Have you ever dreamed you were in prison? Then some part of you is imprisoned. There are many ways in which this metaphor can apply to our lives. We explored some of them in a recent prison dream that was discussed in a telephone group, “TeleDream.” Here is how the dream began:

“I am in a prison(1). Inside, the grounds are like a university campus(2), with green lawns(3) and benches(4) next to old buildings(5). The whole place is surrounded by a thick-barred black metal fence(6). I have just arrived(7). We take turns going to get groceries(8) escorted by a prison guard(9)…”

Every dream speaks to anyone who investigates it, since dreams originate in the Universal realms of the Unconscious. The group exploring this dream discovered dozens of layers of meaning, some unique to each individual. See if any of the nine universal themes we found apply to you:

1. “I am in a prison.” And so is everyone in some manner: To the degree that your job or family confines and restrains you, they imprison you. If your body is wounded, disowned, or a burden to you, your spirit may be imprisoned by the physical. If you long to follow some dream which is prohibited by others,

you may be imprisoned by society. If your dreams seem hopeless or ridiculous, you may be imprisoned by your own attitudes. Most of us are imprisoned by fears, by doubt, by ignorance.

2. “Inside, the grounds are like a university campus”: Inside us the “ground” of our existence is the “Universe” itself. Our individual identity is alternately a prison and a portal: “Every man is a doorway through which the Infinite passes into the finite” (Emerson) The human personality consists of a spark of divinity imprisoned in materiality.

3. “green lawns”: One group member noted that green is the color of growth and spring; to the extent that our growth and blossoming is restricted, we are in prison. Any “failure to thrive” imprisons some potential. Another dreamer mentioned that green is the color of the heart chakra; if our feelings, hopes and dreams were not imprisoned within us, would we need so many reminders to “follow our dreams” or to “know thyself.” A third group member playfully commented that “the grass always looks greener on the other side of the razor-wire fence.”

4. “Benches”: are for waiting, for sitting it out and they can be a valuable respite or the symbol of failing to “take a stand.” Being “put on the bench” in sports is to be taken out of the game. How are we “sitting on the bench” in our own lives, the dream invites us to ask.

5. The grass of the “green lawns” is part of nature, while the bench, the buildings and the fence are man-made. Often our natural tendencies are surrounded by that which has been built up by culture, family rules and traditions, religious beliefs and external authority. There are many built environments like schools and factories which educate and employ but simultaneously imprison. In the movie “Cousin Cousine” a character attends an outdoor wedding but skips the church reception that follows, saying “I don’t trust God when you get him indoors.”

6. The “whole place” might be that place within us all, in which we are whole. Every being carries the imprint of wholeness, like the oak tree implicit in the acorn. Each gender has within, the qualities of its opposite. Each child brings into this world a potential for full being and expression which is only rarely fulfilled. Whatever prevents our wholeness is the “black metal fence” of shadow and restriction and resistance. Poverty is a prison. Prejudice is a prison. Partiality is a prison; gated communities are the prison of privilege.

7. This dream came to a devoted student of dream work whose past efforts had activated and liberated parts of her psyche that had been stored in the “protective custody” of the unconscious since childhood. The release of fresh consciousness that has “just arrived” is the hallmark of ongoing growth. Dreams release unrealized potentials into the adult psyche whenever we are ready to do the work of reclamation. It is our own innocent consciousness that recognizes our over-adapted adult attitudes as a prison. This fresh energy is just what helps to release us from the prison of habit and limitation. Prisons are secure, and sometimes, security is a prison.

8. The dreamer noted that many of the important projects she began had to “take turns” and could not be consistently maintained. Thus there were cycles of meditation and phases of healthy exercise and periodic returns to creative writing. The dream shows these as activities that bring nourishment, the “groceries” that feed the soul. Such activities must often take turns when much of our psyche is imprisoned.

9. Not only do we all contain hopes and abilities that are imprisoned within, but we are all both the prisoner and the prison guard. Our own attitudes and habits imprison us. Our guardedness is our prison’s guard. One becomes a prisoner only after being judged. Within the mind it may be our own judgemental views that bar us from authenticity and freedom, imprisoning us without just cause.

Is not each human ego is a prison of the spirit? Our every fear imprisons and limits our willingness to dare and our ability to love. Our current identity is always the prison of our future self and our full potential. How much “time do you have to do” before you earn your freedom? Prison dreams challenge us to discover how we are confined and how we could break out and be free.

We human beings are visually dominant creatures. We draw many conclusions based on visual cues alone. Our eyes tell a very different story about the world around us than the story that is told by our ears.

“Over the past few decades,” writes Malcolm Gladwell, “the classical music world has undergone a revolution… [To avoid favoritism in hiring] screens were erected between the committee and the auditioner… In the past thirty years, since screens became commonplace, the number of women in the top U.S. orchestras has increased fivefold.” (Blink, 2005).

Now these are professional musicians who make their living by the quality of sound. Their personal status will improve as the quality of the orchestra does, and they recognize musical competence like no amateur could hope to. Yet, when they are seeking the very best talent available, the visual prejudice of gender bias alone so distorted their judgements that just adding a screen during auditions led to a 500% change in gender composition! Now add the visual cues of social class, race, mood, attractiveness and more. In telephone dream groups, the invisibility of meeting by telephone is the “audition screen” that eliminates visual prejudice. And it orchestrates a more secure, less biased discussion.

“TeleDream” is a telephone dream group that was founded in the year 2,000 with the intent of bringing advanced dream work groups to individuals needing resources for interpreting their dreams. We assumed that in a telephone group, we would have to sacrifice the degree of support and intimacy that arises in a face-to-face dream group, but we were quite mistaken. A telephone group tends to be more focused on the specific content of the dreams and on the emotional tone of the members, and seems to be less biased and more growth-focused than when people are in the same room.

Groups that meet “in-person” do develop trust and intimacy that may partially be enhanced by personal contact, by physical touch or by visual feedback–but they also suffer from biases of many sorts. Dream groups have the profound, inner wisdom of dreams to guide the agenda and set a tone of radical honesty. Dream work, itself, focuses the discussion on matters of genuine psychological and spiritual importance; so much so that direct contact seems not to improve matters!

“What the classical music world realized,” Gladwell explains, “was that what they had thought was a pure and powerful first impression–listening to someone play–was in fact hopelessly corrupted. ‘Some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have good posture,’ one musician, a veteran of many auditions, says. ‘Oher people look awful when they play but sound great…. there is always this dissonance between what you see and hear’.”

This dissonance is especially strong in everyday life when nonprofessionals are forming impressions and opinions on an ongoing basis. When we eliminate information like who is the best dressed today, or who has gestures that remind you of an ex-boyfriend, or who resembles your first grade teacher–the group’s attention remains on the dream images and meanings and what they have to teach everyone in the group. Group trust grows and deep friendships are formed on the basis of the quality of what is shared, competence in helping and demonstrated compassion.

Most of our prejudices are visually based. You can’t hear skin color at all. Height and gender and physical appearance make no difference in an email group or in a telephone dream group–both of which have proven highly effective. The safety of working from one’s home and the freedom from being judged on superficial traits often allow greater intimacy and an emphasis on deeper values. It is said that man (or Ego) looks on the exterior, but God (or the Higher Self and its dreams) look upon the heart.

Gladwell quotes Julie Landsman, who plays the lead French horn for the Metropolitan Opera in New York: “Ive been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don’t affect your judgment. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart.”

This perfectly describes the non-visual benefits of telephone groups for working with dreams. We initially thought dream work by telephone (and email) would be of great value in spite of the lack of face to face contact, but in fact dream work has been enriched by the elimination of visual prejudices and the inevitable biases of face to face contact. If professional musicians can’t eliminate massive prejudice when the status of their career is on the line, we should not assume the average dreamer can do a better job: face to face dream groups are good, telephone and email dream groups may even be better.

Why do so many people wonder what their dreams mean… but never actually find out? If our “dreams are nightly letters from God” as Jung’s student, von Franz argued, why are so few bothering to read their mail?

While most people are curious about their dreams–most people are also afraid of their dreams. They sense that dreams are powerful and truth filled. The way many people act, Jack Nicholson’s famous character (Colonel Jessep) might as well be referring to our dreams when he growls: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Dreams convey profound truths that we have not yet noticed or admitted to ourselves. Asking what your dream means is a little like asking the doctor what your x-rays reveal. Sometimes we do–and at the same time really do Not–want to know what is going on inside us. Dreams are nightly x-rays of our whole psyche; they reveal interior facts in a cryptic form it takes expert help to decode. And the news could be good or not so very.

The truly good news is that every dream guides us toward health and wholeness. Every dream contains some form of hope, offers some strategy of adaptation, reveals some pathway to improvement. No dream ever arrives to mock or shame or demoralize. Dreams always affirm life.

But truth can liberate and truth can frighten. Poet David Whyte describes poetry–a close cousin of dreaming–as “the art of overhearing yourself say things from which you can never retreat.” Once we overhear the truths in our dreams, they may not allow us to retreat into ignorance.

Four kinds of fear can oppose our healthy curiosity about the wisdom in dreams:

1. Fear of the Dreaming Experience: Some people fear the experience of dreaming itself. One man never recalled dreams because he found them “just too crazy… you might be driving to work and then your car could begin to fly, why anything could happen!” I suggested he make a deal with his unconscious: He would recall dreams and work on them, if and only if, the makers of dream would send him less scary ones; which they immediately did. I have used this request successfully myself when my dreams seemed too intense or disturbing. Even our nightmares are constructive messages that are cloaked in a dramatic form designed to get our attention.

2. Fear of Dream Meanings: The reason we are advised to “Know Thyself” is because we don’t. Since our dreams know us from the inside out, people may dread hearing bad news. Some people who love dream work and have always received affirming guidance, still have to fight their own resistance to show up for dream sessions.

Mental defenses–like denial, repression and suppression–involve actively forgetting the very sort of content our dreams help us remember. Dreams offer an “end run” around the defense of self-ignorance, but dream work may be resisted for that very reason. It’s very helpful to know that dreams bring us the news we really need to know about ourselves, and they do so only when we are ready to hear it. The dream worker’s focus on growth and healing can reassure dreamers and reduce anxiety. In truth, our dreams love us more than we love them.

3. Fear of Being Seen: Why do we sometimes find ourselves naked in public in our dreams? Because we humans like to cover and hide our private lives just as we do our bodies. We want social approval but dread criticism; what if my dream reveals to others something awful about me? In recovery it’s said: “We are only as sick as our secrets.” Being seen can be embarrassing–but it is also fundamentally validating and healing for humans to be known and accepted; we are social animals.

Dream groups offer a safe opportunity to be seen at the rate one is ready for. Without pressure, group sharing and acceptance is part of what heals and grows us. Some dreamers prefer our telephone and email dream groups because they can connect with others in safer, more comfortable ways and still benefit tremendously. Our relief at being accepted is as great as our fear of being seen and is the best cure for this fear.

4. Fear of Ourselves: We all have secrets; some that we keep from others and some that we keep from ourselves. Jung’s concept of the Shadow refers to those qualities that we keep our ego (or conscious self) from knowing. For example, long after it’s obvious to everyone around them, many alcoholics don’t know they have a drinking problem. That’s why admitting it to self and others by announcing it in meetings is so important in Alcoholics Anonymous (whose formation was influenced by Jung).

We all have a shadow of denied selfhood and part of dream work includes becoming more fully aware of who we are. This calls for courage as well as curiosity. Dream work can be scary, but so is asking for a job you really want or telling someone you love them; scary and valuable. Good dream groups create a safe and supportive context for self discovery. The only thing worse than learning our own secrets… is knowing how visible they are to everyone else while we remain in the dark.

Learning our hidden truths releases us from the primary causes of shame, from the failures they create, and from fear itself. And, those higher potentials within us, our “white shadow,” may be more hidden from us than our weaknesses. Dreams bring us important truths, some very good news, and a chance to be whole again. Can you handle the truth?

Dreams are a doorway to invisible realms that reveal our hidden psychic and shamanic abilities. Consider this classic story of dream research. On the night of March 12, 1964, the renowned psychologist Calvin Hall was monitoring EEG output at Duke University’s Institute for Dream Research. In a nearby room, Robert Van De Castle was the research subject being monitored while sound asleep.

Dr. Hall was understandably skeptical about “paranormal dream activity” as are most psychologists even today. To find out for himself–and probably with the intent of disproving that the contents of his mind could in any way influence the dreams of someone in another location–he performed a remarkable experiment.

When the EEG monitor indicated to Dr Hall that Van De Castle was in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, associated with dreaming, Hall focused his attention on remembering the (Feb 25th, 1964) boxing match between Cassius Clay–now Muhammad Ali– and Sonny Liston.

In addition to imagining the fight, Calvin Hall dramatized the experience by throwing a few punches in the air himself–at a very safe distance from the actual fight, and from the dreamer. Who would expect that such an activity could be perceived by a person sleeping in another room? Imagine Hall’s shock when he awoke Van De Castle after the REM phase and asked if he had any dream material and his answer included these details:

“There was a boxing match going on. There were two young lightweight boxers who were fighting and one of them was doing much better than the other. It seemed his opponent became vanquished and then another lightweight contender got into the ring with him. The new contender now started to give a pretty savage beating to the other boxer… I remember standing up and throwing a few punches in the air myself because I was so involved with the action in the ring.” (Our Dreaming Mind, Van De Castle, 1994)

It is noteworthy that the boxing scene interrupted a dream about unrelated material. As if a television channel had been changed, the boxing scene was inserted as noises that we hear in sleep sometimes are; the original dream then resumed. But what was inserted here was not something like a train whistle (the external sound most likely to work its way into your dreams).

These intrusions were thoughts occurring in another person’s mind–who was not even in the same room! This “private” mental activity was “overheard” and inserted into Van De Castle’s dream. This is how attuned we are in sleep and how capable of mind to mind (M2M) communication humans are.

It is amusing that the fighters were dreamed as lightweights when they surely were not… but in the endless humor of dreams, this detail might be a result of the fight being filtered through a scientific researcher’s psyche. While Hall may have been a “heavyweight” in dream research, he would have been a real lightweight in that fight!

The dreamer is identified with observing the fight just as Hall was but the dreamer experienced Hall’s standing up and throwing punches as if it were his own action. He lived out the physical actions as dream experiences while viewing the mental images as an observer. This is a complex, stereophonic mind-to-mind transmission. How often, you might wonder, are our dreams, which we presume are inwardly originating, actually transmitted by the actions and/or thoughts of another?

Calvin Hall attempted to send telepathic messages to Van De Castle on 17 different occasions: “He concluded that some representation of the intended target material was detectable on thirteen of those occasions, for a success rate of 76%” (Our Dreaming Mind, 1994). If this was an attempt to disprove mental telepathy in dreams it was a pretty stunning failure! Hall repeated these successes with five other dream subjects and later published “Experiments on Telepathically Influenced Dreams.”

Dreams not only carry meaning and guidance from within, and from other human beings, they reveal to us the fuller capacities of mind with which we are all endowed.

Intensive dream work, which reveals the interior workings of the psyche, is guaranteed to change your view of reality. One of the stranger cases I encountered in decades of professional work echoed a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer which told of the Yiddish concept of the dibbuk.

One definition of a dibbuk is a soul who, at death, attaches to another person as a living host rather than leave this plane of existence. In Singer’s story, the deceased person’s soul jumped into the body of another family member and began to act through them, influencing their thoughts and actions. The present case seems quite similar.

The dreamer, a woman in her sixties, came for psychological assistance, reporting a major decline in energy, health and the clarity of her thoughts. I asked when this change began and the client said it dated from about six months earlier.

“What happened around that time?” I inquired. The client said her mother, a strong willed woman in her nineties, had died about then: “Maybe I am just depressed about her loss, but it seems more than that,” she said. I asked her to record her dreams and she brought the following dream to the next session:

“I am sitting in my car which is standing still in the middle lane of a freeway. There are cars whizzing by me on both sides but I am not moving. Concerned that I should not be standing still here, I search around and see in the rear-view mirror my mother is in a car right behind me! I get out and discover that her car is attached to mine. I look right at her and she looks very embarrassed and pulls her car into the right lane and speeds off.”

The client said her mother did not believe in an afterlife and had been very fearful of dying. The dreamer’s “current car” that was inappropriately stopped included her life and health which had been stopped in their tracks. The image of the mother’s vehicle being attached to her was not unlike the dibbuk. Had the mother’s spirit found a way to attach itself to her daughter rather than make the crossing at death? Is that what was draining her life resources and confusing her thoughts.

I asked the woman what the mother’s attached vehicle suggested to her. She said, “I bet she never left, I think she’s still with me, somehow.” The dream suggested that taking a hard look at the mother would be sufficient to encourage her to depart under her own power. The mother’s embarrassment suggests she is doing something she does not feel is justified and that she will correct the situation once confronted. I was hoping so, since my doctorates in psychology and social work did not cover exorcism!

Using the gestalt technique of addressing an invisible other, the dreamer confronted the mother directly: she said this was her body and her life and that the mother’s attachment was not right, that it was clearly harmful to the daughter. She said that she wanted the best for the mother and that the dream showed a clear path for the mother to follow and that she had the power to go there on her own.

The dream showed that both people were being impeded by their connection and were stagnating due to this “inappropriate attachment.” A “freeway” is a path without stop lights, one that is meant for continuous movement and flow, life energies. The “freeway” may also suggest the “free will” of the daughter who should be allowed to go on her way. This “imaginary” conversation with the mother seemed to be sufficient, for within a few weeks the client reported feeling a great deal better physically, and emotionally; she said her thought processes had begun to clear from the day of the session.

Whether the “attachment” that was broken was entirely in the mind of the daughter, or actually involved the mother as “post-departum” house guest, you can decide for yourself. Whichever it was, the dream guidance resolved the problem. As Jung once said, “Death ends a life, but not necessarily a relationship.”

Even if you’re speeding around town, frantically running late, your dog in the back seat is perfectly on time; centered in the Now.

I once thought “eternity” meant: Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. forever. Until a wise mentor suggested eternity was more likely a timeless state of presence or “now-consciousness.” Dreams are like our dog in the back seat: Dreams are always on time. Originating in the cosmic NOW, every dream is in perfect synch whenever it is examined. That’s because dreams come from the timeless side of the psyche where our personal unconscious meets the collective region of the invisible realm (or possibly just down the street from there; how precise can we be in such matters?).

I discovered long ago that dreams recorded weeks, years, even decades before we worked on them, synchronized with the issues of the moment and predicted upcoming events. “How?!” I wondered. One client worked on a dream from 12 years earlier that was perfectly in synch with the issues of her current life, and predicted synchronous encounters on the street and comments from books and television in the weeks following each segment we examined. In the middle of the several sessions allocated to this dream, she vacationed a month in Europe. On returning, the issues that arose on her trip were symbolized in the very next segment of the dream.

One evening in a dream group which invariably raced to sit on the luxurious couch, no one happened to sit there. In the dream we explored that night, one character kept asking “What’s wrong with the couch?” until we all realized–with a jolt–that the dream had anticipated that no one would sit on the couch for the first time in years. “How do they do that?” we wondered with awe.

In Sonny’s dream a character asks “What time is it?” and another character replies “It’s 7:38.” When we interpreted this dream in a 2-hour telephone dream group we discovered many important layers of meaning of “What time is it?” Like, what time of our life’s cycle are we in, and what is it time to do or be, and much more. In the middle of all this, Sonny exclaimed in amazement, “I’m looking at my clock and it’s 7:38 right now!! So being present in the Now was part of the dream’s magical lesson none of us can forget; but How does a dream from weeks earlier anticipate to the minute when we will arrive at that sentence?

In yesterday’s telephone dream group another illustration emerged. The dream read: “I’m very confident, articulate, relaxed and personable.” To which the dreamer said she used to be all those things in a former job role, but as an entrepreneur lacked and longed for those qualities. I reassured her these were real qualities of hers being experienced once again in the dream. And that to acquire them in an institutional role was a fine achievement, but to reclaim such mastery as an independent practitioner was a much greater challenge, one the dream was predicting would occur.

To clarify the hidden impact of job roles and contextual factors, I cited several psychology experiments, lapsing atypically into a mini-lecture mode from when I taught graduate school (before becoming independent myself). When done, I laughed and said, “Well, end of lecture, no quiz today,” and progressed to the very next sentence in the dream which read: “When I’m done with my presentation…”! I burst out laughing at the dream’s anticipation of my rare shift from discussion-facilitator to the “presentation” mode.

That inspired me to tell the group how I was originally trained by the dreams themselves using just such “magical” interactivity. When I would try to cover too much dream content in a session (lest clients think I was dragging things out) the dreams would include images like a driver stepping on the brakes and finally one day a Stop Sign appeared right where I was supposed to stop! “That’s the day I realized the dreams were communicating with me in real time,” I explained to the group.

The very next sentence in yesterday’s dream read: “Immediately I see Bradley cringe along with all the others, and he puts his hands up trying to stop me.” At which time I checked my watch and discovered we had just run out of time… so I obeyed this latest dreamy Stop Sign.

Juan Ponce de Leon who arrived with Columbus, never found the legendary “fountain of youth,” whose waters prevented aging. Currently, medicine is the geography in which that goal is still sought. Human beings always seek outside of themselves that which resides within: “I kept reaching around for you, but you were inside my hand.” (Rumi)

Inside everyone, as if stored in the “deep freeze” of the unconscious mind, is any potential we have failed to actualize in our waking lives. We are all, to some degree, “failure to thrive” adults. Dreams are one profound tool that access these untapped resources. Dream images birth into our awareness the talents, capacities and energies stored within us. One extraordinary case made this abundantly clear.

June S. began exploring her dreams at age 68, when she was markedly declining. Her early dreams excavated the interior forces active in the present and eventually addressed her earliest roots. Her childhood in the deserts of Utah was rugged. Her sister did not survive childhood… and many parts of June did not either! Various non-essential qualities and their attendant life-force simply did not emerge from the unconscious.

After several years of intensive dream work, June reported a dream that changed her life–and my own understanding of dreams: June is holding three babies and is feeling a radiant joy filling her heart as she cradles and loves and adores these three infants. In dream-like logic, they are wrapped in lettuce leaves.

“What does this glorious dream mean? she inquired.

I said I suspected these were three aspects of her own psyche which had not survived her first year and were only now–7 decades later–ready to be born!

“Why would they be wrapped in lettuce leaves? she asked.

“Probably, to see if you’re a vegetarian yet,” by which I meant, that this new energy is not to be consumed directly and applied to more of whatever projects the ego already intends. It is new life meant to grow on its own terms.

I had no idea what this remarkable dream foreshadowed, and I have never seen another case so dramatically clear, though this process is very common in dreams. It is why late bloomers benefit so much from the midwifery of dream interpretation.

Within a year of this dream June called to tell me she was having a bit of a “problem:” while her peers were growing visibly older by the month, she was growing visibly younger. And gaining more energy and more enthusiasm and was developing new interests she had never had. She made it clear she would be happy to cope with this new “problem” however long it continued!

I lost track of June for several years, but got occasional reports when she resumed dating (and affiliated activities she had assumed were long extinct). I remember her joking about how all the “middle-agers” would tire from dancing (she was taking lessons) and from partying (she was giving lessons) long before her energy ran down. Then she returned to school to study mystical and spiritual topics and writing and poetry and art.

Next I heard she had completed the 400 mile peace march across Russia! When she started her Sunday evening poetry salons I attended and was amazed that her energy and life force had continued to strengthen for years after the famous “3 babies” dream which she marked as the turning point in her transformation. It seemed that three separate one year old aspects of her psychic energy had been “averaged in” with her 70+ year old self, resulting in reverse aging. Too bad Ponce de Leon died seeking the fountain in Florida, when it was within, all along.

Virtually every cutting-edge lecture or performance I attended for years revealed June S. well ahead of me in line or already seated somewhere in the front row. I remember telling her at a Robert Bly lecture, the best thing I could do to further my spiritual education would be to steal her daytimer.

When I last saw June she was in her eighties and still so full of life and enthusiasm and playfulness, I could not believe this was the deteriorating 68 year old I had met, long ago. I now know that unlived potentials reside within every person. Whenever we fail to thrive, we store that life force, and if we do the work to reclaim it, we find ourselves as poet David Whyte says, “growing younger each day toward death.”

Western culture has little understanding of the profound origin of dreams and the invaluable guidance they offer. As a result, few people benefit from the most direct source of growth and healing that nature provides. Popular opinions–and even many otherwise capable scientists–suggest that dreams are trivial side-effects of the sleeping mind with nothing whatsoever to convey.

Everyone knows that no one can know what is going to happen before it happens. And, everyone is wrong. Dead wrong. Dreams come from the timeless side of our psyche, where past, present and future coexist, and they regularly foreshadow the future in two ways.

Predictive Dreams anticipate the trajectory of current events and picture the likely outcome; if we keep drinking, eventually we will deteriorate and a dream might depict us in that sad state. Such dreams portend a “probable future” precisely in order to prevent it from coming true.

Less frequent–but far more challenging to our view of reality–is the Prophetic Dream. While they do not seem aimed at prevention or correction, they certainly do imply an origin in greater knowledge than is available to the human mind. Some offer a strikingly precise and detailed account of things to come.

I have written of a prophetic dream which anticipated, to the minute, the death of Princess Diana and which changed the world-view of the young woman who dreamed it (Prophetic Dream of Actual Princess: Dreaming of Princess Diana).

There is a far more famous dream that foretold the shocking death of a national leader more than a century earlier. President Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own death not long before he was going to be assassinated. He reported to a friend that the dream had troubled him for days and he could not shake the melancholy it induced. It is as if he were allowed to grieve his own tragic demise in advance.

The extraordinary details are recorded in “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1885” (Ward Hill Lamon, 1911):

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered.

There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers ‘The President’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin!’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.

After President Lincoln’s assassination his casket was, in fact, put on a platform in the East room where soldiers were stationed to act as guards. Dreams are far from meaningless fantasy or random neurological discharge. They are direct communications from the source of being which guide us, grow us, enrich us, and on sad occasion, forewarn us of events destined to change the world.