Looking brighter than I'd ever seen her, she loved the idea. That same afternoon, she rushed home, picked up a pen, and started putting her thoughts down on paper. Quirky, offbeat expressions such as those in her dreams flooded onto the page. She couldn't get them down fast enough. Combining her skill as a child psychologist and her flair for words, she began to weave together stories, which later became a delightful children's book. This was a perfect creative outlet. Ellen's guidance dreams uncovered an untapped talent that brought her great joy. Rejuvenated by her writing, her clinical work also took on a new life. It wasn't necessary for Ellen to change her profession, she just needed a counterpoint to complement it.
Ellen was proof that you don't have to have any previous psychic experience to receive guidance dreams. Although their messages aren't always spelled out, if you stay aware of what they are trying to communicate the clues are always there. As with Ellen's dream, the answers may be enormously creative. The more attuned you become to deciphering them, the easier it gets.
When you're analyzing guidance dreams, there are some specific intuitive clues to look for. Certain material zings with energy and grabs your attention. It may be only a single word or image, or perhaps an entire segment. Thoroughly search your dream for such sections. Then write them down to see how they are related to your original question. Always stay aware of your body's responses—a sudden wave of goose bumps, a chill, the hair on your neck standing up, a flushing of your face, sweating or a quickening of heartbeat or breath. This is your body's way of telling you that you're on the right track. Sometimes when the answer is more obvious, you can experience an immediate “Ah-ha!” feeling, as though a bright light has suddenly been flipped on in a room. (Of course, these varied responses can help you pick out essential segments in all types of dreams.) But no matter how distinct the message, it's up to you to listen.
I have a friend who wanted to open up a small coffeehouse and bookstore in Venice Beach, but he wasn't sure the timing was right. “Why don't you ask for guidance in a dream?” I said. He thought that was a terrific suggestion and proceeded to write down his dreams for the next several nights. He couldn't recall exact details, but each morning he was left with the sinking feeling that entering a business now would be a big mistake.
Though extremely intuitive, this friend could also be bullheaded, and he went ahead with his plans anyway. Every stage of the process, beginning with getting a loan, turned out to be painful and frustrating. Ultimately, he had to close his store after only eight months because he wasn't making it financially.
Like my friend, I also learned the hard way to take my intuitions seriously. Years before, when I hadn't heeded my premonition about my patient Christine's suicide attempt, there were almost tragic results after she overdosed on the pills I'd prescribed. During the several weeks of her coma, I had much time to think about what happened. That was the turning point, reawakening me to the importance of the psychic and the price I would pay for disregarding it. Now if I'm stuck and don't know what direction to take with a patient, I head straight to my dreams—the strongest psychic connection I have—or they come to me spontaneously.
The advice I receive from dreams doesn't have to be earth shattering to be valuable. For instance, the other night I dreamed that a schizophrenic woman I was especially fond of, whom I'd been treating since I first opened my practice, abruptly went off her medications. In the past, whenever she had done this on her own, the results had always been disastrous. About once a year I'd receive a phone call from some emergency room in the middle of the night, saying that she was blatantly psychotic and needed to be hospitalized. I didn't want this painful and demoralizing pattern to repeat itself. Although I had no other reason to believe that anything was wrong, I still called her the next day to check it out. My dream, unfortunately, had been accurate. Once again she had run out of her medication and failed to renew the prescription. Luckily I succeeded in convincing her to go to the pharmacy and resume treatment. Spurred on by my dream, I was able to intervene immediately and spare her psychiatric hospitalization.
Just as I was alerted to contact my patient, your guidance dreams also can often be red flags warning you of danger. Even if you haven't formally developed your psychic abilities, at certain times of need an internal alarm system goes off to protect you. Guidance dreams can specifically tell you how and when to avoid being harmed.
A few years ago, my friend Lisa was traveling with several friends in an old VW van from Taos, New Mexico, back to California. At midnight, fatigued from driving twelve hours, they pulled over somewhere in the northern Arizona desert and set up camp. The sky was crystal clear, the moon full, the air crisp and cool. They each crawled into their sleeping bags on the desert floor.
As soon as Lisa fell asleep, she dreamed she saw a pair of bright headlights coming toward her down a winding desert trail. A four-wheel-drive jeep pulled up next to her and a ranger in full government uniform got out. In a serious tone, he advised, “You and your friends had better get back into your van. A huge dust storm is about to come through this area. It isn't safe to stay outdoors.” Lisa didn't see anything unusual about his visit and thanked him for the tip. He said good-bye, climbed back into his jeep, and drove away.
When Lisa woke up, the night was perfectly still and there was no sign of a storm approaching. But she had always been interested in dreams and knew enough to pay attention to them. She immediately woke her friends and, despite their grumbling, managed to gather them into the van. A few hours later the van began to rock back and forth in winds of over fifty miles an hour, and spiral currents of dust and sand whipped through the desert until dawn. The flying debris was so thickly caked on the windshield that it was impossible for them to see out, but thanks to Lisa's dream they were all safe.
Guidance dreams such as these aren't unique to our culture. The Aboriginals of Australia have considered them sacred for over fifty thousand years. In their vision of life, time has two dimensions: our everyday reality and a spiritual plane known as the Dreamtime. When tribal members are ill or in trouble, selected persons may send healing messages or warnings through their dreams. In other instances, Dreamtime ceremonies are performed by shamans and through them ancient teachings are relayed. The Aboriginals view such guidance as so completely natural that they use it to determine tribal law.
In the Australian film
The Last Wave,
a lawyer takes on the defense of a group of tribal Aboriginals accused of murder. Although they are unwilling to reveal to him the circumstances surrounding the crime, the lawyer begins to receive the needed information in his dreams. The problem is that he doesn't know how to decipher them. Frustrated at his clients' silence, he turns to one of the men and asks, “Don't you know how much trouble you're in?” Coolly, the tribal member looks back at him with shining black eyes and responds, “No, man. You're the one who's in trouble. You've forgotten the meaning of your dreams.”
Native Americans also honor their dreams. Their vision-quest ritual, a solitary or group journey into nature, is an appeal for a revelatory dream or vision for the purpose of healing, solving a problem, finding a guide, or facilitating a rite of passage, such as a boy passing from puberty to manhood. Vision quests are intentionally rugged and often involve fasting for many days or sleeping on the ground unprotected, sometimes naked, even during rainstorms or freezing weather. Exposed to the elements, the body quickly becomes exhausted. In this weakened state, however, the mind is less chaotic and thus more susceptible to dreams. Only after the vision has made itself known is the quest considered successful.
In our culture, dreaming has become a lost art that needs to be revived. By listening to your dreams, you can receive instructions on how best to maneuver through life's obstacles. They are a deep, instinctual response to your innermost conflicts and needs. Over the years, I have trained myself to pay close attention to dreams, and so can you. They aren't distributed only to a gifted few. The secret lies in your own belief. Once you take the first step and allow for that possibility, guidance will be waiting for you.
PRECOGNITIVE DREAMS
In some dreams you can receive specific guidance about the future, though the message may be presented to you in various forms. To recognize such precognitive dreams, there are a number of clues. Often the imagery is startlingly vivid: You watch an event unfold that might be totally unrelated to you, or you're given information about your own future, or you wake up knowing details about events that haven't yet occurred. You may be given information clarifying times, dates, places, or the direction your life is going to take. More than a simple road map, precognitive dreams can be a precursor of blessings to come or offer underlying meaning about more difficult times. Though you may be given a preview of a totally unfamiliar situation involving unknown persons, most likely you will have precognitive dreams about yourself or those you love. This is especially true of mothers and their children.
In the fall of 1989, I witnessed such a psychic bond between a mother, her son, and a dolphin named Bee. At the time, I was having severe neck pain from a bulging cervical disc. My friend Stephan Schwartz of Mobius told me about a pilot program in the Florida Keys that was proving quite successful. Patients with a variety of illnesses swam with the dolphins in an open marine park. As a result of this contact, their symptoms improved. Since I had gotten very little relief from traditional medical treatments and had always been fascinated by dolphins, I leaped at the opportunity. Late in October, I boarded a plane to the Florida Keys, heading for a week-long workshop at the Dolphin Research Center (DRC).
During my stay, I met participants in some of the other programs being conducted there. Among them was a dental hygienist, Cathy, from Enid, Oklahoma. She had brought her three-year-old son, Deane-Paul, who was born with Down's syndrome, a form of mental retardation. Even so, he was active and strong. He ran around with tremendous energy, and exuded a wonderful life force. Cathy had heard about psychologist David Nathanson's work enlisting dolphins to teach language skills to handicapped and emotionally disabled children.
One afternoon, while Cathy, Deane-Paul, and I ate lunch, she told me about a dream she'd had a month before becoming pregnant. In the dream, she was on a beach in the Caribbean, standing at the shoreline. Suddenly she spotted a pod of nine sleek, blue-gray wild dolphins swimming between a pair of enormous monoliths, heading toward her. As they came close, one of the larger females offered its baby to Cathy, saying, “Please take care of it for me.” As Cathy held the tiny dolphin in her arms, she watched the pod dive back into the sparkling turquoise water and disappear.
The dream confused her. She had been to the ocean only once since she was a little girl, and although she always appreciated the beauty of dolphins, she had never spent arty time with them. Despite the vividness and matter-of-fact, almost predestined, quality of the dream, the dolphin's message seemed so unlikely that Cathy didn't give it much credence. Already the mother of two young girls, she hadn't planned to have any more children.
A month later, despite using birth control, she unexpectedly became pregnant with Deane-Paul. From the beginning, he was lovingly welcomed into her home. Despite Cathy's efforts to teach him to speak, however, he didn't utter a single word the first three years of his life. Then one day, Cathy took her kids on an outing to the zoo. When they stopped at the dolphin pool, Deane-Paul's face instantly lit up: At the very sight of them, he became more animated than she'd ever seen him, as if they had woken him up. Not long afterward she heard about the dolphin program at the DRC. Inspired by the dream, she decided to enroll her son.
As I spent time with the dolphins, I found that there was something therapeutic about being close to them, about touching the baby-soft texture of their skin and hearing their extraterrestrial sounds. They radiated a joy and goodness that flowed generously from their bodies into mine. The pain in my neck began easing up almost immediately. By the end of the week, I no longer needed to wear my cervical collar for support.
In between my own swims, I would see Deane-Paul, a tiny blond-haired boy with a huge orange life preserver around his waist, frolicking and taking lessons in the pool with a dolphin named Bee. She was a friend to him, an untiring companion who carried story-boards in her mouth week after week, with large words printed on them. David Nathanson, an enormously loving teddy bear of a man with a marvelous sense of humor, would pronounce the words aloud and Deane-Paul would repeat them as his vocabulary grew. Watching, I realized he was not only learning to communicate verbally—I saw that his spirit was coming alive too.
Deane-Paul and his mother shared a bedroom in an apartment located close to the DRC. One night he woke up, and Cathy couldn't quiet him down; she had never seen him so distraught. He kept crying, “Oh my Bee, oh my Bee,” and tried to run out of the house. Eventually he sat curled up beside the front door, calling out to her until dawn. The next morning they received the news: Bee had died during the night.
The love between Deane-Paul and Bee had allowed him to intuit her death psychically in a dream. At first, he fell into a depression, grieving. But his work didn't stop after her death. The relationships he had established with other dolphins helped to sustain him through a very difficult period, although his rapport with them was never as strong as with Bee. And the fact that Bee often came to him in his dreams, where they swam through the clouds together, eased the transition. Deane-Paul's initially intense bonding with Bee had begun his metamorphosis from a mute, withdrawn child into an active little boy who shortly afterward attended kindergarten at a public school and has a vocabulary that is steadily improving.