Dreams

As most of you are already aware he vast majority of us have dreams. Some people will tell you that they do not dream. The reality of it is that they probably don’t remember them. The average person will dream between 4 – 7 times a night. We don’t normally remember the majority of them. And the ones we do tend to remember are usually the ones that we have closest to waking up.

Dreams have for thousands of years been the stuff of myths and legends.
Many civilisations namely the Native American tribes and Aboriginal tribes of Australia think that dreams are extremely important to their lives and beliefs. So did the Chinese people to a lesser extent. The people of ancient Greece and Egypt thought that dreams were methods of supernatural communication and divine intervention. Think back to Joseph and his prophetic dreams.

There is much debate and has been for a long time as to what dreams actually are, where they come from and what they mean. For the sceptics out there they will say things like it’s just your mind sorting through the day’s events.
A friend of mine described it to me as like when you defragment a computer. It’s your brains way of organising and cataloguing memories and feelings and emotions. I can understand where they are coming from with this analogy

The Cambridge dictionary defines a dream as “a series of events or images that happen in your mind when you are sleeping”

You could go out and buy a hundred books or dream dictionaries and although they may be similar and helpful they will in effect just be the author’s interpretation of what these images within your dream are.
Each dream that you have is personal to you. No one else can have the same dream although it has been known for people to have similar dreams and dream of the same thing or person. The reason why a dream is unique is they have to be linked to you as a person in reality and no one has the life that you do, the experiences the ups and downs that you have.

I started off as a child having dreams that at the time wouldn’t make sense.
My next door neighbour with another woman. A family member having a car accident in a green car that wasn’t theirs. (They didn’t even drive!)
At the time I paid no attention other than thought that was odd. Weeks on, my neighbour announce he was getting divorced introduced his new girlfriend who I recognised but couldn’t work out why. The car accident happened a few months later when a family member was knocked over by a green car. Left in a bad way but did recover. I used to find myself constantly getting déjà vu. On thought it would always link back to earlier dreams.
I didn’t understand these dreams and started getting into books to try and find out what all these dreams meant.
I started to look at a dream dictionary and although this was helpful at first, left me asking more questions than I had answers for. The reason for this is sometimes you can over analyse everything and not take it for the visuals that you are getting.

For an example I had a dream of driving a red car in the snow.
So years ago I would look up what red meant, what cars meant and also what snow meant in a dream.
Red would mean danger
Car would be all about ambition and drive
Snow would signify inhibitions or private emotions.

A basic summary would be I’m in fear or danger of allowing my inhibitions aor personal ambitions to come through.

That all seems well and good,

The colour red might mean something to you that may be completely different to someone else. As it may mean danger to me but could signify love for you.

Different cars, can mean different things as to whether its travelling, stationary broken down or otherwise.

Same with snow, you could break this down further. Whether it’s just snow, a single snowflake or blizzard.

The problem is that you can end up overanalysing things and reading too much into what you should be getting. Sometimes it’s best to keep it simpler and easier. If you can all remember the catchphrase game show “Say what you see” It could well just be that what you’re supposed to get out of the dream is a red car in the snow.

There is no right and wrong, it’s the same as any sort of reading, its your personal experience and its what’s right to you. Whether you want to break it down or just take it as it is. Each dream may be different.

The best advice I can offer and I regularly tell people is to put a pen and notepad near when they sleep so they can make a note of what they dreamt about and date and time it. Create a special dream diary or dream journal and record your dreams as soon as you can. Some people actually are able to record them whilst half asleep. You can just write the key points or write everything. This could also be done with a Dictaphone or voice recorder. It actually becomes easier to remember dreams the more notes you take.

I’m not expecting everyone to remember every single dream every night or to see the future, answer life’s many questions but you may just be able to help yourself develop your own understanding of not only your inner most thoughts and feeling but also dream language.
Each persons is different and unique to you, once you can work out dreams regularly it will help you on your spiritual path. If you cannot understand your own inner most emotions and feelings and what your mind is telling you, it makes it hard to help and understand others.

Sweet Dreams !
Kevin Bowen

www.kevinbowen.info