1. Why should I pay attention to my dreams?
Answer: A certain number of dreams are a kind of disclosure of divine information in which people get informed not only about key future events but even about past events which were not understandable at that time. Visionary dreams of a divine nature can be so striking that they change a person’s life, or the course of history. We can employ our dreams to act as a pivot in designing our survival strategies.
2. What is in my dreams that I don’t already know?
Answer: Most of our dreams deal with unresolved issues, threat perception and harm avoidance. Some others are related to unexplored feelings. Our dreams generally incorporate self-images, fears, insecurities, strengths, extravagant ideas, personal orientation, hidden desires, jealousy and love. When you interpret a dream, you explore some vital information. Your dreaming mind brings you incredible awareness and insight in terms of unexpected way outs in life.
3. What are the benefits of exploring my dreams?
Answer: Investigating your dreams and finding accurate dream interpretations can help to challenge or confirm important decisions in life relevant to health concerns, relationship issues, career question, security or any life struggle you may be experiencing and various other issues that are overwhelming you.
4. Why are dreams hard to recall?
Answer: Working memory is offline in dream state and mechanism for storing memories is diminished (almost non-existent) therefore we are able to recall well the dreams that are closer to our wake up timings. Also transition in sleep stages may prevent us from dream recall. Normally during sleep there is a movement between different stages of sleep and if dreamer awakes during such transitions, he will be unable to recall dream. Hence dream recall is closely related to one’s sleeping habits. Diversified nature of routine daily life activities may also prevent us from recalling our dreams.
5. How can I increase my dream recall?
Answer: Dream recall largely depends on dreamer’s mind-set about dreams and interest in recalling dreams. Those people having a positive attitude towards dreams can recall dreams well. One’s faith, attitude and perception towards dreams might also prevent dream recall. People taking an active interest in recalling a dream especially on a particular night, or during a period of nights, they are more likely to do so. So try to be positive about dreams, have a regular sleep and note down your dreams whenever you wake up during or after sleep. Also note your mood when you wake up after a normal sleep.
6. Why are dreams hard to understand?
Answer: In waking life we combine word symbols to form meaningful verbal stories composed of sentences; while in most of the dreams symbols, images and metaphors are combined to form meaningful dream stories. Each of us had learnt such system of metaphors, as a result of repeated experiences during childhood. These metaphors are the “language of dreams” that not only convey a dream, but link it to similar events and feelings in our waking life. Therefore all the dream dictionaries use language of metaphors and we have to consult dream dictionaries to understand our dreams. Such dictionaries help us discover some important hints about our dreams on a day-to-day basis.
7. What do nightmares mean?
Answer: Dreams often reflect our life concerns. At times nightmares may be an outcome of our unsolved conflicts of great intensity. Sometimes nightmares may be an outcome of interference or intervention of evil or negative spirits. Usually nightmares have no real story line or any strong emotional content, therefore such dreams have no interpretations.
8. Why do some dreams keep repeating themselves?
Answer: Dreams that recur or repeat indicate that some key event or conflict has not been attended yet. Recurring dreams about your daily routine life activities (like profession, love etc.) indicate your worries about a certain situation in waking life routine. Dreams recurring beyond daily routine life (unusual event or situation which is beyond the obvious canvas of life) indicate that you have not yet got the message about some important mega event likely to take place in near future.
9. Why don't I have dreams?
Answer: It is a proven scientific fact that everybody dreams. Researchers have shown that all human have some unique brain activity which is not present when they are awake. Due to the reasons like genetic disposition, some people don’t remember their dreams when they come out of sleep.
10. Do children's dreams mean the same as adults?
Answer: Dreams of young children who are unable to narrate their dreams, have no story line and thus no significance. However dreams of children who are able to remember and narrate their dreams have significance. Their dreams are usually prophetic or true. Because of their innocence, the dreams of little children are truer than those of teenagers. This is because older children may be busy in their mischief and fulfilling their newly discovered desires.
11. Do dreams predict or foretell future?
Answer: While we are asleep, due to the activity error and conflict monitoring functions in a dreaming brain, the resultant dream stories can focus on conflict and anomaly resolution in our lives, making dreams somewhat forward looking and predictive. Thus dreams often end with a projected direction, path or solution, even if it is not always a positive one or the direction fully formed prior to waking.
12. Why do you think that we have dreams?
Answer: No today’s researcher knows for sure why we have dreams? However religious teachings tell us about the dreams. True dreams may be glad tidings from Almighty Allah. The dreams of self-righteous people are almost always true and meaningful. Some dreams come from evil interference with human mind and these are misleading. Others may be caused by physical or psychological problems such as stomach discomfort or emotional disturbance or too much concern over some problematic issue. It is important to distinguish true dreams from empty fantasies and inspired dreams.
13. Do animals dream?
Answer: Similar to humans, all other mammals exhibit some unique brain activity during sleep. Or at least they experience REM sleep. But the extent and nature of their dreams is questionable. For obvious reasons, we cannot guess the content of their dreams.
14. Why do I have the sensation of feeling “I have been here before”?
Answer: Divinely directed dreams are the most important category of dreams .Such dreams may be rare but very impressive. Such dreams give to the dreamer a powerful vision which reveals something very important to him. But these "rare" dreams are frequent for those who follow the directions of The Creator. The déjà vu sensation, that elusive feeling of "I have been here before" appears, from this observation, to result from the superimposing of divine dreams on a waking state. About 60% people are impressed by several observations of déjà vu phenomenon in life.
15. How can our daily activities affect our dreams?
Answer: Typical dreams appear to focus on concerns about daily events, self, anomalies and conflicts. Such dreams follow the “Continuity Principle” i.e. dreams contain content that is continuous with daytime events or residues of previous waking activity. At sleep onset if the dreaming person kept thinking about his occupation, work or job related activities which require deep involvement, then its profession is impacting dreams as external stimulus. Somebody’s lifestyle also impacts as external stimulus for some dreams. Such dreams shall be meaningless.
16. Do External Stimuli affect our dreams?
Answer: Exclusion of external stimulus is the primary condition required for having divine or psychic category of dreams. It is assumed that external stimuli will not find their way into our dreams. But in reality it often happens that an external stimulus is incorporated into the current plot of dream and subplots are produced which impact the defining plot of the dream. Both themes are blended and it is hard to distinguish.
Example 1. Someone sleeping in a chilly environment might experience such dreams that he is trapped in an icy or arctic location or it is winter or snowy season in dream and dreamer is unable to get rid of such situation.
Example 2. Someone sleeping in a hot or scorching climate might dream that he is caught in burning fire, or he is confined in a close hot space or similar situation etc.
Examples 3. Feelings of pain or ailment in waking life are also incorporated in the dream experience and a subplot in which dreamer is weeping, crying or yelling may be produced.