Last night I had a disturbing dream. I dreamt that I was visiting an old friend at a hospital. This friend was diagnosed with some rare terminal illness, and he had 1-2 days left to live…

Over the years I’ve made it a habit to jot down my dreams in a journal. When I look back on its pages and try to re-read my old entries I’m struck by how strange they are. Most of my dreams involve complex story lines. Some are scary. Others are downright strange and surreal.

Where do our dreams come from? Sometimes, when I am in a dream, I will notice things in the background that clue me into the fact that I am just dreaming. I’ll see a piece of furniture, a bracelet, or some other trinket and I’ll know what’s happening isn’t real because I saw it somewhere when I was awake.

Are dreams just a distillation or mishmash of things that we experience during our waking hours, or do they have a hidden message or meaning? Reading some of my old dreams brought back some bittersweet memories. Some dreams don’t make much sense to me, even after several years. But there were some dreams that at the time seemed to be quite strange, but in hindsight I realize that they were telling me something.

They seem to be warning me about decisions that I made at the time that I wasn’t very comfortable with. It seemed like my intuition was speaking to me through my dreams. Showing me how I truly felt about things, even though I may not be consciously aware of them.

It may seem odd and hard to prove, but maybe we shouldn’t just ignore our dreams. Even though they may be strange, they may tell us something about ourselves. All we have to do is listen.