- The Talmud
Humans have been fascinated by dreams for thousands of years. In many ancient cultures, dreams were accorded great respect and actively used in decision-making. The Bible, the Talmud and the Koran contain hundreds of passages about dreams and dream interpretation. Today, not much has changed. A study published in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that most people believe that their dreams are sources of meaningful insight, revealing hidden truths about themselves and their world.
DREAM SYMBOLS
Most psychologists agree that dreams are often filled with symbols, subconscious indicators of what you really think and feel. A dream of being lost for instance, of being unable to find your way, can mean that you feel unprepared for something in your waking life. A dream of drowning can show that you feel overwhelmed. However, a dream dictionary is of limited use because symbols can mean different things to different people – dreaming about being naked in public can point to a fear of ridicule or a fear of having secrets exposed. But it can also mean an effort on your part to present your authentic self.
Dreaming about spiders can be positive for some. They’re often a symbol of creativity or good fortune. Psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that spider webs were like mandalas, a symbol of wholeness because of their circular shape and complexity. For me, if I’m dreaming about spiders (which I freely admit scare the bejeebers out of me), I know that my stress levels in my waking life are off the charts and I need to do something about it.
INSPIRATION THROUGH DREAMS
Countless artists and writers have also been inspired by dreams. Edgar Allan Poe based many of his works on dreams (or perhaps nightmares). In her 'Introduction' to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley revealed that the story was inspired by a dream. Best-selling author Stephen King says that dreams have been the source for many of his unique plots. Former Beatle Paul McCartney reported that the tune for Yesterday came to him in a dream in 1965. Even legendary golfer, Jack Nicklaus, discovered a new way to hold his golf club in a dream!
CAN DREAMS PREDICT THE FUTURE?
It’s possible that in some cases the subconscious mind has observed and pieced together clues that the conscious mind hasn’t noticed. But that only works with things you’ve seen. What if you dream about something you’ve never seen or heard of before?
This is something that has happened for me since I was a small child. Many of my most vivid and memorable dreams have been about places. Eventually I go there – sometimes days, sometimes years later – and see it in real life. I really wish I’d dream about Hawaii or Africa or some exotic locale like that, but usually it’s fairly pedestrian. For instance I dreamed of a restaurant/bar that was painted forest green. It had an odd stairway leading inside, and the doorway was cramped. Inside, the décor and furnishings were very distinct, right down to the chalkboard with the day’s specials. Within a month, I went to visit one of my older daughters in another part of the country and we went on a road trip to an area I’d never been. She took me to a restaurant that she wanted me to try – and it was the one from my dream.
My youngest daughter also lives a long way from me. She has very dark hair, and just this week I dreamed that I had “her” hair (I’m blonde). I was sitting in a beauty shop and an unseen hairdresser was putting vivid red streaks through the dark brown hair. I thought it was a pretty peculiar dream – until I phoned my daughter and told her about it. It turns out that she had just had red highlights put into her hair.
Are all of my dreams precognitive? Not at all. In fact, most of them aren’t. But I’ve had enough of the predictive ones to recognize, as do many people, that precognitive dreams tend to feel different. In fact, I usually experience them as dreams within dreams – where I’m already dreaming and then have a period of heightened awareness in which I know that what I’m seeing is different from the rest of the dream.
FAMOUS CASES
Many famous people have seen the future in their dreams. One of the most notable was Abraham Lincoln, who experienced a number of such visions. The most well-known occurred in 1865, just two weeks before he was assassinated. In his dream, Lincoln saw a funeral at the White House. He asked someone who was in the casket and they replied, "the president of the United States".
After the Titanic sunk in 1912, hundreds of people came forward to report their dreams of disaster. In some cases, the dream had kept them from booking passage on the ill-fated ship. Likewise with 9/11. Many people reported experiencing dreams up to four years in advance of the tragic event.
SCIENCE AND DREAMS
Mainstream science doesn’t yet accept the concept of precognition. But some people are now theorizing that psychic abilities could have a sound basis. During sleep, when our minds are less cluttered, perhaps we can sense things that elude us when we’re awake. We may be able to tune into a subtle frequency or a resonance when our minds are quiet. After all, according to Einstein, the future already exists. Perhaps, accidently or intentionally, some people can plug into it.
Maybe all of us can, if we just knew how.
Dani Harper
http://www.daniharper.com/
YOUR TURN - Have you ever had a dream that turned out to be true?
I am learning not to discuss dreams especially
ReplyDeleteif any one person is "featured" in the dream.
If I describe it to anyone, a time or two the
dream has come true. If I just leave it alone,
it fades away into the ether.
Pat Cochran
Oh wow, I have dreams where I'm fighting against monsters and things all the time. What do you suppose that means? I'm always the leader, and charge into battle full force. I have a few subordinates that always follow me too. We even chat a lot while waiting for the battles to start.
ReplyDeleteIt turns out, all my subordinates are my friends, and we engage in the battle of life every day together! So it sort of came true!
Some people think that dreams all take place in the same alter-world, and that's why you can sometimes meet people you know while you're in the dream. Which is an interesting notion.
Years ago, I got my first job in a card store right before Mother’s Day. I’d never seen a store where lines snaked through the aisles simply to buy a card. Being thrown head first into the frenzy of the holiday gave me nightmares where I dreamed I was running the cash register all through the night. Then one night I dreamt I walked in the front entrance of the store, beside the front counter, and I saw my manager sitting on a tall stool using a HUGE golden antique of a hand-crank cash register. Our regular cash register had broken and the repairman had loaned us this one that should have been in a museum. The customer line was doubled weaving through the store and my manager was frantically trying to hand-crank this behemoth. My manager begged me to take over for her to give her a few moments break, and I did. The buttons were set so high, I couldn’t see them to push the proper key. I had to perch upon the stool just to work the register. I thought it was just another disturbing “Mother’s Day” dream, but I woke up laughing from the silliness of it.
ReplyDeleteLater that morning, I walked into the card store’s front entrance and saw... my manager perched upon a tall stool, working a HUGE golden hand-crank museum piece of a cash register. Sure enough, ours had broken, and we had THIS loaner for the day. I took over to give her a break and of course, I practically had to stand on the rungs of the stool to see the keys. That was a Mother’s Day to remember.
In later years, while pregnant with our first child, I dreamed I saw my grandmother holding our son in front of her porch (this before “pre-sexing” was available). It was so clear, I saw his features, I saw his face. I “knew” him before he was born. When he was about six months old, I took a photo of my grandmother holding our son in front of her porch. I got the developed photo back and the photo was exactly as it was in my dream. This dream was so vivid and real, I told my husband (about a month before the birth) “We’re having a boy. I just know it.” Still, he laughed when I bought our son’s “very much boy” first outfit BEFORE he was born.
I’ve since had other strange dreams, I’ve “visited” loved ones long gone, spoken to them, touched them. But I much prefer silly prophetic dreams to ones that come as warnings. I’ll stick to the safely mundane.
Can dreams predict the future?
ReplyDeleteI've had at least three dreams involving commercial plane crashes, and one involving a military in-flight emergency, which all came true within a few hours of the dreams. As a child, the events sometimes had a slightly longer lag time from the dream, as long as two or three days.
On one occasion, the dream was occurring as the event was occurring. That was the only one that was a classic nightmare, jolting me out of sleep in a brief panic, then grief because I knew it was real. Passenger's perspective. Slow motion. Green grass, flowers and dirt flowing over the leading edge of the wing. Went back to sleep for maybe an hour, got up, heard it on NPR. Freaky, even for me.
I never kept written accounts of my plane crash dreams. Why would I? I was so young when they started, cursive writing was still on my to-do list. But I've been married a 27 years and my wife would attest to this unusual connection. Were I to have such a dream pending personal air travel for me or my wife, neither of us would hesitate to cancel, even if the $ penalty was high. I would have to be crazy to do otherwise.
Why some planes and not others? I have no idea. I hadn't a clue about September 11th or many other high-profile plane crashes. Insofar as the crashes I dreamed about were concerned, the planes were always commercial aircraft with a passenger load. I never felt responsibility for, or guilt about, any of these events. There was never any doubt they were beyond my control.
Interestingly, I:
• enjoy flying a great deal;
• never have or had regular dreams featuring airplanes; if I dream about a plane, there's an event forthcoming in the very near future;
• did a hitch in the USAF as an aircraft structural repair tech; a poor fit for the military, but I was very good at the trade;
• was born ten hours before the crash of American Airlines Flight 1, which, as of 1962, was the worst commercial aviation disaster of its time, claiming 87 lives almost immediately after departing NY for LA. (Mad Men fans reading this might recall this was the plane crash that kicked off Season 2 in which Pete Campbell's horrible father made his exit. I would have been shocked to see it a part of any storyline on television, but Mad Men is an very strong personal favorite);
• didn't find out the information being born on the same day as the AA Flight 1 crash until four or five years ago, which was several years after my final air disaster dream (to date).
For obvious reasons, I don't go around squawking about it. People generally believe only what they can verify, and I never gave a damn about other people validating what, for me, was (and remains) an intensely personal phenomenon.
Aviation is a thread woven throughout my entire life, including events no less bizarre than the ones I discussed but aren't entirely comfortable disclosing. I never pursued it, but Synchronicity made sure I didn't have to.
Wow tht sounds creepy yet awesome :-)
ReplyDelete