by Nancy C. Pohle

One of the most frequently asked question regarding dreams is, “How do I really know whether or not my dreams are predictive?”

The simple answer is, “You never truly know for sure.” But that doesn’t mean you can’t take all the measures possible to alleviate the impact of the dream’s outcome (if it’s negative) by applying some of the dream’s suggestions in your waking state. It’s also good to keep in mind the Cayce readings’ suggestion that dreams that recur more than three times indicate a strong likelihood that it is predictive.

Barbara told of a dream she had one December night, in which she and her husband were conversing while standing in the house they were in the process of buying. Upon awakening, Barbara had in her mind the date February 2nd. She didn’t know what that might relate to, because their closing date was set for mid-January; but she marked her calendar so that she would pay attention when that day arrived. Two weeks later, she received a call from her Realtor, who apologized and said that the house would not be available until February 2nd. Barbara soon realized, “Oh my gosh, that was the date in my dream!”

We can see that such confirmations give credence to the path we’ve chosen to take. In Barbara’s case, this incident allowed her to feel that the delay was alright and that she had chosen the right house. She and her husband ended buying the “dream” house.

A dream that Beth had emphasizes our interconnectedness with one another, not only with family members, but in the workplace as well.

“I was traveling out of town on a business trip. A colleague was scheduled to present technical data during a seminar in the home-office city. The night before the actual presentation was to occur, I had the following dream:

“I dreamed that I was accompanying one of my co-workers, Adam, as he was preparing to make a presentation to a large audience. We were seated side-by-side in the auditorium as people began to come into the room. I began to sense a bit of nervousness from Adam as he composed himself and his material. He was ordinarily comfortable speaking to crowds since he held impeccable qualifications in his profession. In the dream scene …we sat together for a few moments. Then it was his time to get up and go to the podium. He walked forward and just as he was about to reach the podium area, he collapsed. This caused a commotion in the room, and I moved forward to check if Adam was okay. I noticed that certain people were snickering over what had happened, intimating that he had been carelessly drinking or something …to cause the fall. I was angry with their misinterpretation, and I told them not to snicker but rather to focus their thoughts on what they had come for: information. I then noticed another co-worker, Joe, take Adam’s place at the podium with the presentation material.

“Upon awakening …I experienced a chilling sensation that seemed to snap me into alertness. For me, that’s a signal that the message is precognitive. It’s a very distinct coldness that moves through me, removing distraction, bringing extreme focus.

“When I called the office the following afternoon, they told me that Adam had had a seizure and was unable to make the presentation. Joe had taken his place. As the dream had indicated, a few co-workers inaccurately suspected that he was suffering from too much partying. As it turned out, a tumor had caused the seizure. The dream served as a reminder to maintain a clear focus on my purpose and to avoid petty distraction.”

The next dream touches upon a variety of elements that can be present in psychic dreams. Lawrence’s recurring childhood dreams were a good indication that his dream information was of great importance. The strong emotional impact that he had when he awoke from such dreams implied that Lawrence was receiving warnings. In retrospect, it’s easy to recognize the preparation these repetitive images afforded him for later life-threatening circumstances.

“At age six, I awoke in the middle of the night, too terrified to scream. I was covered in nervous sweat and had a horrible taste in my mouth. It was the first nightmare I ever had, and it reoccurred three or four times a year at first, but gradually dwindled to once every eighteen months or so as I reached puberty.

“In the dream, I was laid out naked on a cold table, shivering and embarrassed. There was a bright light above me and, although I could see no wires, I felt that I was attached to one on the inside of my body. Someone was tugging at it as if I were a puppet with internal strings. I could sense a drip, drip, drip coming from the lights, but there was no sound. The room was slowly rotating, as if on a turntable. I heard muffled sounds as if someone were talking under water. At first it was all very slow and rhythmical.

“Although I was freezing on the outside and wanted a blanket, I was getting hotter and hotter on the inside. There was a rusty taste in my mouth, and I wanted to spit but could not. My heart beat faster and faster, until I thought it would burst out of my skin. As the dream progressed, all these music video-like images would speed up faster and faster, and I would wake up.

“At first the dream came frequently, and it made such a terrifying impression on me that I would wake up as soon as it began again. Months could have gone by, but like a familiar tune, I knew immediately at the first visual note that it was about to recur. One of my biggest memories of puberty was the fact that the dream stopped; from the ages of fourteen to twenty-two, the dream completely subsided. By age twenty-three, I had totally put it out of my head.

“Then, the day before I was to run my first marathon, as I stepped out of a taxi, my legs gave way, and I fell into the street. My whole left side was semi-paralyzed. Feeling very disoriented, I went to my apartment to lie down and lost consciousness, slipping into a semi-coma that lasted for seven days.

“I was eventually found by worried friends and family members, who took me to the hospital where my health continued to deteriorate. After two spinal taps, I was diagnosed with spinal meningitis and hepatitis. My body was shutting down rapidly. A priest came to administer the last rites before my final diagnostic test, and angiogram. Hope for my survival was pretty slim, because the meningitis had settled into the lining between my brain and skull. I was conscious enough to wonder what I had done to anger God enough to take me so young.

“I prayed as I was being wheeled down the hall for the angiogram and lost consciousness seconds later.

“Sometime in the next few minutes, it was as if my old familiar dream began once again. I recognized it right away. I was naked on a cold table, shivering and embarrassed. There was a bright light above me. I realized I was literally living the dream as the doctor explained to me that they were going to shoot a rusty-tasting dye into my heart, which would make me very warm. A wire would be threaded through my body and into my heart. The doctor said I might feel a tugging, like a puppet string or fishing line, inside my body, but I was not to worry. The dizziness I would feel might make the room appear to be turning, but it wouldn’t be. As the drip-drip-drip of the dye went into my tubing, I became semiconscious. I already knew everything that was about to happen to me because I had dreamed it so many times! I relaxed and let the dream play out.

“When it was over, the doctors asked if I had ever had an angiogram before; they couldn’t believe I went through the whole procedure with a big smile on my face. I learned later that many people have cardiac arrest during angiograms. The process involves pumping dye into the heart, which ejects it, forcing the dye out into the blood vessels. Photos are then taken to see if there are any blockages.

“I eventually made a full recovery; the doctors were amazed that there were no signs of mental or physical trauma.”

Because he had previously encountered the procedure in numerous dreams, Lawrence was able to transcend the psychological and emotional shock of that extremely stressful situation.

Another very specific warning came to Lisa in a dream in which she saw herself driving on a familiar highway near her home. As she got on the exit ramp, she pulled up behind an open-bed truck that had a refrigerator on the back of it. The truck driver pulled abruptly away from the stop sign, which jerked the refrigerator, causing it to topple off the truck onto Lisa’s windshield. She felt herself being crushed by the weight of the refrigerator and felt as if she was dying. She woke up screaming, and it took her several hours to recover from the emotional strain it caused.

When she recovered from her terror, Lisa wrote down the dream in detail, feeling that it conveyed an important message. Several months later, she was driving on the same familiar highway and got onto the same exit ramp, triggering her memory of the dream. There, in front of her, were the exact open-bed truck and refrigerator she had seen in her nightmare. Lisa’s immediate reaction was to stop her car well behind the truck. As the truck moved away from the intersection, the refrigerator teetered and then fell off the back. Lisa would have been in the very place where the refrigerator fell if she hadn’t chosen to maintain her distance. By being aware and receptive to the dream warning, she undoubtedly saved herself, if not from death, from a very serious accident.

Not all predictive dreams are this dramatic. They can, however, be extremely helpful in providing meaningful insights into daily circumstances.

The Cayce readings refer to precognitive dreams as “foreshadowing” the possible outcome of trends that we are building in our lives. What we experience in the material dimension is merely a reflection of what is being formed at a higher level. So, when we are attuned to these higher levels of consciousness, we are actually becoming aware of events that might occur in the physical future.

When Edgar Cayce was asked about the meaning of a dream in which a young woman got into a terrible argument with her new mother-in-law, he suggested that it could certainly be predictive—if the two of them continued to hold the same attitudes about one another. In other words, if they kept relating to one another in their current manner, they would inevitably end up in a major argument. A helpful aspect of this reading emphasized that the daughter-in-law had the ability to alter the outcome of the dream by changing her behavior in a positive way. Once again, we are reminded that the future is not set in stone. By taking constructive action, we can create different outcomes from those forewarned in dreams.

This is illustrated profoundly in the dream experience shared by Ellen.

“In the dream, my aunt called to say that there had been an accident. My parents, who were on a road trip across country, had died in the Cascade Mountains when their car went over a cliff. My uncle was already on his way out there from New Jersey to identify the bodies and bring them back home. ‘I love you,’ my aunt said, as she hung up the phone.

“The dream was so real, I jumped out of bed and rushed into the dark living room, trying to get my bearings. Somehow I knew that it was Tuesday in the dream and, as I came fully awake, I realized that today was actually Thursday.

“My parents were on a three-month journey around the country at the time. I was house-sitting at their home, and we had agreed that they would call every Sunday night at seven o’clock to touch base.

“I realized that this could actually be a precognitive dream. After much thought and prayer, I decided not to voice my concern on the phone when my parents called, until I had a sense of where they were and what their plans were going to be for the next few days.

“When the call came on Sunday night, they were in Washington state. The plan was to do a little sightseeing the next day, then to start heading for home through the Cascade Mountains. That was to be on Tuesday.

“I was frightened. Barely able to get out the words, I asked my mother if it was possible to change their route—if there was another way to get where they were headed. Mom responded, ‘Yes, I think so. I’ll ask your father. What’s wrong?’ I decided to tell her about the dream, to give them an opportunity to pray about it and make their own decision. I tried not to alarm her too much, while at the same time trying to get across the impact that the dream had on me. She promptly put my father on the phone.

“After retelling the dream to my dad, I asked him if it were possible to avoid those mountains. He said that they had actually been trying to decide between the mountain route and one that would take them through the low country, and had only decided that day to take the high road. He said that they would talk about it, but he didn’t see why they couldn’t change plans just to be on the safe side.

“My parents did decide to take the alternate route and eventually returned home safely.”

It is impossible to say if Ellen’s dream was truly predictive of a catastrophe; but one thing is certain: If she had chosen not to tell her parents about the dream and something drastic had taken place, she would have regretted her silence for many years to come.

That’s not to say that every frightening dream we ever experience is warning us about a future event. What it does mean, however, is that Cayce’s concept of “fore-shadowing” in dreams is worthy of examination. His readings suggest that anything of real importance which happens in our lives has already been dreamed and that we are shown this information for a reason. Because we each possess free will, we have the power to redirect the trends that develop in our lives. What Ellen was shown in her dream could be viewed as a likely outcome if her parents had continued in the direction they were headed. But because Ellen recognized the devastating impact such a “trend” could have upon her parents and family, she was able to interject another alternative to that trend. Her suggestion of taking a different route was a positive way to redirect the situation. Ellen’s parents evaluated her dream and their circumstances while keeping their daughter’s loving input in mind. Their choice to change their plans was one that made Ellen very happy.

But how do we know if a dream is truly predictive, and does it lose importance if it’s not precognitive in the traditional physical sense? We probably cannot ever be one hundred percent sure whether a dream is precognitive, but there are certain guidelines we can follow which may give us a framework for understanding our personal symbols and dream images.

Repetitive dreams can signal the prediction of an event, such as in Lawrence’s dramatic hospital example. One overriding occurrence that should be an attention-getter is the emotional impact that a dream has. How deep a sense of urgency or import do we feel upon awakening from a given dream? Are we rather neutral, or do we feel perplexed, concerned, or frightened, as did Lisa in her dream with the truck? To put it simply, feelings are crucial to pinpointing significant dreams.

As you become accustomed to working with dreams, you will learn to recognize the ways in which dreams clue you in to a message that is precognitive or psychic in nature.

Excerpt from Awakening The Real You: Awareness Through Dreams And Intuition