Dreams as Common Ground: Part 2

Last week, we explored how “dreaming intelligence” isn’t just something that happens when we sleep—it’s a creative, organizing force working through us all the time, connecting us to wisdom larger than ourselves.

But here’s what I didn’t tell you: we literally cannot survive without it.

Why We Can’t Function Without Dreams

A few years ago, I started noticing something in my practice. Clients would come in exhausted, anxious, unable to regulate their emotions—and when I asked about their sleep, they’d say, “Oh, I get enough hours.” But when I asked about their dreams, there was often nothing. Just blank space. And suddenly, everything made sense.

Modern neuroscience is proving just how essential dreaming really is. Dr. Rahul Jandial, the American neuroscientist and neurosurgeon behind “This Is Why You Dream,” reveals that we literally cannot function without dreaming. His research shows that when we’re deprived of REM sleep—our primary dreaming stage—our brains begin to deteriorate rapidly. We lose the ability to process emotions, consolidate memories, and think creatively.

Jandial’s groundbreaking work demonstrates that dreams aren’t luxury experiences our brains indulge in when they have spare time—they’re biological necessities. Our sleeping brains are actively rewiring neural pathways, clearing out mental debris, and integrating the day’s experiences in ways that keep us psychologically stable and cognitively sharp.

“Dreaming serves as the nervous system’s nightly reset, helping us regulate emotions, discharge stress, and optimize neural connections. Without dreams, we literally start falling apart.”

— Dr. Rahul Jandial

When I first read Jandial’s work, something clicked. Here was a neurosurgeon—someone who literally operates on brains—saying that dreams aren’t optional. They’re survival. And suddenly, all those clients who came to me struggling? I started asking different questions. Not just about their sleep, but about their dreams. About what their bodies were trying to tell them.

The Sacred and the Scientific

What’s remarkable is how Jandial’s cutting-edge neuroscience validates what Dr. Rubin Naiman has been teaching through integrative sleep medicine—that dreaming bridges the scientific and the sacred.

Naiman, the sleep and dream specialist at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center, takes a comprehensive body-mind-spirit approach that encompasses not just meaning-making, but the ecological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of sleep and dreams. He explores how our modern culture disrupts natural sleep rhythms, examines dreams as “night school for the soul,” and investigates how sleep connects us to ancestral knowledge and collective consciousness that transcends individual experience.

Both scientists, approaching from different angles, confirm what indigenous cultures worldwide have always known: dreaming isn’t just a biological process—it’s a sacred encounter with wisdom larger than ourselves. While Jandial maps the neural mechanisms, Naiman explores the holistic dimensions of sleep ecology, and together they validate the profound truth that dreaming is essential for both brain health and spiritual connection.

We’re Starving Ourselves of Dreams

I get it. I’m in it too—the emails at midnight, the scrolling before bed, the feeling that rest is something we’ll get to “later.” But what if our exhaustion isn’t just about being busy? What if we’re literally starving ourselves of the dreaming our brains need to function?

In our 24/7, screen-saturated world, we’ve become not just sleep-deprived but dream-deprived. Many of us get sleep but miss the deeper REM stages where, according to Jandial’s research, the most crucial neural repair and creative processing occurs. We’ve lost touch with the natural rhythms of darkness and light that our ancestors understood as essential for accessing this deeper intelligence.

What Mindell understood intuitively through his dreambody work—that dreaming intelligence operates continuously—reflects insights found across cultures and scientific disciplines. This understanding bridges ancient wisdom with modern research, suggesting that the creative, organizing force we experience in dreams may indeed be working in our daily lives in ways we barely notice.

So what do we do about it?

If dreaming is essential for survival—for emotional regulation, creativity, and connection—how do we tend to it? How do we cultivate a relationship with this intelligence that’s trying to guide us?

Next week, I’ll share what it means to truly tend to your dreaming intelligence—and why it’s about so much more than sleep hygiene.

I’ll also introduce you to Sarah, a client whose life transformed when she stopped analyzing her dreams and started embodying them.

This Week: Tend to Your Sleep

Before we can tend to our dreams, we need to tend to our sleep. This week:

• Notice your bedtime rituals (or lack thereof)
• Track when you feel most rested vs. most depleted
• Ask yourself: Am I creating sacred space for rest and darkness?

Dreaming Forwards the first Workshop in my 4 part series Creating Living: A Series on Deep Sustainability – Early 2026

Spaces will be limited for this experiential workshop where we move beyond dream interpretation to embodied dreamwork.

📧 Email admin@bencrebertpsychology.com.au with “Creating Living” in the subject line for:

• Early notification when registration opens
• A free guide: “Recognizing Your Dreaming Intelligence in Daily Life”

Catch up: Read Part 1 – The Intelligence that Never Sleeps