7 Types of Dreams and Their Meanings
We all love to dream and hear about other people’s dream experiences; when they are good ones anyway! Sometimes the best stories are the ones we live during our sleep time and many great writers and musicians have claimed to have ‘dreamed up’ some of their best work. So, let’s look into how this can occur, and how YOU can use your dreams to create amazing insights!
1. Processing Dreams
It is said that we dream every night, but simply forget most of what occurs. These incidental dreams are what I call the ‘processing’ ones, where if we do remember the imagery, much of it will relate to conversations and thoughts from the previous day. There is not much to interpret from these, as they are what the mind uses to create short-term memory. It is the most necessary type of sleep, however; as we lose our sense of reality and sanity without it. That is why sleep deprivation has been used as a type of torture over centuries.
2. Anima/Animus Dreams
With another nod to Carl Jung’s work, he described the anima as the perfect female counterpart for the male and the animus as a woman’s ideal man (based upon a heterosexual perspective, although the archetypes of masculine and feminine may apply beyond these parameters of course). The key really is about recognizing our male/female side, so that we own and embrace both the masculine and the feminine parts of ourselves.
Therefore, the preface for the anima and animus dreams are about us recognizing our desires and sexual projections both in ourselves, if we have suppressed areas of our characters and also about what we regard to be our ideal mate. The belief is that the scary dreams of being held down or seduced by a member of the opposite sex, are projections of our own ‘other side’ or even ‘dark side’ wanting to be released from our own subconscious.
Some of the experiences I’ve heard about sound more like spirit entities, and it’s easy to become confused between the two. The Anima/Animus is a projection of our own subconscious, revealing our own limitations and needs to our conscious mind.
3. Lucid Dreams
Some people experience these dreams naturally and frequently, others learn to do so. The concept of lucid dreaming refers to the awareness of being in a dream, whilst asleep. This allows the dreamer to ‘wake up’ to the fact they are dreaming and have a vivid alternative experience of their own choice and guidance. In a sense, you can go anywhere and do anything if you are able to have lucid dreams, although I’ve rarely heard of anybody creating their dream from start to finish. Have you? I’d love to hear more experiences of this. It is said that if you go to sleep with the intent that you wish to lucid dream, that after a certain amount of repetition this will start to happen for you too! Try it!
Although I always warn people that to do this every day will obstruct the processing dreams, which are integral to our mental health. So, it’s best not to do this every night, once you develop your ability.
4. Nightmares
I believe and I also perceive, that most of us, by adulthood have a certain amount of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is not to nullify the severity of this in those who have been in incredibly shocking, and horrific circumstances, it is a recognition that a low level of PTSD does contribute to depression and overall health and acknowledging this can help us to deal with it. Nightmares are actually sent to us to help us to recognize trauma and intense psychological fears that are lodged within our energy bodies. Nightmares are there to bring awareness to us, so as to help us to heal deep issues.
Now it may be observed that children experience nightmares, and have had little trauma, but note that being born and being squeezed out into a cold and scary world requires psychological recovery. Some children may even remember past life pains and horrors and carry the grief from these in their energy subconsciously.
Often nightmares come to reveal our deepest fears and anxieties to us and the best way to deal with these is to try to sit with the fear and allow the energy of it to engulf you. Allow the stress to be revealed and transmuted.
Please note – this advice is not for those experiencing flashbacks, or severe trauma based upon real-life events. This advice is for low level, fear, and phobias only.
5. Travelling Dreams
Have you heard of astral travel? The concept that our energy/astral body (akin to the aura and the soul) may travel independently of the body and weightlessly fly to different places and even timezones. There are some who astrally travel whilst awake, and others who have done so due to severe illness or shock, but it is said that ALL of us can astrally travel when we are asleep.
Imagine. That dream where you met up with your grandmother who has passed or visited your partner when they were 100 miles away, maybe you actually did?
Sometimes astral travel dreams are so vivid that it is difficult to believe that they didn’t actually occur, well I would say that they probably did. Have you ever asked somebody that you feel you ‘visited’ if they experienced anything themselves? Sometimes they have. Padre Pia was a famous figure who could appear to people at will and even relocate his physical body. Maybe you can too? If you believe you can.
6. Creative Dreams
Our dreams are a wonderful way to download creative inspiration. Paul McCartney famously said that the song ‘yesterday’ arrived at him in a dream, I have had songs come through this means also. In fact, sometimes people with no musical ability can hear amazing pieces of work, apparently penned by their sleep-induced minds, although given no outlet with which to share these.
Some inventors and entrepreneurs have said that if they have a problem the best thing to do is, “sleep on it!” Often if we ask a question that we need an answer to, our slumber may very well reveal this to us. Try it, it’s amazing how often we are the masters of our inspiration and solutions. Einstein used this method to perfect his work, I tend to ‘ask the universe’ to solve my quandaries, but a lot of the time it is my own subconscious which provides the most effective answers.
7. Prophetic Dreams
I believe that we are all naturally psychic, that the feeling of ‘being watched’ and the sense that ‘something is wrong’ are still socially acceptable phenomena but that we have a lot more ability than that. Like anything, if you don’t use something you do lose touch with it, but before electric lights, and house security systems, all humans needed to use additional sense if they wished to stay alive.
When we are asleep, we cannot judge our intuition and psychic ability, so dream time is a very common way to receive ‘messages’ from the other side or sensory perceptions that have been ruled out by our conscious logic.
More of us than care to admit it, have had dreams which have predicted the future, or revealed information that was not clear to us whilst we were awake. One of the key ways to identify a dream which is predictive or ‘prophetic’ is the vividity of it, and the fact that the dream itself will wake you up. If you suddenly are roused from your sleep for no apparent reason and yet have a strong sense of a dream that has just occurred, then write it down! In as much detail as you can, it may very well come true, or be a message for somebody close to you.
Do you know that if you get into the habit of writing your dreams down every day, then you begin to dream more often and receive more messages? Try it. Perhaps there is somebody who wants to contact you, or maybe a clue to how to achieve your greatest desire is lingering there in your dreamscape, waiting for you to discover it?
Wishing you all; peace, love, faith, and joy. Shalom and sweet dreams~~~~~