Online Class: Dream Interpretation 101

Courses Frequently Bought Together:

Meditation 101: Learn How to Meditate

Spiritual Counseling

Psychology 101

Course Motivation

The Role of Dreaming

Many people seriously downplay the important role that dreaming plays in our lives -- be it in the area of health, growth, or personal development. And regardless of whether we remember our dreams, they do play a crucial role, both consciously and subconsciously.

One might say we sleep in order to dream.

It was during the 1950s when scientists first discovered that dreaming nearly always happens within the crucial Rapid Eye Movement (REM) segment of the sleep cycle. While the average adult spends approximately two hours in the REM cycle of sleep each night, infants spend much more time, mainly because that cycle of sleep stimulates the areas of the brain connected to learning and development.

If people are deprived of REM sleep, the effects are swift and debilitating. Within a few days, a REM-deprived person will become anxious, depressed, irritable, and even nauseous. So, regardless of whether we remember our dreams, they play a crucial role in our health and well-being -- physical, emotional, and mental.

Some scientific research has shown that in the later stages of development, an unborn child exhibits signs of REM activity in the womb, supporting the suggestion that dreaming is linked with both human growth and development. Among the many benefits of REM sleep is its association with increased production of proteins, which is extremely important to mental development, and is directly connected to the actual learning of certain skills.

The Value of Dreams

Dreams enable people to see the world with new eyes, as the vistas of dream consciousness pay no heed to the usual awake rules of space and time. There is no one way to regard dreams, or to interpret them. If you are committed to exploring your dreams, you will remember them, and they will most certainly help you. But you must be committed and dedicated to seeing and recalling your dreams, before you can hope to interpret them properly.

Without commitment, all explorations, techniques and interpretations are worth little.

Though it will require an investment of your time -- and some effort -- to become properly conversant in the language of dreams, you will find it worth so much more than the investment you have made.

You will discover that your dreams are a constant source of insight for your inner growth and development, and are constantly available to you as a useful step in the healing process.

During our waking hours our conscious minds are very much in control, but when we sleep, the unconscious mind takes over and we enter the world of dreams with all its visual imagery, symbols, and the use of many different types of metaphors.

While we will cover different themes, symbols, and approaches in the various lessons of this course, to truly understand and benefit from our dreams, we need to remember and listen to them with our hearts, rather than just our heads.

The best news for us all is that our dream worlds do not exist outside of ourselves, but are deep within ourselves. Therefore, they are accessible at all times, to be tapped into and utilized for any purpose we see fit.

Our dream worlds are regarded as products of our unconscious minds -- that level of the psyche within which impulses are held in a subdued state. You need to keep in mind that in comparison to the relatively small proportion of things of which we are aware, the unconscious mind is a massive warehouse of memories, dreams, and reflections -- both personal and transpersonal.

Strangely, even though people all over the world have been interested for many years in entering and inducing the dream state, few cultures have had techniques for actually recalling dreams.

Being able to remember dreams (and therefore the messages they contain) is very important -- as dreams are the conduit through which unconscious material is delivered to us from the depths of our minds. Dreams are a way for us all to gain much greater self-knowledge.

Dreams raise our conscious awareness, enabling us to become much wiser and smarter.

Dreams, which were, for many years (or many hundreds of years), seen as messages from the gods or other independent bodies, outside of ourselves, must now, by necessity, be seen as messages from within ourselves.

All we need to be able to do is interpret the language!