Working With Dream Themes: Dreams Heralding Amazing and Fortuitous Events

The Burden of Great Dreams: Image via Pinterest

Every now and then, often when things are moving along in steady state, we might have a dream that shows something incredibly and wonderful happening such as coming into a great deal of money or reaching a phenomenal level of career success. The natural inclination of most people I know who’ve had a dream like this is to tell everyone about it because it is such a joyful dream. However, I would caution anyone who has such a dream to not share it with many people, if at all. Write it down and treasure it in your heart. Remember it and be faithful to it, especially if times get hard before the dream is manifest in waking life.

The dream has been given to you for a reason. It most likely is a vision that is preparing you for an amazing journey to the end foretold in the dream. However, that road may include many hazards and potholes—such as extremely challenging obstacles and setbacks—so much so that you may lose hope and forget you had the dream at all. The dream is an inspiring vision meant to keep you moving.

The Story of Joseph and His Brothers

The Bible is full of stories of people being led, warned and inspired by dreams. The story of Joseph (Genesis 37: 5-11) is one such story where Joseph has a dream that indicates his older brothers, who are envious of their favored younger brother, will one day bow down to him. Joseph blithely and naively tells his brothers about the dream, antagonizing them all the more. They eventually sell him into slavery and say in Genesis 37: 20, “…We shall see what will become of his dreams.” Joseph has to undergo many ordeals as a slave in Egypt before he rises to the great heights foretold in his dreams. In the end, it happens but at what a price!

Wondrous dreams, based on my own experience, seem to happen to me as they did to Joseph. It’s only after years of struggle and faith in their vision, and often the experiencing the ridicule of the many that are envious or disbelieving, that the dreams manifest in waking life. So now when I have such a dream, I tell very few people, and know I am carrying a precious but heavy load.

The Bible, Dreams and Spirituality

In Dreams: A Way to Listen to God Morton Kelsey says, “…the Church has developed no theory that can bring the spiritual world closer to human beings.” This is a powerful statement. One would think that it would be a primary function of Christian religions to do this. Instead, the mainline Christian churches have traditionally offered biblical and theological studies which provide intellectual and cultural understandings of Christianity, but have moved away from experiential forms of spirituality which might let us personally “taste and see” the glory of God. I think this is one reason so many people have left mainstream Christianity to explore yoga, meditation and other experiential approaches to connecting to something greater.  Yet, as Kelsey points out in his book, dreams have always been part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and he heartily recommends using them as a spiritual methodology to bring the spiritual world closer to us.

It’s not like the spiritual world isn’t trying to contact us. It does so nightly in our dreams! But how few people make an attempt to remember their dreams, and of those who do, how few make it a practice to honor, record, reflect and learn from their dreams?

One only has to pick up a Bible and see the frequent references to dreams and the important role they played in shaping people’s lives. People who could interpret dreams, like Joseph and Daniel, were held in high esteem because it was thought that God spoke through dreams. In the Bible, the information received in dreams is shown to be very important such as in predicting times of flood or famine or helping a person in need. Joseph, the husband of Mary, was one of many who received an important message in a dream. He was told to not worry in taking Mary as his wife since the child she had conceived came in a most unusual way. All these characters in the Bible worked with and let dreams shape their lives—even when their lives depended upon it.

Perhaps, if we let God into our lives through our dreams, our lives would take on a much greater meaning and significance compared to the trivial and myopic views we hold in an uninformed waking life that is often driven by the demands of others as well as egoistic and material needs.