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It’s only a dream?  Hardly!

Have you ever told someone your nightmare and they dismissed it saying it’s only a dream?  You knew they were wrong.  You couldn’t shake your uneasiness.

Every dream has meaning and every dream is important. Dream worker Kevin Todeschi said, “Nothing significant ever happens in your life that you didn’t first dream it.” So, how can you harness the power of dreams to help you?

Some sources report you have 60,000 thoughts each day. It’s impossible to process that many thoughts, interactions, and feelings. In fact, you

Image depicting thoughts
You can have more than 60,000 thoughts each day.

only process about 5% of what you experience in a day. That seems a small percentage until you take into account the types of stimuli you encounter. You probably don’t notice the air conditioner cycling on and off.  You ignore your heartbeat and respiration. You take those things for granted.  You probably don’t even notice you sneezed. When everything works properly, you don’t pay attention.  You only notice when something out of the ordinary happens.   If the room becomes too hot, you investigate the air conditioner. If you sneeze repeatedly, you might blame your allergies and take an antihistamine.

That’s where your dreams can help.  The 95% of unnoticed experiences is stored in your sub-conscious.  Overnight, it’s your dreams’ responsibility to sift through your daytime events. What isn’t important, the solitary sneeze, is pushed from your short-term memory and set aside. It’s not forgotten entirely, though, because the memory of that sneeze might become important the day after tomorrow when multiple cold symptoms become apparent.

What about subtle warning signs? Let’s suppose you pass two co-workers conferring in the hallway. You catch part of their conversation and pay no attention. You don’t notice they stopped speaking as you approached. It might not occur to you that they were talking about you.

Again, your dreams will jump into action.  As your sub-conscious sifts through the rubble of the day, it will focus on the most pressing matters in your life, highlighting important interactions you missed. For instance, if you are in competition with one of those co-workers for a promotion, the conversation you vaguely overheard might contain critical information.  Your dreams will tell you what you need to know.

It would be convenient if your dream announced on a billboard that the co-worker is sabotaging your chances for promotion by feeding your boss faulty information about a project you’re managing.  However, the language of the sub-conscious is symbolism.  You must crack the symbolic code to decipher the warning.  You must interpret the symbols.

The following nightmare tells you what you need to know about that hallway conversation.

You enter a dark room.  Suddenly you walk into a spider web.  Part of it gets caught in your hair.  A giant black widow spider moves slowly toward you.  Horrified, you can’t move.  You try to scream, but no sound comes out.

You awaken in a cold sweat. 

Dreams with strong emotion carry critical messages. Fear is potent. The scarier the dream, the more dire the consequences of ignoring the communication. However, you won’t learn the meaning unless you understand the symbolism. Let’s interpret the dream.

A common dream symbol is a house.  It can represent you and can indicate a current situation in your life. Are you “in the dark” about something? Are you paralyzed, unable to get out of harm’s way? Could the type of spider be important?  It might be if one of the co-workers is a widow. Is she spinning a web of deceit?

Once you understand the dream’s imagery, contextualize the answers. Then plan a course of action.

If you fail to receive the dream’s theme, don’t despair.  You’ll get another chance to decipher the code when your dreams send you the same warning using a different scene tonight!