Dream Benefits and Avoidance Continued

By ignorance about dreams, I simply mean lack of knowledge about dreams and their possible benefit. Perhaps you don’t recall any dreams and no one has ever explained the benefits of dreams and that you can train yourself to remember them.

Disbelief is involved when you think you can remember your dreams, may see some limited benefit, but don’t believe the benefits are worth the effort. You do not think that dreams can provide answers to pressing personal problems.

I believe fear is one of the key reasons people largely ignore their dreams. Most of us are doing some things in our lives that we know are not beneficial, and we are avoiding doing some things we know we should do. These are the famous sins of commission and omission. The thoughts about our shortcomings help form our self-image, and if our self-image is already weak, we may be terrified by what we will find in our dreams. The response is often, “I’d rather not know.” Now, you can overcome this, for a time, by selectively filtering out dreams that show you or your actions in a bad light and focus on the positive dreams that show them in a good light. To progress, you must eventually face the self in the other dreams. I think it is much like taking a test. If you don’t think you have done well, you are not anxious to get the test results.

If you are unwilling to change, you will probably continue to see the same dream themes occur nightly. You may have a recurring dream. Perhaps you gotten the message on an intellectual level, but have not understood what you must do to progress. You will probably lose interest in a short time with the belief that the dreams aren’t really helping much.

Finally, we have limited time. You may really believe that dreams can do everything I listed as benefits, but consider it too time consuming to seriously pursue them. You tell yourself that you will take up dream study when you have more time, which generally means never. Serious dream study is just not a priority for you. However, I point out in my book how dream study can save a person hundreds or even thousands of hours of grief over some situation the individual would not be in had the dream messages been deciphered and acted upon. The time spent working with dreams will pay dividends many times over the effort expended.

The great 20th century psychic Edgar Cayce said many things about dreams in his readings. He said that we could all do what he did through our dreams, if we are willing to pay the price. And he said that every significant event in our lives is foreshadowed in a dream. This second claim is what launched me into my serious study and work with dreams many years ago and is the subject of my book. I have pointed out the most common of the reasons people largely ignore their dreams. If you don’t work with your dreams, you have to decide if you want to remain in one of the categories or start changing your life by tapping into this immense power available to you each night while you sleep. Your dreams are part of your life, and they are there even if you ignore them. By discounting them, you are dismissing several hours of your life each day as insignificant. Next week when I begin to discuss dreams and healing, I will show you just how significant they can be.