The Importance Of Dreams

I really felt like writing last night and today. For one,It's just that time of the month.For two, words kept coming to me. I don't think anyone reads these things (except my old roomie Nicole, kudos to her hah) but I need to practice writing again, so desperately.

Anyway, the appreciation of the importance of dreams,(and I don't mean dreams of the future and posterity, but the actual mind scenes taking place during rapid eye movement when one sleeps at night) directly follows a notable theme of my summer,

which would be

sleep.

Not enough sleep, oversleeping,sleeping at the wrong times, the horrid law of gravity directly related, the need to wake up in life and a recently noted teaching on how we spend a third of our lives asleep and that's when God tries to speak to us. And that loops me right back to the dream topic.

So dreams, sometimes they are really foggy and I can't for the life of me remember their allusive contents,leaving me distracted. Other times a dream I had is vague but leaves an extensive aftertaste like a traitor's kiss--- it's just painful but I can't even ascribe a theme to the dream, leaving me bereft of something and I don't even know what. Other times the dream is so real that at some point an action in the dream corresponds to physical reality (such as a dog biting me) and actually wakes me up with force, leaving me emotionally gawking at how close to home the dream had hit.

So it's said that everyone dreams, all the time, whether they remember or not.

So why do dreams matter? Do they?

After some reading up, I think it's true that "western" thought, versus eastern or more specifically Hebrew thought, has effected the way I've tended to view my dreams.

For example, western or "Greek" thought leans to the intellectual side of, well everything. Logos is everything. In contrast, Eastern thought leans to the spiritual significance of things.

Not that I should over-spiritualize everything, but dreams are getting my attention more lately, due to the fact that dreams I've had in the past, oh, two years or so have borne VERY strong symbolic resemblance to happenings since then.

I have to say, I rarely have had dreams with strong, scary negative subject matter. So when I do have one, it stands out.I still remember certain nightmares from when I was a young child and teen.

One that will bear repetition is a dream I had a couple years ago, sort of out of nowhere. Personally I believe it was God trying to prepare me for an event.

In the dream I was at home, and stepped outside. I noted my neighbor, and his pitbull.
I thought to myself, "watch out for that dog" but that threat faded when I realized the presence of a real enemy.There was a vehicle in front of me. Standing on it was someone I knew, someone close to me. With him were two black pitbulls. He smiled in a smug way and I instantly knew he would sic those animals on me. I also knew that while he thought he controlled the dogs, they were controlling him. It was weird.

Anyway, the dogs chased me and I of course, ran. (You would have too, trust me:)
I ran to a stairway. It was midway up that one of the dogs caught up. It bit me, specifically on the side of my abdomen. I recoiled from it so strongly that I just woke up.

Around this time and soon after events occurred in my life and the life of this person that confirmed symbolism in my dream.The colors, type of animal, people and objects in the dream fit together in ironic ways once I researched their possible meanings.

Since then I've had several of these kind of dreams.

One particularly very very scary dream I cant even remember the contents, they were too blurry. But I woke up with a very strong sense of fear and panic and even painful relief. The nature of the dream was such that something irrevocable had happened. I know the Lord doesn't give people a spirit of fear yet the dream became a warning to me to be alert to my circumstances. Shortly after, I discovered some things that confirmed the fears triggered by the dream.

The point of all this is, if you have a dream that stands out, take a closer look at it maybe. The Bible talks a lot about this subject, and I'm learning how to pay attention to these kind of things that at times I've pretty much brushed off as insignificant mental stuff.

Why would God try to reach us through things like dreams we have at night? Because our spirits are more attentive when we aren't mentalizing so much. Jesus used parables a lot to convey his messages to people. There is something about symbolism that takes root.