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THE CYCLE OF DREAMS

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Most of us consider the waking world concrete and predictable, and dreams mere fantasies that dissipate the moment we awaken. Yet the waking world is filled with surrealistic images and unpredictable events that can see m the stuff of dreams. Dreams, meanwhile, represent the innermost truth about our unconscious thoughts on reality. In that sense, they represent a level of perception that is "more real than real." By taking time to grasp the meaning of our dreams, we may come to understand with far more depth our relationships with others and the world.

Just as we experience the people, events, and objects around us, we also incorporate the feelings, images, and symbols they provide into nightly dream encounters. Many other people incorporate those same individuals, events, and objects into their own dreams. If you find yourself dreaming about someone you know, chances are that person also dreams about you.

Dreams may also inspire us to take tangible action in the waking world. Many buildings, products, and artifacts are doubtless inspired by images their creators first experienced while dreaming. Perhaps the spontaneous creativity of their sleeping imagination revealed to them the solution to a problem they were grappling with at an unconscious level. Or a fleeting image from a half-remembered dream became the conscious inspiration for creation.

Much of what you experience as waking reality, including everything from scientific breakthroughs to musical compositions may, at some level, represent a conscious expression of images "borrowed" from your dreams and those of others. Once those images are materially expressed, they may once again be "borrowed" by the sleeping unconscious, thereby taking on another in carnation within the realm of dreams. That new dream experience may, in turn, inspire any of us to take further creative action, thereby continuing a creative cycle that evolves and changes within each succeeding dream and waking manifestation.

Proceed to the