WHY DO WE DREAM?
DO 1838
3/8/84
1. I WAS THINKING AWHILE AGO--sort of wondering like I sometimes do, not really asking the Lord--I was wondering why I have so many of these odd dreams that I can only vaguely remember that seem to be virtually meaningless & are definitely not message dreams. They're not revelations or anything, but they're sort of like story dreams, they just go on & on & keep my mind busy. They say you can dream nearly all night even though you're sleeping, & the funniest thing came to me! It's funny I never thought about it before.
2. YOUR IMMORTAL SPIRIT DOESN'T NEED SLEEP! While your physical body is having to sleep or rest, your spirit needs to keep busy doing something, so the Lord lets it travel & have all kinds of experiences. It's learning even in your sleep, travelling & experiencing, so that while your body sleeps your eternal spirit is very busy doing things & learning things, even making decisions & choices!
3. EVEN THOUGH THE DREAMS MAY NOT ALWAYS SEEM TO HAVE ANY RELATION TO YOUR PHYSICAL LIFE OR YOUR PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE, THEY'RE DEFINITELY SPIRIT TRIPS, lots of times back into your history, your early life. You're sort of scouting around exploring the past & sometimes the future. But you're busy actually learning & travelling & exploring & having experiences that are edifying your spirit while your body's asleep. Isn't that amazing?
4. YOUR SPIRIT IS ALREADY LIVING IN THE SPIRIT WORLD! Your spirit is already really a part of that World, it is spirit & it is spiritual. So you're more conscious of that World in your sleep. When your body's asleep, you spirit is free to learn & wander about & explore, experience, see & decide & have all kinds of amazing experiences!
5. ALTHOUGH YOUR PHYSICAL CONSCIOUS MIND MAY NOT GRASP THE MEANING OF ALL THOSE EXPERIENCES, YOUR SPIRIT IS LEARNING, SO THAT IT'S NOT WITHOUT MEANING. Those spiritual experiences & dream trips in your sleep are actually edifying your spirit & keeping it busy learning & experiencing & making decisions, learning lessons while your body's asleep, because your spirit doesn't need sleep.
6. BUT YOU SOMETIMES WONDER ABOUT THESE FUNNY DREAMS YOU HAVE THAT DON'T SEEM TO HAVE ANY MEANING OR YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT RELATIONSHIP THEY HAVE TO THIS LIFE. Well, they may have no relationship to your physical life, although sometimes they do, & often you're actually making decisions, which is a part of the learning process, learning how to make decisions. The Lord's testing you in your sleep, He's putting your spirit through experiences & lessons & learning, & also testing & trying you & giving you examinations & tests just like school. He's keeping your spirit very busy & it's getting an education while your body is sleeping.
7. I THINK THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE NIGHTMARES, YOUR SPIRIT IS ACTUALLY BATTLING SPIRITUAL FORCES! While your body's asleep the Lord allows that to see what you'll do or how strong you are & what effect it will have on you & whether you'll make the right decision or not, if you'll really call on Him for help even when your spirit is attacked by evil spirits in your sleep. So it's all a part of your spiritual experience which continues in your sleep.
8. I THINK THAT'S QUITE A REVELATION--WHY WE DREAM! That's a good title! (Maria: Well, why aren't some people conscious at all of their dreams or their nightmares? I almost never remember dreams & I never have nightmares.) It would probably wear you out & probably wear out your conscious or physical mind. You'd become weary & faint in your mind if you remembered them all. (Heb.12:3) It's sort of like how He blocks out babies' memories of their pre-existence in Heaven so that they don't have to worry about it. It won't make them feel so bad about being in this World if they don't remember how wonderful it was in Heaven--Paradise lost! (Maria: Maybe some people are just less sensitive than others & it doesn't punch through or something?)
9. I THINK THE LESS SPIRITUAL ARE LESS SENSITIVE TO REMEMBERING THOSE DREAMS & EXPERIENCES, you know that's true, because some people do & some people don't. Maybe some people just have lazy spirits. Maybe the Lord knows you can't stand to remember them, that it would be too tiring on you, on your physical mind. Your physical mind is a part of your physical body. In a sense it's sort of a part of that union of your body & spirit.
10. SO PRAISE THE LORD, THAT'S WHAT CAME TO ME WHEN I WAS WONDERING WHY WE HAVE DREAMS THAT SEEM TO HAVE NO MESSAGES OR ANY PARTICULAR SIGNIFICANCE OR MEANING, & YET WE REMEMBER THEM OR AT LEAST PARTS OF THEM. You probably don't realise what significance or meaning they have, which is edifying your spirit even though you don't grasp it with your conscious mind.--Just like Paul said about praying in the spirit & in tongues, your spirit is edified (1Cor.14:4), but what does this mean? It means your spirit is literally being educated & inspired!
11. YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND, YOUR PHYSICAL BRAIN IS NOT ALWAYS ENTIRELY AWARE OF YOUR DREAMS, but sometimes you catch fleeting glimpses of those spiritual experiences with your carnal mind, as the Scripture calls it, & you remember them. They're retained in your memory cells just long enough that when you wake up you still remember scenes & fleeting glimpses of what your spirit was experiencing. It's almost like seeing a ghost, it just appears & then suddenly vanishes, like faint memories of the past that you recall to mind.
12. THE LORD'S BEING MERCIFUL TO US IN THAT WE'RE MOSTLY JUST CONSCIOUS OF THE PRESENT. We've got enough problems today to take care of without vividly reliving experiences of the past or even trips into the future. So the Lord is good to us by helping us forget the past & not to know too much about the future, except for certain people who need to know to tell others. So thank the Lord for it. Thank the Lord for a memory that forgets, & that even forgets dreams.
13. (MARIA: WE KNOW PRETTY MUCH BY SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION THAT EVERYBODY DREAMS, but mainly what I was saying was, why do you remember your dreams & I don't? Maybe there's something about being a deeper sleeper too, because to remember it you have to bring it into your conscious mind. So because you're such a light sleeper you can do that more easily than a deep sleeper.--Doesn't that have something to do with it?) Maybe so.
14. SOME PEOPLE JUST HAVE A STRONGER SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, & in a sense, a stronger spiritual memory to translate dreams from the spirit to the physical, from the spiritual mind to the physical mind so that they can remember them. Maybe it's a gift, a God-given gift, because I remember lots of dreams very very vividly. Even though sometimes they seem to have no particular significance or meaning or message, I still remember them very clearly, almost like I'd stepped into a movie house, watched part of a movie & then left. Well, my spirit was watching the whole movie, but my physical mind only remembered part of it, what my physical mind registered & grasped temporarily, so that when I woke up I still retained that in my conscious mind.
15. BUT THEY SAY THAT ACTUALLY NOTHING IS EVER LOST BY YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, the psychologists' technical name for what I'm convinced is your spirit. In other words, underneath the conscious mind is the subconscious mind, which is always thinking & dreaming & where everything is registered permanently. Your subconscious mind, in other words your spirit, remembers everything.
16. --JUST LIKE WHEN YOU MEET THE ANGEL OF LIGHT AFTER DEATH & SOMETIMES HE HAS YOU REVIEW YOUR ENTIRE LIFE VIVIDLY & RAPIDLY, THAT LIFE-REVIEW EXPERIENCE. How does it happen? You remember things that you'd forgotten. The Lord just unreels, unravels your subconscious memories of past experience like a tape recorder, only in very high-speed video! It's all still there, He just has to open your mind or turn on your key & let it run & you'll see the whole works from childhood to the present. This has been the experience of countless numbers of people in their after-death experiences, so that in a sense we're judged by our own spirits & our own spiritual experiences. In those after-death, life-review experiences the people themselves, in a sense, are judging their own actions & motives throughout their past life. They see their own wrongs & evils & mistakes & they themselves are judging themselves.
17. YOUR SPIRIT IN A SENSE BECOMES YOUR OWN JUDGE, & YOU KNOW, THEREFORE, THAT THE JUDGEMENT IS FAIR & JUST & HONEST & YOU'RE CONVINCED THAT IT'S RIGHT. The Lord uses your own memory to either convict you or exonerate you, just like in your dreams. He tests you to see what you're going to do in certain situations & even temptations, where you have to make decisions to see if subconsciously, you might say in your right mind, you'll make the right choices. Therefore your spirit or your spiritual mind is constantly busy & thinking & dreaming & having spirit trips all the time in your sleep, because it doesn't need rest, it doesn't have to sleep. It's immortal, eternal, spiritual. "The things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal!" (2Cor.4:18) The physical dies away but the spiritual is forever & it's forever even in your sleep.
18. IT'S A GIFT, IN A SENSE, TO REMEMBER THOSE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES & DREAMS, but it's undoubtedly a blessing that you don't remember everything that happens in your sleep, your spirit experiences that you're not supposed to remember. It would be too much of a burden for your carnal mind to be burdened with all that all the time & have to remember it when you have the present to worry about, today. You've got enough to think about today.
19. BUT IN THOSE DREAMS--I THINK I WOULD CALL THEM LEARNING DREAMS--YOU DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE TO REMEMBER THEM ALL IN YOUR PHYSICAL MIND BECAUSE THEY'RE ORDAINED TO EDIFY YOUR SPIRIT, to teach your spirit. Perhaps in the next life when we're fully in the Spirit, then maybe we'll remember some of those things or be able to recall it if we want to.--Or maybe the Lord will just wipe it all out since it's had its desired effect of teaching you something in your sleep, sleep-teaching.
20. SO, MANY DREAMS THAT ARE NOT MESSAGES & SEEM TO HAVE NO SIGNIFICANT MEANING, DO HAVE MEANING! They have meaning to your spirit & your spirit is learning even though you're not conscious of it. So you're getting a double education! You're learning all day & your spirit is learning all night while you're sleeping. Praise the Lord! He's the One that helps your carnal mind remember it & retain it from your spiritual experiences, so that you can pass it on & you can remember it in order to help you & others in your physical life.
21. (MARIA: MAYBE SOME OF THE CONSCIOUS DECISIONS YOU MAKE IN EVERYDAY LIFE ARE THE RESULTS OF THOSE. Even though you don't realise that you remember it, all of a sudden it comes to you what you should do.) I believe it! When you come to having to make that decision when you're awake, you automatically make the right decision because you learned the lesson while you were sleeping. So when you're awake & the test comes, you give the right answer. (Maria: That's encouraging, that even though you don't consciously remember the dream, you still get something out of it.) Amen! I believe it!
22. THE CONSCIOUS PHYSICAL MIND GETS TIRED & WEARY. You can lie sleepless sometimes for hours thinking about things & worrying about things or even planning things & figuring out problems, etc., but that wears out your body because your conscious mind, your physical mind, is part of your body. Your brain is part of your physical makeup, so it tires your whole body. So if you could remember everything & all the experiences your spirit has in your sleep, it would really wear you out. Thank God we don't!--But we get little glimpses, little bits & pieces. Even though we may not understand the whole movie & what it was about--like sometimes coming in late or early or whatever--you know it was there & you had it.
23. --UNLESS THE LORD WANTS TO REALLY REVEAL SOMETHING TO YOU & HE HELPS YOU REMEMBER THE WHOLE THING, WHICH I THINK IS SORT OF A GIFT OF REVELATION. Revelation means something that's revealed.--Reveal, revel.--Revel-ation. It reveals the thing & relates it to the present so that you can remember it. Otherwise you have'm & your conscious mind forgets'm.
24. THANK GOD FOR DREAMS! THEY'RE PART OF OUR EDUCATION, our spiritual education as well as a revelation if the Lord decides that we need to remember it. But you've got enough to think about in your physical conscious mind & your daily activities without having to take these spirit trips & dream trips & live in a dream World all the time. You'd become so Heavenly-minded you wouldn't be an Earthly bit of good! You can only retain so much. PTL! GBY! ILY! XXX! "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then He openeth the ears of men, & sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, & hide pride from man." (Job 33:15-17)