Dreams and Spirituality
Victoria Hardy
March 19, 2007
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with sleep. As a child my mother struggled to make me take naps and I figured out very early in life how to lay in the bed long enough to convince her I had actually slept, when I had not. It wasn’t the sleep that frightened me, it was the dreams. I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, full color episodes that seem to last hours and as a child I use to wonder which world was the real one, the sleeping one or the waking one. And I also use to wonder, if dreams were just an expression of stress and anxiety relief, how was it that they occasionally bloomed into reality right before my waking eyes.
The Bible speaks a lot of dreams, perhaps because the writers of the book didn’t have television and movies to entertain them and most of the ancient cultures put a lot of stock into what their dreams had to offer. But in modern society dreams are of little importance, just the wanderings of restless and over-stressed minds. As we spend a third of our lives asleep, I think we are discounting a large part of who we are by putting so little emphasis on what happens to us in our dreams.
Yes, over the years I have been accused of being too metaphysical or too spiritual, as though one can be too spiritual, I’ve also been told it’s a nice place to visit, but you really can’t live there. But I disagree, I have found that I really can’t live anywhere else and be comfortable, so I put a lot of importance onto what I am dreaming and figure it’s my own personal pipeline to the Creator. Before I became a photographer, I dreamt I was a photographer, I bought a camera the same week and within a few months, after a lot of trail, error and studying the way of the camera, I was a working photographer. Before I first picked up a paintbrush, I dreamt of painting and before I became a writer, I dreamt of writing.
Of course, all dreams are not filled with the future creativity fighting to make itself known, there are the warnings of bad things to come, as well, and probably the reason I fought the dream state so hard as a child. Before my sister was killed in a car wreck, I dreamt of her demise and woke in screams and terror. And over the years, I saw my son’s funeral again and again in my sleep, the first dream occurred when he was about three years old and those visions made me a very protective parent, so the fact that he was 18 when he passed, means to me that I was given an fifteen extra years with him.
Although my dreams have always been littered with lights in the sky, falling planes and shooting stars, those images in my sleep have increased ten-fold since the passing of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the Gulf coast and I have to wonder what that means. The Bible states that in the later days average men and women will be given the gift of prophecy, old men will have dreams and young men, visions and it also speaks of signs in the sky. Native cultures certainly point to us being thick into a time of great change, not the end of all time, but the end of this time. So let me be the first to ask, what are you dreaming?
The Bible speaks a lot of dreams, perhaps because the writers of the book didn’t have television and movies to entertain them and most of the ancient cultures put a lot of stock into what their dreams had to offer. But in modern society dreams are of little importance, just the wanderings of restless and over-stressed minds. As we spend a third of our lives asleep, I think we are discounting a large part of who we are by putting so little emphasis on what happens to us in our dreams.
Yes, over the years I have been accused of being too metaphysical or too spiritual, as though one can be too spiritual, I’ve also been told it’s a nice place to visit, but you really can’t live there. But I disagree, I have found that I really can’t live anywhere else and be comfortable, so I put a lot of importance onto what I am dreaming and figure it’s my own personal pipeline to the Creator. Before I became a photographer, I dreamt I was a photographer, I bought a camera the same week and within a few months, after a lot of trail, error and studying the way of the camera, I was a working photographer. Before I first picked up a paintbrush, I dreamt of painting and before I became a writer, I dreamt of writing.
Of course, all dreams are not filled with the future creativity fighting to make itself known, there are the warnings of bad things to come, as well, and probably the reason I fought the dream state so hard as a child. Before my sister was killed in a car wreck, I dreamt of her demise and woke in screams and terror. And over the years, I saw my son’s funeral again and again in my sleep, the first dream occurred when he was about three years old and those visions made me a very protective parent, so the fact that he was 18 when he passed, means to me that I was given an fifteen extra years with him.
Although my dreams have always been littered with lights in the sky, falling planes and shooting stars, those images in my sleep have increased ten-fold since the passing of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the Gulf coast and I have to wonder what that means. The Bible states that in the later days average men and women will be given the gift of prophecy, old men will have dreams and young men, visions and it also speaks of signs in the sky. Native cultures certainly point to us being thick into a time of great change, not the end of all time, but the end of this time. So let me be the first to ask, what are you dreaming?
Print
Email
