Why do we dream?
Well, one reason is because our souls never sleep. They are active in other dimensions while our bodies rest. Your subconscious takes the night shift so you can feel refreshed each morning. How thoughtful! Some dreams help us heal emotions and relationships while we sleep. They give us wisdom and guidance when our ego isn’t looking to interfere. That’s why parents should never tell their children, “It was just a dream.” What they are dismissing is a natural way for humans of all ages to process hidden emotions and learn to understand the many layers of their beings on a subconscious and spiritual level. Dreaming is also a time to connect to the unlimited potential we have as creative individuals. Dreams are real and should always be respected, because they are a part of us, both the conscious part and the subconscious part.
Dreams have been shared and documented since the beginning of time. The Bible reveals that dreaming is how God communicates with us - “He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds.” (Job 3:15). In more recent times, scientists and artists relied on dreams for their creative ideas. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity developed from a dream he had about a field of cows surrounded by an electric fence, and Paul McCartney woke from a dream which provided the melody to his famous song “Yesterday.” Just imagine what you could come up with in your dreams if you learned how to interpret and even incubate them.
Ancient civilizations from Greece, Rome and Egypt believed dream interpretation to be an art practiced by wise oracles requiring divine inspiration. But we all have the ability to learn to interpret our own dreams. We just have to learn the language of dream symbols. Egyptians knew how to incubate dreams, meaning they chose subject matters to dream about prior to sleep, similar to the way we choose films to view on a streaming website. Dreaming is never random, it is interactive. But we don’t have to sleep in temples as the ancient people did in order for the gods to send their messages to us. We just have to close our eyes in our own beds and let the curtains rise on our dreamscapes.
I used to believe dreams were nonsense, just rehashing the day’s encounters and worries. But over time, a few dreams forced me to take notice and I started documenting them. At first I only documented dreams occasionally if they were extremely vivid and seemed to hold wisdom that I could not yet understand. When I focused more attention on dreaming, the ability to remember dreams became a familiar practice. Now I look at my dreams from a spiritual perspective, in terms of everything being connected by universal energy, and so my waking life has become more magical and meaningful because of it. I’ve discovered great insights through my dreams, solved emotional problems, and learned there are many types of dreams we can experience in order to expand our higher consciousness.
Types of Dreams
Some people say they don’t dream, but that’s impossible. All of us dream, some just don’t remember. It’s like intuition; we all have this sixth sense, but not all of us listen to it when it whispers to us. You might recall a vivid dream you had as a child because it was a nightmare and woke you up. Nightmares, even for adults, reveal our fears. Sometimes we experience a recurring dream we just can’t shake. This might be an emotional issue or warning that is being ignored like that intuition I mentioned. Dreams are an extraordinary way to help us learn to self-heal mentally, emotionally and physically. Healing dreams range from seeing yourself hugging a person you are in conflict with, to being shown a type of food which contains specific vitamins and minerals that your body is currently lacking.
The types of dreams that get my attention the most are the ones that come true. For example, I once had a dream about meeting a man who carried a suitcase. He told me his name. I wrote these details down in my dream journal when I woke, and I thought nothing of it. After a month had passed, I was traveling on a plane. The man who sat beside me on the flight struck up a conversation. He introduced himself and somehow the discussion led to our birthdays. When I returned home after my trip abroad, I was looking back through my dream journal and my heart stopped on a particular page. I found the entry where I had written about a man with a suitcase (a symbol for a journey). I recognized his name as the exact foreign name the man provided beside me on the flight. And, the date I wrote the entry in my book matched the date he told me was his birthday. I dreamed about a stranger on his birthday one month before I met him in waking life! This is called a precognitive dream in which the dreamer is shown information about future events. I have had numerous precognitive dreams, one that even led me to the awareness of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. I attended their annual conference in the Netherlands and met other members including scientists, psychologists, doctors, nurses, artists, healers, professors and psychics from all over the globe who study dreams to better understand the mind, body and spirit.
How to Interpret Dream Symbols
When I began keeping a dream journal, I wrote my dreams down the moment I awoke, because if I started making my bed, washing my face or brewing coffee, I would lose the memory of the dream and much of the important details, such as the objects I saw, their color and texture, how many there were, how the dream made me feel, and what questions I had about specific dream characters such as a lion or my deceased grandmother. I later learned seeing our ancestors is called a visitation dream. These are wonderful ways to connect with the spirits of our loved ones who have passed on and wish to say hello from heaven. They sometimes have specific guidance for us about our life journeys.
You can find dream dictionaries on the internet with general interpretations of common dream elements such as water, which symbolizes your emotions, whether the water is in a tub, a lake, or in the form of rain. The more you write down your dreams and make it a regular practice, the better you will get at interpreting the symbols as they relate to your own personal psyche. For example, I often dream about numbers and animals. If specific numbers keep repeating in my dreams and waking life, I look up their meaning to help me interpret the dream. The Universe is governed by numbers and reveals messages within each specific digit. For example, the number three symbolizes past, present, future, and also mind, body, spirit. It forms a triangle and can symbolize the trinity, or it might refer to something that will happen in three months, or in the month of March, or even on the third. You might be offered three job opportunities, or be pregnant with triplets! It all depends on the other dream elements. The same goes for animal symbols. If a zebra, an alligator and a lemur cross your path in a dream, it is not by chance. (And notice there were THREE animals.) Each animal guide communicates a different message in the dream dimension based on their unique characteristics. Native Americans have been connected to sacred animal medicine for centuries. The wolf, eagle, and buffalo all have great wisdom to share in the collective consciousness.
There are numerous books available to begin to delve into this forgotten language that our ancestors understood. I’ve only scratched the surface on beginning to help you understand your dreams. Eventually you can teach yourself to incubate dreams and even become lucid, which is when you are aware you are dreaming and you can fly or do whatever you wish. If you want to learn more about your dreams, feel free to contact me to help you begin your journey into dream work. It will change the way you perceive yourself and the Universe at large.
Sweet dreams!
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