"How to Increase Your Dream Life! Remove Hindrances and Recall Your Dreams"

Dreaming is both a physical and a spiritual event in life. It is helpful to establish good, healthy habits and take care of the body to ensure a healthy dream life.

Dream Hindrances

There are factors that can limit or hinder dream recall or impair our ability to dream. Dream impairment and recall issues common to many are:

• Sleeping disorders.
• Abnormal sleep cycles.
• Jarring wake-up by an alarm clock.
• Sleeping in uncomfortable conditions.
• Lacking a system to capture our dreams.
• Believing negative cultural perceptions of dreaming.
• Eating the wrong types of food before going to sleep.
• Giving no thought to dreams immediately after waking.
• Nightmares or tormenting spirits that enter our dreams.
• Experiencing chronic pain or the effects of medication.
• Prescription drugs or recreational drugs, alcohol, sleeping pills and cigarettes alter the chemical makeup of the body. Medications that treat depression, fear or anxiety may also distort dreams.
• Menstrual cycles and pregnancy cause hormonal changes in the body, which can make dream recall difficult.

Sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, or tossing and turning in bed, sleepwalking and making frequent trips to the bathroom at night cause interruption of sleep cycles and patterns that prohibit dream recall. There are many great devices that are available to help resolve or lessen these problems.

Eating heavy, fatty, rich or spicy foods before bedtime may cause the body to direct the blood flow to the digestive system rather than to the brain during sleep.

Various interferences such as waking up suddenly in the morning to an alarm clock will jar the dreamer out of sleep causing the mind to erase details of the dream. Telephones, doorbells, knocking, slammed doors, children playing, family members' voices or anything that causes sudden awakening may vaporize part of or all of the night's dreams.

Sometimes forgetting a dream is intentional. The dreamer may not want to remember due to fear of the dream's language or message. However, fear of a negative interpretation may cause us to miss out on the true encouraging and hopeful symbolism the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate. Even if the dream means that change is necessary, God is in the business of encouraging His own and He wants to give us hope. Satan wants to discourage us and bring fear into our lives. Likewise, dreams from God are ultimately constructive, not destructive.

Tormenting demons and nightmares can hinder our dreams or wake us and interrupt sleep patterns. It is also important to guard the eye and ear gates so that evil messages do not have ground in our lives to infiltrate our dreams.

Statistics indicate the average American will spend thirteen years of their otherwise productive life watching television. (Photo via Pixabay)

Unforgiveness and bitterness can also hinder one's dream life as tormentors come and invade our dreams. It is important to forgive people quickly and not allow a root of bitterness to spring up in life. God gives us dreams because He loves us and wants to communicate with us 24 hours a day. We sleep one third of our lives and that would be a long time not to be in contact with God. So He invades our sleep and hovers over us, causing the void places in our lives to be ordered according to His divine plans. Dreams lead us to the Father's heart. When we are in His presence we are transformed into His image. Dreams are the doorway into the realms of eternity where we can visit our heavenly Father and where He comes to visit us.

Removing Hindrances and Remembering Your Dreams

What can we do by way of removing the hindrances so we can remember our dreams? First, we must perceive dreams as valuable and important. In American culture, dreams are not held in high regard. In church life, many of us have not been taught to believe that dreams are from God, and in most religious fellowships we are warned against placing any weight or substance on dreams and the messages that they bring. We have not been trained to understand the symbolic language of the Holy Spirit in the dream realm, to discern the source of our dreams and to rightly interpret the ones that are from God.

If we do not begin to regard our dreams from God as precious treasures of mystery, then He may not continue to speak to us through dreams. Here are some practical things that we can do to improve our dream life:

1. It is important to establish normal sleep cycles. Staying up too late, being too tired and missing sleep disrupts rapid eye movement (REM) dream cycles.

2. If jarred from sleep in the morning by an alarm clock or sudden loud sounds, dreams have a tendency to disappear. Alarm clocks will jar the dream away from us because dreams come while our minds are at peace and in quiet rest. One way to counteract this effect is to try to wake up gently and immediately reflect on last night's dreams.

3. Upon waking, we should listen to our inner voice and ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand and remember the dream(s). The morning time is a great time to receive the revelation and understanding of dreams, because it is fresh in our memories. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring the dream message to mind and ask God questions to clarify what the symbols mean.

4. Before the rational mind kicks in, it is important to take notes or record the dream and date it. Establish a system of capturing your dreams as they occur. Place a light, pen and paper by your bed to jot down the outline of the dream. Capture the important facts and details upon waking from the dream. Postponing this important part of the process may result in losing the dream forever.

You can also capture the major ideas of dreams by using a digital recorder to record them upon waking. In times of quiet meditation discuss the dream with the Holy Spirit. Write it in a dream journal, pray and actively wait for the Holy Spirit to give the interpretation. Then outline the actions that need to be taken to fulfill it or to derive the intended meaning from the dream. Always date and title dream entries. Typing dreams onto a home computer or online journal creates an ongoing record that can be updated as more revelation and spiritual insight is received.

5. Another tip to uninterrupted sleep is to try to establish a habit of sleeping in a comfortable position. A violent sleeper who tosses to and fro throughout the night may tend to have fragmented dreams due to spurts of waking and sleeping. It helps to calm down and settle into a comfortable place before drifting off to sleep.

Dream Recall Strategies

Dream recall is a technique developed through discipline and practice. Forgetting or ignoring a dream is like walking away from knowledge and divine wisdom that God has imparted. The first three questions the dreamer must ask are:

1. What were the feelings upon awaking from the dream?

Determine the feelings stimulated by the dream. Emotions will give the dreamer a sense of the issues involved – are they resolved or unresolved? For example, if the dream evokes feelings of being puzzled it may be a message that things in the dreamer's life need to be examined and searched out. If the dream causes feelings of happiness or relief there may have been some issues resolved in the dreamer's life and the dream is a reflection of the change.

Psalm 139:23-24 (NASB), "Search me O, God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way."

Psalm 51:10 (NASB), "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."

2. What was the setting?

Although the location of a dream setting may have a literal interpretation, the setting may also define the dreamer's inner life. For example, a hospital in a dream might represent an actual medical facility and a literal illness, or it could symbolize an issue that needs healing in an area of the dreamer's life or relationships. Another interpretation is that hospitals accommodate patients. The meaning may hide a symbolic play on the word "patience" which is needed by the dreamer.

A school setting could symbolize education or preparation, which could be literal or traditional life lessons or spiritual training.

A foreign country setting may symbolize that the dreamer is outside of a comfort zone. Some questions to help reveal the meaning behind a foreign country setting are: How do I feel about this country? Why is this particular country in the dream and not any other country? What is the first thought that comes to mind when I think about this country? These types of questions will help the dreamer identify feelings and the significance of being in the new place. (Photo via Pexels)

3. If this dream was a story, what title would be fitting?

Asking this question will reveal the essence or general theme of the dream. Remember, the symbol vocabulary or meaning attributed to different events, places or people in a dream is strictly individual, because we each have unique, personal histories, attitudes, appreciations, likes and dislikes.

Dreams are often road maps that help direct our course if we will only learn to read them correctly. Answering the questions above will quickly give the dreamer an overall sense of the issues brought to the surface by the dream. This way, the dream can be broken down into small segments so that the dreamer can take a strategic and structured approach to its interpretation. In this process, the dreamer will identify experiences and analogies in the dream as well as points of similarity between dreaming and waking life.

REM Sleep

REM sleep lasts about 15 minutes during a dreamer's 90-minute sleep cycle. Throughout the night we rotate through several 90-minute cycles which involve rapid eye movement or REM sleep. During REM sleep, as the name suggests, the brain is watching the dream occur. The dreamer's eyes actually shift back and forth almost as if across the movie screen of the soul as the dream unfolds.

Oftentimes, women have better dream recall than men due to the differences in brain function. Women have more synapses that connect the two sides or hemispheres of the brain. The right side of the brain deals with the creative, artistic, emotional realm. In general, women are more right brain dominant than men who tend to be left-brain dominant, logical, and analytical in nature. Women use the visual memory and inductive reasoning portion of the brain more often. Women remember more details such as the color and design of the clothing worn in dreams.

A good night's sleep is eight hours, and it is essential to have at least six hours of sleep in order for the body to phase through several REM cycles. If we don't get enough sleep or are overly tired it is more difficult to recall dreams because the body is too drained to allow the brain to remember the dreams.

Upon waking, focus in on the images in the dream. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the hidden truths and to bring a correct understanding of the dream. Ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom, the right interpretation and the application of the dream. Write down the title and date and record the dream in a journal. Record the main facts, setting, colors, feelings and characters of the dream.

Remembering a dream is easiest upon first waking or in the state of awareness between sleep and awake, if the dreamer is able to do so without fully waking up. (To Subscribe to the Elijah List subscribe here.)

The greatest power in the universe is love,

Dr. Barbie L. Breathitt
President, Breath of the Spirit Ministries
Email: 
Barbie@BreathOfTheSpiritMinistries.comWebsite: MyOnar.com

Barbie Breathitt is the author of Dream Encounters: Seeing Your Destiny From God's Perspective, and  Gateway to the Seer Realm: Look Again to See Beyond the Natural. She is an ordained minister, dedicated educator, and respected teacher of the supernatural manifestations of God. Barbie's dynamic teaching skills, intelligence, and quick wit keep her a favorite with audiences everywhere. Barbie has become a recognized leader in dream interpretation, traveling to more than forty nations. Her prophetic gifting and deep spiritual insight have helped thousands of people understand the supernatural ways God speaks to us today.

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