Truly, the only dreams I understand are those from the Lord and those that are strictly spiritual.
Dreams are a peculiar language and sometimes it's only the spirit that understands. I'll try to explain that.
If you don't believe in God at all, then this writing is just going to bore you, as it won't make any sense. Personally, I know there is God, from experiences that can't possibly allow me one second of unbelief.
If you stump your toe, you know it has happened because of such symptoms as pain, the chair actually moved, the noise and possibly blood. Is it possible for someone to convince you it didn't happen? "You're imagining it. You're reaching for something to believe."
I know there is a spiritual life and a true God, in the same way. Not because somebody convinced me but because He has spoken to me both while awake and out loud and while asleep, through dreams.
The dreams are true because there is a track record of fulfilled prophecies, most of my life. Things that came true the next day or weeks later or even years later.
I've also witnessed the prophetic dreams of my own daughter. Things like what she should do the next day when the hood flew up on the car while driving 70 mph. She obeyed and survived.
One can only witness these things, just so long, before accepting it as reality and it becoming an everyday part of life.
What I have learned about these dreams, through practise, is that dreams come in many forms. Sometimes the brain is simply manipulating inputted data, sorting things out. Sometimes the brain is growing and dealing with experiences (like that of a child).
Also, through life experiences, I've learned the actuality of the spirit. We are more than meets the eye. We are both mortal body and spirit in one.
There are times when the spirit has to butt in, in an attempt to explain something important that the mortal mind cannot conceive. That's when we have what I call, 'spiritual dreams'.
Then, there are those times when the Lord is actually talking. He will teach, guide, explain and sometimes warn. These I call 'dreams of the Lord'.
You can see where I get the concept of 3 different kinds of dreams: mortal brain, spiritual and dreams from the Lord.
I'm not a psychologist and therefore no expert on the mortal brain dreams but when it comes to spiritual and the Lord's dreams, it's like a language I understand. I've been speaking that language most of my life. Ask me where I get my knowledge, is like asking me how I learned my native language. How did you learn your native language?
You can deny the Bible is not truth and that God does not exist, but without that knowledge, you can't understand your own spirit's language. If one knows the Bible and especially parable language, one can understand spiritual dreams and those from the Lord.
The reason for this is when the Lord speaks to us, He uses our own language of understanding. When we have read and studied the Bible, there is a common ground to work with.
Is there anyone who understands you better than your mother? Then how much more, when it is your creator? He is body, mind and spirit just as we are body, mind and spirit. It's the spirit that is able to commune across any lines:distance,realm,worlds. When the Lord needs to speak to us, He speaks with the common tool, which is the spirit.
There are definite signs, within the dreams, to tell you when the dream is especially from the Lord. Those signs are distinct. Most of the time, the signs are actually Jesus Himself in the dream, watching, walking with you, talking to you, demonstrating something.
Spiritual dreams are our own spirit speaking to our own mortal mind. It's the spirit that understands spiritual things which are invisible to us, as mortal beings.
Depression is a mysterious thing because it's more often times spiritual in nature. Oh yes, your spirit can get depressed. I can explain that but right now, we're on the subject of dreams.
While your mortal body operates on physical senses (smell,touch,sight), the spirit has none of these things. In order to commune with the mortal mind, the spirit uses our own memory and our own knowledge. The spirit uses our own memories and knowledge as symbols of meaning, to express something.
So when it comes to spiritual dreams, for the most part only you can understand. Others, like myself, can help but to fully understand, one would have to become you.
Dreams from the Lord are a whole other matter, as His language He uses is pretty much universal. He not only will use symbols (which we have learned from the Bible) He usually is actually there in the dream. He is the long lost lover (no sexuality involved), the good friend helping you do something, the wise man or woman giving you understanding about something (explaining something). Sometimes He is actually the symbol, like 'the rock' or a 'cleft in the side of a hill'.
Have you ever dreamt of being out in space somewhere, looking back at this world? How do you suppose you got there?
In a dream, have you ever sat in the park on a bench, talking to someone you felt very comfortable with and knew that you knew him and yet upon waking, you had no idea who this person was? Guess what. You were sitting face to face with Jesus. Literally.
While many deny their spiritual existence or the existence of God or Jesus, their own dreams have been telling them the truth. Since those dreams don't affect how the sun shines or how they physically operate in waking life, they are able to push away the dreams and deny them altogether.
The fact is, though, those dreams are trying to tell them something. These are the nagging dreams we can't get out of our head.
The span of our existence is so extremely vast and yet we refuse to make connection with that side of ourselves but we can't stop the dreams.
When we sleep, we lose control over the conscious mind. The conscious mind slows down just like a computer, it 'goes to sleep'. The subconscious mind never shuts down. It is always available to the spirit and to the Lord and without the conscious mind, there is no 'spam blocker?'.
Your conscious mind receives data and operates on it, according to what has been imprinted from past experience. In other words, whatever we see, smell, feel, hear, goes into a prepared slot, so to speak. When it comes to conscious mind understanding, it's really tough to makes changes and have them stick. If your computer did that, you'd have a fit. It would be useless to you.
Blue is blue, after all, and smelly is smelly. Just think, what stinks to you smells like dinner to a vulture. Mind set? Genetics?
Your own spirit, while having no emotions, does understand your mortal emotions and uses them against you. The spirit knows what sort of reaction comes with certain memories or life actions so it will use those memories or life actions, in dreams, to get the output of the right emotions. All this, to get your attention concerning something in particular.
An example is one of my own dreams. 3 fancy looking ladies (symbols of 3 years) come to my door asking about renting MY home. My snide reaction was to send them over the hill to another town. My emotions about it were defensive and caused me to return to a place where I had been earlier in the dream. The 3 fancy ladies, caused an action which is what my spirit wanted, in order to play out a summation, something the spirit wanted me to see.
While examining your own dreams, you have to look at your own reactions and feelings. What caused it and what did it cause you to do. You have to realize your spirit doesn't share these emotions and is using them to get real reaction.
Flying, in your dreams, is a real event. I mean, you actually flew. Remember your spirit has no boundaries. Mortal boundaries are only for mortal bodies on this mortal world. Since you are also spirit, and it can only express while the conscious mind sleeps, it will escape and be its true self.
Want some proof you are also spirit? Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone you didn't know very well, everybody else seemed to be ok with this person and yet you had just a strange sickening feeling in your stomach that you had to find some way to excuse yourself and get away? Now you explain to me which gland or organ, in your body, that causes that sickening feeling. That feeling isn't quite in the stomach, more like just under the solar plexus. What organ or gland do we have there? What nerve center? There's no explaining how or why we get those feelings except that that's where the spirit resides.
The spirit senses things we don't even connect with and causes these strange sensations.
So if the spirit is so much a part of us, doesn't it make sense it would know a way to commune with the mortal side? The actual truth is, our spirit is part of our every day life. Nobody talks about it, it's not out their for plain view (with mortal eyes), it doesn't talk with a separate voice (mortal) so our physical senses have no connection with it, so (for most) it doesn't exist. But still, there's no stopping dreams. For the sake of our own spirits, it's a good thing there is an opportunity to mingle with the subconscious mind in dreams.
So....the subject is dreams. One has to gain a sense of which dreams are which: mortal mind (computer stuff), strictly spiritual (personal) and dreams from the Lord (personal growth and sometimes universal messages).
It's a general rule that spiritual dreams, whether from the Lord or just personal spirit, are loaded with symbols. Those symbols sometimes come from memory which causes an emotion in the dream. Universal symbols are: water,hill or hills, windows,house,road,car,bridges,trees and many more but you get the idea.
A house represents yourself. You. The rooms of the house represent the varied facets of your life. For example the front door is that part of you that you're willing to share with the public. That front face. The back yard is that part of you that not everyone gets to see, the more personal side of your personality. The bathroom is actually that inner secret soul, part of you. For Christians, this is the place of prayer.
Water is spiritual food. For the Christian, it is the Holy Spirit or blessings.
The car is your life direction. You'll notice that sometimes you're driving and sometimes a stranger is driving or someone you know. This would represent something happening in your life, a direction you are going. Depending on who is leading that direction, is who will be driving.
Let's say you're a woman and your husband is driving. This is a woman who's life is being directed by the husband.
If you see yourself losing control of the car, and you're driving, this is a sense of losing control in ones life. Or the other driver losing control, is a spiritual knowledge that this person doesn't know what they are doing and is leading you the wrong way. You see, your spirit knows things that you don't. It's the spirit that can't be lied to. Thus, the reason for the dream.
Spiritual dreams that are actually dreams from the Lord, will have the Lord Himself in it. He will come in the form of Himself, dressed as He was in life, Himself appearing as a modern casual man, a judge,a lawyer, a doctor, a stranger that helps you accomplish something like maybe finding you a boat while trying to escape. I've even seen the Lord as a waiter, serving the water in glasses around the table. He will always be the servant or helper.
When it's the Holy Spirit, talking to your own spirit, He will come in the form of water: everything from a lake, a pond, a fountain, river or stream, a swimming pool or even the toilet or shower. The shower is the greatest because it represents a personal blessing.
The ocean is not the Holy Spirit. The ocean is a spiritual view of all of history, including all people throughout history. So when you're walking on the beach, you are abiding in 'today', the edge of the ocean which is the edge of time.
Critters have meaning also. A spiders web = exactly that, getting into a web of something: deceit, occultism, perversion.....
Beads are prayers, comes from the concept and memory of catholic prayer using beads (whether or not we are catholic, we know what they do).
A field is a span of time. You see your own house and across a field is another house, that's you now and you in the future.
A barn or huge warehouse is all that life offers. Hiding in a barn is kind of like drawing a picture of you hiding yourself in a particular subject (maybe a work-a-holic?).
If you ponder on your dream and realize it's not actual life events but something symbolic, then start thinking about what those symbols mean to you, the sense you get surrounding those symbols. It will help you to understand what the dream was all about.