The Reason Why Some Dreams are More Real Than Others

We’ve all woken up from a dream thinking everything in it looked and felt real.  Other times we’ve woken up remembering fragments of a dream only to have those fragments vanish as if the images were sketched in disappearing ink.  Then there’s dreams that seem to imprint themselves on the inside of the dreamer and its impossible to forget about them, even years later.

So what would cause a dream to be so strong within our memory?  Well, I’m not convinced that this kind of dream is a strong memory as much as a knowing lodged deep within the dreamer.  Sometimes when I’m out and about asking people about their dreams, I’m told be someone that they have nightmares so scary they’re not sure if they want to know what the dream means or not.  When I ask the the person if they are prone to nightmares they often times say no.  This always stirs my curiosity and I do my best to convince them that if they share their dream with me, I can show them how what’s frightening them can help them.

Here’s an example:

I was fighting in the Civil War and I had the kind of old rifle that needed to be reloaded with gunpowder and a rod.  I was trying to shoot people and a guy wearing a brown jacket came up on a horse, pulled out a pistol and shot me in the head.  I fell over into a puddle of water and I could feel the water enter one side of my wound, flow through my head and exit the other side of my head.

The dreamer had this dream three or four years before and remembered it like he had it the night before.  I could tell by the way the dreamer was speaking that the dream bothered and perplexed him.  This was also a recurring dream and really frightened the dreamer because he was equipped with a gun but was always frustrated because he couldn’t get it loaded fast enough.  He was always shot, always fell into the puddle of water and always felt it flow through his head.  This dream was speaking of an internal struggle that the dreamer was having.  The dreamer had power but was slow to use it because it’s not the best power for the job, and because of this, would suffer the defeat of death.

I haven’t found anything more frightening than death when I’ve had nightmares, but what can be even more disturbing than death in a nightmare is death caused by an eternal fight within the dreamer.  This struggle is imprinted within the dreamer, even before the dream happens.  Having a dream about an inner ‘Civil War’ is just confirming what is happening within the dreamer.  The dreamer may be trying to ignore it or unable to recognize it, and it takes a dream like this to single out the issue and alert the dreamer that their inner struggle needs to be dealt with.

Have you had a recurring dream that bothered you and you don’t know why?  Share it on our public dream page and let’s discuss it.

Note: The next blog post will not appear until Nov. 30th because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

EB

Photo credit: Mark Theriot / Foter.com / CC BY-SA