If you are looking for insight into what is going on in your life perhaps you should consider looking to your dreams for some answers….
I recently read a book titled Second Sight by Judith Orloff. In her book she has devoted an entire chapter to understanding your dreams and how intuitive messages come through our dreams. Judith believes strongly in the messages that she gets from her dreams. To her, dreams are the compass by which she navigates her life. To her, each dream carries a personal message that is extremely important for you to not only hear, but to understand. She encourages everyone to learn more about what they dream and what these dreams are trying to tell you, what messages they are trying to share with you.
She lists the following format that dreams come through in:
- Psychological Dreams
- Guidance Dreams
- Precognitive Dreams
- Healing Dreams
In her experience the majority of dreams that we have are psychological, and only a few are intuitive.
The aim of psychological dreams is to identify and sort through unclear emotions. While, intuitive dreams tend to be quite impersonal, and have a crispness and clarity to them. At times they can offer guidance or solutions to issues that you are currently dealing with. You often feel like a witness, in some way detached from the events in your dream. Other intuitive dreams offer some type of physical healing.
Learning to differentiate between the various types of dreams is a journey and in reality they tend to overlap end be interwoven. Judith states that “What remains universally true is that the integrity of what dreams have to communicate is flawless. We can trust them”.
Psychological Dreams
There seems to be a common thread across people when it comes to psychological dreams. Many of us experience similar inner struggles and needs and therefore the format of dreams can be very similar if not identical. Have you ever dreamed about either giving birth or watching someone giving birth? A birth dream is all about growth and achievements.
Dreams that reflect your inner strength, will have themes of you winning against the odds, rebuilding things when they have been wiped away, beating your opponent. These dreams encourage you to keep going and to believe in yourself.
When your fears, anxieties and insecurities come through in your dreams you will dream things like going to take a huge exam and not being able to read your test paper. Or perhaps you are being chased and no matter how fast you run, you just don’t seem to be able to get away.
“The beauty of psychological dreams is that they help you recognise certain personality traits, some more productive than others, so you can take action and not become seduced by those that no longer serve you. Such dreams provide the ideal arena to uncover your hidden emotions. Fear, rage, and trauma can build up like toxins, often taking precedence over intuition. Until you get the message and take compassionate stock of yourself, they will endlessly play out in your dreams”. says Judith.
Your psychological dreams give your insight into those areas of your life where you need to pay attention, and the more you work through the issues that these dreams reveal, the more space you will make for intuitive messages to come through.
Guidance Dreams
In our dreams, we are able to access parts of our brain that are often blocked when we are awake. So, while you may be struggling to find answers to a problem while you are awake, if you look to your dreams, you just may find the solution that you need. We are often too emotionally involved in situations in our lives, and so it is difficult for us to access the guidance that we need. If you write down a specific question or request on a piece of paper and put it next to your bed as you go off to sleep, you are formally asking your dreams to provide you with guidance. When you wake up, write down your dreams and look through them for the answers you are needing. If you don’t get the answer straight away, continue asking the question each night until you get the answer that you need.
The best way to analyse your dreams is to look for things that stand out, things that grab your attention. It might be a single word, or a part of a dream, or an entire section of a dream. As you write down this piece of the dream that you feel is related to your question, take notice of your bodies reactions to this. Do you get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, or does your heartbeat get a little faster? This is how your body is telling you that you are on the right track.
It is up to you to listen.
Precognitive Dreams
When you receive guidance about the future in a dream it will usually be very vivid. You will watch the event unfold and it may be totally unrelated to you or it could give you information about your own future. The information you receive may include times, dates, places or directions that your life is going to take. According to Judith, “Precognitive dreams can set you on a particular path, serve as a beacon of light on a darkened highway. But glimpsing the future doesn’t mean that you don’t play an active part in it. Or that you can just sit back and think, oh well, it’s going to happen anyway.” Your dreams are there to provide you with general guidelines. They present possibilities of what could happen.
At times these dreams are there to warn you about some danger to you and when you heed them, you will be more prepared and will have more protection available to you. By sensing the dangers, you will be more ready to avoid them.
The more in tune and intuitive you become the more connected you will become to the collective. So at times information will just come through to you, and there may be nothing you can or need to do about what you are shown. These are like news flashes that come through, and there is no responsibility attached to them, or a requirement for you to do something to change or prevent these events. It may actually not be in your power to do anything with the knowledge you are given.
When you care about people, you will be more likely to have precognitive dreams about them. This is both an honour and a responsibility.
Healing Dreams
In these dreams we are given information about what the best course of action would be to help you or someone you know to heal. We all have a healing instincts, and our dreams can be the way that these instincts come through to us.
Dream Journals
“The real art of dreaming is in remembering our dreams.” Judith says. The act of recording your dreams means that they cannot slip away from you. A dream journal is like a doorway into insight and guidance for your life. When looking back and reading through dreams that you have recorded in the past, you will be able to recall exactly what you were going through at that time in your life.
As you wake each morning, spend a few minutes recording your dreams before you get busy with your day. Otherwise your dreams will slip away and you will miss the important information and guidance they have to share with you.
The more you document your dreams the more you will begin to understand what types of dreams they are and will be able to see which ones brought through intuitive or precognitive information for you. It may take days, weeks or even months to confirm some of the information that comes through in a dream and so having a journal is an excellent way for you to be able learn to trust the guidance that comes through.
If you have trouble remembering your dreams you may want to try these suggestions:
- Make sure that you take some time each night before going to sleep to wind down from your day and to disconnect from all electronic devices.
- Ensure they you have a comfortable and safe sleeping environment, one in which you won’t easily be disturbed or abruptly awakened during your dreaming state.
- Have a dream journal ready at the side of your bed to record what comes through. (And even if nothing comes through initially, the dream journal is symbolic of your commitment to start remembering your dreams).
- If you have a specific question, write this down on a piece of paper (or in your journal) and place this next to your bed.
- As you wake up, take a few moments to recall your dreams and write down anything that comes through. Don’t dismiss anything. Everything that comes through is relevant.
- Continue with this process every night and don’t give up. For some people it may take weeks or even months for information to come through, however, as soon as you begin acknowledging what does come through, more will begin to surface for you.
- Use the information that comes through to shed light on those things that you are needing guidance with.
If dreams are able to give us insight and guidance into our lives, and if they do bring through clarity and direction, why would we not invest the time and energy in learning the language that they speak to us in?
Happy dreaming :-).