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.