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27 KINDS OF DREAMS
Michaels’ new book, A Dream Guide, shares dreamers' stories about dreams that you can experience, and how to recognize and use them. Here is a quick summary.
BODY OR HEALTH. A health report or heads up about a physical problem. Can include suggestions for recovery or health improvements.COUNSELING. Therapists often get insight into clients from their dreams. A counseling dream can summarize a problem, point out its cause , and give insights towards healing.CREATIVITY in dreams tap into and expand creative potentials. A scene of a hobby or a teacher explaining how to do a task can be a creative dream. DEATH. Death is generally a metaphor about change or loss, but sometimes, it can be a warning [See Nightmares—The Dark Side of Dreams and Dreaming for examples of actual warnings and how to recognize them]. Dreams that forecast a natural death can include transition images like crossing a bridge, going on a journey, or a funeral. Dreams about accidents or disasters tend to a metaphor for unpleasant endings or change.DECISIONS. Stories about real versus fake can ask you to take another look at your goals and standards about a decision. Selecting one from a group of similar items can be a heads up to examine your options, new or old.ENERGIZING DREAMS. Sometimes a dream helps remove an emotional block; the result is that you wake up feeling energized. If you go to sleep tired and depressed but wake up feeling revived and inspired, you may have had an energizing dream.ESP DREAMS give you a glimpse into the future and American Seer of Virginia Beach, Edgar Cayce, suggests that you pre-dream everything important that happens to you. Keeping a dream journal helps to pin-point such glimpses of the future. GROUP & IDENTICAL DREAMS. By coincidence or telepathy, individuals can experience an identical dream. Or—a group can get together and decide to “collectively” have a dream about a particular person or topic. Dreams generated by “group dreaming” can be amazing, and a fun activity for friends to try. HEALING. Thanks to a healing dream, you can go to sleep sick and wake up healed—in whole or part. Such dreams are likely an experience of the soul remembered as a dream because dreams are the only vehicle of memory as you sleep. You can ask for a healing dream. A dream about healing once said, “Ask and you shall receive.” Requesting a healing dream may be a link to the Almighty as a little-used resource which is available, for the asking.INTEGRATION. Integration dreams bring wholeness and balance as a dream type connected to God and the soul. They arrive unexpectedly, often during a time or challenge or of seeking spiritual growth. Common images are a wise old man, radiating light, and mountain tops. An integration dreams makes you feel whole, alive, confident, and stronger than ever. It may have to be experienced to be fully understood.LUCID DREAMS. A lucid dream is about level of awareness. When dream and suddenly become aware that you are dreaming—you are having a “lucid” dream. As you become aware that you are dreaming, stay calm, look for a source of light and move toward it. If you reach the light without waking up, a transformation may happen that ancient Tibetans called “The Dawning of the Clear Light.” MALE-FEMALE (M-F) BALANCE DREAMS. To stay whole and balanced, every man needs soft traits like empathy and understanding; every woman needs strong traits like initiative and decisiveness. M-F dreams keep this balance and tend to feature a central, opposite-sex figure that you admire whose words and actions are a clue about traits you need to deal with.
NIGHTMARES & FRIGHTENING DREAMS. Most scary dreams are about fear or anxiety. Others mirror a negative trait or limitation that you would rather not see in self. And on rare occasions, a frightening dream can be an actual warning. Warning dreams tend to be intense and show true-to-life details like actual people or places. [See Nightmares—The Dark Side of Dreams and Dreaming for examples of actual warnings and how to recognize them.] OTHER-PERSON DREAMS put you in touch with how another feels about self or how they experience life. They increase your understanding and ability to help them if you can. PRACTICE DREAMS. As you sleep, you may practice skills or traits and remember the practice session as a dream. Look for repetitive scenes that can be a metaphor about a talent or a trait that you are practicing. PROMISE DREAMS emerge when you are weighing whether to continue an activity or a goal. They let you glimpse how something in progress will turn out—if you persevere. REBALANCING EMOTIONS. An important function of dreaming is to keep emotions in balance. A rebalancing dream is like a meter reading of your general emotional state or of a specific emotion. Sometimes a dream creates a reaction in the dreamer which leads to the rebalancing.RECURRING DREAMS flag important issues that need to be dealt with. They may be linked to fears or trauma and repeat because the message was ignored or missed. Recurring dreams pack an emotional punch to get your attention. Noting what happened around the time a recurring dream began can help bring the message to light. REINCARNATION & PAST LIVES. For those who believe in past lives, a concept embraced by two thirds of the world’s population, reincarnation dreams reveal scenes of past cultures, places, and experiences. Past life dreams explain a relationship, a talent, or a limitation. Look for reincarnation dreams during periods of change or when new people or experiences enter your life.REVIEW DREAMS offer a perspective on recent or long-ago events past events—that continue to affect you. They help sort out feelings and priorities and process thoughts, feelings related to the past which may be leftovers that block your growth. Once you have a new perspective on the issue, you can move on.SEX DREAMS. Sexual scenes can bring out your best passion or can be a metaphor about enthusiasm or “getting close” to a person or situation. SIGNAL DREAMS give you a heads up about something new that is on the horizon, whether soon or in the future. Because they signal something, you may feel a sense of shock or surprise at the announcement.
STRONG OR VULNERABLE. Like an automatic meter, dreams register emotional changes and mirror whether you feel strong or vulnerable. Dreams of empowerment show scenes of heroic strength while dreams of being vulnerable show fear, being passive, depression, or inappropriate aggression.TRAVEL OF THE SOUL (Astral Travel)—REMEMBERED AS A DREAM. The soul can travel and visit other spiritual realms—an experience called “astral travel” – which may remember as a dream. You may wake up with vague recollections of distant places or communications with others. Soul travel during sleep may be rare but shared stories suggest that they happen to many.VISITS FROM THE DEAD. Dreams about those who have who have died are common. Some dreams may be symbolic, but many are actual visits, remembered as a dream, because a dream is the only form of memory during asleep. Many believe that the soul lives on and that a deceased soul can visit, on occasion.WORLD EVENT DREAMS such as dreams about the coronavirus) give you an ESP glimpse into a world event that is about to happen. Such dreams hint that we are all connected at some unconscious, collective level. You may experience the event as an observer or may see an event unfold from the perspective of someone who is actually there. World Event Dreams have much to teach us about our mind-soul connections to everyone—and to all that happens in the world.