Sweet dreams? Not always!

The time we spend asleep should all be restful. For the sake of those with whom we share our beds, we should lie still and make as little noise as possible. For our own sakes, we should be able to wake feeling refreshed. Unfortunately, the allocated time for sleeping can be filled with movement, noise and disturbed sleep. The main classification of sleep disorders involving movement and behavior is called parasomnia. It comes into play as partial awakening as you slip into and out of REM sleep, or just as you are falling asleep or slowly waking up. As to movement, some sleepers regularly move their arms and legs around. In most cases, this will be determined, but relatively gentle. In a few cases, the movements can be quite violent. Then there is sleepwalking. This affects children as they approach their teens and about 5% of adults at various times during their life. In most cases, people simply move around the home and then return to bed. But a few go through household routines involving eating or, in rare cases, driving. Obviously, at such times, the sleepers may be a danger to themselves in picking entirely unsuitable things to eat, or in attempting to control a vehicle while semiconscious. One of the more interesting of the parasomnias is the so-called sleep or night terrors. Everyone dreams. This is marked by rapid eye movement (REM). In most cases, we have no memory of the dreams. It's only if the dreams come while we are beginning to approach consciousness that we can understand and remember the content of the dream. Most of the time, we have sweet dreams with only the occasional nightmare. However, in a small number of people (estimated to affect about 2% of the adult population at some point during their lives), dreams turn into physical panic. This is not the usual REM dream. This is a moment of complete panic as the dreamer attempts to wake. He or she may move convulsively, shout in fear, and perhaps sit up. Then, he or she will turn over and return to full sleep. There's usually no memory of this when waking naturally in the morning. This disorder most often affects people who have recently been through a traumatic experience and they will have terror attacks most nights unless they go through therapy to come to terms with the psychological causes of the repeated fear. In such people, the use of sleeping pills like ambien is not recommended. Sleeping pills are a highly effective way of ensuring people get to sleep or stay asleep during the night. But they are not a form of psychotherapy. If someone is suffering from an anxiety or stress disorder, taking ambien may actually make the problems worse. There are an increasing number of instances where people on sleeping pills are sleepwalking. These pills do not ensure that people remain inactive during their sleep. For night terrors, the only drugs likely to be effective are for the control of anxiety disorders or antidepressants. This article should reinforce the idea that you should always get a doctor to diagnose your condition and advise on the most appropriate treatment. You should not self-medicate with ambien just because you have a sleep disorder

Meaning Of Color Dreams

Dreams in colors not only set the mood in a dream but actually determines the meaning and outcome of the dream. Dreams in color based on the intensity of the colors which affect the meanings of dreams pose no threat to you and are generally sent from God or are borne out of our own wants and desires.


How Colors Affect Your Dreams

Black, the color black represents Satan, demons, evil spirits, dark influences, illusion, phony agreements, promises to be broken, false words of assurance, deception, lies, betrayal and truth mixed with lies. This is magnified if there is any gray in the dream, or when you see black or shadowy images in the dream.

Black & White Dreams are usually demonic in nature and represent total illusion, camouflage, deception, treachery, hidden agenda, lies, danger, a warning of attacks, especially if there is anything or anyone in the dream gray, pale, hazy or there are shadows in the dream. This type of dream can be a warning to you to be careful whom you trust or place your confidence in the natural. Dreams that are black-and-white, have black in them or images or shadows of black and gray are usually demonic dreams leaving you with a feeling of danger, fear and the unknown.

Despite the dream appearing to be good and you're thinking it's a dream sent to you from God, you must be very cautious. To see the color black in a dream represents an illusion counterfeit of something good, however to confuse you, the dream will have small morsels of truth interspersed heavily with lies, giving you an illusion of truthfulness, really meant only to deceive you.

The only time you should consider a black-and-white dream would be if the dream contains some light within the dream and the black-and-white colors are vividly clear and easy to see. Before you take anything serious about what you see in a dream with the colors black or dark shadows, you should go to God, pray and ask for in prayer for the counsel of the Spirit of God that you not deceived.

Pastel colors: Faded or washed-out colors in dreams represent illusion, camouflage, secrets, deception, lies and a hidden agenda.

Medium intensity colors represent truth, veracity, honesty, sincerity, accuracy and messenger bringing help or good news. Deeper hued and strong colors represent determination, strength, power, authority, steadfastness, strong will, the ability to see a project or idea through to its completion. Deeper hues of colors also represent integrity, honor, reliability and a person who is forthright.

Bright colors represent insight, information, knowledge, wisdom, answers solutions and hope. Vivid colors represent God working with you through situations, problems and obstacles for good in your life. Illuminated, glowing colors: Radiant colors represent God intervening in your life through answers to prayers, healings, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Illuminated colors also represent instruction from God and a way made clear.

Blue - Medium Blue - Light Blue represents God, peace, harmony, security, tranquility, wisdom, purity, revelation and a spiritual breakthrough. The color blue when not mixed with any other color also represents blessings in your family, health and job. In some cases, a deep royal blue in a dream represents a wonder.

Light Blue - Dark Blue represents a new beginning or phenomenal breakthrough in your career, family, marriage or relationships. Light blue-dark blues also represents the loving sacrifices in your devotion, caring and compassionate nature you willingly display toward family and friends. If in the dream the blue is a deep royal blue represents wisdom, purity, revelations of information, good news and a breakthrough you're about to receive. The breakthrough most likely involves your family, health or job.

Light blue represents bondage, illusion, sin, to be deceived or to be deceitful toward others. If in a dream you destroy, cover or deface any blue object represents a rebellion side, pride, disorderly events, thinking and actions, a disbelieving nature in your heart with your refusal to see the truth when God reveals solutions to you concerning a problem you're experiencing, especially when the solutions involves a friend, mate or a family member.

To wear blue clothing or a blue covering in your dream or to dream you are under a blue sky or in a blue room represents a new beginning, peace, harmony, tranquility and security. Under a blue sky or wearing blue clothing also represents a secret or information you need will be forthcoming. The symbolic meaning of the color blue in a dream depends on what is blue in the dream and how dark the blue is.

Dark or medium blue represents the love, unyielding devotion, caring involvement, compassionate personal sacrifices you readily demonstrate towards family and friends. When the blue in the dream is a deep blue represents a pure heart, wisdom gained to apply revelatory insights of dream messages, good news and a breakthrough you're about to receive from God. The breakthrough invariably relates to your family, health or job. In special cases, a deep blue in a dream, especially a dark blue stone or gem in a dream represents a miracle you've prayed deeply for.

Turning Ideas, Goals, and Dreams Into Reality

The best way to make a goal or idea materialize is to learn how to make it persist. Have you ever been sidetracked from a good idea, a meaningful goal, or your dream because you did not quite know how to make it materialize? The ability to make your ideas or dreams a reality is not only a key factor of success, it is also an indispensable asset to achieving happiness, or to one's ability to recover quickly from unexpected setbacks. It takes a tremendous amount of mental fortitude, realistic thinking, and creative problem solving to be able to achieve the success and happiness one desires out of life. These are just some of the conditions and actions that it takes, in order to have an idea materialize, or make a dream come true. Persistence is not just the ability to keep on keeping on; it is also the very essence of making ideas and dreams a reality.

Nothing can exist, survive, or last unless it can also persist. With that being said, how do you make an idea persist, until it materializes? How do you maintain your motivation and drive in the face of challenges? Most importantly, how can you free yourself from the elasticity of recurring problems, so that you can move forward with less effort or stress - and with greater effectiveness? The key here is to know and fully understand what the elements of persistence are, and use them to take effective actions that will get you results. No solution is useful to anyone unless they know about it and feel certain they can use it to accomplish the results they desire. Allow me to introduce the book and workbook Secrets of the Art of Persistence - solutions for turning your ideas and dreams into reality.

Sweet dreams are made of geomagnetic activity

Looking for an explanation for recurring nightmares of leaving the house without your trousers on or losing your teeth? New research suggests you can blame the Earth's magnetic field, rather than a repressed childhood.

Darren Lipnicki, a psychologist formerly at the Center for Space Medicine in Berlin, Germany, found a correlation between the bizarreness of his dreams, recorded over eight years, and extremes in local geomagnetic activity.

Other studies have tied low geomagnetic activity to increases in the production of the melatonin, a potent hormone that helps set the body's circadian clock. So, based on anecdotal evidence that melatonin supplements used as a sleeping aid can cause off-kilter dreams, Lipnicki wondered whether local magnetic fields could induce the same effects.
Bizarreness barometer

Between 1990 and 1997, he kept meticulous records of his nightly reveries, amassing a total 2387 written accounts during his teenage years. "I always wanted to do science with them," he says.

For the study, he devised a five-point scoring system to rate the bizarreness of these dreams. On the low end are dreams completely representative of reality – "I am sitting at a table doing some maths or physics homework," for instance.

Dreams that scored a three could happen, but seemed unlikely. For example: "A friend is in the backyard of my house, building a wooden platform atop of 7-foot high stilts."

The most bizarre dreams that Lipnicki recorded had little or no connection with reality: "I was stranded on a foreign coastline with a monkey that spoke English and a woman that suddenly became small, almost doll-sized. Then I was at home."
Dream result

Lipnicki looked up daily geomagnetic activity in Perth, Australia – his home at the time. A scale called the k-index quantifies local geomagnetic activity, and he included only days that scored on the extremes of this index. This whittled his dream log down to 66 days of low geomagnetic activity and 70 days of high activity.

Using these figures, Lipnicki uncovered a statistical correlation between dream bizarreness and geomagnetic activity, with freakier dreams occurring on days with the least geomagnetic activity.

Of course, this correlation doesn't prove that the Earth's magnetic activity determines whether we dream of a mundane day at the park or something more like an LSD trip. But a larger and better controlled study may be worth pursuing, Lipnicki says. "At this stage, it's just putting the idea out there."

Can Our Dreams Predict the Future?

Question: I've had dreams that came true. Example: I ride a motorcycle. I dreamt that I saw a sign that said 10 mph curve. Two weeks later I went through that curve I dreamt about. The reason the dream is important to me is because I was riding too fast to make the curve. I remembered the sign before the curve and did a hard braking job and just made the turn. It took me 30 minutes to recover from the experience. I don't always have dreams that are like that one, but I do have dreams that come true. My question is "What does dreaming have to do with what we are doing at any point in time?"

Trying to determine which dreams are about the future and which ones are not can make you pull your hair out in frustration! Stanley Krippner, who devoted much of his carrier to paranormal dreams wrote a book about it aptly called Song Of The Siren.

He feels that there is a great potential in the dream and psychic ability, but also finds the search quite elusive. His teacher and co-researcher for over a decade, Montague Ullman, agrees and his book Dream Telepathy is well worth reading for anyone interested.

Carl Jung was also interested in psi phenomena but came to a different conclusion about dreams that speaks to your question about what dreaming is doing at any point in time. He felt that dreams predict the future in a more general sense -- warning us when an attitude has gotten too far out of hand.

Thus the dream will play out variations of what will happen if the attitude is not changed. That a particular occurrence or event happens is more the natural outcome of the attitude at play rather than a seeing into the future in the sense we normally call precognitive.

This seems to fit with newer theories about dreams being a place of rehearsal. In a sense, we are rehearsing the future and some of these plays are going to be accurate.

To test yourself, Linda Magallon suggests we create a dream journal and be very careful about dating each dream. This way when something does occur, we can go back and have an objective record, at least for ourselves.

All of a sudden I can recall dreams... why?

Question: I very seldom have dream recall. My brother has been in a non responsive coma since July 2nd. I have had no dreams that I recall until 2 weeks before Xmas. Now I've had three that I recall. All having to do with him walking normally, or singing -- got any ideas about why I should suddenly be recalling these now?

It is very difficult to feel helpless, and even more frightening and frustrating when those we love have problems beyond our control. Though I wish that dreams could tell us about future outcomes in these matters, this path is very tricky and elusive. While only the dreamer can be the final authority on the meaning of his or her dream, we can talk about meanings in general.

If this were my dream.... In my dream there are themes of hope and recovery. It's not clear to me if this is something attached to future reality or giving me hope in the present, but it calls me to focus on the relationship I had with my brother, the everyday aspects of walking and singing, of generally being together. I might even look up friends of my brother, extending the metaphor of finding ways of being with him.