Dreams—the ephemeral experiences that occur while we sleep. Sometimes they seem so real, other times they seem nothing more than a replay of those events that plagued us during the day. What makes these vignettes of our unconscious so fascinating?

 

We probably spend at least one-third of our lives sleeping, and according to researchers, at least a third of that time is spent dreaming. Yet, we still know so little about dreams. What are they? Where do they come from? Do they have meaning? Why do some people seem to dream and others not?

 

Dreams have intrigued and fascinated people for centuries, from before the time of the ancients up to today. Through the years, people have constantly sought answers to some of the mysteries surrounding dreams. Some of those seeking the answers to dreams have used the ‘common sense’ approach, others the ‘fantastic’ or ‘divine’ approach, and still others, the ‘psychoanalytical’ approach.

 

People are so fascinated by dreams that even many of our literary works are filled with references to them. The Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge seemed especially susceptible to translating their dreams and nightmares into prose and poems. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) also translated his dream imagery into literature. Lewis Carroll created a whole world from several dreams he had, and he wrote these worlds into his well-known books, Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.

 

When Alice entered her dream world created by Mr. Carroll, she entered a world that many of us are familiar with. It’s a world where reality changes from moment to moment, and the rules never seem to apply. You see things and people as they are, and others as you wish they would be. Also, like Alice, dreamers are confronted by their fears. Alice faced the ultimate in fear when she confronted the Red Knight. Even though she felt the unreality of the situation, it seemed real to her. It seemed so real that when the Red Knight told her she would cease to exist when he awoke from his dream, that she not only believed him, but was terrified that she truly would cease to exist.

 

Sometimes, it is only with this kind of dream imagery that an author can bring across the intense emotion and fear that he needs to for his reader to understand a situation or character. It’s a type of powerlessness that comes across, a feeling we’ve all experienced at one time or another. A feeling that our life is out of control, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Most of the time we wake up from a dream of this sort, panting, in a cold sweat. These types of dreams also seem to stay with us all throughout the day. I think Cathy (Emily Bronte’s heroine in Wuthering Heights) probably said it best, “…these dreams that stayed with me; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.”            

 

Shakespeare was exceedingly fond of using dream allegory, and even wrote a play about dreams and dreamers called A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Shakespeare was quite aware of the impact of dreams on people, and he used this to help the audience relate to his characters. Prospero, the magician from the Tempest, suggests that life is merely a dream, “…We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” Edgar Allen Poe expressed much the same sentiment in his poem, A Dream Within a Dream, when he said, “…All that we see or seem, Is but a dream within a dream.” This may lead one to wonder then, which is the dream and which is the reality? Maybe asking that is the ultimate confrontation with ourselves. Because if we can’t face ourselves in waking life, perhaps we have to do so in our dreams.

 

Today, many who believe in the fantastic approach to dreams think that dreams are messages from some other plane of existence or contain some esoteric wisdom. Some even believe that the soul itself leaves during the night to seek knowledge and wisdom on the astral and other planes. Many researchers seem to combine the three approaches.

 

Most of them think of dreams as a means of communicating, not only with our inner selves, but also with our bodies and, perhaps, even with those in other realms. Researchers have found that dreams let us access information that, while awake, we keep hidden or are otherwise unable to see clearly. When faced with decisions or problems, dreams sometimes can even help us define the answer or solution. Professor Kekule stated that it was a dream of a spinning snake biting its own tail that gave him the clue to his ring theory. The ring theory is the basis of the constitution of benzene, which finally emerged as the benzene formula. A formula that revolutionized chemistry.

 

It is a well-known fact, that outside stimuli can, and does, affect dreams. But even when confronted with outside factors, the mind usually blends the stimulus into the dream without losing or corrupting the overall meaning or flavor of that dream. A sleeper can be dreaming of an overcast day, and incorporate the dripping faucet into the dream as a sprinkle of rain.

 

Through their imagery, dreams help keep us in touch with what is happening in our own bodies. If, for example, you dream of baking bread, you are warned of a possible illness. The recorded incidences of psychic dreams have filled volumes. So, it’s not surprising that modern researchers are more open to considering the possibility that telepathic or clairvoyant communication can occur during dreams. Some have even gone so far as to admit to the possibility that dreamers may somehow even be able to foretell future events.

 

I know many of my own dreams have been filled with imagery and, quite a number of them have even shown me glimpses of the “future”—choices that essence has made and no amount of balkiness on ego’s part is going to change, or choices that others, who are important to me, have made, and they want me to “know” about their choices.

 

When I was young, I used to have “forewarning” dreams all the time, along with numerous dreams that were exact duplicates of the day I then lived. Evidently I spent a lot of time in the lower astral planes “practicing” things, because I remember spending a lot of time while in grade and high school going “Wow, didn’t I just do this?” or “Wow, didn’t I just dream this?”

 

As I got older, I either didn’t need as much “rehearsal” for my days, or I’ve just been too busy working with other people and trying to help them with their issues that I haven’t had time to live my days two times (once as a dream and once in ‘real’ life). So, many of those types of dreams have ended. But I still get the occasional dream message from someone else showing me what they have planned (usually a death or major accident) so I’m not caught unawares.

 

But I still spend a great deal of time dreaming—and I still pay close attention to those dreams. Because most times there’s a whole lot of wisdom packed into those short, ephemeral images.

 

Actually, the dreams lately have been remarkably clear, although the images themselves have been decidedly bizarre. After each dream I awaken knowing perfectly well what they mean, despite their strange images.

 

For instance, the last dream had me walking with my dad and entering a strange home. The house was large, but shrouded in shadows. I opened the large, double front doors, and we entered a shrouded, dimly lit entry room, but it was like no entry room I’d ever seen. The room was larger than my current living room (which is about 20 x 18) with a ceiling so high, I couldn’t even see it. The wall color was a mottled maroon or red, and I felt as if I had entered a funeral parlor rather than someone’s home. There were people clustered in the corners, hidden within the shadows—I could see their shapes and hear them whispering—but my father hurried through the room to one of the doors at the far end. There seemed to be about 6 doorways, but my dad knew exactly which one he wanted, and he grabbed the door handle, pulled it open, and slipped through just as I nearly caught up to him. Hesitating just a fraction, I, too, went through the door, which he had left ajar. The first thing I saw was my mother (who has been dead for about 8 years). She was standing by a bed packing things into a trunk. The only light in the room was cast by two lamps, one on each nightstand, which left most of the room shadowy. My father had rushed over to my mom, so happy to see her after all these years, and while she was smiling at him, she never once stopped putting things into the trunk. Yet, my father seemed to take no notice of this odd behavior and continued to chatter to her, telling her everything that had happened in the past 8 years.

 

Suddenly I felt very tired, and all I wanted was to sleep, but looking around, I realized that I couldn’t use that room, not with my parents there—and they showed no signs of leaving any time soon. I walked over and touched my dad’s arm, but he brushed me away and continued chattering with my mom, who continued folding and packing (where she kept finding all these items to pack, I don’t know, there weren’t any bureaus or anything). Realizing that my father was determined to stay there, I went back out the door I came in. But now it seemed as if every light in the world were on. The room was so bright as to be nearly blinding. I reached over and found some light switches, but when I flicked them down, it didn’t seem to help. The light was still blinding. I had thought that I could simply curl up on one of the couches in this room, but with the light being so bright, I knew that I was going to have to return to my own trailer (that’s what my mind in the dream called it—yet, in reality, I live in a very nice concrete and stucco home). Stumbling through the brightness, I found the front door again, and leaving the whispering and shuffling people behind I went back outside so I could get some sleep in my own “trailer”.

 

So, what does all of that mean? Well, to me it was rather simple—the large, house was my translation of the astral plane. I was astral traveling with my dad (not that he’s dead, but he’s getting closer to letting go of the physical plane, and as part of that process is his need to work through some remaining issues). I act as his companion and guide on these occasions, so I work at maintaining a sense of “reality” that is acceptable to him.

 

 

The entry or living room that we passed through was the transitional plane—a plane that functions as a way-station for those going to and from the astral levels and the physical plane. Those waiting to be born into the physical plane can go there and monitor their physical plane families, while those whose physical bodies die go there until they decide what they want to do next. That’s why all those “people” seemed shadowy—they’re some of the people that are “waiting”. 

 

The door my father went through was a door leading to his particular “death” reality. When he dies, he expects to see my mom waiting for him. I saw her packing a trunk, because I know that for my dad to move on he is going to have to go through a lot of “baggage” carried over from his current life—baggage having to do with his relationship with my mother, and baggage having to do with his concepts of life and death, and all the other types of baggage each of us carries with us from our current lives.

 

His dismissal of me was merely my own awareness realizing that my “job” of helping my father find his way was done. He didn’t need me now, he and the astral representation of my mother would work things through (until my dad awoke in the morning—although he never remembers any of these wanderings). Hence, my sudden feeling of intense sleepiness was my own body telling me to come home.

 

The bright light now shining in the entry way/living room was the brightness of all the souls (including mine) that were waiting there, that’s why using a light switch wouldn’t work…you can’t dim a soul when it’s non-corporeal. We are light, and we are extremely bright. What you can do, is not “see” the soul as it is (bright light), so when I first entered with my father we saw shadows and a dim interior, because my father has an internal vision as to what he believes “heaven” and the afterlife to be like, and it doesn’t include a true vision of the soul. He still believes in heaven and hell and so expects my mom to be waiting for him so that they can travel to heaven together. Therefore, when I astral travel with my dad, I need to respect his views and allow the “scene” to be observed in a way that is acceptable to him.

 

The “trailer” that I needed to return to was my own body, and my reluctance is (to me) understandable. I have grown weary of the physical plane and would much rather continue my studies and experiences in the astral levels, but it’s not time yet. So, although I wanted to remain, the brightness of my soul (and all the others there) convinced me that I needed to go back to my body to continue my “waking sleep” – my life.