Types of Dreams

Daydreams
There have been studies done that show that we all tend to daydream on an average 70-120 minutes a day. While
we are doing this, we are at a level of consciousness between the sleeping state and waking state. (Most often
we are emitting alpha waves while we do this.) Daydreams are typically nothing more than when we allow our
imagination to run while we are awake. Our external awareness decreases slightly and we lose ourselves in
ights of fancy. This area of dreaming is the one most often neglected in dream studies because many think of
them as nothing more than wandering thoughts. That said, it can be highly valuable to interpret your daydreams
in the same way you do your night-time dreams as well. They can be very revealing about your true feelings.
Daydreaming takes place in the right brain, where your creative and intuitive functions are active. You may
concoct fantastic scenarios that allow you to escape or fantasize your way through a boring time of day or you
may vent your frustrations by imagining vengeful acts on someone who has in some way angered you. Another
form of daydreaming is worrying, if you allow it to go to the depth of imagining a negative outcome in detail. It
is important to guard your thoughts while daydreaming as it is certainly a passive form of manifestation. If you
nd yourself worrying about things, imagine positive outcomes.
It has long been know that many famous people, artist, actors, athletes and the like have used daydreaming as
a positive means of increasing their success. There have been studies done that prove that people who even
workout in their imagination or practice their game will show a signicant improvement in the real world.
Lucid Dreams
Lucid dreams occurs when you realize you are dreaming. Some people have developed the skill to remain in
the lucid state of dreaming. They take on an active role in their own dreams, deciding and inuencing what
they dream about or how things progress in their dreams. Many people will have a spontaneous lucid dream
where they are doing something fantastic (for many it is ying) and realize it isnt possible in the waking world.
Following are some steps you can take to develop the ability to lucid dream.
Steps to Improving Lucid Dreaming
1. Throughout the day, ask yourself the question, Am I dreaming? You can do something like look at the page
of a book, then look at it again or look at a clock to read the time then look back again. Basically anything that
delivers a precise answer, but you check it twice while you are asking the question. Am I dreaming?
During your waking hours if you ask yourself this question and look, you will see the same result twice in a
row. The clock will say, 11:15 am, then 11:15 am. If you are dreaming however, it will often say 11:15 am the
rst time then change when you look back! This will be your clue. If you ask yourself this question often, it will
inevitably occur while you are dreaming then when it does, it is likely you will realize you are dreaming and
become lucid!
2. If you see a common scenario or object in your dreams you can use that as a code to signal to yourself that
you are dreaming. This is obviously easier to do if you know you have something you dream of commonly.
(You are writing your dreams down each day now arent you???) Once youve chosen an object or scenario to
be your code, you simply say to yourself, when I see this______, Ill know Im dreaming.

3. Use the obviously impossible things to signal yourself. You cant walk through walls or y while youre
awake. You cant speak to loved ones who have passed on. These things can be used to notify you that you are
dreaming.
4. Its very important to employ these techniques without being forceful. If you try to force yourself to be lucid,
it will work against you. Just relax and allow them to happen when your subconscious mind is ready.
If you develop the ability to lucid dream, you will have mastered a very powerful tool for personal development,
because you will be able to script your dreams and explore things that are not safe or possible in the waking
world.
Nightmares
Some nightmares are the result of eating too late or watching a scary movie, but when we have recurring
nightmares in particular, it is important to pay attention to what it is that is causing us so much anxiety. Many
times nightmares occur to point out a fear or a stressful situation that we need to deal with. When viewed as
such, they can be very powerful in helping us to clear out the emotional garbage and to take more control in our
lives to change the things that we know deep down we should. Dont be alarmed by nightmares thinking they
are prophetic in nature, as they are most often simple symbolic dreams that point to a particular issue. To rid
yourself of nightmares, avoid eating late at night, watch what you put into your brain and if you have a recurring
nightmare, rehearse it during the day but change the ending to be a positive one.
Recurring Dreams
While we have mentioned recurring nightmares, not all dreams that repeat are nightmarish in content. If you are
having any sort of recurring dream it means that you are being messaged to pay attention to a particular issue
or course of action in your life. Like any form of synchronicity, repetition is a huge clue for you. Here are the
things you need to consider when dealing with a recurring dream:
1. First you must realize that a recurring dream is calling on you to make a change in your life. This means that
to benet from it, youll have to be willing to make the changes as the course becomes clear to you.
2. Even if the issue is difcult or painful, you must be open, ready and willing to take it on.
3. Be aware and understand that the subject matter of the dream, while it may be uncomfortable or disturbing is
most often symbolic, so dont take it literally, but rather dig into the metaphorical meanings of it.
4. Metaphors often have multiple layers, so dont be discouraged if you still have it after you thought you
resolved the issue. It may have more meaning for you. As you work on the situation, you will likely see the
dream begin to change.
Healing Dreams
Healing dreams are when you have an indication that you may have a health problem. I had one such dream
where a guy walked up and told me I needed to see a Dr. because I had cancer. This was a very early warning of
the cancer I did in fact have, months before I showed any physical symptoms!

Prophetic Dreams
There are two types of prophetic dreams Ill discuss. The rst is deja vu. Most often we remember a deja
vu not after the dream itself but while we are experiencing the physical manifestation of it some time later.
You may have had a situation where you were in a particular time and place and someone said something
and you thought to yourself, Wait, Ive dreampt this before! It is my belief that there is a part of our minds
or awareness that resides outside of the time continuum. We access snippets of our lives before they actually
happen (for me a huge proof that we do in fact have a destiny.) and then recall them when we are actually
physically going through that moment. As you begin making it a habit to record your dream, you may actually
get the chance to record a dream that become a deja vu later on. This solidies the reality of these events even
more.
The second type of prophetic dream is when we see into the future, and it may be our own future, the future of
someone else we know or a global event. The biggest key to recognizing these dreams is that most often we see
these from a higher vantage point (as if up in the sky) or from a objective perspective. If you have a dream of
looking down on an event, or you see yourself physically like youre outside of your body, you should denitely
write this down and see if it does in fact manifest into reality.
Epic Dreams
Epic dreams are some of the most vivid and intense we can have. They often involve fantastic creatures like
mythological beings, power animals, archetypes or quests that leave a very strong and lasting impression. You
may wake from this sort of dream with a sense of excitement and awe and feel as if you have had a great secret
revealed. These are another type of dream that are very important to record in as much detail as you can. Often,
these dreams hold strong clues to the nature of your destiny or help catalyze a signicant change in your inner
self.

Common Dreams And Their Meaning

Dreaming of being naked: If you have a dream of being naked it can have one of several meanings. Most
often it means that you feel vulnerable about something. You may be hiding something (clothes mean you are
concealing) and so dreaming of being naked means you feel like everyone knows what it is you are trying to
hide. Many times youll be naked in the dream but no one seems to notice but you and this means that your
anxieties are unfounded and that you are psyching yourself out about the issue that only you are aware of.
Dreaming of being naked can also mean that you are caught off guard about a situation or decision. Its like you
dont feel prepared and youre afraid everyone will nd out that you arent.
For the few people who feel extremely comfortable in the nude, dreaming of being naked can just be an
indication of your uninhibited tendency toward freedom.
Being chased: If you are being chased in a dream, it means you are running away from something. This may be
a responsibility, an aspect of yourself or an issue and the key to guring out is to see who or what it is that is
chasing you and explore the metaphor of the chaser. It may also mean that you are afraid of being attacked (far
more common in women) and can be brought on by movie or news about rape or other forms of attack that have
caused you anxiety.
Losing or missing teeth: When we dream that our teeth are falling out or missing it means that we are
embarrassed or feel as if we are lacking power in a situation. Anxieties about aging or losing our attractiveness
or about being up to a task can bring them on. Spiritually, these types of dreams can mean we are listening to
what people say and disregarding what God thinks about something. Pay attention if the dream has an overall
spiritual tone as it may be the latter.
Flying: If you dream you are ying, Ive already mentioned you may have a lucid dream. Flying itself means
that you are on top of a situation, or that you have risen above something in your life. This could be ying in a
fantastic way or even on a plane or other vehicle. If you are ying but having a hard time controlling it, it can
mean you are on top of a situation but struggling to be that way.
Falling: When we dream of falling it is another indication that we feel out of control in a situation. It means we
can no longer hold on to the ledge and are about to be victim to a circumstance. These usually occur just after
falling asleep while are bodies twitch and jerk.
Failing a test: If you dream you are being tested, then in some way you are. You may be tested by someone
around you or you may be being tested in a larger sense by God or the Universe. If you are failing it means that
you feel anxiety over not being prepared, that you dont measure up or that you feel in some way inferior. It is
an indication that you feel overly challenged by things going on in your life.
The family house: When you dream of the family house or of a house passed down to you or given to you, it is
most often a dream about yourself. We live in a body and we live in a house. This is the correlation. Each room
will have a metaphorical meaning.
Some suggestions:
Bedroom: The area of intimacy, rest, recharging, deeply personal
Bathroom: Where we release our negativity or clean ourselves
Living room: Where we live, our active role in life
Kitchen: Where we get our nourishment, our attitudes about ourselves

Methods of Interpretation
Alfred Adler - a dream theorist who believed we use our dreams to express our real intentions, drives and
motivations. He saw our dreams as a means of solving problems. The more you dream, the more problems you have! He saw dreams as a way to understand and solve our problems.
Using his methodology gives all of our dreams a somewhat negative slant, and for this reason I tend to
disagree with him if his approach is taken as an all encompassing means of interpretation, though I do
absolutely agree that dreams do at times help us to resolve issues in our lives.
Sigmund Freud - Freud felt that our dreams were symbolic representations of our desires and helped us
to understand our uninhibited urges and impulses. He took a very sexual stance on everything that I tend
to think was another myopic view of a very large subject. I do agree that we often suppress our desires
through the lters we have imposed (social expectations) and that sometimes we release our desires in
dream time where we cannot be judged for them, but I also believe we dream about much more than just
this.
Carl Jung - Originally a student of Freud, Jung separated his association with Freud primarily over
disagreement about the nature of dreams. Jung believed that dreams were more spiritual in nature and
that they were a window to the soul. He viewed most things as paired opposites (good/evil, night/day)
and thought that our ego and shadow (counter ego) were constantly working to maintain a balance. Jung
believed dreams are a way of us working through our discovery of self and that the meaning of dreams
helped us to understand on a deeper level what is going on in our outer world. He had a lot more faith in
the dreamer being able to interpret their own dreams than the other people we have mentioned. Jung did
also recognize that certain dream symbols had a universal meaning and he tied them into his theories on
archetypes and the collective unconscious.
Frederick Perls - the founder of Gestalt therapy, believed that dreams are entirely subjective and that
every person you encounter in your dreams is a reection of some aspect of yourself. He believed every
object was a part of you as well. His method of interpretation would have you re-enact the dream and
play the different roles in it, then ask questions of the different people or objects in the dream in the hope
to attain emotional unity. His driving premise was that we rejected aspects of ourselves and needed to
work through these areas.
While I nd value in each perspective, as well as the traditional approaches of many spiritual doctrines,
I tend to think everyone had a small piece of the puzzle. You will nd your own way, when it comes to
dream interpretation. I tend to lean towards a Jungian method in my own dreamwork. The critical thing
is to record them as often as possible and to work to understand them in whatever context works best for
you.
You will nd that as you develop and integrate more symbology into your thinking, by consciously focusing on it, your dreams will likely get more sophisticated in how they communicate with you. We will be
exploring archetypes in a later class and that will give you more fuel for this exploration as well.

Conrmation of Dreams
Dreaming has little signicance if you dont work to conrm them. This is why the practice of recording
them, interpreting them and acting on those interpretations is so important. Remember what I told you
early on, that our inner world is a reection of the outer world. Look at your dreams as just another
dimension of your reality and treat it with the same validity as your waking experience.
When you begin to do this, you will start seeing that the signals you get in your waking experience, the
synchronicity will often mirror what is going on in your dreams. This holistic approach is what will assist
you in fullling your role in this world.
The reason we record dreams and synchronicities is that the two working in unison will give us the
broader perspective of how accurate we are interpreting the signs.

Dreaming On Purpose
You can make your dreams an ally in bettering your life. Ive already given you some suggestions for how to lucid dream. Learning
this skill can enable you to know things you otherwise wouldnt. It is amazing how much you know on subconscious level that you
dont even realize. Additionally, Ive had a great deal of evidence that we can explore what we might think of as alternate realities
through our dreaming that have a direct impact on the outer world. You may nd yourself visiting the Akashic records, where all of the
information about souls and universal knowledge reside.
You can
going to sleep. Many of the worlds greatest people have used their subconscious mind as a solver of problems by stating their intentions about what they will dream about either verbally or by writing it down before going to bed for the evening. Edgar Cayce was
known as the Sleeping Prophet and was able to diagnose illnesses while sleeping as well as receive prophetic information.
The rst thing we must do to unlock this potential is to improve our ability to dream.
We can do this by:
1. Getting into a regular sleep routine and allowing ourselves an hour of snooze time. You do this by setting your clock to get up an
hour earlier than normal, then hitting the snooze button when it goes off. This aids greatly in remembering your dreams.
2. Dont consume heavy foods or alcohol before bed.
3. Say to yourself each night before sleeping, When I wake up I will remember my dreams. It seems almost silly its so simple, but it
works.
4. Keep a pen or pencil and a pad of paper by the bed so you can write your dreams down as your rst order of business.
5. Dont jump right up, lay in bed when you wake up and keep your eyes closed for awhile. Allow yourself to recollect your dreams,
then write them down immediately.
6. Draw pictures from your dreams. It doesnt have to be a work of art, but it can help you greatly in remembering details you cant
write down quickly enough.

Assignments This Week

1. Perform the lucid dreaming exercise at least 3 times this week.
2. Record your dreams every day, even if you dont remember them, write, I dont remember my dreams this
morning.
3. Give your subconscious at least one problem to solve this week by writing it down on a note card and place
it by your bed. Record what you dream afterwards.

Next Week:
Next week well be studying the meaning of numbers!