As a society, we are undergoing a protracted dream drought, and for most human cultures, this is a very serious condition, because it means we have lost touch with the three great gifts of dreaming: (1) our ability to see into the future; (2) our ability to call on dreams for diagnosis and healing and above all (3) our ability, through dreaming, to maintain a personal connection with spirit, with the God we can talk to.

It’s through dreams, say the Navajo, that humans keep in touch with the spirit realm. If you have lost your dreams, say the Iroquois, you’ve lost part of your soul. “It is an age-old fact,” declared the great psychologist C.G.Jung in his last major essay, “that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

There are three main reasons for the dream drought in many modern lives:

1. Bad habits.

The rhythms and routines of a typical urban life simply don’t support dream recall. Too often, we are jolted awake by alarm clocks – or bed mates, or kids who need to get to school – and stumble out into the world, fueled with caffeine, to try to get through our rounds of deadlines and obligations.
2. Fear and regret. 

We run away from our dreams because we think they might be telling us something we don’t want to hear – about the dark side of ourselves, or trouble or illness ahead – missing advisories that could help us do better,
Alternatively, we dream of something wonderful .But when we wake up we tell ourselves we can’t manifest what we enjoyed in our dreams. So we kiss off the dreams, forgetting that if we dream it we may be able to do it.

3. Artificial sleep cycles. 

Very often our concept of a good night’s sleep is at odds with our dreams. We are told we need to spend seven or eight hours each night in uninterrupted sleep. This idea would have amazed our ancestors. Before the advent of artificial lighting most humans experienced “segmented sleep” divided into at least two distinct cycles “Consolidated sleep”, as we experience it today, isn’t natural and does not support dreaming.

How do you break a dream drought?

Set yourself a juicy intention for the night and whenever you wake up, write something down. You don’t remember a dream? Record something anyway, like your first thoughts or feelings on waking. That way you are saying to your dream source: I’m here, I’m ready to play. Be kind to fragments. That wisp of a dream – maybe just a color or a funny word – can be a clue that can lead you to interesting things. And remember you don’t have to go to sleep in order to dream. When you pay more attention to synchronicity in waking life, you may find your night dreams open up too.