What Are Dreams? Meaningless or Meaningful?

Most people pay no attention to their dreams because of the prevailing notion that dreams are nothing more than noise in the brain—vestiges of waking experiences that linger in the nervous system. Let me be frank: That assumption is simply false.

While enjoying my dream, it suddenly stops, like a frozen computer screen or a TV show put on pause. In the center of my dream a pop-up window appears, much like on a computer. The window expands into a door, and a spirit guide/guardian angel dressed as a Franciscan monk in a long, brown, hooded robe with a knotted-rope belt and leather sandals steps through the Sacred Dream Door. His hood covers his face. “Come with me. We have something to tell you.”

When you pay close attention to both your conscious life and your unconscious, your unconscious doesn’t need to knock on the door seven times to get your attention. The artist Salvador Dali once commented that he used to have dreams, but stopped at some point—perhaps because he had shared the mes­sages of his unconscious through his expressive art.

Although radically different in terms of their content and feel, the range of dream states are just as complex as waking states.

In a 2016 New York Times article, “A New Vision for Dreams of the Dying,” the work of neurobiologist Dr. Christopher Kerr is discussed. Dr. Kerr believes that end-of-life dreams have a therapeutic function and can help not only the dying but also their families.

Perhaps you have always ignored your dreams or devalued the messages from this part of your psyche. But most cultures of the world have used dreams as healing tools, and Freud and Jung proved the great value that dreams have for us as conduits to instinct, buried memories, and the unconscious.

If you believe in the paranormal you might not be surprised if you hear stories of deceased loved ones appearing during the night, huge explosions heard just as someone is drifting off with no obvious cause, and other peculiar occurrences.

Dreams have provided useful information in medical diagnosis for centuries, beginning in ancient times with the shamanic traditions of the indigenous cultures around the world.

In my brighter vision of what is to come, our society will be guided by dream helpers. Their constant work is to help those around them to use dreams for guidance and healing. It is recognized that dreams diagnose problems before they manifest...

Getting a fright from a dream is very normal. But our brains don’t have a secret plan to freak us out with nightmares. In the olden days, many people believed dreams were a window to another world.

Dreams are bizarre. Because of this, they’re inherently interesting. Dreams can teach us about the nature of consciousness, reveal to us personal and universal truths through symbolic language, and enable us to make lasting changes in our own lives. I have experienced all of these through my own dreams.

Somewhere in every meaningful dream is the potential for per­sonal growth. Your dreams give you clues about their meaning through the settings, characters, sym­bols, actions, reactions, and especially resolutions. The resolution of a dream is often...

In the wake of disasters, multiple reports of prophetic dreams and oracles often surface. Immediately after the Titanic sank, dozens of people reported canceling their trip because of dreams that foretold of the sinking. It makes you wonder how many others had...

There is a healing instinct within you that can manifest in dreams. You'd be surprised at the straightforward health advice they give, either spontaneously or on request. Tips on food, preventive therapies, treatment options...

One of my spiritual teachers spoke a lot about premonitory dreams. She was a firm believer that dreams were important divine messages, coming in through the help of our spirit guides. Over the years, I had plenty of time to test out her theories...

It has been so important to connect with my soul, to listen, and respond through the heart and the emerging feelings as I sought some genuine interaction with people and the world around me.

What would it be like to have a 'quiet and unerring counselor' at our side each night? How might our relationship with dreams change if we trusted their ability to guide, warn, inspire, and heal?

I have always depended on dreams to provide me with clear answers about my direction in life, whether in love, my career, health, friendships, travels, and challenges. Whenever I am faced with an unknown or uncertain path...

If you dream often, write down all your dreams and choose to work with the one you feel most intrigued or moved by. If you can only remember a few images, work with whatever you recall of the dream because it may contain valuable information for you.

Dreaming serves to make us healthier -- mentally, physically, and emotionally. But do dreams improve our spiritual health as well?

Often we may wake up in the morning believing that we have not had any dreams. But it is more likely that we have not yet remembered the dreams we did indeed have.

As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the midst of a tremendous and extraordinarily difficult transition from a world fragmented into often hostile groups and ideologies to a world where people are united by their common humanity. Our dreams hold the potential to transform the...

There are five different types of dreams: ordinary, lucid, telepathic, premonitory, and nightmare. They often blend and merge with one another.

The astrological signs represent how energy moves, spirals, cycles, and changes. Each sign has unique characteristics. As the moon moves through the astrological signs each month, the dream energy takes on some of the characteristics of...

"I was very moved by the Blue Star Kachina prophecy,” Lucina began, sitting self-consciously next to the stranger. “I wanted to share with you a dream I’ve been having for the past months, and maybe you can help me with it? It’s been haunting me and I just want to understand it better.”

Some therapists will use "dream interpretation" to help a patient understand himself, but understanding will not cure symptoms. Our goal is to find blocked memories and to cry.

Dreams are a direct conduit to the intuitive mind. You can use your dreams as problem-solving tools in the waking world -- but first you have to remember them and learn to decipher their sometimes confusing messages.

It is the most well known – and perhaps infamous – theory of dreams in the Western world. At the turn of last century, Sigmund Freud published his book, The Interpretation of Dreams, arguing that our dreams are nothing more than wishes that we are looking to fulfil in our waking lives.

About 50 per cent of us will at some point in our lives experience “waking up” and being conscious while still in a dream – possibly, we may even be able to act with intention in it. Such “lucid dreams” are not only a vivid and memorable experience for the dreamer, they are also of huge interest to neuroscientists and psychologists.

We spend around six years of our lives dreaming – that’s 2,190 days or 52,560 hours. Although we can be aware of the perceptions and emotions we experience in our dreams, we are not conscious in the same way as when we’re awake. This explains why we can’t recognise that we’re in a dream and often mistake these bizarre narratives for reality.

Many people say their lives are so busy that they don’t have time for meditation. Yet every living being must sleep. During sleep time, we don’t schedule meetings or have appoint­ments to keep. The time is ours, and is usually subject to the mindless, random chaos of our undisciplined minds.

When I had symptoms that could have been because of cancer, I was told in a dream, “but you don’t have cancer.” And I didn’t. The following story by Audrey Carlson may challenge your beliefs, and will certainly touch your heart, for it shows that when love exists, dreams do come true.

“It seems to me that this dream, since you don’t believe it to be a vision of your future, could just be Spirit talking to you about your present moment in life. I don’t know much about your life, but have you recently traversed a difficult moment where you had to let go of things and surrender to a higher force? Have you had to burn away some beliefs and venture into an unknown land?”

An aura of mystery surrounds dream interpretation, conjuring up images of mystics staring into crystal balls or psychoanalysts reading the minds of their patients. But the essence of dream interpretation is really quite simple and understandable. Anyone can do it—no special training required.

Ever since I was young, I loved going to bed at night. I couldn't wait to drop off into deep sleep and experiment the massively expansive world of dreaming and wake up the next day with revelations and important messages from beyond. I started a dream notebook...

Standing before a universe filled with matter, material scientists face the eternal mystery of explaining where all this stuff came from. We face no comparable mystery, however, over whether the mind has the ability to conjure up a three-dimensional world during dreams and hallucinations. In our world, we know dreams are possible.

It's extremely informative to see what types of symbols and images repeat themselves in your dreams. Recurring themes in dreams, as well as recurring dreams, can indicate that you still have something important to work on that you have yet to understand.

Carl Jung developed a technique he called active imagination, a process of consciously dialoguing with our unconscious, that allows anyone to consult an oracle within themselves. Someone who has learned active imagination is thus able to take some degree of control over his or her own growth process.

The condition of animals in your dreams often reflects your situation in regular life. You see an eagle confined in a birdcage, unable to spread its wings, and you’ll want to ask where, in your waking self, you need to claim space and freedom to fly. You see a lion napping on your porch...

The dream will teach you how to recover and nourish your soul. We stand at the edge of such power when we dream and remember to do something with our dreams. Consider the meanings of the words for “dream” in different languages...

As far back as I can remember, my Mammy taught me to talk about my dreams in the morning; we would discuss them and consider what they might mean. We talked about dreams coming true and being able to see into the future with dreams...

As we grow spiritually and the more we work with the information we receive in dreams, we accept the idea that our parents represent parts of our soul. One day, with the concept that our life is like a dream, we have such an understanding of...

Although some dreams certainly seem to symbolize life challenges or fears, not all dreams have the same “feel.” Many times the imagery represents something in our waking, conscious state that needs to be confronted, or even changed.

by John D. Goldhammer, Ph.D. Researchers studying the relationship between dream content and the onset of disease have discovered a particular type of recurring dream that often comes long before cancer becomes apparent. Their research suggests that: "Cancer can be seen as a 'growth' process  . . . taking place incorrectly in the body rather than in the...

Between 1996 and 2000 I was a telephone hot line volunteer for an organization that put survivors in touch with people newly diagnosed with cancer. The sharing of dreams on the cancer hot line became a wonderful healing exercise for the new patients. Often we talked about dreams that conveyed messages...

by M.J. Abadie.

Although there is no scientific proof that recalling our dreams makes them any more effective, it does seem that in general when we pay attention to things, we are more effective. Recall that the proverb says, 'An unremembered dream is like an unopened letter from God.' This doesn't mean that dreams you don't...

If there is a problem you have on your mind, you can ask yourself or a higher power to dream a solution. Here's how it works: first you write out your problem, formulated as a question. In this note, you should ask for a dream with a solution in symbols you can understand.

Although no one can say for certain what dreams are, where they come from, or even why we have them, there's no doubt that they are important to the quality of our lives. Even people who claim not to dream (they just don't remember their dreams) are in some subtle way affected by their dreams, if only as an unexplainable...