tags: how to deal with psychic dreams, help with dreams, predictive dreams, prophetic dreams, future dreams
A growing number of people are becoming alarmed, even horrified sometimes, when they see their dream experiences play out in ordinary life. This article hopefully alleviates some of the stress associated with the more negative-type dream predictions and provides some grounded recommendations for dreamers faced with this situation.
The charismatic storyteller, Robert Moss, outlined many extraordinary historical events that were directly influenced by dreams in his fantastic book, The Secret History of Dreaming (2010). Many of his stories include horrible dreams that unfortunately played out in the main character’s life at a future date.
Take for example the dream just prior to Southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s, 1977 plane crash.
Moss detailed how one of the backup vocalists dreamed that morning that her band had crashed. He cited Jojo Billingsley’s direct quotes about her dream: “I saw the plane smack the ground. I saw them screaming and crying, and I saw fire” (2010, p. 133). Since she was not touring at the time with her band, she called the band members, begging them to not get onto the plane. What’s most interesting about this story is that the band members didn’t simply scoff off the dream. According to Moss, they actually took a vote on what the group would do. They came up with a sort of compromise…since it was a non-direct flight, they apparently decided to take their plane to the first stop and change planes for the second half of the trip. Obviously, the crash then happened during that first leg to Billingsley’s horror (understandably, she quit performing for many years after that event).
Taking a single, isolated event like this, one could simply pull out the “coincidence card” and scoff it off as just another contrived fairy tale. But we must not operate in a vacuum and instead honor humanity’s clear ability to predict future events. Taking Moss’ book and combining it with a very simple search on the internet, we easily have many more “impossible” dream predictions. However, this article is not about trying to convince the naysayers. The people searching for this article already know the phenomenon is real. The problem is how to deal with it. Specifically, what the heck are we supposed to do with these dreams?
That’s the real puzzle here. Some of the prophetic dreamers I’ve talked to report that this “skill” or “talent” they have (to accurately predict future events) is not only fantastic but sometimes incredibly frustrating and downright miserable. Imagine waking up repeatedly and knowing that at least one part of your dream will come true at some point in the future.There are at least two problems here: 1) What will come true, and 2) When will it happen?
1. What part of the dream will come true? There are many cases where the predictive dream was nearly identical to what happened later (same characters, same venue, same actions, etc.) For example, the Premonition Man (Chris Robinson) dreamed ahead of time exactly how the terrorist would plant the bomb. However, the bulk of these dreams are not that clear cut. It is well known that most dreams play out metaphorically. A fat cat in your dream may actually represent your rich uncle, for example. So, first of all, if you have a horrific dream, and you have a track record for accurate future events, which type of dream is it: will life play out identically as the dream or just metaphorically? While determining this answer in the points below, you’ll want to start narrowing down the single event or action that you’ll end up focusing on (trying to prevent or control). Here are some recommendations:
a. What does your intuition tell you? Or rather it should be asked this way: what DID your intuition tell you? Intuition only happens once, immediately in that moment. So to answer this question, you’ll have to go back to the dream and recall your emotions as this event played out in the dream. Do your best to read the intuition from your dream and not what your rational brain is telling you right now.
b. Look at your track record. Are you a prodigy dreamer who constantly predicts future events? Do you have a knack for this sort of thing? If so, how do your predictive dreams, on average, play out in real life…verbatim or allegorically? Go with the answer that is most common for your personal dream history: if you predict metaphorically most of the time, then look for metaphors of your significant dream story. If you predict exactly what will happen, then look for the most significant dream event or the most probable in real life and focus on that. (note: when I say “focus on that” I mean look for solutions that would prevent either the most significant dream event or the most probable event from happening in real life.)
c. Were you lucid at all in the dream? This means that at some level, you are aware you are dreaming while you are in the dream. Lucid dreamers are notorious for approaching dream characters to find out more about the dream they are in. Try to recall whether you were slightly lucid and chose to ask someone in your dream about this future event. Consider their advice when deciding what course of action to take in real life. (note: in future dreams, you may be able to force yourself to become lucid so that you can consciously choose to approach people in your dream—search the internet if this is of interest to you.)
d. No matter whether you are a metaphoric fortune teller or a pretty accurate one, there are undoubtedly many different events that happened in the dream, and so you’ll have to wade through them and figure out which of the events you need to focus on (i.e. try to prevent them from coming true). The biggest answer here is your emotional state in the dream. What was most memorable (emotionally and somatically in your dream)? What got you really upset or uptight in the dream? Also, what was the most vivid part of the dream? These are the aspects or events you’ll focus on in your waking life. Also consider the probability of them happening (although this isn’t particularly foolproof, as my regularly prophetic-dreaming wife scoffed a dream event simulating a car wreck, which is relatively unlikely on normal days…but it happened the next day).
e. If you rarely predict dreams and can’t really use any of the above material, then this paragraph may help. Perhaps by now, your dream is slowly playing out in real life, chronologically. Hopefully, you have a detailed summary of the chronological events because you’ll simply focus on the event that was next in your dream. Let’s say you had 6 consecutive events in your prolific dream, and the first one came true in real life. This probably happened to “wake you up,” so to speak, before the subsequent dream events play out in the near (or distant) future.
Develop a very basic plan
Once you’re relatively satisfied answering the above considerations, you should have what we shall call a “best guess dream event.” This is the event that you believe has the highest probably of happening and it has two key characteristics: 1) it will be the top event from the checklist above and 2) you have a reasonable ability to do something about it (i.e., to alter the future, if you will). If you’ve selected an event to which you have no ability to change in real life, then select your second highest event. You should be concentrating on just one or two possible events at the most, especially if the dream is manifesting chronologically, just as in paragraph ‘e’ above. Again, you only want the events that you can control to some extent.
Now that you’ve narrowed the events to just one or two, what’s next? First, share your dream with someone you trust. Consider NOT talking to people outside your comfort zone about psychic dreams and it is best to NOT attempt to convince a skeptic about the possibility of your dream coming true…this will only hurt you, as they might throw you in the loony bin (where you’ll be totally powerless about preventing this dream). If you have no one to talk to about your dream, then you have two options: 1) remain calm and quiet and pray about your dream…go inward and ask for divine guidance on your course of action; 2) request help from a dreamworker at the National Dream Center (www.nationaldreamcenter.com/contact). It is very important you find an outlet that is amenable to your dream predicament. Don’t go it alone.
With your helper, decide one, simple thing you can do right now to prevent the dream from happening. For example, my daughter, based on my wife’s car accident dream, asked if daddy (referring to me) could drive the truck that afternoon instead of the person who was supposed to drive (the bleeding person from my wife’s dream). The family did decide this based solely on her dream, and I drove home instead of the older person who was planning on making that trip. In real life, I was tragically hit by a passed-out drunk driver, but because of my agile driving skills, he impacted our fully-loaded trailer instead of plowing into the front of our truck at 60 mph, directly head on! The bottom line is that this dream probably saved the lives of several precious human beings, and it was a simple, easy change inside the family unit.
But many people won’t have loving, supportive family/friends to talk to. If you suspect that someone or several people are going to get hurt by this future event and you really deem it important to visit the authorities, you must act calm and relaxed. Do NOT attempt to convince the authorities, and never attempt to convince them while in a very emotional state. I cannot stress this enough. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. Also, do not stay convicted about this…always remember that the dream may not play out as in your dream. Ultimately, no one knows the future, not even the most precise dreamers. Remember that when talking with the authorities.
If you feel powerless about this situation, and it is emotionally dragging you down, seek professional help immediately. You’ll want a licensed counselor or psychotherapist that has a track record for being humanistic or even transpersonal, or at least one that doesn’t have a habit of pathologizing everyone. With life situations that seem out of your control, sometimes meditation can quickly solve these issues, but definitely seek professional help. There are licensed professionals who deal with dream therapy, meditation, and other holistic methods that really work. Attempt to find one that is familiar with the ‘transpersonal’ nature of dreaming.
Now that we’ve covered the most immediate material for your troubling dream, you should already have a decent idea about your course(s) of action (at least the first, simple, grounded, reasonable action item). You do NOT need a large, intricate plan here, just the first step or two that can easily be done in a short amount of time.
Lastly, the National Dream Center is exploring the phenomenon of future-oriented dreams (i.e. psychic or precognitive dreams). Even if you think your dream isn’t foreshadowing something, it may have bigger implications than you think. When you have time, please log onto www.nationaldreamcenter.com/dreamdb and enter your dream. If it later comes true, it will help identify predictive dreams and segregate them from all the other non-prophetic ones before the event takes place.
The next step is to resolve the time element of your dream, but we will have to cover this in tomorrow’s post. If you have questions with the material so far, please write an email to nationaldreamcenter(at)gmail.com or provide comments below.
Disclaimer: The author, Chris McCleary, does not claim to be a licensed professional in counseling, psychology, mental health, or any other related field. The reader is solely responsible for the actions that they decide to take based on this article.
Copyright © 2014 Chris McCleary. Except for the external resource snippets, all rights reserved.
