What do dreams mean?
What are they telling you?

by:  Calleen Wilder

I am absolutely dedicated to listening to and attempting to understand my dreams every single night.  I believe that dreams are extremely valuable to us in our daily living, and as such, that no one can truly afford to casually dismiss them, or worse yet, not remember them at all.

Yes, sometimes even I have trouble remembering my dreams, but for the most part, what I need to know always sticks out, because I have trained myself to remember and to try to interact within my dreams should I feel the need to? 

Doing the work necessary to begin remembering more of your dreams is really simple, but often overlooked at the end of our busy and often exhausting days.  It can be likened to your alarm clock….if you don’t take the time to program it and turn it on, it won’t go off in the morning.

The same can be said for your dreams.  If you don’t program your mind to help you remember, and more importantly understand your dreams, than you simply will be missing out on one of the most important and insightful tools you have…..your mind…..

Dreams can come in all shapes and sizes, but there are some pretty standard dreams we all have, and these are the dreams I would like to explore further with you:

These are the dreams that some people say are very vivid and the colors are extremely clear, but I tend to disagree.  I have found that quite often these dreams may usually be the ones that we remember, and the ones that stand out in our minds, but my prophetic dreams can be every bit as cluttered with seemingly unrelated objects,  symbols and a hodge-podge of people, ideas and situations as any other dream. 

These are the dreams that once recalled however, seem to have a major dejavu feeling for us.  The “I’ve seen this or done that before” moment. 

I don’t always realize these dreams to be the future forecasters that they are until the corresponding event actually happens within my daily life.  And for those times that I do realize the prophecy in advance, I've found that whatever the dream was telling me has never failed to materialize within my life within quite often the same day.  

These dreams can foretell and forewarn of so many upcoming events that they are extremely important to have access to. 

Sometimes they may foretell of small little incidents that will be occurring in your daily life, but quite often these foretell of major events that you will be truly happy to have advance notice of.  Yet either way, I find them incredibly valuable and uncannily accurate. 

I have also found them to sometimes be a preconditioning for further ESP awareness….usually many psychics and mediums will start with prophetic dreams.

How can you recognize a prophetic dream?  As soon as you awaken, remember every detail of your dream.  Remember the colors, the names, the sites, the people, everything....and then watch as these things unfold within your week.  Sometimes the occurrences might be a bit skewed from your original dream, but you will recognize the similarities.

The only real way to recognize these dreams consistently is to begin actively observing your dreams and their outcomes.  I believe that these dreams happen for everyone in a slightly different way so no definite boxes can be drawn around them, but if they happen for you, they will almost always appear in the same manner each time you have one.

Plus, once your mind and internal self realizes that you are paying attention to your dreams and their outcomes, it will also be able to design your own format in which these dreams can appear. 
 

These are the dreams where we are running from someone, standing naked in public, can’t speak or see, possibly are in a war, an argument or a confrontation.  We may be driving down a highway, talking with different people, or having random images simply appearing all throughout the dream.

These are the most frequent dreams we have, and often the most misunderstood.

I believe these dreams happen to either inform us of what we are really feeling inside, i.e. stressed, angry, lost, etc… or they are the subconscious mind’s way of working out its most current dilemma. 

Our subconscious mind holds all of the information about our life.  Our likes, dislikes, fears, stresses, problems, and really everything that we do, think or feel is stored there. 

Sometimes our conscious mind knows about these things that are internally disrupting our lives, and sometimes it does not.  Or at the very least, it doesn’t know the extent or degree of the situation.

So it is during these dreams that our subconscious tries to work out different scenarios for solutions to the problems we have.  Sometimes it is simply letting off some steam while it can, which is when we are asleep and not trying to rationalize our feelings or find our own solutions.

We are very raw and open when we sleep.  And it is when we sleep that our subconscious mind gets to have its time without our conscious mind’s interference.

It may very well be doing this for good reason too, as it is emotional and instinctual versus rational.  So the solutions it may present to us may very well be something we would have never thought of.  Also, it may very well be trying to preserve our health through releasing our pent-up stress and negative emotions through dream scenarios.  

Therefore, these dreams are dreams that we are well advised to pay close attention to.  Know that as our subconscious attempts to solve these issues, it can proceed at a much greater clip if we can also consciously participate in the solutions it is offering.

We must also realize that quite often when we think we have resolved some issue of concern to us, if our dreams are still showing signs of distress in a particular area of our life, (which is often presented as the background in which our dream scenes appear), our subconscious may be giving us a "heads up" that we have only artificially solved our problem as the subconscious is still very involved, either physically or emotionally in the situation. 

A brief example of this type of dream is when we are naked in public in our dreams. Then we must seriously consider where we are feeling vulnerable or exposed in our daily lives? 

When we are running from some monster or unseen entity, we must consider who or what we are we running from and more importantly perhaps, why?  Why are we afraid to confront this issue or person head on? 

When we can’t speak or move….where are we not saying what we want to say, or where are we feeling stifled and held down?  Where are we paralyzed in our own lives? 

And on and on it goes, but it is truly very self-explanatory if you just take a moment to think about how the dream pictures made you feel and what they might look like if they were presented in our daily lives.  Sometimes if we think about it, it will be painfully obvious what it is that is “bugging” us.  Another example, bugs represents something that is bugging us.  How big, small or numerous the bugs are is another crucial detail.

Once we understand the issue, we must face the fact that it is causing us, at least internally, much concern, possibly stress and duress in our lives.  Otherwise, our subconscious would not find it important enough to address it in our dream state. 

In other words, if it truly were no big deal then we probably wouldn’t have dreamed of it.  It would have been dismissed.  If our subconscious feels it is important, then so should we.

Our subconscious exists to keep us alive….its very basic in its job.  If it feels something is threatening our lives via our mental or physical well being, it is going to try to resolve the issue, or at the very least avert some possible harm to us, again be it mental or physical, via this release valve (our dreams).

Therefore, once we have a dream we need to evaluate if it feels like some current obstacle in our lives, even ones we haven’t yet fully consciously recognized, and then try to help resolve the issue.  That doesn’t mean artificially fixing the problem by perhaps confronting someone and yet still not really resolving anything.  We've all had those times that we walk away after talking something out with someone and yet we still feel unhappy or unsettled with the outcome.  If you do this, trust me, you’ll be dreaming about it again real soon.

The next type of dream I find very common are not really dreams at all, but actual happenings:

In other words, people who have passed over, spirit guides, angels, etc come to talk with us.

And yes, these happen all the time and are very easily deciphered.  These dreams are often precisely accurate in detail.  Such as when in your dreams you have an encounter with someone you know to be deceased, and in the dream, you are very often even talking to them about their prior death and they are confirming it. 

Unequivocally, these are real visitations…gifts from the spirit world. 

In your dream state your higher consciousness is available to those on a higher plane.  It is a time when you become more than just your body and your mind; you become you, the soul and spirit of you.  It is truly a time when you are complete and totally who you are.  In this state, without your conscious rational mind telling you this is impossible, you can meet your loved ones and they can meet you…It's a sacred event. 

I so often have people asking me about these types of dreams and saying they seemed so real, I tell them that's because they are real.  This is how spirit can reach you without your freaking out, being afraid or refusing to see them.  Cherish these. 

I have also experienced on many occasions dreams about my spirit guides (which usually appear as people or animals) and I often recall the conversations I have with them and the things that they share with me. 

Sometimes I see them, sometimes I’m simply in a brightly lit room with lights beaming all around me and a voice comes out of seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  Other times it may be as simple and as obvious as me sitting at a table and talking to them. 

When I awake from these dreams I always know that something very important has just been revealed to me.  If I don’t recall what they said, I've found that it doesn’t really matter what my conscious mind recalls, as I know my subconscious heard it all and will enact it into my daily life automatically without any participation from me.   These are dreams you don’t really have to dissect to get the benefit from. 

We really need to pay attention to our dreams.  Perhaps buy a book on interpreting dreams.  Just know that many books have many negative connotations, but one that I have found that has helped me out over the years is a book entitled “The Mystical Magical Marvelous World of Dreams” by Wilda B. Tanner. 

I bought mine years ago and it is now severely tattered from use.  It doesn’t always explain everything in the way that I feel it was meant to be….however, if my dream was full of symbols that I can’t interpret, I always look in this book and see what those symbols might have meant.

Let me also explain that your spirit guides and loved ones who work with us during our dream state will also know what book you are working with…..therefore, many times the symbols you receive will be the ones they have decided to use knowing you will be looking them up in this book. 

Dreaming is very complicated, spiritual, enlightening and has the potential to heal our lives.  Make it a priority to work with your dreams.  I promise you, it will be well worth the effort you put into it.

For a great example of a visitation dream and how it can be interpreted, also read Dreams.

 My Nightly Dream Exercise

In order to remember and receive what I need from my dreams, every night as I'm getting ready to fall asleep, among other things I have a little saying that I incorporate that goes like this:

"Whatever you would like me to know, please help me to dream about it, to remember it in the morning and to understand its meaning”.

Often, if I have a specific question about some aspect of my life, I will also ask that they give me information on that exact topic in a manner that I will understand and will remember upon awakening.

Do this often enough and I promise you too may become infatuated with your dreams.  They really will bring you understanding and great insights into your daily life and your internal workings.

Here’s to a wonderful dream! 

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