In my marriage, I am the person who listens to gut feelings, and occasionally makes decisions based on a good feeling or a bad feeling. Professionally, nursing is an art based on scientific principles, and this means that my training has allowed attention and validity to both science and everything this brings to us, AND intuition. Intuition has allowed me to move the code cart to a particular patient just before a code. It has allowed me to move a particular patient to the ICU bed nearest the nurses station. It has also allowed me to teach college using some new strategies. I believe that both science and intuition are to be balanced in an adult person and that both benefit us, equally. My husband, is a person for whom numbers, and measurements are friendly. In engineering, numbers help to predict the reliability of items and of the systems he creates. There is little room for intuition in his world, and therefore, he tends to stick with the tried and true conclusions which the numbers themselves have predicted. It is therefore no wonder that he and I perceive dreams very differently. He perceives dreams as the simply ramblings of an exhausted brain. They have no more meaning or significance to him than the order in which ribbons of paper pages emerge from a paper shredder. As you might guess, I feel differently. I believe that although sometimes dreams are the simple rehashing of the days annoyances, that they often hold much more significance. In dreams, we often state in an exaggerated manner, the days frustrations or problems. Sometimes, during dreams we actually solve problems. Occasionally, we allow ourselves to anticipate the results of problems, and in this way, dreams may actually foretell the future. I also believe that when we are in deep REM sleep that we may be open to the ideas, thoughts and encouragements of those who love us and who have passed. However, I think that last part belongs on my other blog, and so I will conclude.
In this post I want to encourage you to listen to your dreams. Remember that a truly wise person uses ALL the information given or suggested to them. If you generally forget your dreams, then place a small pad next to your bed with a pencil. On awakening, write down what you DO remember. With practice, you will begin to recall more and more from your sleeping state. Even if you do not yet buy the aspect of this, in which I believe that others may pass information to you, being open to the ideas expressed in dreams helps you to plan your life and your choices, even if these ideas only come from your own subconscious state. I have friends who dreamt that they were at home and that their home was flooding very very quickly. They both laughed this off, until they both found themselves in a car together recently, where a flash flood threatened to rinse the car off the bridge and into a fast moving stream to the river. The mental work they did in the dream helped them to recognize what to do to save themselves, more quickly than if the dream had not occurred. I know people who mentioned fearing an earthquake because of dreams they had prior to the 5.8 earthquake on the East Coast of the US last August. I am not saying that we should live our lives waiting for our dream world to dictate our choices. I AM saying that dreams are known to be a direct line to our subconscious minds, and that we may notice things in waking hours, that we might not tell ourselves until we are safe asleep. Why should we ignore information which seems to be coming to us anyway ? It is my belief that each human being has a certain amount of ability to recognize what is coming. You can call it "pattern recognition" and be scientific about it. You can call it a psychic sense. I don't care which. Just "open all the mail you get" even the messages you receive while sleeping.
Also, should you be troubled by disturbing dreams, there is a place to go on the internet to help to explain them, or to help yourself to interpret them a little more fully. (Although be careful, a mountain lion in my dream likely means something entirely different to me, than it does to you in your dream, for example)
Visit: The Experience Project
http://www.experienceproject.com/dreams/protection/A-Mountain-Lion-Protects-Me-In-All-Of-My-Bad-Dreams/102665
