Ominous Signs for the Future

During all of the debate of the future health of the US economy by the politicians, financial analysts, and economists, I think the cost of climate change has been almost completely overlooked in the projections. The climate continues to get warmer and the costs of the effects of extreme weather are growing. In a recent post, I described a dream I had several years ago about the effects of Earth changes during the next decade. I believe that as the weather causes flooding, fires, and crop failures the costs will climb substantially. And as we experience increases in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, many nations will become bankrupt.

It was recently announced that the 2019 budget deficit reached $984 billion dollars. The national debt is nearly $23 trillion dollars. Since we are already running budget deficits around one trillion dollars a year, what happens when we experience enormous costs from violent weather and other Earth changes. As a nation, we have no reserve. I believe we will probably see both tax increases and higher interest rates as the government finds it necessary to borrow even more money, money that may not exist since other countries will also have problems.

I have not seen any projections that include large escalating costs resulting from climate change. Any cost increases appear to be pushed onto to local communities to deal with, but I believe the problems will be on a national scale and far greater than local flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, or fires. The federal government will have to address them. The government could create even larger budget deficits and add even more than what is currently projected to the national debt, which could destabilize the entire economy. Or it could raise taxes to increase revenue to offset the higher costs. Since the damage experienced may also cause a slowing of the economy, this is not a good scenario—raising taxes with a slowing economy.

My conclusion is that the path we are on with huge budget deficits during relatively good times is a recipe for disaster, especially considering what my dreams show for the next decade. I believe that Barack Obama was correct when he said that climate change was the most significant problem facing humans. But as a nation we are not listening; we are exploiting the Earth’s resources and spending as if the problem does not exist. I suspect that in the near future the blame game will start. People will wring their hands in sorrow, wondering how it happened, how we could be so unprepared. And then people will look for those to blame, but blame will not change the reality we will all have to face.

Last week I had a dream that was taking place as massive Earth changes were occurring. I was with someone else, and we were above the Earth near the West Coast looking down. Some people far to the east of the United States were leaving the planet (dying?), and I was focused on the West Coast of the US. I commented to the other person that it was going to be much worse when the volcanoes began erupting. The air would be filled with poisonous gases and debris, making it impossible for people to live in large areas of the West Coast. I wondered where they would go.

An Interesting Dream about Politics

Last night I dreamed about preparing for a test on Roman history along with a large group of other students. The focus was on Julius Caesar, who was assassinated by members of the Roman Senate. I was cramming for the test, trying to understand the events that led to Caesar’s death. Eventually I entered a classroom to take the test.

I find the dream interesting with all of the political drama that is currently taking place in Washington. I don’t know that the dream is precognitive, but if it is, it could be indicating that President Trump’s supporters in the US Senate will eventually turn on him, just as Caesar’s friends in the Roman Senate turned on him. In Trump’s case, the assignation would be a political one. There are definite similarities between Donald Trump and Julius Caesar. Both Donald Trump and Julius Caesar are considered authoritarian and populist in their political leanings.

I don’t believe the dream is just a reflection of my personal beliefs because I would be quite surprised to see the republicans in the US Senate turn against him. Also, my belief is that President Trump would resign if he believed he would be both impeached and convicted.

When I have dreams like this one, I try to relate it to what is happening in my own life. If I can’t, I put it aside as one whose meaning may become clear in time. I can’t relate this dream to my personal life, so I will have to wait to see if it is in fact related to the events in Washington.

Monitoring Your Health Through Your Dreams

On 3/25/2019, I posted an item titled Health Advice from Dreams. Because of the importance of our dreams in relation to our health, I continue my thoughts on the subject in this post. Also, I recently had a dream that reminded me of the ability of my dreams to provide concrete guidance concerning my health.

Recent surveys have indicated that health care will be one of the major concerns of Americans for the next presidential election. An enormous amount of money is spent on health care in this country each year. Yet the results are disappointing, with the quality and effectiveness of health care in the United States far down the list compared to many other countries. We spend more and get less. I think many reasons for this exist, and various solutions are being proposed by political candidates. Politics aside, I believe that one obvious answer is to teach people to take better care of their health. And they can do this by monitoring the state of their health depicted in their dreams.

I believe that your dreams represent one of the best sources of information about the state of your health. And it is a powerful diagnostic tool, completely ignored by the medical profession. Scientists are still arguing over the meaning of dreams, while some of us routinely use dreams to monitor our health. In my books, I give several examples of how I received health advice from my dreams, and the benefits that resulted. During my years in a corporate job, I cannot recall exactly how long I worked without a sick day, but I know it was more than twenty years prior to my retirement. During that same period, people in the group I managed, were frequently absent due to illness.

I attribute my good health during that time to changes I made in lifestyle, as well as the constant feedback from my dreams alerting me to health risks or further changes needed to maintain good health. In addition to providing many other types of assistance, my dreams were a health advisor that kept close watch over my physical and mental health.

The good news about health dreams is that they are among the easiest dreams to interpret, often providing advice in a clear unambiguous way. Consider the dream I had a week ago. I dreamed that I had taken my car to a service station because it wasn’t running properly. The mechanic said he didn’t see anything fundamentally wrong, but I needed to drive it around more to get it to run better. Those of you who follow my blog posts will know that a car is often a symbol for the human body in a dream. So I identified the car with my body.

Now, as some background, the past few months I have not felt well. I lacked energy and just didn’t feel robust. I live in Florida, and because of the unusually hot and humid weather, I have been exercising inside on an exercise machine I own. I thought that this would be a good substitute for my normal two-mile walk outside each day. After the dream, I realized that I might have been wrong. I believe that the exercise machine helped, but something was lacking. The dream seemed to be saying that I needed to walk around more. Fortunately, it has cooled down some recently, so I immediately returned to my fast-paced walk outside. The change in how I felt was immediate. I now feel like my old self. Again, the dream guidance was dead on.

Many reasons exist that people give for ignoring their dreams. I believe that if they would begin to see them as coming from a wise and concerned advisor, they would feel differently about them. Dreams are a source of great help, and they are not to be feared. The time to be afraid is when you ignore their guidance.

Dreams as a Mirror of Your Inner Self

In my books and in my posts on this blog, I have attributed many benefits to the study of one’s dreams. However, the fact is that most people that I encounter have virtually no understanding of dreams. They do not know even the basic facts that scientists have documented, which includes the fact that everyone dreams many times during the night’s sleep cycles. Over my lifetime, I have seen numerous books published about dreams and authors of those books have appeared on national talk shows. But among the public knowledge about dreams still seems to be very sparse.

I believe that many people have had one or more dreams that they recall, and want to know the meaning of a particular dream. But the interest stops there. Some will search until someone gives them an interpretation that makes sense, but then they forget about their dreams until they have another one they want to understand. Very few people see dreams as important messages from the unconscious that they should try to understand. Even many scientists have not reached this conclusion, and some consider dreams meaningless creations of the subconscious.

Previously, I have written about the reasons that people ignore their dreams. Several reasons are discussed in my dream books and they all contribute to the limited interest in dreams. However, in this post, I want to focus on what I believe is one of the most important reasons dream interpretation is not popular. And that reason is the fear of what we may find.

We all have an image of ourselves: what we think we are. This image determines how we see the world. Our beliefs form early in life and continue to develop into adulthood. They give us our picture of the world we inhabit. No two people see the world the same. Two people may have major agreements, but even then, some differences will remain because their interests, abilities, and life experiences are not identical.

We all have filters. Some information is filtered out. We do not see it or pay attention to it because we do not agree with it or do not think it is important. If someone we do not like does something good, we may not “see” the good act. We may automatically filter it and do not even notice its occurrence.

The world we see is one that corresponds to what we think it is. In this day of deep political divisions, try to convince a person with strong political beliefs that the opposing party has the best interests of the people in mind. The person will rattle off all the justifications for reviling the opposition’s approach, and will not notice any of their good qualities. The current strong political views are usually based on what is wrong with the other side, not what they have in common or share.

Our dreams give us a mirror we can look into to see our inner selves. Dreams reflect our true image: who and what we really are, not what we hope we are or would like to be. If someone is open-minded and fair, that image will be reflected in their dreams. (Note I use the now accepted their instead of his or her.) However, if someone is narrow-minded and bigoted, that image will be reflected instead.

As we age, physical changes will be reflected in a mirror. A person can look at their physical image and wish it were different, that those puffy eyes, lines and age spots, or extra flab weren’t really there, but the mirror cares little about such desires. It simply reflects what is there.

Similarly, dreams reflect our inner selves. We can decide to not look, as in the case of some vain person who destroys all the mirrors in their house so they won’t see anything that may distress them. But that doesn’t change anything. The reality of their physical image does not change. And other people are well aware of how they look. We can decide to not look at our dreams because we fear what we might see, but other people usually see our real selves even if we don’t. If a person is a braggart or a liar, other people know that. People may lie to themselves, but they are not fooling those around them.

As I have stated, many people avoid interpreting their dreams because they are afraid of what they might find. They may have behaved badly and don’t want to be reminded of that from a dream. Avoidance of dreams is particularly true concerning precognitive dreams. Over the years, numerous people have voiced to me their fear of seeing some bad things that may happen in the future in their dreams. Their response is to avoid their dreams altogether, and if they have a frightening dream that shows an undesirable future event, they try to put it out of their minds as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, this does not solve any problems. In fact, it prevents them from potentially avoiding the occurrence of the probable future event. And if it cannot be avoided, it prevents them from coming to terms with it psychologically prior to the occurrence. I refer to this as the mental Ostrich syndrome. If we don’t look at it, if we don’t see it, maybe it will go away.

Carl Jung, a prolific writer and one of the most famous and studied psychiatrists of all time, believed that we need to unite our conscious and unconscious minds to become whole as human beings. We cannot do that if we hide from our dreams. Our dreams are a mirror of our inner selves, and our time making an examination of them is surely worth as much concern as an examination of our physical selves, which occupies some of the day for most people, and much of the day for many people.

In the metaphysical writings of Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts, we find that dreams play an important role. Both of them consider it essential that people pay attention to their dreams, and that they learn to interpret their own dreams. The symbols in your dreams are unique to you; no one else can tell you what something in a dream means to you. Certainly, there are common themes in dreams. And some of the symbols share a similar meaning across people’s dreams. But to get at the heart of it, which is why those particular symbols were selected in your dream rather than some others, you must examine what they mean to you. What are the associations you make? No one else can do that for you, which is why dream dictionaries are of limited use.

If you expect another person to interpret your dreams, you are asking them what your life means. You are asking them to interpret your innermost thoughts and feelings. No one can do the job for you. You cannot become self-aware by asking another person to do it for you. You have to do the work yourself.

Climate and Weather Changes

On August 17, 2015, I had a dream about Edgar Cayce and climate change that is described in my book The Inner Guru, and was previously posted on this blog. I will summarize it here.

In the dream, I was viewing a large vertical panel that contained a chart of some kind describing distinct periods in the history of the Earth. There was also some mention of Edgar Cayce and his prophecies concerning Earth changes.

My attention focused on what was labeled Period 6 (not a Cayce term). This period was concerned with the present and near future. An inner voice told me that the weather would get much worse during the next ten to fifteen years. It said that some current landmasses would be under water due to flooding. I saw the year 2030 as the end of this period.

During the four years since the occurrence of the dream, we have seen severe weather in many parts of the world. Each year, new high temperature records are being set, and the combination of record rainfalls, ice melting, and thermal expansion have caused severe flooding in many areas. Climate change is already a fact for the many people who have lost their homes. Unfortunately, my dream is saying that flooding will only get worse for many more years.

In the dream, I was aware of a Period 7, but I did not focus on it to see the content. Perhaps it will be revealed in another dream. So far, the dream is consistent with the weather changes we see occurring and predictions made by others such as Edgar Cayce and Gordon-Michael Scallion.

I am trying to get additional insights through my dreams on the progression of earth changes due to climate change and other factors such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Any dreams related to this topic will be posted here on this blog and on my website thepropheticdreamer.com.

Food Shortages in China

In my book The Inner Guru and previously on my blog, I described a dream I had on April 19, 2015, concerning China. In the dream, I was talking with the President of China, and he pointed to a place on a map of China where he said food shortages would begin in three years. For my dream to be prophetic, some evidence of food shortages should have occurred last year. In fact, this was the case. I started reading reports of an epidemic of African swine fever sweeping through the pigs in China, which reportedly began in August of 2018, but may have started even earlier. China is the largest producer and consumer of pork of any country in the world. Pork makes up more than fifty percent of the Chinese meat consumption.

This year, the problem appears to have worsened with the outbreak spreading throughout all of China. China has recently announced that they are releasing frozen pork from their emergency supplies to meet demand, but there are indications some of that meat may be contaminated with the disease. Fortunately, it is not harmful for humans, but it is usually fatal for pigs.

Because of the African swine fever, the pig population has dropped dramatically. The statistics and other information are easily found with an internet search. This disease is a major problem for China and it is driving up the price of pork worldwide. They will be forced to import large quantities, but there is no guarantee that this disease will not spread throughout the world. Even if it does not, it is not clear that there is enough capacity to make up for China’s losses.

Again, as I have emphasized in my books and in my posts, dreams provide warnings about situations before they occur, sometimes years in advance. My dream did not indicate the nature of the food shortages, but I was certain that something would happen that would cause food problems in China in the period given. We do not have to be blindsided by events of this type. Pay attention to your dreams and they will broaden your view of the world around you. You will often be forewarned about significant events of concern to you, society, or the world at large.

About Dreams

I have recently reviewed a large number of dreams posted on a website by people seeking the meaning of their dreams. I have been struck by several things. First, there is enormous diversity in the dreams that are posted. The second thing is that many of the people provide the barest of details about the dream and provide little or no information about their lives, but expect someone to provide an interpretation. The third thing is that from the comments posted along with the dreams it is clear that many of those who posted the dreams do not understand the source of the dreams. They don’t realize that the dreams relate to their thoughts, beliefs, and actions in their daily lives.

I have been studying and interpreting my dreams for nearly fifty years. And I have examined numerous dreams of other people. The possibilities for the meaning of the symbols in a dream are unlimited because each symbol is unique to the dreamer. Now it is true that some common symbols appear frequently in dreams, but even these symbols can have shades of meaning that differ from one person’s dream to another. An example of this is a symbol like a car. A car in a dream may represent the physical body, and the age, model, and condition of the car often provides additional clarification about the condition of one’s body. But this is only one interpretation.

The dreamer’s feelings about cars can greatly affect the meaning of the car in the dream. Does the dreamer love cars, or are they just transportation? Also, how does the car relate to the rest of the dream? Whose car is it? Is it one the dreamer owns now or he has owned in the past? What color is the car? Is it stationary, or is the dreamer driving it on the highway? The dream could be about how the driver, who may be the dreamer, is traversing life. In the dream, the driver may be driving too fast, or may be careless and cause an accident.

Maybe the car is at a repair shop or body shop. The number of possibilities quickly grows. All of these questions must be answered to get at the meaning of the car in the dream. And whatever the correct interpretation, it usually relates to the daily life of the dreamer.

I have had dreams about cars that include all of the possibilities just mentioned. Sometimes the dream was a health dream with information provided about the state of my health, which sometimes included a discussion with a mechanic at a service station about the repairs needed. At other times, the dreams related to my actions in my daily life. I might find myself driving too fast or too slow, or making a right or left turn. In these dreams, my physical health was not the issue; the conduct of my life was the issue.

The interpretation of your dreams can be fun; you can make a game of it. But other people cannot interpret your dream by your simply giving them a few sentences that describe the dream, and you cannot interpret it by simply looking up the symbols in a dream dictionary. You may get a sense of the theme of the dream and some of the broader issues involved from other people or a dream dictionary. But to understand the complete meaning and significance of a dream you need to interpret it yourself.

Your dreams are about you, your most secret thoughts, actions, and desires. No one else can tell you what a person, object, or place in a dream means to you. No one else knows all of your thoughts and actions during the course of the days prior to the dream. Your subconscious mind selected the objects, people, and environment of the dream because of associations in your mind that are woven into the dream. If the car in the dream was one you previously owned rather than your current one, the message is different because the association is different. There is no shortcut to self-awareness. You must do the work.

Although I have spent a lifetime studying my dreams, I still learn new things about myself all the time. I am not impressed by how much I have learned about dreams, but by how little I know. The mind has enormous creative power and humankind’s potential is unlimited. But to tap into the potential, you must begin to understand the workings of the unconscious. And I believe the study of your dreams is the best way to do that. There is a very special feeling when you finally discover the message in a dream for yourself. It is a feeling that you do not get if someone else just tells you something about yourself, even if it is true.

Contact Information

I have posted contact information various places. On my website www.thepropheticdreamer.com you can fill out a form for an email that will be forwarded to me by the website—point to BIO and then click on CONTACTS. If you have questions, I will do my best to respond. However, I cannot interpret a dream for you. In previous posts and in my books, I make it very clear that the dreamer must learn to interpret his or her own dreams. Dream symbols have meanings that are unique to the dreamer, and their complete meaning cannot be deciphered by another. However, I can suggest things to look for or consider when trying interpreting a dream. Many dreams have common themes, and an understanding of the theme may help you understand the complete dream.

My response may be in the form of a post on my blog, particularly if I think the answer to a question will be of interest to others. I do not share any personal information such as someone’s dream without the individual’s permission. And even in that case, I would not identify the source.

Recurring Dreams

A clear indication that you need to pay attention to your dreams is the occurrence of a repetitive dream. Here I am referring to the same dream recurring, sometimes frequently. You may have recurring dreams that show you in a certain environment performing familiar, similar activities, which is a different situation. These dreams often occur to reflect your daily activities, and I will address them after first considering the same dream recurring.

Often people experience the recurring dream as a nightmare, in which something is chasing them, they are failing the same test again, or they are falling. The dream is important because it indicates that some issue in their lives has not been faced and resolved. As an example, failing a test in speech or communications may indicate a failure in communications with a family member, close friend, or coworker. Or being chased may indicate some fear has not been faced. The repetition of the dream means the issue has not been resolved. The dream is likely to continue to recur until the message is understood and action is taken.

I believe dreams of this type are actually quite easy to interpret if you are paying attention to your thoughts and actions during the course of the day. In my books, I suggest making a brief record of key thoughts, actions, and events for each day, along with your dreams. Then when you have your next repetition of the dream, you can examine your activities the day prior to the dream, and the day following the dream. The dream may be a reflection of the concluding day’s occurrences, or it may be precognitive and reveal a key occurrence the following day.

First, examine the key thoughts, actions, and encounters for the day. Do you see any relationship to your dream? Think creatively; look for associations, not literal similarities.

If you can’t find any relationship to the day just experienced, examine the dream again in relationship to the next day. This is where you will see precognitive dreams revealed. You may be surprised to discover that the dream perfectly reflects, in a metaphorical way, the coming day.

People often try to interpret their dreams in a literal way. Dreams are not normally literal, and you must approach the interpretation of your dreams as a search for associations. A person, object, or activity in a dream may be a metaphor for something else, which is what you need to discover. As an example, if I dream that my front teeth are breaking off or falling out, this does not mean I need to rush to the dentist. More than likely, it has nothing to do with my teeth in a literal sense. Since teeth involve the mouth, as do words, the teeth are an obvious association for words. Often the dream I described means that a person has said some regrettable things, and the broken or loose teeth represent the ugly or loose speech.

The key to the meaning of a recurring dream is found in your conscious life. This is why it is important to understand your daily thoughts and feelings. Dreams only seem mysterious because we are not completely in touch with ourselves daily on a conscious level.

The other type of repetition that occurs is the theme in the dream, such as working in a certain job performing familiar activities. In this case, the same dream does not recur, but you find yourself in a familiar dream environment. As an example, in my case, I often find myself back in the job I had for many years during my corporate employment. I am never doing exactly the same thing as in previous dreams, but the products I was familiar with and the people from my old group often appear in the dreams. To understand the dreams, I have to understand what the products and people represent to me. If a software developer is in the dream, this means something different from a marketing person.

Dreams use your experiences to build their stories. But the stories are not literal; they are representative as metaphors for the activities and themes that make up your life. Exceptions do exist when dreams are literal, which I write about in my books, but these dreams are less common. Don’t think your dreams are nonsense because you have never done or would never do the activity in the dream. Think about what the activity in the dream represents to you and how it may relate to your daily life. What are you doing that is like that activity in some way? The associations provide the key to its meaning.

Dreams and Society

I just returned from a trip to Denver. While in the Denver area, I visited a book store that claimed to have over 100,000 titles. The bookstore was quite impressive in its collection of books. I browsed the metaphysical and psychology section, which were in the same room. After some searching, I found a single small bookshelf labeled dreams, and nearly half of the books were dream dictionaries. The other shelves were loaded with books on every other aspect of New Age thought, and books on psychology and recovery from every form of addition imaginable were plentiful.

Bookstores carry books based on demand, and the demand for dream books appears to be low. I also asked about Edgar Cayce books, which twenty years ago could be found in even small bookstores. The man assisting me looked them up. He found that ten years ago, they had carried many titles, but now they only carried two.

I think the trends in society are clearly reflected in what people are reading. The Cayce material and dreams are not in vogue right now. People are interested in help with addictions, and the very help that will keep them free of addictions in the first place goes unnoticed. Current society is mesmerized by social networking, and technology reigns supreme. The inner life gets little attention because the rewards are not recognized. Working through problems with the help of dreams requires too much effort for those who seek to solve problems with pills and destructive behavior.

Unfortunately, I find that few people want to really change. They want to solve their problems in the context of their current behavior. In other words, they want to keep all of their thoughts and habits, but still find a solution to their problems. And many believe the best way to do that is through medication or escape. Facing problems and finding the cause is hard work, and few seem willing to put forth the required effort.

Society experiences fads and trends. Right now, the fascination is with new technological developments, which are occurring ever more rapidly. But we are seeing problems with our youth through addictions of various kinds. Technology has given us ways to improve our lives, but it has also given us ever more powerful synthetic drugs that are destroying our society. Without the balance of the inner and outer lives, society is lost. Better is often defined by the number of possessions and amount of wealth people possess, rather than an inner awareness and connection to the source of all life. Society is now experiencing the results of the seeds it has sown by disregarding our spiritual nature.

I continue to see people avoid making a small change that would provide immediate improvement to their lives. I believe it is because they believe they are losing something in the process, something they value, even if it is detrimental to their physical or mental health. Dreams will help you see more clearly, but they cannot make the changes for you. The individual still has to heed the dream advice and actually make the necessary changes.

I find it incredible that people pay large amounts of money to visit a therapist when the inner therapist they already possess can advise them better than any other person can. Now, some people do need to seek professional counseling because they unable to help themselves. However, I believe the average person who is dealing with problems in their life can find the answers from within, and it doesn’t cost anything. They need only pay attention to their dreams.

We must balance our lives. Time must be set aside each day for meditation and dream work. This is maintenance for our spiritual health. It should be viewed as important as eating is for maintenance our physical health. If we neglect either, we will experience problems.

Death and Dreams

I recently reviewed my blog posts to see which ones garnered the most interest. I was a bit surprised to see that my post titled Dreams and the Fear of Death on March 16, 2018, received more than three times as many views as the next most popular post, which was Some Common Dream Themes.

Because of this interest in dreams related to death, I decided to expand on the earlier post in this one. I hope I can help alleviate the fear that many people feel when thinking about their death. Death to most people represents the unknown—and we often fear what is unknown. Despite religious teachings, nothing concrete is known about what happens after our physical death. Does awareness continue in some way? Do we reincarnate and experience another life on this earth? If we do not come back to this earth, but our existence continues, what form does it take? What do we spend our time doing? Or is there a sense of time at all? Even in The New Testament, Jesus does not elaborate about the exact nature of the life with him in eternity.

Many scientist have looked for some evidence of our continued existence, but have found none. But perhaps they have been looking the wrong place. They expect to see physical evidence, but there is no reason to believe that evidence of our continued existence after death will be physical—at least in a way that can currently be measured.

My own belief of our continued existence after death came about because of my studies of Edgar Cayce and my own dreams. The Edgar Cayce readings enlarged my view of the universe and the nature of humankind. I knew that much of what he said was true because I experienced it in my own life. Despite my scientific background, I didn’t care what scientists thought because I knew what was true. While the scientific community argued over the existence of psychic phenomena, I could see my future ever day in my dreams from the prior night. And the paranormal became normal.

Edgar Cayce described death as a simple process that can happen as quickly and easily as “the snip of a ribbon.” I believe that many people who pass over are confused for some time because they don’t realize they have died. In my dreams after my mother died, I visited her in a hospital room. She didn’t realize that she had died. When she was told, her initial reaction was fear. I tried to comfort her, but she had to adjust to her new circumstances and reality. People who are considered “sensitives” often will see the dead, especially family members who have recently passed.

Some scientists say visions of the dead are all a creation of the mind in an attempt to alleviate our fear of death or sense of loss of a loved one. But they are also the same scientists who will say psychic phenomena don’t exist, despite a wealth of evidence that it does.

Clearly, when we die the brain will cease to function as its blood supply ends. Its physical cells will begin to die. But I do not believe the mind and the brain are the same thing. I believe we need a physical brain to function properly within the framework of a physical world. We need the brain to process all of the sense information to allow us to function and warn us of dangers. A mind independent of the brain will not be able to make sense of a physical body in relation to its environment. But I believe that only part of the mind is involved with the functioning of the brain. I believe the remaining part of the mind is attuned to other realities.

Edgar Cayce described the mind as consisting of three parts: the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the superconscious mind. The conscious mind is our normal aware mind, the subconscious mind similar to that described by psychologists, and the superconscious mind the part that has never left its Creator. Some may consider it related to the collective unconscious of Carl Jung. These are not clear partitions or divisions, but more like aspects of the one mind.

When we dream, the dreams can come from the subconscious and different levels within it, or as divine guidance or visions from the superconscious. Sometimes our dreams are about our daily struggles and concerns and are close to surface consciousness. At other times, we may tune into concerns of others such as family and friends, or we may see future events such as a job change or health issue. And on some occasions, we may have a divine vision to inspire or console us.

Edgar Cayce said that when we die the subconscious becomes the conscious in our new existence, and the superconscious becomes the subconscious. So based on this view, we don’t just join our Creator, or pass to eternal damnation, but instead we face an existence based on what we have built into our deeper levels of consciousness while on the earth. We face ourselves. A well-known Edgar Cayce quote is “All you may know of heaven or hell is within your own self.”

If you want to discover the contents of your subconscious, I believe that dreams provide the way. Our dreams show us the contents of our subconscious; they reveal whether or not we are in accord with our superconscious. If you are afraid to look now, you may not have any choice later. And you may have lost opportunities to bring light into your consciousness while on this earth.

I do not believe that someone suddenly becomes aware and enlightened after death. I think we become what we are when all the contents of our subconscious become visible. We dwell on the level we have built for ourselves. We have an opportunity in this life to pass over as a happy and forgiving soul, or we can pass over as one filled with conflict and hate. The choice is ours. I don’t think the occurrence of death changes who we are.

Some who believe in reincarnation may think that they’ll postpone any hard choices or changes in behavior until the next life; they’ll revel in this life and all its pleasures without any regard for consequences. Any thoughts about making better life choices are postponed for another life. My comment to those is the following: if they believe in reincarnation, what makes them think the next life will afford them the same opportunities as this one. It could be much worse with any progress painful in the extreme.

I also think that dreams provide us with a sense of what existence is like outside of the physical body. Things are much more plastic with change initiated by our thoughts. We can travel effortlessly and are free of all of the restrictions of a physical body. But are we happy? As stated above, I think the answer is determined by what we have built into our consciousness. Jesus said, “… the kingdom of God is within you.” Why are we always looking outside of ourselves?

Over the course of my lifetime, my dreams number in the tens of thousands. I cannot begin to document all of my dreams and explain their meaning. In my books, I have provided a small selection of dreams that I believe are representative of the various types of dreams I encountered. My dreams have been a marvelous adventure. Some of my days now are quiet and uneventful, spent working on a book or blog post. However, my dreams of the previous night may have had me engaged in multiple adventures and paranormal contacts with others. Sometimes when I awake, I am glad to have the day to rest from my dream activities. Your nightly dreams can be the most creative part of a twenty-four-hour period.

I believe I have sometimes visited those who have passed over. The visits are usually brief encounters, but do provide a sense of the continuation of life after physical death. However, I caution here that most encounters in dreams with those who have died are not encounters with the actual person. The person in the dream is symbolic of someone we have encountered or will encounter who reminds us of the actual person in some way. I think we can only know the difference based on the nature of the dream and interaction with the person in the dream. What I consider my actual encounters with the dead have been with people who recently passed.

As humans, we have the ability to reflect on our lives and review the past. We assess the deluge of sense information and from it build a picture of the world. However, despite our best attempts to see clearly, we also filter out unwanted, but important, information and distort what we see by our beliefs, which may not have much relationship to reality.

The senses are only part of the complete picture. Our subconscious is also sending us information through intuition and dreams. If we ignore them, we are not seeing the complete picture. We are cut off from the tremendous source of creativity that is our inner being. Enlightenment or becoming whole is the process of uniting and bringing into harmony the internal and external so we become consciously aware of both and complete as a human being.

If you want to have an experience that will convince you of the reality of life after death, look to your dreams. Pray about it and ask to have an experience that will leave you with the knowledge and understanding that life continues after your physical death. Have faith and it will happen.

Life without Unnecessary Fear

Is your life free of fear? And by fear, I mean that unpleasant, and sometimes disabling, emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is going to cause you discomfort or pain. I think most people want to feel good, and they want to avoid distress. Of course, the person or thing causing the fear may not be a real threat. Nevertheless, if you think it is a threat, that thought may be enough to induce a sense of fear. The mind and body will respond to imagined threats as well as real threats.

I think few of us will claim that we have never been afraid. Sometimes fear is a good thing because it causes the body to marshal its reserves to thwart the threat in the best way possible. If your life is in danger from another person, flight may be the proper response.

But how do you stop the fear that is a result of all of the imagined threats. In this, I include the fear of failure, rejection, loneliness, poverty, sickness, old age, criticism, and a host of other things that you may worry about. How can you live free of this type of fear?

I think that much of the fear comes from one’s not knowing what tomorrow will bring. An optimist may expect tomorrow to bring the best and that life will only improve. However, many people reflect on all the bad things that might happen, and they fear the unknown—the future that they think is not yet written. Only, the future is written, and you can see your future if you look. And if the future is undesirable, you can change that probable future into the future you want.

The answer to seeing the future you are building is found in your dreams. Your dreams will show you where your path leads. And threats will not come out of nowhere, completely unexpected; you will be forewarned, giving you an opportunity to avoid many of them. And for those you cannot avoid or change, you will have time to prepare yourself psychologically for the coming event.

I am not suggesting that it is easy to eradicate unnecessary fears. It requires effort on your part, but there is a definite comfort in knowing that a presence is watching out for you and constantly advising you about the proper course of action. This presence is within you and speaks to you through flashes of insight or intuition, and speaks to you nightly through your dreams. That presence never leaves you because it is part of you—it is a deeper layer of consciousness that is not normally accessible to your conscious awareness.

Some will say, “I would rather not know.” To me, that is like trying to navigate the world without sight. Blind people do it with the help of guide dogs and other resources, but life is much more difficult without the sense of vision. However, even with sight, the things you think you see are blurred by your prejudices and beliefs. You don’t see reality; you only see your own version of reality. The external world is a world of energy. Signals are generated by the retina of the eye from light photons impinging on it, from the external energy that is the world. The picture of what you see is created in your brain from the electrical signals flowing along the optic nerve to the brain. Your brain creates what you accept as the real world.

When it comes to judging another’s motives or intentions, your own conditioning and beliefs will determine what you see. The conscious mind is limited in what it can determine and “see” as reality because you cannot see without some degree of bias and filtering. But with the help of unconscious portions of the mind, a greater reality can be seen. And many of the biases and inhibiting beliefs can be recognized and corrected before they seriously limit the quality of your life.

If you want to be free from unnecessary fear, unite the conscious and unconscious aspects of your mind. And the way to do this is to understand your dreams. The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung said that we couldn’t be whole without that integration or joining of the conscious and unconscious, which he called individuation.

Fighting the Current

Going with the flow is not always the best advice, especially if the flow is moving in a way that is destructive or immoral. The majority is not always right, as we saw in Germany leading up to and during World War II. Adolph Hitler enjoyed the broad support of the German people, but they were misguided. It often requires great courage to take a position that is counter to the flow of events and in opposition to the majority. Some courageous individuals in Germany paid for their opposition to Hitler with their lives.

However, the flow, especially as it pertains to your individual life, may be a different matter. Many people spend their lives bucking the current that is trying to take them in the right direction. They develop a perspective on what they want or expect to happen and refuse to adapt to actual circumstances. Any signals that run counter to what they want are ignored, filtered out without any real consideration. They don’t see reality: they only see their personal desires and cannot relate to anything that conflicts with them. If their personal agendas are in harmony with their souls’ desire, their lives will benefit. However, if they are not, they will seem to be in continuous conflict.

When I managed people in my corporate life, I often encountered those individuals who always tried to swim against the current and make things difficult for themselves and others. Their careers suffered, and they would blame everything and everyone except themselves for their lack of success. Those individuals always chose to fight the current and saw themselves as taking a stand as individualists, even when there was no cause or inequity to oppose.

So how do we know if we are fighting the current when we should be letting it move us in its direction? My answer is that our dreams offer the best counsel available. And they are free of charge. Our nightly dreams provide feedback on how we are doing. They provide encouragement to continue on a certain path if it is right for us, and they provide warnings if we are on the wrong path. Dreams also help us expand our capabilities and grow as individuals. We may be on a path that is positive, but not one that best utilizes our talents and abilities. Dreams will help us open up our potential and encourage us to expand our horizon.

Many may not want to acknowledge it, but we create our own lives. Although some people enter this life with serious challenges, even those people can decide how they will respond to their circumstances. If you don’t believe this, read the story of Helen Keller. Most of us do not have challenges that great. However, we make decisions each day that place us on a path that will inexorably take us to experience life in a certain way, a way determined by our thoughts and beliefs.

There are many reasons that people have for not paying attention to their dreams, which are reviewed in my books. For the purpose of this post, I point out that one of the main reasons is the tendency of people to take the path of least resistance. It is just easier to ignore them. It is much like diet and exercise. I think few people are unaware of the importance of diet and exercise for maintaining a healthy body. Yet, evidence is overwhelming that the majority of Americans are largely ignoring the advice of nutritionists and health experts. It is just easier to stop at the fast food restaurant or flop in front of the TV and tell yourself you will go to the gym or health club another day.

Dreams will jar you out of that sense of complacency. You will see the results of your lifestyle, sometimes in a very vivid and shocking way. But shock may be what your subconscious is trying to achieve to get your attention. Now, if you are OK with cutting yourself off from that information, then don’t complain later in life that some disease occurred without warning, and if you had only known you would have made some lifestyle changes.

The deeper levels of consciousness are always trying to bring our lives into balance and steer us onto a path that is beneficial for our body and mind. But we must learn to listen by interpreting our dreams and then act upon the guidance we receive. The help that so many seek is right there in plain sight. No one separates us from our internal wisdom except ourselves.

Dreams About Your Health

I believe that we all possess one of the best sources of help for maintaining good health. This source is free of charge and readily available to everyone. Of course, I am referring to our nightly dreams, which constantly monitor the state of our physical and mental health.

I was reminded of this by something I read earlier this month. The publication of a new comprehensive medical study warned people that the consumption of three or more eggs a week could be dangerous for their heart health. This study was reported on by CNN on March 15, 2019. (Three or more eggs a week increase your risk of heart disease and early death, study says By Susan Scutti, CNN Updated 5:10 PM ET, Fri March 15, 2019.)

The study reversed the position of doctors who had previously said that consumption of three of more eggs a week was not a problem and people should not be concerned. In my book The Inner Guru, I mention a dream I had many years ago warning me to limit my egg consumption to two eggs a week. When I read about the position of doctors last year on egg consumption, I wondered why I had that dream because they said it was not a concern. Now I know the answer. My dream was correct, despite the position of many in the medical community at that time.

Your subconscious mind is aware of everything that occurs within your body and knows how various foods affect your physical health. You simply have to learn how to listen to the messages from your subconscious. This source of wisdom is not limited to food, but also applies to any medicines that you take. The unconscious levels of mind are always trying to steer us to a path that is healthy, both physically and mentally. People spend huge sums of money to get advice that is readily available to them from their dreams. If you want to have good health and prosper, learn to interpret your dreams.

For most people, I believe the way to good health is simple: get an adequate amount of sleep, eat healthy, have regular exercise, develop a positive outlook, and reduce stress in your life. Your dreams will provide feedback on how you are doing in each area. And they will help you avoid serious illnesses that could have been prevented with simple adjustments to your behavior.

If you ignore your dreams, you may be living under the delusion that everything is fine when it is not. People often convince themselves that they have healthy habits because they really don’t want to face the truth. But the truth is much easier to deal with when there is still time to change. When the heart attack suddenly occurs or you are diagnosed with cancer or some other serious, and potentially deadly, disease, the treatment becomes more challenging and has a greater impact on your quality of life than taking steps for prevention would ever have.