April is Dream Awareness Month. From a hotline for dreamers to a dream incubation experiment to find answers to economic challenges, you'll find info on these and a special offer for PLW subscribers in this month's column. Enjoy!

APPROXIMATELY, A THIRD OF OUR LIVES are spent sleeping. Our sleeping time moves in 90-minute cycles with most dream activity happening in the latter hours. This is why we usually recall dreams in the morning, and it is a function of our biology and DNA programming as much as the mind's need to assert its purpose for being.

Sleeping performs two basic functions, both dependent upon the conscious mind being set aside. The first function is the revitalization of the mind and body. By removing conscious mind interference, the seven major chakras work unimpeded to balance the mind/body connections and synchronize wholistic thinking. The success of this re-energization plan determines how you think, feel, and operate the following day. This is why your mother always told you to get a good night's sleep.

Sleep also allows for subconsciously dominant time, opening the door to your subconscious mind's perspective of your day.

Consider this, how do you spend your waking hours? Concerned about your loved ones? Your career or schooling? The kid's college education? Day-to-day realities populate most of our waking thinking. Whether practical concerns like how to assist aging parents, or ethereal ones like how to parent old souls in young bodies, our conscious minds are magnets for learning.

When we sleep, we shut down the computer for a while. No more information is received, and no more thoughts are stimulated through the physical senses. Now, the inner mind can do its work. Part of that work is your subconscious mind communicating its point of view on how the outer you is running your life. This communication opportunity is the second function of sleeping.

We call the subconscious messages that come while we sleep "dreams".

Dreams focus our minds on what is important in life. When interpreted they reveal the state of our conscious awareness. They tell us about our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes, our successes and failings. Sometimes, as with the increasingly common flying dream, they pat us on the back, saying, "Well done!" Sometimes, as with nightmares, they slap us on the hand, cautioning, "Pay attention to what's happening here!"

Then there are the dreams we dream again, and again - and again! Why do some dreams reoccur? Does the inner self intend to repeat itself? The answer is, yes. When we dream the same dream time and again, you can liken this to an email that you resend. Most email correspondence is intentional and two-sided. You send an email to someone and they respond. When a response is not forthcoming, you may resend a message. You take the time to do this, because you have something important to communicate and you want to insure your recipient receives your message. A recurring dream is like an email that is sent and re-sent. The same message is pertinent and you are looking for a way to get that message to your intended recipient.

LESSON ONE
Reocurring dreams are messages
that have been relevant to our conscious state of awareness
in the past and once again hold something valuable for us to consider.

Sometimes these messages seem very personal to us, and sometimes they are commonplace. Have you ever dreamed of being naked in public? This happens often for Jim, a 67-year-old male from Illinois.

I frequently dream of being in public places either nude or without my pants. Sometimes I am at business conferences where others are in suit & ties and I have lost my shirt, my pants or both.

In the Universal Language of Mind, the dream language, nudity symbolizes an openness in the dreamer's attitudes. Each time Jim dreams of being naked, his inner self is commenting on his openness the previous day. Openness usually denotes honesty in how we express ourselves.

Since Jim appears naked in inappropriate dream-places, the message encourages him to review his day seeking a time when he may have told the truth at some expense. Perhaps he was "business-like" in dispensing facts to a small child with unfulfilling results. Maybe, he was the one feeling "open as a child" with others who expected a certain code of conduct or civility. An example of this might be blurting out a truth at a time and place that others deem inappropriate. The dreamer is the one to determine how the message applies to his life.

The reoccurring nature of Jim's naked-dreams offers another insight we can address. Openness and honesty are an important theme in this dreamer's life. If honesty is the best policy, his dreams are advising him on how to express it with intelligence, kindness and compassion. He need only respond through active reflection.

Many people dream of their childhood home. Generally, these dreams indicate the particular ways you received life during the ages you lived in that place.

A house in a dream represents the dreamer's mind. When the house is your parent's house and the one you inhabited between, say, birth and fourteen, then that dream-house indicates the formative ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that shaped your world-view. When that house appears in a dream, your subconscious mind is saying, "What you did today is related to the first 14 years of your life."

My recurring dream is about the house I grew up in. The side door to the house is sometimes unlocked, sometimes wide open, sometimes ajar, and in last night's dream, it was barricaded closed. What does that mean?
- Pat, female

When Pat dreams about "the house I grew up in", her inner self is drawing a connection between what happened the day before the dream and the consciousness she experienced at a younger time in her life - the years she lived in that house. This indicates that she is bringing beliefs from that time period in her life into the present. This could be beneficial when a belief like "Things always turn out" meets the present reality of her boss downsizing the company at her expense. This could be detrimental when a belief like "Things never turn out" meets that same situation. The core beliefs we hold find their root in our early years. How these beliefs surface and impinge upon our present reality is where life-learning occurs. One of the ways our inner self enlightens us about these beliefs is through images of our childhood homes.

Pat's repetitive dream includes a specific and telling image: the side door to the house. This indicates a way she can move in and out of these beliefs when she desires. The side door symbolizes an alternative way of thinking about what she learned as a child that is usually open to her. In this dream, however, the side door is closed and barricaded. Pat's inner self is saying, "Your normal way of dealing with these beliefs didn't work today." By reviewing her day with this in mind, Pat is assured of a new way of seeing how she uses her mind.

This dream is both reoccurring and repetitive. The reoccurring element is the childhood home; the repetitive element is the side door. Repetitive dreams can evolve. They are not always the same. Reoccurring dreams, however, present the same people in the same situations. They do as their name suggests, they reoccur. Each time the dreamer recalls the reoccurring dream, the same message is applicable in his life.

I first read the Bhagavad Gita when I was 22. Over the past 30 years, I have read it a dozen times. The scene, theme and characters of the book have remained the same with each reading. I am the one who changes. I know this because I remember how I first understood the Gita. I remember the first time I taught the text, and the second time. My experience of the Gita is both reoccurring and repetitive.

LESSON TWO
Anytime we have recurring elements in our dreams,
we are being stimulated to look at ourselves anew.

Are we really the same person who lived in that childhood home? This is the kind of question the reoccurring dream asks us to answer.

Sometimes parts of our dream reoccur. We may dream of a particular room again and again. Our boss may be featured in many of our dreams, sometimes as a dream-walk on. A pair of boots may show up on other feet as well as our own. In each case, the dream symbol is conveying specific information about your state of awareness.

Dream-rooms will indicate a particular activity in mind. When the bathroom is repeatedly featured in your dreams, this says you are invested in purifying your thoughts and actions, releasing the old and caring for the new.

Dream-bosses represent the superconscious mind, the part of Self closest to the Source of our being. When your boss enters your dreams, it is your inner authority that is being highlighted in some way.

Dream-boots symbolize how we are expressing our spiritual foundation. Whether protecting what we know, hiding it, or declaring it, dream-boots will always serve to bring the dreamer's attention to what exists underneath.

LESSON THREE
When people, places, or things appear often in our dreams,
they indicate where our attention is focused and quite often
are karmic indicators of the soul learning that is the mission for our life.

Anna dreamed about a coworker at least once a week over a six-month period. This was a man she found difficult and unreasonable. It seemed no matter what she did, she could not reach a happy medium with this man. Ultimately, he was the reason she quit her job. At this point her dreams about the man began.

"I started studying with the School of Metaphysics four months after I quit my old job," Anna said. "At first I had a hard time accepting that this man could be an aspect of myself. He had grown to be a thorn in my side. I'd left my job to get away from him, and here he was creeping into my dreams. It was a nightmare, even though the dreams themselves were never particularly scary."

The difference for Anna came when she learned a mental exercise for forgiveness at SOM. "Eventually I could see the connection between something in my own thinking and this man showing up in my dreams. It took a while because I didn't see myself as saying or doing what I remembered him saying and doing. The connection was not so tit-for-tat.

"The first time I completed the forgiveness exercise, the man died in my dream. I knew immediately what he symbolized. I had been blaming him in my head for being the reason I'd quit a job I liked. My attitude of blame kept me from forgiveness. I was being unreasonable and it was making my life difficult. Admitting this set me free which was represented in my dream as the man dying."

Kay, a happily married woman from Texas, had a similar dream experience, this one involving her ex-fiance.

I keep having dreams about my ex-fiance. We broke up in January 1995 & I was married to someone else by July of the same year. I am still married to the same man (happily), & we have 2 kids, mortgage, the normal married stuff, very happy & normal.

For the past 13 years, I have these dreams that my old fiance somehow just shows up wherever I am & he always wants me to go somewhere with him...he tries to get me to get back together with him. There will be days that I don't think about him at all during the day (the longest I think has been a week) & then dream about him that night out of the blue.

I think about him most days because I keep having these dreams about him. I would like to stop these dreams so I can enjoy my family without thoughts of my ex. I have no desire to be with the ex at all. I am planning on growing old with my current husband.
- Kay, female, 34

The element that makes this a reoccurring dream is Kay's ex-fiance. Everything else in the dream appears to be independent. Similar to the woman dreaming of her childhood home, Kay dreams of a man from her past. Just as the childhood home dreams symbolize beliefs and ideas the dreamer held in the early days of her life, so Kay's dreams of a man she was to marry symbolize a way she once created and fulfilled her desires.

These ways are no longer a reality in Kay's waking life. As she writes, she has moved on to another relationship and is making a life with her husband and children that she intends to enjoy for years to come. So why does this person Kay once thought about marrying intrude in her dreams? Although she has moved on in her waking state, there is a part of her that still wants to move through life in the way symbolized by this other man. A key here is how Kay refers to this man. He is not "the man I once thought about marrying." He is "my ex-fiance who I broke up with in 1995."

The possessiveness shows in the language Kay uses to describe her relationship with this man. She says there are days she doesn't think about him, that she has even gone a week without thinking about him. When this man appears in Kay's dreams, he is there as a symbol to reflect where her attention has been - on the past and old ways of making things happen. This is why he is a recurring symbol in her dreams.

The key to making these dreams stop lies in the dreamer's ability to identify what this male represents to her. He symbolizes a subconscious aspect of herself, so he is a part of her inner self that she sees as wanting to be in her life. When she identifies the quality he represents - be it adventurous, kind, rebellious, or charismatic - she will gain insight into what she feels is missing in her life. As she works to add this element in her waking life, the dreams will change for she will be inviting a different message from her subconscious mind.

LESSON FOUR
To stop a repetitive dream,
change the consciousness being highlighted in that dream.

Consider the following dream featuring tornados as the recurring element.

I had dream of two tornados coming and they picked up our house while we were in the basement. Then it was over and then two more was come after or house. We lived out in the country and then the people that were in my dream were my kids and one of my uncles and they were sick. My dream recurs but in different way and different people but there are always tornados and I always see them when they're coming and then when they are fading away.
- Susan, female

Tornados symbolize inner turmoil and confusion. These dreams say the dreamer is aware that she experiences inner conflict when she needs to make a choice. Making decisions can be a tumultuous ordeal, particularly when she wants to remain unconscious of the need. When that occurs, aspects of herself bear the responsibility. These dreams encourage the dreamer to wake up and realize she is the cause for the turmoil.

When Susan learned the meaning in her dream, she had difficulty accepting herself as cause. She thought others were disharmonious or uncooperative, and that what she thought didn't matter. What she discovered was a tendency to go along with others because she did not want trouble. She began to realize that most of her effort became failed attempts at peacekeeping. Most of the time Susan could see trouble coming and didn't have a clue what to do about it, so she wouldn't assert herself. She just went along with others, until the "storm" literally blew over.

As Susan studied these dreams, she became more attentive to what had happened the day before she had them. She began to shift her thinking from avoiding trouble to expressing her preference. She gave up being passive, and began asserting what she wanted. The change sometimes shocked those who were used to Susan just going along with their ideas, yet this momentary friction was easy for Susan to handle when compared to what she once put herself through.

This self-initiative was the shift in consciousness Susan needed to make. She had received her subconscious mind's point. The tornado dreams ended and have not returned.

Any discussion of reoccurring dreams must include some variation of this one.

The past few months or so I have been having a recurring dream that I go back to school to continue my education. I sign up for all my classes but on the first day of class, I learn that courses that were taken previously no longer count and I must retake them. Sometimes I dream this about high school and some times I dream this about college. All of the dreams require retaking classes that are no longer valid and extend my time to continue my education to a higher level.
- Female, 43, FL

This dream scenario ranks among the top five common dreams studied over the past forty years. The "going back to school dreams" parallel the rise of higher education in society during that time. College became an expected level of education for the middle class as well as the upper class, and people of all ages began earning degrees. It has become common for people to return to school.

This particular dream-plot is specific and it is threefold.

1. In almost all cases, the dreamer is "going back to school".
2. Ignorance about classes to attend is an issue in the dream. It may appear as not being able to find the class the dreamer is supposed to attend. It may be a time problem centering on the dreamer being late. At other times, the dreamer may need to retake classes, like the woman in this dream.
3. The dream involves being tested, usually a test that the dreamer neither knew about nor is prepared for. This element appears in this dream in the references to the courses "counting" and being "no longer valid".

These dreams concern the way we are learning in the schoolroom of life. They tell us it is time to complete experiences we left in limbo some time ago. At the earlier time, we didn't know enough to understand the experiences, now we do, but we haven't been applying ourselves. These dreams encourage us to return to the purpose of our lives, which is spiritual learning and growth. Knowing how to learn from everyday life empowers us to be open to the kind of self-evaluation that encourages our best.

LESSON FIVE
Your inner subconscious mind always encourages
soul growth and spiritual progression.

With conscious understanding of our dreams comes appreciation for the level of dedication and perseverance our inner self demonstrates. The subconscious mind is willing to tell the conscious mind the same message, again and again, and again. Whatever is necessary, it will do. That's a remarkable asset in these changing times. Reoccurring dreams help us identify the areas where personal change will have the greatest impact - for soul growth and spiritual progression."

A SPECIAL NOTE for April
Join us as we endeavor to
Fix the Economy Without Getting Out Of Bed

Think there have to be answers to the current economic woes? Join us as we dream incubate answers to the economy.

The list of people who have used their dreams for invention, direction, and resolution is long. Dream incubation, using your dreams to solve problems and answer questions, has been practiced for centuries. Men and women have turned to their dreams for answers. From Rene Descartes' discovery of Analytical Geometry to the last movements of George Frederic Handel's Messiah to Mohandas K. Gandhi's dream of hartals to Mendeleyev's dream of the Periodic Table of Elements, dreams have shaped our destiny. We expect they will do so again.

In a study at Harvard Medical School conducted in the 1990s, researchers discovered that students who focused on a problem before going to sleep reported dreams that addressed that problem. One-third of those dreams actually offered a solution for the dreamer's problem. We anticipate that history will repeat itself as dreamers focus on the current economic problems during the current GLOBAL LUCID DREAMING EXPERIMENT (GLiDE) April 24th through the 26th. You can register to participate in this experiment at www.dreamschool.org.

Previous studies demonstrate that the power of dreams goes beyond the physical limitations of the waking consciousness. As we learned years ago at Harvard, dreamers will come up with solutions, mostly personal. The Harvard studies taught us that.

As dreamers respond we anticipate some common elements or patterns will surface. There may well be a few truly outstanding dream answers worthy of global impact. We look forward to sharing what we discover with you here at Planetary LightWorker and at dreamschool.org.

We encourage your participation. Take a moment now. Go to dreamschool, complete the simple demographic questionnaire (you'll find the link on the first webpage), and you'll look for your instructions to arrive via email around April 15th. Then, spread the word! The more people who are involved in expecting answers, the more we are exponentially destined to receive them.

Until next month, may your dreams be blessed and your days be prosperous in what is most important to you.

THIS MONTH ONLY: Want to talk to an expert about a dream? Call the National Dream Hotline®, the annual weekend of sharing dream research sponsored by the School of Metaphysics, the last weekend of this month. The Hotline opens at 6 pm Friday, April 24th and runs through to midnight Sunday, April 26th. Just call 417.345.8411 to talk to dreamologists and researchers at the College of Metaphysics. Mention that you are PLW Subscriber and we'll send you a copy of Every Dream is about the Dreamer.

© 2009, Dr. Barbara Condron

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Barbara Condron is pioneering global dream awareness through heading the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiments at the College of Metaphysics in the Midwestern U.S. The experiments seek to collect the largest body of experiential knowledge to date concerning specifically, lucid dreaming, and to analyze the data making it widely known. She has been teaching people how to understand and interpret their dreams since 1975. Her books include The Dreamer’s Dictionary and Every Dream is about the Dreamer. She also created the documentary “Ten Powers of Dreaming”, a study of dreams that have changed the course of history. Barbara is a frequent guest on radio/tv and has been interviewed by newspapers from Atlanta to Alaska to Tokyo.