Health, Dreams, and Symbols

I have recently provided several examples of health dreams. I believe these dreams were quite clear in terms of the message because there was limited symbolism. Sometimes my dreams are even simpler and more obvious. After retirement, I was having a problem with my lower right hip, probably resulting frIom an activity in my preteen and early teen years. One night, I had a dream about a man serving the role of an adviser. He referred to my hip and said, “The problem is deep. You should see an osteopath.” I did see an osteopath, who I still go to once a month for a spinal adjustment that keeps me tuned for about a month. In fact, I went yesterday and found some new office personnel. The new employee who took my blood pressure and checked my health history asked me for a list of the medications I was taking. I told her I wasn’t taking any, and she said, “That is unbelievable. It’s rare to find someone who isn’t on medication.” I have gotten the same question and reaction from several other medical assistants over the years as well. My blood pressure is still excellent and overall health very good. I did not miss a day of work due to illness the last 25+ years of my career.

My dreams certainly contributed to my good health all these years. As I mentioned before and describe in my book, this wasn’t always the case. However, a good diet, regular exercise, and giving up smoking in my twenties all helped. But this isn’t the total story. We are all complete systems with an amazing ability to compensate and adjust to our surroundings, and for this to occur properly we must have the right thoughts. The mind has an enormous effect on our health. I recall a conversation with one of my colleagues many years ago. He had just learned that he needed a triple heart bypass. I was surprised because he was slender, ate a good diet, and exercised regularly. The doctor told him that there are three main causes for heart disease: improper diet, lack of exercise, and stress. He did well on the first two, but not on the third one. Stress, the third one, is the one that did him in. He was in a very stressful position for an extended period and it had affected his health.

Dreams do not just deal with the physical issues that begin to limit and affect the quality of life. They deal with the causes, which often involve the person’s state of mind. A person’s beliefs can be at the core of the problem; for healing to occur, the beliefs must change. Physicians often just treat the symptoms, and if a patient gets a remission of the symptoms, he or she is considered healed or at least not needing further treatment. If the symptoms return later, then often the answer is more drugs. The number of drugs consumed in this country, legal and illegal, is staggering. We have become a society of instantaneous gratification and solution for everything from the foods we eat to the medicine we take. The problem is not entirely with the doctors. Many people want a pill to fix the problem; they don’t want to put forth the effort that is really needed to heal. They don’t want to change, and a doctor doesn’t have the time to try to persuade them to change their lifestyle, if they ignore his suggestions.

Dreams are about change, just like in the case of the man I met who had a health reading from Edgar Cayce. The restoration of his health required that he make changes to his life and the results took time. The doctor’s solution was for him to take a prescribed medicine, but it didn’t work in his case. He was having frequent blackouts and wasting away. The Cayce regimen took about six months to restore his health, but it dealt with the fundamental causes. Cayce sometimes compared a person’s dream guidance to what he did during his readings. He said we could do what he did through our dreams, if we are willing to pay the price.

I realize that most people will not want to work with their dreams in a serious way. My hope is that a few will see them as a better way as I did and make the effort to incorporate them into daily life and experience the amazing benefits in their lives. If you don’t think you have time to study your dreams, think about how much time you have expended to deal with a difficult situation you might not have been in, if you had seen and heeded the warnings in your dreams. Sometimes we spend the rest of our lives trying to correct for a mistake in judgment. And if you don’t think you can face the self that is revealed in your dreams, be aware that the real self, both the good and bad, is most likely seen by family and friends, even if you do not want to face it. Ignoring it or hiding from it does not make it go away.

My next entry in a few days will start to examine common symbols in health dreams. You can often get a snapshot of the state of your health from a common symbol and its depiction in the dream.