I am standing in a crowd of people talking, when suddenly I get an awkward feeling in my mouth. All of a sudden, my teeth begin to crumble in my mouth… Are you kidding me? I now need dentures at this early stage in my life? Then I realize, this can’t really be happening.
A while back, I posted about how I lucid dream, and this turned out to be one of those dreams, a persistent one. Time after time, I’d realize I was dreaming. I’d then simply “think” new teeth back into the jaw of my “dream self” and continue on with whatever the plotline was that evening. The weird part was that this kept happening even when I was aware that I was dreaming. Something else had to be going on, I reasoned.
Coincidentally, at my next trip to the dentist, she asked me if I realized that I had been grinding my teeth. She proceeded to tell me how bad this was for my teeth. She also indicated that it was most likely happening in my sleep. Then I put two and two together.
I was grinding my teeth at night, and when I did that, my body was informing me in my dreams by the crumbling teeth dream metaphor. Since then, I have discovered that many people have this teeth crumbling dream also. When asked if they grind their teeth, they have checked with their dentist, and sure enough, they do. As far as I have discovered thus far, nobody has ever officially documented this claim in dentistry.
So here is my claim to dentistry fame: I shall now officially dub this discovery as the Benek Teeth Crumbling Phenomenon (BTCP). Apologies in advance if someone has already discovered this.
Might it be the case that when people become aware of unconscious actions that harm themselves, such conscious recognition in and of itself might be enough…to cause the harmful behavior to stop?
What is more interesting to me than this little discovery was the fact that once I became aware of the problem, I was able to stop the teeth grinding altogether in my sleep. Now mind you, I was asleep when the dreaming happened–in a dream state–yet my physical state behavior changed. And I was not consciously telling myself to stop grinding my teeth in my lucid dream state. Instead, the teeth grinding just stopped, apparently subconsciously.
This leads me to draw some interesting physical/theological conclusions. Might it be the case that when people become aware of unconscious actions that harm themselves, such conscious recognition in and of itself might be enough, sometimes, to cause the harmful behavior to stop? This seems logical doesn’t it?
Teeth grinding obviously isn’t good for my teeth, but I didn’t know that I was doing it. Once I did, the action stopped even while I was technically in a subconscious state. Is it possible that such conscious acknowledgement of a previously unrecognized harmful behavior might cause the individual to subconsciously stop the said behavior?
My thought is that such conscious acknowledgement may be a sociological function of religious worship as well.
For instance, what if a person thinks thoughts that are bad, but doesn’t realize that they are bad? If they then verbally convey those thoughts to another person, who proceeds to indicate to them that the thoughts are bad, would such an acknowledgement be enough to potentially stop the bad thoughts from happening again?
Reality Changing Observations:
1. Have you or someone you know ever experienced the BTCP?
2. How do you explore your subconscious issues that impact your conscious self?
3. Has a worship experience ever helped to convict you of something you needed to change about yourself, and if so, how did your life ultimately change?
