Dreaming – How Real Are Our Dreams? - Culture and Society Article

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By:Greg Gourdian

We wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmarish dream of our demise and wonder whether we have just been warned. Or we linger in a dream that is gratifying a primal but unfulfilled desire in our life for happiness or success until we can remain within the dream no longer and we must awaken. Do our dreams have any real significance and if so how can we know?

Many people claim not to remember their dreams upon awakening, or even deny that they have any dreams at all. But dreams appear to be a fundamental function of our minds as necessary as sleeping or breathing; many people sincerely believe that their dreams have great significance or add immense value to their lives.

Whatever significance may be found in our dreams is ultimately up to us to discover. There is no way to empirically know what value our dreams may have, but subjectively we may assign them whatever value seems appropriate to ourselves. A dream which may appear to be a warning may serve to avert us from some future disaster. If such a dream fulfills its purpose it is possible we may never encounter the circumstances which we were warned about and may never then empirically know if it really had been a precognitive dream. If in fact it was a truly precognitive dream which helped to steer us clear of some disaster in our life then that dream certainly had a great deal of value. And, if we are lucky enough to arrive upon the scene of our dream and emerge from the event unscathed, in part due to our forewarning, then we are very lucky indeed because we know in our hearts the dream was given to us to help us. However, there still remains no empirical proof regarding the validity or nature of our dream experience.

So with dreams it often boils down to a matter of faith in the value of our dreams and our skill in understanding what our dreams may mean. The fact that we dream is of course very real, even if the content of our dreams may appear to be unreal. Dreams speak to us on many levels. They may have meaning in context to many different things in our lives. When we study our dreams we should look beyond our first efforts to interpret them and dig deeper to look for as many meanings as we may be able to find.

Dreams have often been thought to derive from a single source, but in fact many dreams are blatantly derived from multiple sources with many different interpretations all of which may be valid from different points of view or contexts. When we attempt to unravel the meanings of our dreams we should be as open-minded as possible to the many motivations we have for assembling our dreams in the manner in which we experience them, we will often want to consider that sources external to ourselves are also involved in the processes by which our dreams are delivered to us. We may be receiving messages from the future, from god, from a soul that has passed away or from a living person whom we may or may not even know.

Whatever the sources of our dreams may be, whether a non-conscious internal process or a divine message from an angelic being, our dreams have many potential meanings to explore and may deliver inspiration, warning, affection, perspective, and much more to us. The value we place in context to our dreams is personal, but those dreams we value highly often have a profound influence on our lives and therefore profound meaning in our lives.

Wherever we find influence and meaning we find something real and valuable to ourselves so our dreams have the potential to be very real indeed, and they may even transcend the everyday reality we are accustomed to believing in and may radically change our beliefs or change how we experience our world.

When we focus our attention on our dreams we may make them stronger and more potent templates for events that will subsequently manifest in our lives, making our dreams appear to be very real indeed. Through prayer, meditation, writing, painting, music and many other activities we may turn our dreams into something we may use to transform our lives and we may even extend that transformation of our own lives to transform the lives of other people.

Our minds are very powerful assets which we may use to deliberately change our world to make ourselves happier and healthier. Our personal beliefs and expectations play very powerful roles in how we manifest the events we will experience in our lives. Our dreams are some of our most potent tools for change in this regard because our dreams do something our conscious minds have great difficulty doing, our dreams synthesize various parts of our lives and experiences bringing them together in new and unexpected ways which may transcend our personal limitations or transcend internal or external conflicts that our conscious minds can scarcely perceive let alone reconcile or use to our advantage.

In this invaluable synthetic process our dreams may bring us new potentials for growth and may help us to heal and to become happier human beings. Through our self improvement and our shared joy and delight with the world which our dreams can help us to achieve we may be empowered to be more compassionate and loving, nurturing people toward those around us with whom we share our lives

This makes our dreams very real indeed because the influence of our dreams can manifest in our lives profoundly in so many different ways to make our world a better place to live.

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Article keywords: Dreams, dreaming, dream interpretation, transformation, enlightenment, lucid dreaming, manifestation, joy

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

BIO: Fledgling author Greg Gourdian has worked with the general public as a psychic reader for a little over four years from 1981 to 1986. Much of his written work is channeled, although he will admit that he has no idea who many of the sources for his channeled work may be. He has many strange tales to tell regarding his spiritual journey and he attempts to tell his tales in a humorous or entertaining manner. While not an accredited teacher, Greg has taught classes in psychology, sociology, metaphysics and parapsychology.

Visit Greg's blog at tangledintime.blogspot.com/