What I learned when I eventually started paying attention to my nightly journeys is enormous. Dreams let me visit the heavens of God to learn from the feet of ascended masters in beautiful temples. Dreams let me see the future as well as the past. I realized that dreams are a source of truth.
However, many of my experiences with the dream world are beyond the scope of this article. This is because most of these experiences are not backed by research and are not substantiated. Therefore, I will write about my normal everyday interaction and how they have aided me to be a better person.
Here I will share a dream experience that helped me in a period of my life when I was juggling many events in a bid to survive. I was able to catch this dream as a significant one because I had started meditation and learning about true surrender to the will of God.
When I was in my final year at the University, I was working a night job and schooling at the same time, so naturally it affected my academic performance.
When it was time for degree exams I fell sick and I had volumes of course materials to cover. If I stand a chance to graduate I must work through the materials and pass the exams. Because I was sick I couldn't do much with failure staring me in the eye and panic began to set in. I knew I had to go into meditation and surrender my fears, anxiety and concerns to God and the universe. After I came out from meditation, my calmness and confidence was restored. In this state I took a nap. Soon after I awakened in a dream that looked very real, in that dream I was in a classroom having a section with 3 unknown professors. In this section we reviewed the course materials and the likely questions and answers. When I woke up I quickly jotted down the questions and answers before I forgot them. This dream helped me and guided me on areas to read and how to prepare for degree exams and avoid expending unnecessary energy. I passed and graduated thanks to the awareness of paying attention to my dreams.
However, I thought dreams were just dreams.
But after I started paying more attention to them, I began to see miracles in my life.
I started writing down some of my dreams and thinking about what I had experienced in them. I did not try to believe that every dream had a hidden message or that every dream could predict the future. Instead, I became curious about what my dreams might tell me about my thoughts, emotions, memories, and everyday experiences.
Over time, I learned several interesting things.
One of the first things I discovered was that I actually have many dreams.
The problem was that I usually forgot them.
Before paying attention to my dreams, I believed that I only dreamed occasionally. But when I started keeping a dream journal beside my bed, I began remembering dreams more often.
Sometimes I remembered a complete dream. Other times, I only remembered a small part.
I might remember a house, a person's face, a conversation, a road, an animal, or simply a strong feeling.
This taught me something simple: forgetting a dream does not mean you did not dream.
Dreams can disappear from memory very quickly after waking up. Writing down even a few details can help preserve them.
I also learned that I did not have to remember every detail. A few words were enough to remind me of the dream later.
Another thing I learned from paying attention to my dreams was the importance of emotions.
Sometimes I could not remember everything that happened in a dream, but I could remember exactly how I felt.
I might wake up feeling happy, worried, confused, excited, sad, or afraid.
At first, I did not think much about these feelings. But later, I started asking myself why certain dreams affected me so strongly.
For example, if I woke up feeling anxious after a dream, I would think about what was happening in my life at that time.
Was I worried about something?
Was there an important decision I needed to make?
Was I under pressure?
Was there something I had been thinking about before going to bed?
I discovered that paying attention to my emotions could sometimes help me think about things I had not noticed during the day.
This does not mean that every dream has a deep psychological meaning. Sometimes a strange dream is simply a strange dream.
But paying attention to how I felt helped me become more aware of my emotions.
Before keeping track of my dreams, I did not realize how often everyday experiences could appear in them.
After paying closer attention, I began noticing connections.
A conversation during the day could appear in a dream. A person I had recently seen could suddenly appear that night. Something I was worried about could become part of a strange dream.
Sometimes the connection was obvious. Other times, it was difficult to see.
For example, I might spend the day thinking about an important problem and later dream about being lost somewhere.
The dream was not necessarily giving me an answer to the problem. It could simply have been influenced by what was already on my mind.
This taught me that our waking lives and dream lives are not always completely separate.
The things we see, hear, think about, and experience during the day can sometimes become part of our dreams.
That made me more interested in paying attention to what was happening in my life when I had certain dreams.
Another interesting discovery was that some themes can appear more than once.
When I started recording my dreams, I began noticing things that showed up repeatedly.
It might be a particular place, person, activity, or situation.
Some people may repeatedly dream about falling, flying, being chased, missing an important event, traveling, water, or being unable to find a particular place.
Seeing a theme once may not seem important.
But when you see it several times in your dream journal, you are more likely to notice it.
This taught me the value of keeping records.
Our memory is not always reliable. We can easily forget what happened in previous dreams. A dream journal gives us something we can look back at.
After several weeks or months, it becomes easier to notice repeated themes and compare them with what is happening in our lives.
Paying attention to my dreams also taught me to be careful about dream interpretation.
There are many websites, books, and videos that claim to explain what different dreams mean as well as many pastors who wear the toga of dream interpreters deceiving gullible followers with fake interpretations.
You may see claims that dreaming about water always means one thing, dreaming about a snake always means another thing, or dreaming about falling has one specific meaning.
But I learned that dreams are not always that simple.
The same dream symbol can mean different things to different people.
For one person, water may represent a peaceful memory. For another person, water may remind them of a frightening experience.
The meaning of a dream can depend on the person's experiences, memories, emotions, and circumstances.
This made me more interested in using dream interpretation as a way to explore possibilities rather than treating every interpretation as a fact.
Instead of asking, "What does this symbol always mean?" I found it more useful to ask, "What does this symbol mean to me?"
That small change made paying attention to dreams much more personal.
However, my dream interpreter wheel is very objective and point you the dreamer to certain parameters like your emotions, place, and the persons in your dream.
I have had dreams where I visited an antique museum and at other times a library. During this time I was contemplating writing a book, but didn't know what to write or to begin writing it. After visiting a library in the dream state I became inspired to begin writing my first book which is still on sale on Amazon.
Some of my dreams were so unusual that I could not have imagined them while awake.
There were strange places, unexpected people, unusual conversations, and situations that made little sense.
I discovered that dreams can inspire creative ideas.
A dream can give you an idea for a story, drawing, poem, song, video, or even a business idea.
The strange thing about dreams is that the mind can combine different people, places, memories, and ideas in unexpected ways.
This is another reason I believe keeping a dream journal can be useful, even if you are not interested in dream interpretation.
Perhaps the most valuable thing I learned was that paying attention helped me notice patterns in myself.
I began noticing the things that appeared in my dreams and thinking about why they might be familiar.
Sometimes a dream reminded me of an old memory.
Sometimes it reflected something I had been thinking about.
Sometimes it simply made me curious.
The important thing was that I started asking questions.
What was I thinking about before I went to sleep?
How did I feel when I woke up?
Have I had a similar dream before?
Is there something happening in my life that reminds me of this dream?
These questions encouraged me to pay more attention to myself.
Paying attention to my dreams taught me that dreams can be worth remembering, even when they do not make sense.
I learned that I dream more than I remember, that emotions can stay with us after a dream, and that everyday experiences can sometimes appear in our dreams.
I also learned to notice repeated themes, be careful with dream interpretations, use dreams as sources of creative ideas, and accept that some dreams may never have a clear explanation.
Most importantly, I learned that paying attention to dreams can encourage us to pay more attention to ourselves.
You do not need to believe that every dream contains a secret message. You do not need to understand every symbol.
You can simply become curious.
The next time you wake up and remember a dream, take a few minutes to write it down.
Write what happened.
Write how you felt.
Write down anything that stood out to you.
Then look back at your dreams after a few weeks.
You may begin to notice things you never noticed before.
Sometimes, the most interesting thing about a dream is not what it predicts, but what it makes you think about.
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