I Am Who I Am.

We sometimes hear someone make the comment: I am who I am, or I am what I am, or it is just the way I am. This often occurs after the person has received criticism for some statement or action. I am not referring to LGBT. This post is dealing with something else. The subject here is any individual who may occasionally justify certain characteristics or behavior with one of the three responses about his or her identity that is not related to sexual preference.

This begs the question: Who am I? People have investigated this question for thousands of years, and religions believe they have the answer. Some scientists too have concluded that they have the answer, which is often dramatically different from any answer religions provide. 

So when people give one of the above three responses, or something similar, to criticism, what do they really mean? Do they mean that their behaviors are hard coded into their personalities to such a degree that they cannot be or do otherwise? They came out of the womb that way and there is nothing they can do to change, nor should they try.

Parents often face this dilemma in raising children. During the teenage years, the child is frequently heard saying, "you won’t accept me the way I am. You want me to be someone else." And in many circumstances, this is a valid response, especially if the parent is trying to decide the child’s future and life’s career.

But many times it is not an appropriate response. A child who does not want to take personal responsibility for his or her actions may also respond this way. And here we have the crux of the matter. When is a criticism valid and when is it misplaced? Sometimes we may be affected by a criticism and think we should change, even when the criticism is not justified.

My answer to this is that you need to know yourself. You need to know who and what you are. Through dreams, you can discover your individual identity and soul's purpose. Then you are not affected by others’ criticism if is counter to your purpose and knowledge of yourself. 

One of the worse reasons I can think of for doing something is because everyone is doing it. Sometimes the herd is following a leader off a cliff. You need to be so certain in your own self-awareness that even the influences of your family and friends will not send you in the wrong direction.

The other side to this is our recognition that we are the wrong path or have behavior that is unacceptable and needs to change. Someone in this position who gives one of the three, or similar, responses I listed to criticism is saying I don’t want or intend to change. This person’s attitude is that this is the way I am and you are going to have to accept me this way. 

Of course, for someone behaving badly, this attitude is not based on any deep introspection, but rather it is based on the person’s laziness and lack of concern about his or her behavior and any negative impact on others and his or her own life. The response is a selfish one and indicates a complete lack of self-awareness.

Our dreams make it difficult for us to ignore our own selfishness and lack of regard for others. If we are sincerely seeking help and working with guidance from our dreams, we will see all aspects of ourselves. Our beauty and creativity will be evident, but so will our blemishes and pettiness. 

So the next time you are tempted to say this is just the way I am, ask yourself if you really know this to be true. Or are you just avoiding dealing with some aspect of yourself that you would like to ignore, but need to correct. Of course, our failings are usually quite evident to others, even if we ignore them.

Our dreams show us our potentials, what we can become to family and friends in our lives, but they also show us our deficiencies. I believe that one of the reasons few people work daily with their dreams is their unwillingness to look at their deficiencies. They don’t want to see them; they don’t want to change.

Bad behavior that can affect one’s health is an example of this. If a person is doing something that is detrimental to his or her physical health, the effects will be revealed in dreams. The person can refuse to look at it and ignore any future dreams, but the effects will still occur. 

We live in a world of cause and effect. If you want to change the effect, you have to change the cause. Those who laugh it off and treat the warning as trivial are destined to reap the consequences.

During my life, I have known several people who lived hard, consuming excessive amounts of alcohol, engaging in late night partying, and getting inadequate amounts of sleep and exercise. They laughed at any suggestion they should slow down and bring balance into their lives. A common response was "I am going to enjoy life and not worry about it. When my time comes, it comes." (One person I knew with this attitude died shortly after turning thirty.)

If that is really their choice and they have a full understanding of what that entails, then they have made their decision and must live with the consequences. However, years later, I heard many (those that still survived) of these same people say they wished they had made better choices when they were younger. 

It is amazing how a diseased, suffering body and the approach of the end of one's life changes one's perspective. I think few people who abuse their bodies when young really understand what they are doing, and they don’t actually want to face the consequences. 

Serious work with our dreams changes our views; it changes us. We grow in our understanding of our own lives and the creation of those lives through our thoughts and actions. New potentials open up, and we see our connection to everyone and everything around us. We begin to learn who we really are. We see the life we are building and the consequences of our actions.

Literal Dreams

I have mentioned literal dreams in several of my posts, but only in connection with some other topic. In this post, I focus entirely on literal dreams. 

First, let me define what I mean by a literal dream. I consider a literal dream one in which the story or message is literal. If you dream that you meet someone and have an unusual conversation, the dream would be literal if this meeting and conversation actually occurs just like in the dream. 

Suppose you have a friend or a family member who has just been diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer. This individual meets with you or calls you to tell you the diagnosis. If you dream about this event as it actually occurs, the dream would be literal. 

Now, it is possible that you may have a dream in which a portion of it is literal, but symbols are also present. If in the above example, suppose you dreamed that someone else was telling you about the cancer. 

The message may be literal, but the person delivering it could be a symbolic representation of the person with the disease. In this case, the person in the dream will usually remind you of this other person in a striking way, so the subconscious mind through association used this other person to symbolize the individual with the actual disease. 

A telephone dream can be a literal dream as far as the message is concerned, but in your conscious state, you do not receive a telephone call. The telephone in the dream is there to tell you that you are receiving a communication from your subconscious that often contains a critical message. 

In my case, one night the telephone rang in a dream with a disturbing message. The voice on the other end said your son is in trouble. This dream occurred over forty years ago; at the time, my son was in preschool. Unknown, to my conscious mind, my son was having a serious problem with an older, larger boy in the preschool who was a bully. 

Perhaps, there were signs my conscious mind missed. This was a chaotic period in my life and many things undoubtedly escaped my conscious awareness. However, this situation did not escape my subconscious awareness, so it made my conscious mind aware through a dream. My subconscious considered the message too important to put it in a dream with symbols that I might not interpret correctly. 

I have found that dreams in which I receive a warning about some action I have taken or am considering taking also often contain literal messages. The message could be delivered via the telephone, but my dreams usually deliver the message through a voice without any association with a person. I just hear a loud background voice that delivers the warning. 

The voice does not have to be delivering a warning for the message to be literal. The voice may advise you to take a certain action that would be in your best interest, but either you are unaware of the opportunity or are procrastinating. 

Once I dreamed that a voice said now would be a good time to buy puts on the stock market. I did not take any action, but the market did take a dramatic downturn within a week or two of the dream. 

I have had many dreams in which a voice comments on the health of an individual who is a close friend or family member. In one I dream I had recently, an angelic presence in a dream suddenly approached and said that George (not actual name) has a serious heart problem.

Of course, this dream could be symbolic, but based on what I know about George, I think it is literal. Other times, especially when I am concerned about the health of someone, a voice gives me an update on the state of the person’s health. 

If you have a telephone dream, or hear a voice as I have described, pay close attention to the dream. The message could be of critical importance to you. I should add that some of my dreams about earth changes such as a certain coastal city not being safe after the earth axis shifts were delivered in this fashion. 

I give more credence to these dreams being literal indications of future events than my symbolic dreams about earth changes, which could just as well be about internal or external events in my own life. A similar comment applies to economic events such as sudden major changes in the financial markets. 

A Potentially Cataclysmic Event

There is an article in the July, 2015 issue of The New Yorker called The Really Big One by Kathryn Schulz that caused me to reflect on a dream from many years ago about Seattle. The article is about a seismologist’s view that there is a significant probability of a major quake in the Pacific Northwest within the next 50 years. 

The area is in the Ring of Fire, where the Cascadia fault zone is located off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Scientists know that earthquakes in certain regions where there are fault zones tend to repeat with a known cycle, which is independent of current climate changes, and they have discovered that this is one of those regions.

The projections are not due to some prophet calling for destruction in that part of the world. They are based on known data and scientific projections about potential quakes in that region. Earthquakes have occurred there before every few hundred years on the average, and the next one is already overdue. The article that describes this with all the details is well worth the read.

My interest, as I stated, is due to a dream I had concerning the city of Seattle, which is in the zone of impact should a major quake occur. The dream occurred a long time ago, and it was during a period when I was reflecting on potential earth changes.

One night I dreamed a major quake had struck the region with a severe impact on Seattle. The top part of the space needle had broken off and fallen to the ground. The city had been inundated and was under several feet of water.

Seattle was not an area I ever traveled to on business, and normally I would not think about this particular city. Of course, as I have stated in other posts, this destruction in Seattle could symbolize some event that occurred in my life at that time. However, due to the recent article and likelihood of a major quake in that region, I think my dream could also have been a reflection of a future event. 

Perhaps at the time of the dream, when I was reflecting on possible quakes in California, my subconscious tuned into an occurrence in the Pacific Northwest that it saw as a future event. What triggered it doesn’t matter; it is worth considering as a potential warning.

I do not live near Seattle and have no plans to visit that area, so I am not at risk should a seismic event occur. However, there are millions of people potentially impacted by such an event. My advice to those living in high-risk areas is to be alert to warnings from your own dreams. 

If you are meditating and working with your dreams on a daily basis, you will not be caught unprepared. If you are at risk and have no desire to experience a catastrophic event, I believe your own inner guidance will provide warnings in advance of such events. 

Note that I say have no desire to experience such events because some people actually crave what they consider as excitement when in a potentially life-and-death struggle.

If you wait until a disaster occurs to try to tune into your inner self, to get guidance from your dreams, you may find it is too late. Learning how to decode your dreams takes time and practice through regular effort. A disaster doesn’t suddenly give you that ability. 

A similar comment can be made about meditation. If you have not been meditating on a regular basis, you may find it impossible to meditate during a crisis. Louis Pasteur made the statement, "chance only favours the mind which is prepared" often quoted as “chance favors the prepared mind.” I would like to add the statement: Survival in the time of disaster favors those who are prepared.

I am reminded of a story told by one of my English professors in college. He said he was taking his oral exam for the PhD when he was asked a question about what he considered an unimportant reference he could not recall. He responded by saying he could always look it up if he needed it. The questioning professor said, “You need it now.” 

Our physical life is fragile indeed. If you place all of your trust in you wealth, job, and the stability of your environment, during a major disaster you will discover how quickly your sense of security can disappear. A house, personal possessions, and job can all be gone in an instant. 

True security comes from a sense of attunement with your inner self and higher consciousness; it does not come from the material. During my lifetime, I have experienced power outages and blocked roads because of storms. I was never in serious danger, but without power and easy access to stores, I realized just how dependent we all are on technology and accessibility. 

I think people who have grown up with tablets and mobile phones will be quite challenged if they have no cell phone access and are without power for their homes. Yet, this is something many may come to experience.

Nightmares

Yesterday there was a headline article on CNN about former POW Jessica Lynch. She describes for CNN her life the past twelve years and the challenges she has had to face. Now traveling and speaking to groups as a motivational speaker, she acknowledges that for twelve years she failed to seek help for her mental health. Apparently, this year she has changed her mind and is now getting professional help.

The reason this story caught my attention is her assertion that she has had the same nightmare for the last twelve years. Apparently, this is not uncommon for those suffering from PTSD as the result of combat or some other traumatic, life-changing event. In her case, the nightmare is a replay of Iraqi soldiers coming to get her as she tries to escape. 

This fits the classic definition of a nightmare as a disturbing, realistic dream. Nightmares, as contrasted with normal dreams, only occur during the REM dream cycle.

If you are suffering in a similar fashion with a recurring nightmare that affects the quality of your life, I urge you to get professional help. Even a few weeks can seem a long time with a recurring nightmare. And a period of twelve years is an extremely long time to experience the same nightmare. 

Sometimes those suffering from PTSD after returning from war have experienced nightmares the remainder of their lives.

The nightmare resulting from some traumatic event like enemy capture is one type of nightmare and professional help may be needed to help the individual face and resolve the cause of the nightmare. For most people, the underlying cause could be stress due to something in their individual lives. 

Perhaps they are failing at something regardless of the effort made. It could be marriage, a job, a sport, or finding themselves unable to pay the bills. This stress could trigger a recurring nightmare in which they are sinking or being chased. Or they may be climbing up a slippery or treacherous slope unable to reach the top and find themselves falling or in fear of falling.

I believe that nightmares can also be triggered by coming events seen by the subconscious, which triggers a response in the form of a nightmare. As a young child less than five years old, I frequently had dreams, including nightmares. In fact, in the family I was known as the dreamer and sleepwalker. 

I can recall a recurring dream that terrified me at the time. I dreamed that I saw a gigantic ball of snow and ice starting to roll down a hill headed toward our house. As the ball started to roll over and crush the house, I awoke. I lived in Vermont, so ice and snow were common sights. However, in the dream we were being destroyed by the snow and ice.

This dream recurred until my father died from a kidney disease when I was five years old. After his death, our family fortunes went downhill very rapidly. 

My mother went back to work outside the home after being out of the labor force for almost twenty years. She was forced to accept a low paying job, which had to support two young boys. A load of medical bills left from my father’s illness added to the pressure. Within a few years, we were destitute. We were indeed crushed by the death of my father.

I believe that my subconscious mind saw the coming death and drastic change in our financial situation. This information took the form of a nightmare in my dreams, and it continued until the actual event occurred. Regardless of whether your nightmares are precognitive or dealing with known situations, if they are recurring, you should pay close attention and try to determine the cause.

Individual nightmares might be triggered by strong medications that can disrupt the sleep and dream cycle, so examine the list of side effects associated with any medications you are taking. My own philosophy is the fewer medications, the better. But you may be dealing with a serious illness, and the medication you are taking may be the prescribed treatment. 

If you find the side effects unacceptable, you should discuss them with your physician. He or she may be able to find an alternative medication that is equally effective without the unpleasant or harmful side effects.

Some think that certain foods can cause nightmares, and there is limited evidence to supports this view. However, I cannot think of any examples from my own dreams. 

Nevertheless, this is a common view. In fact, when I reported my nightmares, and even non-stressful dreams, to my mother and grandparents as a young boy, they concluded they were caused by something I ate. Of course, their view of dreams was based on folklore and not any serious study, but sometimes there is an element of truth to folklore. 

As I have mentioned in other posts, for the most beneficial dreams you should eat a proper diet, get adequate exercise, stay away from drugs, unless prescribed by your doctor, and meditate daily.

Three Recent Precognitive Dreams

A week and a half ago, I had an interesting dream that is typical of many of my dreams that reflect the highlights of the next day. In the dream, I was talking with someone about a two-dimensional barcode. Data was being encoded in the barcode in a strange way. As the string of numbers was parsed, the representation of each digit was placed in the barcode on a certain row and column with no order structure apparent. 

The other person in the dream asked me if I understood how it worked. I said I did, and I told him someone just needed to write a program that did a table lookup to determine where to place the digit in the barcode based on the table. The table was key to the placement of data in the barcode.

A voice in the dream gave me a number that was four or five digits and said it was my identification. This number related to the barcode in some way. For clarification, I should add that I was once responsible for a font group that created digital barcode fonts, among other things, used for printing on commercial high speed ink-jet printers.

The next day was Sunday. I had just published a new post the previous day and did not plan to spend any time on my computer. I thought about going out for the day, but as the day progressed, I decided against it. Then late in the afternoon, I found myself on my computer. 

I suddenly decided, at least so I thought, I would start collecting my blogs into a book format. As I did, I realized that I had to do considerable rearranging of the order of the posts. I had to select the post and then decide where to place it in the book based on the product I had in mind. 

The product was a certain arrangement of the posts by topic and required my creating a mental table for the blog post location based on the topic. The dream played out and as always captured the salient parts of my activity.

About a month ago, I was awakened by a disturbing dream. The dream was brief and straightforward. Something happened in the area of my upper right molars. What appeared to be a bundle of nerves hung down from a section in my mouth. I was shocked in the dream and thought I had better go to the dentist immediately. 

Upon awakening, I checked for any pain or discomfort in that part of mouth, but could not find any. The teeth seemed fine, and I had never experienced any problems with the teeth in question.

I have often observed that if my dreams reflect a future event of this type, the actual event may not occur for a few weeks. Now, early last week or a few weeks after the dream, I noticed a sensitivity in that part of my mouth after eating some crunchy items the previous day, making it difficult to chew. I waited a few days to see if I had just irritated a tooth by what I ate or by grinding my teeth at night. The discomfort did not worsen, but it did not improve either.

On Sunday night, I had the following dream. I dreamed I was with a man walking along a road that passed a housing development with houses on each side. The man, who happened to be English, was in an executive position at my previous employer. We were going toward a building that housed two companies. He expressed concern over the presence of two companies in the same building. He was trying to determine which company caused some kind of problem involving them.

One thing I associate with the English is dentistry because of the stereotype of the English having poor dental care. I believe the dream meant the following. The houses represented my teeth. The walk was a journey through my mouth with the dentist, symbolized by the Englishman. His concern over the two companies represented some kind of concern over two teeth.

The next day, I was driving home from the mall, which takes me past my dentist’s office. I suddenly found myself turning into the parking lot, even though on Sunday I had decided to give it another week before making a decision about a visit to the dentist. I went into the office about 3:00 PM and the receptionist said she could get me in at 5:00 PM. 

When the dentist saw me at 5:00 PM, the dental assistant had already asked me questions, taken an X-ray, and checked for sensitivity on two molars. The dentist was very thorough, but despite his best efforts, it was not clear which of two teeth was the problem. One molar had a crown so it was not possible to determine the state of the underlying tooth. It is possible I irritated both. 

Right now, I am in monitoring mode and have another visit scheduled for August. If it was just an irritation from something I did like eating the crunchy food, it might clear up. I will look for further dreams that might indicate any needed action.

I should state very emphatically that in the case of the barcode dream and the second dream about the dentist, I did not intend to engage in the activity reflected in dreams when I started the day. These activities were not something I thought about before retiring the previous evenings to precipitate the dreams. 

The day after the barcode dream, I had no plans to access my computer when the day started. And my trip to the dentist appeared to be a spontaneous decision. Yet both dreams reflected the next day’s activities accurately before I even knew what I was going to do. 

I am not implying from my examples that these are the only recent precognitive dreams. These dreams were selected because I could easily describe the circumstances surrounding their occurrence. 

My dreams continue to reflect the next day’s key activities, events, and interactions. However, for some dreams a great deal of information would have to be provided for someone else to understand their meaning. Also, sometimes the information is highly personal relating to others as well as myself, so is not used in examples.

Paranormal Abilities in Dreams

In dreams, you can experience abilities of the soul that are not obvious in daily waking life. Telepathy, clairvoyance, and astral projection are the best known abilities. First, I will describe what I mean by each of these.

By telepathy, I mean the communication of one mind to another through a means other than the physical senses. Some may think that this automatically means that someone with telepathic powers can read minds, such as the main character Toby Logan in the TV show The Listener. 

This is not normally the case. However, there may be times when you suddenly “hear” someone say something to you or about you when no words were spoken. I give an example of this in my book involving a waitress in a restaurant I used to frequent.

Clairvoyance is the ability to see things beyond the use of the normal senses, which usually includes the ability to see future events. My precognitive dreams can be considered examples of my clairvoyance while in the dream state. And this ability does not just relate to the future; I may see events taking place that are beyond the range of my normal senses, such as a family member who is emotionally distraught at the time I dream of him or her.

Astral projection is thought to occur in dreams, although probably less frequently than telepathy and clairvoyance. This phenomenon is an out-of-body experience during which the astral body is said to travel outside the physical body to another location. 

The astral body is thought to be a replica of the physical body, but consisting of an energy form that is sensitive to feelings and emotions. This body lies between the mental body and soul.  

We all have psychic powers as part of our true nature, but for a variety of reasons they are not visible for most people. However, in dreams, we often will communicate directly with another person about issues not discussed in the waking state. Sometimes we are not involved in the discussion, but receive the thoughts of other people about us or some situation that involves us. 

I have had numerous dreams with both kinds of communications occurring. Consider the following example. Suppose you have recently starting dating someone, become infatuated, and are anxious to know what your friends think of your new love. You might well have a dream in which you overhear a conversation your friends are having about your situation. 

As another example, your behavior may have suddenly changed recently leaving your friends puzzled. You may hear their concerns or tune into their thoughts in a dream. 

As a final example, you may be avoiding a situation, thinking that no one has noticed. But while dreaming, you tune into the thoughts of a close friend that indicate otherwise.

I find that some of the most remarkable dreams involving ESP may involve people who are close to us such as family members. The communication is not necessarily with the family member, but may be with someone else who is involved with the family member.

I once dreamed that I met someone I did not know very well and received a simple message. The message was there are things about me you don’t know. This person was involved with someone close to me, and we both later discovered that there were important things that the individual had concealed about her background.

Dreams directly about family members can be extremely revealing. If you are in a committed relationship, and one of you has an affair, the partner is almost certain to see evidence of this is a dream. Also, in dreams, you are likely to discover how your partner really sees you, not how you think he or she sees you. You see yourself through the other person’s eyes. 

In the case of children, if one of them is involved in some forbidden activity such as consuming alcohol or taking drugs, he or she might be able to fool your conscious mind, but not your subconscious. If you see this type of activity in a dream, don’t panic, but do look into it right away.

In addition to family, dreams about someone with whom you have contact can be particularly valuable when they make you aware of hidden motives of the individual that may affect you. If a co-worker is going behind your back to enhance his or her position to your detriment, this will most likely be revealed in a dream. You are telepathically picking up his or her real intentions and subversive actions. 

I once had a warning dream about a colleague who was trying to undermine my position. Consciously, I was completely unaware of his intent, but the dream put me on guard and in time I saw the reason for the warning. 

Another time, in an example given in my book, I was tuned into a situation with a contractor that could be considered a telepathic connection with several people concerning their opinion of him.

During my years in a management position in a corporation, my dream telepathy benefited me greatly. My job required extensive communication with sales, customers, and third parties. I had responsibilities that involved business units in Europe and Asia as well as America. 

I quickly learned that some of the norms for business conduct in other countries are quite different from the United States. My dreams helped me understand the cultures of these other countries and made me better at dealing with business and personal issues involving them. 

Often the dreams were precognitive dreams that alerted me to a situation involving an imminent telephone call, which included the mood of the individuals involved and the tone of the discussion. I was often able to defuse a situation with angry customers or sales people because I was prepared ahead of time through a dream.

In my precognitive dreams, clairvoyance was rather routine. I once saw a house and lot I later purchased in detail in a dream weeks before I saw the actual property. My dream even pointed out the concerns that would, and did, surface when I saw the property.

In another dream, described in my book, I entered work one Monday morning and encountered my boss with huge red blotches on his face. The prior night I had dreamed about my boss in exactly that condition.

I found that astral projection is rarer as an occurrence, but it can be induced prior to falling asleep through suggestion in the pre-sleep state. One night, prior to falling asleep, having expressed a desire to experience astral projection, I dreamed I was taken on a tour by another man. 

We approached a train track with a speeding train approaching and he just passed right in front of it without concern. I stopped before the track. He looked at me and laughed, saying that it couldn’t hurt me. We then went to a location where people were assembled and some type of performance was taking place. 

In my dreams that may involve astral projection, I am traveling on the wings of thought with remarkable ease and a sense of well-being. Of course, there are those who will dispute that such a thing as astral projection even exists. If you have an open mind, but remain doubtful, I suggest you read There is a River by Thomas Sugrue or one of the other biographies of Edgar Cayce. 

I am not suggesting that all flying dreams involve astral projection; it is only one possibility. As some authors suggest, it may also mean rising above a situation in your life. Other possibilities will depend on your current life situation and associations with flying in the dream.

Edgar Cayce and Levels of Dreaming

My own introduction to the meaning of dreams came through an Edgar Cayce study group. This was followed by a weeklong course on prayer, meditation, and dreams taught by the late Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of Edgar Cayce, and Dr. Herbert Puryear, a psychologist on the staff at the Association for Research and Enlightenment. 

After my education on the Cayce approach, I read many books on dreams written by psychologists, which included some of the then current theories about dreams. There were many areas of agreement within the different sources, but the thing that attracted me to the Cayce approach was the spiritual dimension, which was missing in most of the scientific theories. 

This was not the case for all psychologists and psychiatrists. The work of the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung is similar to Edgar Cayce in many respects, and the spiritual element is a key aspect of Jung’s approach to the unconscious. This is not true of Freud.

In the Cayce approach, dreams can occur on three levels: body, mind, and spirit. Our dreams are not necessarily from one level only; we may find, for example, a spiritual element in a mental dream. There is always the more obvious interpretation of a symbol in a dream, but there may also be a deeper hidden meaning.

Dreams at the body level may be initiated by foods we have eaten or drugs we have taken that cause problems for the body’s normal processing. Strong drugs may initiate bizarre dreams, as well as foods that cause difficulty for the body. For the best dream recall, eat a well-balanced diet, get sufficient sleep, and avoid drugs other than necessary prescriptions.

Our normal concerns and conscious struggles with problems can be reflected in dreams. If we are sincerely trying to receive guidance from our dreams, then the dreams will be more than just a reflection of concerns, but will offer concrete help in solving the problems. 

As an example, you may find yourself on the wrong path in a dream, which may reflect your approach to solving some problem. Consciously, you probably already realize that your approach is not working. If you are sincerely seeking help, you may well find a clue in the dream that leads to the right path or approach to solving the problem. 

As an example of this, I refer to one of my early dreams about being a slave on a slave ship. In the dream, a voice said it would not be nearly as bad if I didn’t resist so much. I already knew that I felt that way towards my job, so that part of the dream wasn’t telling me anything new. The remainder of the dream, though, did give me the solution. 

My mental resistance to my work situation was making it much worse. The answer was to not struggle against my current lot, but to embrace the situation in which I found myself and develop a more positive attitude.

I believe the dream example about the slave ship also demonstrates the third level of dreams. In this level of dreams, we discover a spiritual presence that guides and instructs us for our greater good. This often occurs as an unknown voice in a dream. This same voice told me many years ago just months after joining a study group that everything would be OK when I lost my job, and that I would have a new purpose in life. 

Sometimes the voice comes as a warning about unrecognized threats, and my dreams of this kind have always been literal. Also, spiritual dreams often include religious symbols such as the cross or priestly robes and colors such as white, blue, or lavender.

Edgar Cayce expressed a view that we find prominent in A Course in Miracles. This view is that if a person can really connect with the spiritual, what Cayce called the “universal forces,” nothing is impossible.

There are instances in the readings when a person receiving a health reading had asked if his or her particular ailment could be corrected through self-hypnosis using autosuggestion. In at least one case I can recall, where the person had a critical illness, Cayce’s answer was that it could not. The condition was too serious. He told the person that deep meditation would be required. The person needed to become in tune with the spiritual forces. 

In my dreams, I have clearly seen the elements indicated by Cayce in his readings. The three levels of dreaming are clearly visible. My physical health was often examined, the importance of my mental health to my daily life was emphasized, and there was often a clear spiritual tone or presence. 

Paranormal abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance were natural occurrences in the dreams. My experience with dreams reflects his readings on dreams and the findings of many others who reported their dreams to the A.R.E. through the study group program. 

Many scientists are still trying to decide if telepathy or precognition is real when I can observe them daily in my dreams. I don’t need a scientific model for how it works to enjoy the benefits of my dreams any more than someone needs to know the chemistry of fire to cook food and enjoy the results or Maxwell’s equations to utilize electricity.

The force of gravity is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has always been experienced by everyone, but it was unexplained until Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Even now, most non-scientists find little comfort in an explanation they don’t understand, but this has never stopped them from experiencing and exploiting gravity in a variety of ways. 

For those who are not dream experts, I am trying to widen your view of dreams and the possibilities for an enhanced life. But I am not asking you to accept on faith what I write; I only ask that you reflect upon what I have stated in my posts. In the end, you will only become convinced when you see the evidence for yourself.

Your dreams are about you, the dreamer. I cannot tell you what they mean, but I can promise that you will have an incredible journey in discovering their meaning for yourself. 

Dreams Set the Mood

Dreams often set the mood for the day. I have been waiting for some good examples from my own dreams, and I think last night’s dreams provide them. My dreams all showed that today was going to be a challenging day. They did not indicate a major crisis would occur, but did leave me with an apprehensive feeling upon awakening. And as always, they accurately reflected how the day would go.

You also have probably awakened some days with a general feeling of discomfort. You may have had sufficient sleep, but still feel out of sorts. You drag yourself out of bed and wonder why you feel lousy when you felt fine the night before. 

The answer is that sleep is not a period of inactivity; your mind is still very active while you sleep. You spend about two hours each night dreaming, which can be an extremely active time. The nature of these dreams often provides the clue as to your feeling and overall mood upon awakening. Did you have beautiful, peaceful dreams that left you well rested and cheerful upon awakening, or were you engaged in life-and-death struggles in your dreams, which left you exhausted and depressed upon awakening?

In my case, this morning and during the night upon awakening several times, I was aware that I would be involved in or surrounded by some struggles today. In one dream, I saw an enormous battle that involved Asians, and in another, I entered my house to feel a chill and see a thin film of snow everywhere. 

Now most of you are probably aware that the Chinese stock market has been plunging, in addition to the crisis in Greece. Today the problems in China continued with more than half of the stocks no longer trading. To add to people’s concern, trading on Wall Street was shut down for several hours due to technical problems. And the day finished with the Dow down over two hundred points.

I only have a small percentage of my investments in the stock market, so the impact on my finances was minimal. When the market shut down due to technical problems, I decided to go to Whole Foods, which is fourteen miles from where I live, for some organics I purchase weekly. According to articles on the Internet, Wednesday is supposed to be the best day to shop at Whole Foods. 

Today this was not the case. Two of the items I regularly purchase there and cannot get at the Publix near me were out of stock. Then when I tried to get an answer concerning an item in the bakery from one of the employees in that department, I was told that the item is the way it should be, when it clearly was not the case. I good humoredly thanked her, chuckled to myself thinking about my dreams, and realized it was going to be one of those days.

As I began work on this post, I had many of my thoughts down when Word crashed. I could not recover the work because auto save hadn’t activated yet, so I started over. I felt that the dream about entering my house and feeling a chill and seeing a light dusting of snow accurately captured my day. The house represented my daily activities, which includes my thoughts. The chill and light dusting of snow represents the chilling effect the negative experiences had on those activities and thoughts. 

If the experiences had resulted in severe loss or confrontations, the dream would have been different. The light dusting of snow would have been a mountain of snow from a major storm. My recall of the dreams was enough to serve notice for the day and its progression. In this case, I recognized that the day was going to be challenging and carefully monitored my feelings as the day progressed. Instead of becoming controlled by external forces and events, I was able to be in control and remain positive.

As an added note, I often have dreams concerning events whose impact extends far beyond myself. Occasionally, I will have dreams concerning a move in the stock market or some national or world event. 

I find that dreams about the financial markets are sometimes difficult to identify because most dreams about financial markets are symbolic of other events. And a dream about something seemingly unrelated to financial markets may be about them. For this reason, I am reluctant to share such dreams, even if I think they are about the financial markets. I do not want people to make financial decisions from one of my dreams. 

I am not a financial adviser, and people should seek out the appropriate expert if they need financial help. You can seek help from your own dreams, but remember that most dreams are not literal. Even a powerful, striking dream concerning the stock market may relate to a sudden change in some other aspect of your life totally unrelated to your finances. If you act on that dream as a literal message, you could incur unexpected losses. 

Your subconscious mind is simply using your associations and feelings about the impact of a sudden change in your finances to drive home another message. You need to be experienced in working with your dreams and the symbols they use to convey messages to minimize such misinterpretations. Also, before seeking financial help from your dreams, examine your purpose. Dreams are most beneficial when you have the right purpose.

Treat Your Sources with Caution

The world of information is quite different today from when I was growing up. If I wanted information on a topic, I had to depend upon often-outdated articles in an encyclopedia and limited resources at the local library. 

Now in seconds articles can be found using a search engine such as Google. Resources like this make my job as a writer much easier, but there is a risk associated with the explosion of easily accessible information. 

Not all articles are accurate; many are misleading at best and completely wrong at worst. There is no certification or licensing for the author of the article. Anyone can create a blog or a website and begin to pontificate his or her views on a subject or the state of the world.

Great care is needed to determine the qualifications of the author and relevance of the views espoused. I would hope that anyone who follows my posts has taken the time to check out my biography. 

My posts are my views and not meant to be a scientific dissertation. I believe what I write is supported by current research and is consistent with metaphysical teachings, but they are still my views. 

I have tried to state clearly the purpose of my book and the objective of my posts. My claim is that I have worked extensively with my dreams for over forty years and have realized most of the benefits said to be possible by sensitives such as Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts. Because of this, I decided to share what I have learned and explain the process I used to realize those benefits.

My book is a memoir, not a book on dream interpretation. However, I believe it contains many valuable suggestions for interpreting dreams and provides the process I used to identify precognitive dreams. Although the views are mine, I find that my experience with dreams is consistent with the experience of those who received readings from Edgar Cayce and of those study group members who recorded and reported their dreams.

I am pleased if you find my story and posts of benefit, but if you do not, then spend your time elsewhere. There are many paths and approaches, and only you can determine if a particular one is of value to you. 

The Kirkus Indie review of my book, with an excerpt on the back cover, said my approach of taking personal responsibility and applying the guidance from dreams was a strength. I do not promise that it will be easy or that the interpretation of a few dreams will solve all of your problems. My approach is not spiritual fast food. But I think the rewards and benefits far outweigh the amount of effort required.

Some will think it is just easier to use a dream dictionary, go to a psychic, or someone who claims to be a dream interpreter rather than putting forth the effort to understand all the symbols. This approach runs counter to very specific statements made by metaphysical sources such as Edgar Cayce and Seth concerning the meaning of dream symbols and the ability of another to decipher your dreams. 

You can find information on the Cayce view of dreams through the Association for Research and Enlightenment (www.edgarcayce.org), and Seth’s view can be found in Session 641 in The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts. 

The books about Edgar Cayce as related dreams are also a good resource. Two older books that contain the basics are Dreams Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist and Edgar Cayce on Dreams by Harmon H. Bro, PhD. They provide the Cayce view and contain many excerpts from his readings on dreams.

It is true that Edgar Cayce interpreted many dreams for individuals, but he also strongly urged people to learn to interpret their own dreams and apply the guidance for maximum benefit. If you take a dream to another person for interpretation, you might get lucky and find someone with a real gift. But even if the interpretation is accurate, you are losing one of the most important benefits, which is self-realization. 

After a period of struggle with a dream or dreams, there is a special feeling that occurs when you finally realize what the dream is telling you. This is how we grow as individuals, and it is not the same as someone else just telling us something, even though it might be true. Furthermore, to understand fully the other person’s interpretation, you will still need to reflect on the symbols in the dream to understand his or her interpretation.

I do not provide a theory of dream interpretation. There are several different theories. My approach is a very practical one. What do your dreams mean to you and how can you benefit from them? Do they help you in your daily life? If the answer is no, then your time may best be spent on something else. 

I believe that if you consistently follow my suggestions about remembering and interpreting dreams and sincerely try to apply guidance from your dreams in your daily life, you will begin to experience the benefits I have been describing in my posts. But you have to do the work.

Your dreams are about you and your associations, and therein lies the key to their interpretation. As you study your dreams, you are studying yourself and gaining in understanding of your motives, desires, and potential. 

Be cautious about your discussions with friends and relatives. Some will be very negative and tell you it is a bunch of nonsense, that dreams are meaningless. They typically are people who have not worked with their dreams; they are people who have made a decision about dreams without any real investigation. 

If you find yourself surrounded by naysayers, don’t argue with them because it will be unproductive. Seek out those with a common interest. 

Many people are interested in dreams and have a positive attitude toward them. You can find these kindred souls at New Age bookstores, lectures, yoga classes, and metaphysical retreats. And sometimes you may find the person sitting next to you in a restaurant or coffee shop shares your interest in dreams.

Reassurance from Dreams

Your dreams do not just focus on problem areas of your life. There are times, especially after a series of dreams dealing with some character deficiency or inappropriate behavior, when you may feel that you are hopeless and can never be OK. However, dreams do not just tear down; there is also a building process. When you are on the right path, you will receive strong reassurances from your dreams.

Indications that you are moving in a positive direction can occur in a variety of ways. In a dream, you may have just made a right turn onto a highway. For spiritual progress, you may find yourself in a plane that has just lifted off, or are swimming effortlessly in a pool. 

One time, when I achieved a degree of success in overcoming a negative in my life, I encountered and shook hands with a person I knew whose last name was Victor. Sometimes you simply receive a test paper back with a grade of A or B. The subject will give you the clue about the aspect of your life that has shown great improvement or success.

You may also receive reassurance concerning some issue in the following way. You hear a voice or meet a dream adviser who delivers a message such as the one I received when working on my book. In a frenzied effort to get it finished, my energy became depleted and I did not feel well. In a dream, my adviser said he could guarantee that I would be back to normal in about six months. And I was.

During one of the darkest times of my life, when I was without a job and almost out of money with a wife and young child to support, I had a vivid dream that provided a strong reassurance that everything would be all right. In the dream, I was told that I would have enough money to make it through the bleak period and find a new purpose in life.

The dream was completely accurate. The money lasted until I had a job, and I did indeed find a new purpose in life.

Names in dreams can also be used to deliver both reassurances and directions. Your subconscious mind does not just pick names at random. Every item and word in a dream has a purpose. If you are told you should see Christopher for help with a problem, it doesn’t take much effort to see the possible reference to Christ. 

I gave an example in an earlier post of being told to move to Tallahassee in a dream. A little parsing and rearranging of letters of the word reveals the following: T has all see. And T is an obvious reference to cross. In short, I was being told to carry my cross as an answer to my struggles at that point in time.

If you meet or shake hands with a person in a dream, pay close attention to the person’s name like Christopher or Victor. Does the name have a meaning in ordinary use? Try parsing the name for clues as to the meaning. If that doesn’t yield anything, think about people you may know who have that or a similar name. What do those people represent to you? What is your association? If the person has a title such as a medical doctor, the name may give a clue about the type of treatment needed for a medical condition.

Places you visit or are told to visit can be particularly important. Usually, the dream is not telling you to go literally to that place. The place, a location such as an island surrounded by water or a city such as Tallahassee, is the key to the meaning.

The dream can be a positive affirmation of changes you have recently made. A trip to Manhattan Island in a dream may be indicative of a new spiritual state. Someone outside the US may dream of moving to the United States, which may reflect a unification occurring within his or her life.

Of course, the overall mood of the dream is extremely important. Positive dreams may leave you well rested with a feeling of peace and connection to all life around you. Your personal appearance may also signify accomplishment. You may see yourself with hair combed or be dressed in new attractive clothes. As mentioned in an earlier post, the colors of your clothes such as blue, purple, or lavender may indicate a spiritual approach and a new awareness.

You may receive money in a dream. You may suddenly discover money or something else you associate with wealth. Or some recent action may have caused you to recognize the positive in your life, which is symbolized by money in the dream. The amount of money can also further indicate the type of wealth found. The numbers one and seven or multiples thereof are often spiritual symbols. 

We do not progress in life in a straight line. Sometimes we are in a positive period and in a state of relative bliss, and other times we may feel like everything is a challenge with progress slow and painful. We go through cycles, and as we do, we experience these cycles in our dreams. 

So even if your present dreams appear critical, this does not mean your life is a waste. You need to pay attention to the guidance you receive and make necessary adjustments in your life. Then when that cycle finishes, you will find your dreams more positive and affirmative. 

Each day is new and presents new challenges and opportunities. We are always in a state of expanding our knowledge and awareness and finding new ways of challenging ourselves as we experience our creativity.