What Message Are Your Nightmares Sending You?
We all dream, whether we remember them in the morning or not. If a dream is particularly lucid or 'real', it can have an important message for us that we would be wise to listen to. It can give us clues about which path to follow in our lives, or advise us to watch out for certain signals that can help us deal with situations that may be troubling us. But some of the most lucid dreams are not the 'unicorns and rainbows' type that we may read about in the thousands of dream interpretation books. These are the terrifying world of our nightmares, where our deepest fears become all too real. So what are these dark dreams telling us? Are they dire warnings, or actually helpful insights into our personalities that can also be a valuable spiritual aid?
While nightmares are without doubt deeply distressing, they do give us important information that can be of immense help to us on our journey through life. Leaving aside straightforward 'phobia' dreams and those caused by physiological effects for a moment, lets look at what nightmares can tell us about aspects of our personality and what might be holding us back in life.
Unresolved pain
Nightmares are often manifestations of unresolved issues or pain that can sometimes go all the way back to our childhood. If we lost a close family member and didn't have a chance to say goodbye, a nightmare may indicate that we need to obtain some sort of closure to be able to move on with our lives. These dark dreams force us to confront issues that we may have run away from by bringing them to the forefront of our mind. Rather than turning our backs on them once the daylight has chased the night-time shadows away, we need to analyse what messages the dream is sending us so that we can finally lay these issues to rest.
Recurring nightmares warn us that if we don't confront a problem head on, it could hold us back emotionally, physically and spiritually. The best way to understand the message is to keep a dream diary, noting down any patterns that keep appearing to uncover the inner conflict they're indicating. While they might be frightening, nightmares are actually an important part of the healing process that helps us to move forward.