Follow Your Dreams

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.

–Edgar Cayce

Did you ever dream about insignificant things that actually happened later? 

I once dreamed that a plastic planter hanging from a tree outside my window broke and the plant inside it splattered on the ground. The next morning, the planter fell. 

Sometimes, I wake up from a nap because I’m dreaming that I need to take clothes out of the dryer. Invariably, two seconds later, the buzzer goes off. 

How in the world did I tune into the weakening of the plastic? How did I know the buzzer was about to go off?

Such manini (small) events thrill me, because they remind me that something inside each of us (call it spiritual awareness or God or subconscious or what you will) knows what physical brains have no way of knowing. I wonder if smaller dreams get me ready for bigger dreams coming my way one day.

Dream experts say it’s a worthwhile endeavor to work on remembering your dreams so you can decipher those messages from your subconscious, start to understand them, and use that knowledge to improve your life. In the words of one of my favorite metaphysical gurus, Seth, “You are sometimes far wiser when you are dreaming than when you are awake.” Thinking about the limited mindset I operate out of at times while awake, I am grateful for my dreaming self’s wisdom.

So how do you train yourself to remember your dreams? What works for me is keeping a pen and paper or a recording device (a cell phone app will do) beside my bed, and writing down or recording what I remember when I first wake up. Regularly recording my dreams helps me capture them more frequently and in greater detail. Rereading them helps me figure out what my symbols mean to me and understand myself better. 

My other favorite spiritual teacher, Edgar Cayce, advises not to waste time consulting books about dream symbols. He said, “Only you can figure out what your symbols mean to you.”

For me, years of writing my dreams down have revealed some personal symbols. I know that my purse and car are symbols for my identity, and dreams of misplacing these can make me feel anxious and lost. If another person is driving me around, I’m letting someone else control my life. Knowing what my symbols mean helps me pinpoint what my dreamer is telling my waking self.

Dreams are illustrations…
from the book your soul is writing about you.

–Marsha Norman

I’m working on getting back in the habit of recording my dreams. Like I did in the 80s, when I dispatched fire trucks on a military base in Hawai’i. 

Back then, I regularly and diligently wrote down my dreams in a dream notebook or on the closest scrap of paper handy. My habit of forcing myself awake enough to scribble my dreams down allowed me to capture them before they vanished like mist in the light of my waking consciousness. I would pose a question to my inner self before I fell asleep, and sometimes receive the answer in my dreams. 

During those days, I loved a coworker, a strapping young firefighter named Vic, and feared his criminal pal Jaku. My heart shattered when Jaku murdered Vic after a heated argument. Jaku claimed self-defense, said Vic came at him with a gun.

I had no doubt Jaku was lying. The real mystery was what the two men argued about. I prayed for a dream to tell me. What had enraged Jaku so much that he rapid-fired four bullets into Vic, and two more into the concrete floor of Jaku’s garage, missing Vic’s body as he fell, dying?

Did I receive an answer to my prayer? Yes, seven months before I prayed; I’d written the dream down and forgotten about it. Only after I conquered my fear of Jaku and told the homicide detectives my whole truth did I rediscover my dream. 

Remember the line from Elton John’s song “Goodbye Norma Jean” (later renamed “Candle in the Wind”) about Marilyn Monroe? Where Elton sang that Norma Jean never knew “who to cling to when the rain set in”? Paying attention to my dreams helped me cling to my inner wisdom when tragedy struck.

Man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

–Napoleon Hill

What do we want to know? All of us can ask for a dream that gives us the answers we seek. Even if we don’t get an answer the first day, or the second, or the fiftieth, we can keep asking.

In the movie Field of Dreams, a voice told Ray (played by Kevin Costner) that he should build a baseball field on his bankrupt farmland. The voice said, “Build it and he will come.” After Ray built it, the man (Ray’s father) did come. If we build our dream practices, understanding will come.

Edgar Cayce said interacting with dream states connects us to far greater dimensions than just the physical. Seth said, “Request the answer to any problem and it will be given, but you must trust yourself and learn to interpret your own dreams. There is no other way to do this except by beginning yourself and working with your own dreams, for this will awaken your intuitive abilities and give you the knowledge that you need.”

I find following myself into my dreams fruitful and fascinating. How about you?

Happy dreaming and remembering. ☺

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