Spirit Contact & Dreams (lo-res)

Who knows what dreams may come?

Spirit Contact & Dreams

The season of sleep offers the best opportunity
for the Spirit of God which lives within each of us
to make contact with the mortal mind.
And our dream life is sometimes inspired by this contact.

But most of our fantastic and varied dreaming
arises from the mortal mind.
Interpretation of dreams is therefore dicey,
and the best rule of thumb would be to assume
that a dream is "just a dream."
Perhaps it can be psychotherapeutic
sometimes to recall or even to analyze a dream,
but then again sometimes it may be best
to just let such mental regurgitations
of our daily thoughts and experiences pass unheeded
like so much psychic psewage.
2

Yet inasmuch as a dream may sometimes be
the result of spiritual contact,
therefore a dream may offer some insight
into the Spirit's message,
even though the dream itself may be
essentially meaningless and valueless.
3

Why is the season of sleep the best time
for one's Spirit to make contact with one's mind?

To make contact during consciousness,
most try to find quiet; peaceful sights and sounds;
body at rest or at least unexcited,
voices hushed and stilled; thought subdued.
4
That certainly describes restful sleep.

Until one is able to train one's mind
in the habits of deep meditation,
the time of sleep reasonably would seem to offer to the Spirit
one's mind at its most pliable.
5

If true inSpiration, so to speak, appeals
to the evaluating higher mind functions,
rather than to the reactive lower mind mechanisms,
then one might suppose
that the best sleep-period for Spirit contact
is not during the deathlike deep-sleep cycles
but during the semi-aware light-sleep times.
These are the periods characterized by dreaming,
so-called Rapid-Eye-Movement sleep.
6

However, a dream can be considered a kind of mental noise
of the type we eschew for meditative states.
Dreams are not usually the result of,
but may be instigated by, the Spirit's work.
7

As our thought-paths are adjusted
by the Spirit's subtle manipulations,
the brain might seize upon the adjustments as seeds for dreams,
much like when we prod the brain with an electrical stimulus
and trigger vivid memories and experiences.
8

Therefore it would seem that the optimum time
for the Spirit's contact with one's mind
would be during that narrow window of opportunity
when one is just entering light sleep
but before the brain begins babbling a dream.

If this is the case, it is easy to imagine
that the Spirit really has only the briefest of time
in which to work.

9 10
Then the cascade of imaginary dream-noise begins
and the Spirit's window of opportunity begins to close.
If all of this supposition is correct,
then the best chance for interpreting dreams
in order to determine whatever message the Spirit may have for one
does not lie in analyzing the content of dreams,
essentially idle mental babble.

11
Instead, one must leap back up the tumultuous waterfall of dream-thought
to find the source of the dream.

The unusual or exciting aspects of the dream
are those which we usually recall
and wake up exclaiming about.
But if we try to recall how the dream started,
we may find ourselves going back
into vaguer and more generalized events.

We might presume that the Spirit's message
is often one which is not easily translated
into consciously-understood specifics.
The Spirit seeks to reinforce
those value-choices we have made when conscious
and therefore for most of us
the Spirit rarely speaks directly or in familiar speech-type patterns.
This would be true as much for the dream-inspiring work
as for conscious contact.
12
So, even if we were able to travel back in memory
to the beginnings of a dream
even then we might not find
that the still small voice within is saying
anything we are prepared to understand.
13
Being verbal creatures, we tend to expect
the answer to our prayers to be verbalized,
especially true for those involved in
intellectualized religious philosophizing.
14

By and large,
we are apt to be disappointed in this.
15

But it just might be that, with some practice,
one could learn to ignore the bulk of dreams
and examine their inspiring origin in the mind.
And in so doing,
one may find that the originating ideational impulse
is indeed accessible to and interpretable by
the conscious and reasoning intellect.
16
And it is in just this way that the dream
may offer some insight into the Spirit's message;
even, Spirit willing, a clear answer
to our spiritual questionings.
As ever, it is best not to presume too strongly
that our conclusions are correct in such endeavors.
17
Playing it safe means
making heavy use of the qualifier "maybe"
when attempting to divine the Will for oneself,
rather than risking the possibility of attributing to the Spirit
that which is merely one's own idea,
and taking the value of any such analysis or interpretation
(indeed any teaching)
on its own merits,
weighed in the scales of experience and wisdom
and under the probing searchlight
of the Spirit of Truth.
My ideas on the Spirit's work in the mind
during sleep and otherwise
are based on my reading of Paper 110^,
"Relation of Adjusters to Individual Mortals"
specifically (especially Section 5^),
and other passages of The Urantia Book generally,
which should be understood as the background for this article.
My conclusions, interpretations, and representations
are not necessarily those of the book's authors,
of its publisher and sometime copyright holder
the Urantia Foundation,^
or anybody else.
19
Sweet Dreams!
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