Here is why you shouldn't feel bad about what you do in your dreams

(You're not morally responsible for what happens in your dreams!)

We all get scared when we wake up from a dream and you did something horrible. Or you did something you would NEVER do in real life. You spend most of the day trying to forget, and feeling ashamed and embarrassed. I'm here to tell you-you don't have to feel bad! We are not morally accountable for what we do in our dreams. I could go into heavy detail, and I did! You can read one of my research papers here, or I can just explain it to you real simple.

I'll start with a story. St. Augustine was a philosopher who lived in the early 300's. He committed his life to celibacy, but he battled explicit dreams. He prayed and prayed and prayed and God did not take those dreams away. Augustine wanted to find out if it was his fault that he was having explicit dreams. Long story short, he came to the conclusion that since dreams happen against our will technically-we are not responsible for what our dreams entail.

He was not far off. Life I mentioned in my last two blog posts, why we dream and if dreams have meaning-we know that dreams are neurons moving throughout our brains and memories being encoded. We are not morally accountable for what we dream. It doesn't have to have some underlying cause, or some underlying meaning. A dream can really be just that.

Now, that is just the bread and butter. As we go along and learn more-we may yet discover that our emotions do play a role into our dreams. But for right now, don't worry over a dream you had and whatever it was about. You can rest easy knowing it doesn't mean what you think it means.