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After paying attention to dreams for a while, it becomes apparent that not all dreams are the same. Some dreams seem just a usual bundle of mixed up symbols, weird stories and strange goings on. But other dreams stand out, they seem different. They may still have some element of the bizarre to them, or they may seem perfectly normal, but for whatever reason, they seem to touch us or make more of an impact than the every-night, run of the mill dream.
Some different dreams we can look out for are:
Have you woken from a dream feeling deeply healed?
- Healing dreams. After periods of stress, trauma or loss, we can have a dream that touches us deeply. It may include the appearance of a loved one, a wise elder, an innocent child or a gentle animal, or there may be no actual character, just a special place, a vision, or some words we hear. But the result will be the same. Some how this dream reaches into our hurt and makes it feel better. Even when we wake, this feeling of healing can linger and help us cope with whatever problems have bothered us so far.
- Teaching dreams. These kinds of dreams can help us make sense of confusing times. They may come as an epiphany (the “ah-ha! moment”), a sudden profound understanding or a sense of awakening. They help us realise the lesson to be learned from difficult experiences, the value from a period of struggle or to see the truth when the world seems vague or confusing.
Is your dream trying to teach you a lesson, or showing you how to do something new?
- Guidance dreams. Similar to teaching dreams, theses dreams help us to see the truth, but guidance dreams are subtly different in that they help provide us with direction. We will often wake from a guidance dream with a clear sense of purpose, knowing what actions we must take next. Guidance dreams help provide clarity into how we should live our waking lives, and how we can improve our interactions with other people, often through moderating our own behaviours and beliefs.
- Warning dreams. Like an inversion of guidance dreams, these dreams are an insight as to what we should not do, rather than what we should do. If we are engaged in a risky situation, if we have not realised consciously that we are being deceived, or if we are on a course of action that is leading towards an unpleasant, even dangerous outcome, these dreams will often provide a “wake-up call.” We can usually recognise these dreams as we may wake from them shocked, even a little scared. The important thing to realise is that if we heed the warnings of these dreams, we can create a better outcome.
- Problem solving/practical solution dreams. These kind of dreams are usually very specific, and deal with a problem we have already identified and have probably been wrestling with or fretting over for some time. They can help provide a solution we have been seeking, or they can help us fix something. Often these dreams are not strange symbols, but quite literal, as sudden flashes of insight.
- Creative Inspiration. Like problem solving dreams, creative inspiration dreams will often come after we have been seeking inspiration (either consciously or not) for some time. These dreams are often vivid and highly charged with emotion or energy. The dreamer may actually see the painting, sculpture or other piece of art in the dream, or hear music played, and then try to recapture that in waking hours. Or the dream itself may be an inspiration of colour, imagery, sounds and patterns.
- Prodromic Dreams. These are dreams where we can diagnose an illness that is occurring within our body, and potentially also the cure we need. These dreams are not about psychological or spiritual healing primarily, but about actual physical healing of an ailment, although this may be linked to a psychological feeling or condition, such as anger or grief. (see post on Prodromic Dreams.)
- Lucid dreaming. These are the dreams where we become aware that we are dreaming. It may be fleeting awareness, and then we fall back into the dream, it may be startling so that it wakes us up entirely, or we may maintain the lucidity long enough that we are actually able to control the outcome of our dreams. (see post on Lucid Dreams.)
Has your dream experience been so profound it feels like you have communed with the divine?
- Dreams of the divine. These dreams are immediately recognisable but utterly impossible to ever fully describe. In these dreams we feel we have been touched by God, or communed with the Spirit of our Ancestors, or become at one with the power of the universe. These dreams are extraordinary, and if we are lucky enough to have one or more, it will often be an experience that stays with us for our entire lives. (see post on Big Dreams.)
These different kinds of dreams don’t have to exist in isolation, and one dream may have various features. For example, a dream of the divine might also provide creative inspiration, a problem solving dream might also be a lucid dream, a teaching dream could also be very healing, and so on. But when we do have these dreams, we know they are out of the ordinary, and that dreams have a very real contribution to make to our waking lives.
Are you dreams trying to tell you something?
We have all heard stories of people who have dreamed of a series of numbers, and used those numbers to win the lottery, or of people who have dreamed of impending disaster, and then made choices that saved their lives like changing from a flight that crashed or staying home the day a bomb went off at work. Indeed, there are many cases in history of predicting the future, from people in the bible to President Abraham Lincoln. We call these dreams “precognitive dreams.”
Science cannot explain these experiences, but does that make them untrue?
Dreams of our own personal future may not be as dramatic or as extreme as those life changing examples, but nor may they be so rare. Our subconscious mind has many more capabilities than we are usually aware of, or indeed, than we make use of. One of the great skills of our subconscious mind is to seek meaning in things we don’t understand, and part of the way to do this is to look for patterns in our lives. Our subconscious mind will often see the implications of our choices, the cause and effect going on in our lives, before we consciously realise. Our dreams may indeed be visions of the future if we learn to understand them, our subconscious minds way of saying “if you do this, this is what may happen”. Sometimes this may be a warning, at other times it can be a solution to a problem, or show the reward of our hard work, patience or perseverance.
Where are the signs in our dreams pointing towards?
Another way dreams can help us anticipate the future is by supporting our intuition. in those moments when we just “get a hunch” or “have a feeling,” our intuition is at work. Sometimes our intuition may stem from a half remembered dream, or it may be the conscious recognition of the patterns the dreams have been playing out in our minds for some ways. As we improve our relationship with dreams, so too can we improve our intuition, and increase the likelihood of having those lucky hunches more often.
Sometimes though, it seems even this explanation is inadequate. Sometimes a dream of the future may seem to be a specific message or intention sent to us from another place. This seems to be particularly true when we dream of a loved one. This may take the form of a deceased relative, who appears to warn or give advice, or maybe someone precious who is far away, and needs to share some important information. What exactly is going on here?
There is actually a lot of scientific work going on to explore the connection between human minds. (The links below are a good place to start exploring.) Physics is starting to unravel some of the mysteries as to how space and time can be irrelevant when to seemingly separate things are actually part of the same thing. Who knows if this is happening when are dream of those we love. This can be perhaps more easilly accessed in our dreaming state, when our conscious mind is not in the way to tell us what is impossible!
How can your dreams help you live a brighter future?
But science still has a long way to go in explaining communication with the departed. Perhaps this is one experience we have to interpret purely in our own personal way, and to make the best of what we learn.
Even without being visited by people, alive or no, in our sleeping hours, we can all learn to better cultivate our own self understanding through dreams, and in doing so become the best possible creators of our future.
http://www.monstrous.com/forum/index.php?topic=3032.0;wap2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlocality
