The Power of Dreams

Nine Ways to Understand Your Dreams

By Robert Moss

Have you ever said, "It’s only a dream"? While we often dismiss dreams, or fail to make room for them in the hurry of our daily lives, dreams can be a fabulous source of guidance, healing, and "juice" for any day. Dreaming offers us nine tremendous gifts. Check the following tips on using dreams to help with the challenges of everyday life.

Robert Moss, a world-renowned dream explorer and teacher, has launched Dream Gates, a new blog on Beliefnet. He is the author of many books, including "Dreamgates" and "The Secret History of Dreaming." To learn more about Robert's work, visit his website, Way of the Dreamer.

We Solve Problems in Our Sleep

Jeff Taylor woke in the middle of the night from a dream in which he created an electronic bulletin board that was lit up with eager job-hunters logging in from all over the map. He scrawled the phrase "Monster board" on a pad in the dark, then rushed to an all-night coffee shop and roughed out the plan for what became the stunningly successful internet job agency, Monster.com.

If you want to solve a problem, or need a fresh perspective, sleep on it. Write down your intention ("I would like guidance on X") before turning in, and be ready to record something whenever you wake up. Even if you have forgotten your dreams, you may find you have your solution.

Dreams Help Us Stay Well

As she slept, Wanda Burch saw her deceased father in a dream, wearing a white medical coat. He yelled at her, "Get to a doctor immediately! You have cancer!" She acted on the warning, getting medical help early enough to survive the disease. Her survival chances were greatly enhanced as she developed the ability to harvest healing imagery from her dreams, as recounted in her book "She Who Dreams."

We have a wise physician and healer available in our dreamtime every night. Our dream doctor can predict possible symptoms long before they develop, prescribe appropriate treatments, and give us images the body can believe in to make us well or keep us well. Our dream doctor makes house calls and doesn’t charge a cent!

Dreams Hold Up a Mirror to Our Behavior

Renowned Swiss analyst Carl Jung related the experience of a patient, a wealthy businessman who was about to embark on a new venture when he dreamed that he got himself so dirty his arms were covered in black muck—up above the elbows. After consulting with Jung, the dreamer concluded that the new project was "dirty business"—which later proved to be the case—and abandoned it.

Dreams can also give us an objective picture of our current actions and attitudes and show us where they are likely to lead. When I was leading a very fast-track life, I dreamed I took a corner at insanely high speed in a beautiful racing-green Jaguar. Then everything came to a stop. A mechanic turned up and inspected my engine. He cautioned me that I ought to be much more careful. “If you smash up this vehicle, don't imagine you’ll get one as good any time soon." I took the advice!

Dreams Coach Us for the Future

John Lennon dreamed he read his own obituary and was shocked to find that he had murdered himself in front of the Dakota on Central Park, according to the book "Lennon in America." Eleven months later, he was murdered in front of the Dakota by a demented fan who identified with the Beatles star to the point where he married a Japanese woman and used Lennon's name when he signed out of work before the murder. Lennon’s dream was precognitive; it showed a future event that was played out when the wannabe John Lennon killed the real one.

Dreams can warn us of challenges (and opportunities) ahead and give us a chance to take appropriate action—including getting out of the way. I believe that my own life has been saved from fatal road accidents on three occasions because I was able to use dream previews as travel advisories.

Dreams Are a Secret Laboratory

Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, a pioneer of quantum physics, said that dreams were his "secret laboratory." He recorded thousands of dreams, and they guided not only his work in physics, but his researches in other fields such as philology and the interaction of mind and matter.

Many of our greatest scientists, inventors, and discoverers have been world-class dreamers. Their dreams help connect ideas that have been brewing in their waking minds. The list includes Isaac Newton, physicist Niels Bohr, chemist Friedrich Kekule, inventor Elias Howe (who dreamed up the first practical sewing machine needle, giving us the modern garment industry), and Albert Einstein, who woke on a spring morning with the special theory of relativity clear in his head.

Dreams Are a Creative Studio

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, says that the idea for the search engine that became a multibillion behemoth first came to him in a dream. He offered this advice to new graduates at his alma mater, the University of Michigan: “When a really great dream shows up, grab it.” Stephenie Meyer started writing the phenomenally successful “Twilight” series because of a dream that drove her to the keyboard right away. The famous architect Frank Gehry uses dreams in building design. He says he based part of his design for a cancer center on dream conversations with a woman friend who had died of breast cancer. He dreamed that his dead friend told him to make his design softer, to appeal to women patients. In the finished version he included shapes derived from the folds of fabric in a shawl.

To be creative is to bring something new into the world. Whatever our field of interest – from a dinner party menu to song lyrics to the next leap in technology – our dreams provide a creative studio where we try out new ideas and make connections that escape the everyday mind.

Dreaming Is a Key to Better Relationships

Schoolteacher Marybeth Gurske dreamed that her heart was opened, and she saw an "energy cord" running from her open heart to her dream partner, the ultimate "Mr. Right." She painted that beautiful image. When she dated men, she checked whether the energy in the encounter matched that of the dream – and moved on fast when it did not. Every night she imagined herself being drawn, inexorably, by that heart-cord toward the man of her dreams. Fourteen months later, she found him and they are now married.

Dreams can introduce us to our life partners. They can also put juice and depth into an existing relationship, or show us when it is time to cut our losses and move on. Sharing dreams in a family circle or among friends is a great way to build stronger connections, solve mutual problems – and have fabulous fun. Through dreams, we can also heal our relations with our departed, bringing a blessed sense of forgiveness, closure, and continuing or reviving love.