Most readers have heard the term “conscious creating” or “conscious co-creating,” but what about a new cousin to these terms, called “conscious RE-creating?”

Did your dream really foretell the future, or did you simply create what you saw in your dream? Could it be that every predictive dream is merely us subconsciously recreating what we saw in our earlier nighttime dream? (Answer: hardly, but it does happen to all of us from time to time, so it’s worth exploring this issue.)

Let’s take an example…you dream of an altercation with a friend, spouse, or significant other. Then, the next afternoon, say, you find yourself in the middle of a heated argument with that person in real life. Did the dream predict it or did you unconsciously create the same scene as in the dream?

This is where the skeptics begin their argument against predictive dreams. The dreamer is merely creating the scene they saw earlier from their dream, but it’s all done without their conscious intent. Are they right? Certainly there are times when we do create our own reality based on an earlier dream. That can hardly be denied, especially for the dreams that produced some really cool feelings and emotions…why not create that reality and feel those feelings again?

In 2011, scientists found a way to record a fuzzy version of our dream images, which begs the question: would a morning replay of your dreams eliminate or exacerbate this tendency of fulfilling previous dreams? There are certainly no easy answers, but if you had this machine to watch every morning, that would mean your dreams were no longer unconscious. With the dream material fully conscious, you would be a conscious re-creator instead of an unconscious one. In short, you could choose which dreams to re-create and which ones to laugh at.

At this point some might ask the question, “Who cares? Does any of this even matter?” Actually it does, especially for those who are working on themselves, trying to grow into better people. A lot of our daily actions are conducted under the radar of our conscious brains. We pull into the driveway to suddenly realize, “Oh my gosh, I don’t remember any of that drive home!” Ditto for biting your fingernails or picking your nose (you don’t actually do that do you?)

The point is to take more control of our lives, becoming less swayed by our dreams and other unconscious material. You don’t need a fancy dream recorder, you only need a simple dream journal a few minutes each morning to reflect and document the emotional content of your dreams.

Many dream theories (that we’ll explore in much more detail later) suggest that dreams are a clearinghouse for feelings, emotions, and “day residue” (a Freudian concept meaning that the person applies some of their daily experiences into their dreams). In fact, the concept of re-creating a dream could actually be a sort of hamster wheel…re-creating more of what we already experienced from the day residue which was actually prior to the dream.

Take our altercation example from above. To continue the scenario, the heated argument manifested the next day, but the content in the argument had been brewing for months or even years. It was the dream that perhaps broke the camels back, producing enough emotion to pump up the confrontation level, perhaps.

Bottom line…become a conscious re-creator instead of blindly keeping the hamster dream-wheel going. So, sleep…dream….wake….reflect….document….re-create that which is beneficial for you!

Copyright © 2014 Chris McCleary. Except for the external resource snippets, all rights reserved.