One quiet night you go to sleep, dreaming a friend from another city is in your front yard. In your dream this friend shares a secret that blows your mind. When you awake the next day you think nothing of this strange vision. Until you receive a text that your friend is visiting town and hoping to speak.
When they come to your house, your heart beats in excitement, all you can think is “OMG this is exactly what happened in my dream!”
Prophetic dreams are an incredible phenomenon, that have been written about since ancient times. Are these dreams messages from god, psychic visions of the future, or simply weird creations of our own minds?
In this article we explore the magic and mystery of prophetic dreams, including why these dreams happen, types of prophetic dreams, what they mean for manifestation, and having a vision of a prophet, or god.
Theories About Why Prophetic Dreams Happen
There are a few theories about why prophetic dreams happen. The first is the clarity of intuition. Your subconscious mind is a power house, constantly paying attention to what’s around you and converting it into symbolism, sensations, and thought forms.
When you fall asleep, your conscious mind, often prone to overthinking and rationalizing, turns off and your subconscious gets the chance to take over. As your subconscious mind processes what’s happening in your life, it can give you clear visions of future events.
Your intuitive nudges may seem random, however they come from carefully collected information you experience every day. To learn more about this, check out the psychologist Carl Jung’s book called “Dreams”.
In manifestation, law of attraction and law of assumption. Your dreams show you what’s manifesting in your future.
Often people practising conscious manifestation will see their manifestation come true in a dream before if it appears in real life. If you are wanting to create your own reality, there’s more on this later in the article.
Another theory of prophetic dreams is connected to the collective consciousness of the universe. While we each experience this life as an individual being, on a deeper level our lives are beautifully intertwined.
The ‘100 monkey’s theory’ has proven this!
A Japanese primatologist, when studying monkey’s decided to introduce a new food, that the monkey’s had no experience eating. As they learned how to interact with this food, including washing it, so it tasted better, it took the first group of monkey’s a while to understand.
After the entire tribe learned the process, the young monkey’s started to be able to do it without any instruction, even teaching adults.
The amazing part of this experiment is groups of monkey’s on other islands, with no exposure to the experiment, began quickly picking up the habit without help.
What this mind-blowing experiment shows is after a certain amount of beings in a species learn something, it becomes common knowledge for the rest of the species in the world. As if occurring through telepathy or magic. This is the truth of collective consciousness.
Each night as you sleep, you tap into the interconnected web of human consciousness, which allows you to understand concepts you have no interaction with in your waking life. This is one way you can get a sneak peak into future events.
For Christians, prophetic dreams are thought to come from the Holy Spirit. Such dreams come after one is praying and god speaks to the dreamer. Often carrying a message the connects to the bible or Jesus Christ.
You will find many stories in the gospel of such dreams. Below are two popular examples written in the bible.
Joseph dreamt that his brothers would bow down to him, and it happened (Genesis 37:9). Pharaoh dreamt of seven cows eating seven other cows, and when the cows were eaten, they became seven fat cows. This dream was a sign from God that there will be seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine (Genesis 41:1–36).
It’s considered a blessing when god speaks to you, and can be a significant event that changes your life for the better. Even making some non-religious people convert to religions.
Many religious prophets attribute their visions to dreams, not just in Christianity. In the ancient religion of Jain, the prophet had 14 dreams, which were thought to be prophetic visions of future children.
Third, dreams can come from thinking about something a lot
The final theory, and the most acceptable to skeptics, is quite simple. When you think about something a lot, you dream about it.
Due to the structure in your brain known as the RAS (reticular activating network), you will also see what you’re thinking about a lot. So when you dream about it, it will create a sense that you are experiencing a prophetic dream.
The RAS is a network in your brain that allows your mind to rest by tracking patterns. It’s essentially autopilot mode, where it repeats regular thought patterns and pays attention to only what your conscious mind deems important.
For example, if you spend your conscious time learning about money, and thinking about money management, your RAS will pay the most attention to things related to money and exclude the rest.
This is also a rational explanation for synchronicity. When you deem something like 11:11 is important, your RAS network will learn to pick out 11:11 repeatedly and exclude other time sequences you don’t care about.
When this happens 11:11 can easily appear in your dream as a message from spirit.
Types of Prophetic Dreams
1) Guidance & Spiritual Messages : When you’re faced with a difficult decision or feeling lost, you may have a prophetic dream that offers guidance. Sometimes these can be very clear and easy to interpret.
Often when you’re dreaming, spirit will speak to you in cryptic symbolism. In order to interpret these dreams, we must look at what each message means to our own minds. Remember dreams, intuition and spirit speak to you in your language. Meaning what you think, feel, and believe about each symbol shows the truth about what it means.
Two people can have the same dream and entirely different meanings for that dream.
For one person, dreaming about old men reminds them of their grandpa, fills them with joy and is a symbol of wisdom. Another person may find dreaming about old men unsettling, to them this a message about authority figures that they find difficult and controlling.
Pay close attention to especially vivid or memorable dreams, as they bring valuable guidance for your life and future.
2) Telepathic Dreams : Telepathic dreams occur when one person has a message that needs to get to the other person. It can also come from one person thinking about the dreamer a lot.
For example, I often get dreams of people contacting me by message or text. I may have a dream where a specific person floods my phone with 20 + messages and awake to find a single message from them saying “Hey”, or “How’ve you been”.
This shows me there’s something deeper they’re needing to communicate. Their waking mind may be resisting the conversation or wanting to ease into it.
Being able to interpret whether a dream about someone is a prophetic dream or something from your own head takes practice. When you next speak to the person you dreamed about listen carefully, the meaning of the dream will become clearer as you talk.
3) Future Events : These are the classic prophetic dream, where the exact image or vision you see in your sleep suddenly comes true when you wake. You may have one of these future visions right before the event, or many days prior. The moment a dream actually comes true in real life, exactly as you dreamt, is a moment of pure wonder.
Clairvoyants and psychics have these types of dreams frequently.
If you find yourself having this type of prophetic dream, start honing your intution when you’re awake. You have a powerful connection to spirit, the more aware of your intuition you are, the more these dreams will begin to benefit your world.
4) Warnings : Warning dreams will have you waking with a start. You might feel fear or a sense of doom. These dreams can be cryptic, like getting submerged in cold water (represents struggling), or having all your teeth fall out.
Overwhelming symbols are a warning to prepare, and a suggestion that you should be paying attention to something in your waking life.
It’s rare to have a clear dream that shows the exact circumstances of something bad happening. However, if you do, have hope, this shows the situation you dreamed of can be avoided.
More on what to do if you don’t want your prophetic dream to become a future event below.
How to Remember your Dreams
For the majority of people, dreams are a random occurrence that are fuzzy and easy to forget. However, it’s shown that you have 5 dreams a night, every night. When you increase your recall you will have prophetic dreams, more frequently, and the meaning will start to actually make sense!
So, how do you remember your dreams? The easiest way is to start with a dream journal.
Have a simple notebook close to your bed and every time you have a dream, write down as many details as you can, as soon as you wake. At first, you may have little to write and forget much of what you dreamed about.
Overtime, your dreams will get increasingly more vivid. To the point, you may begin having pages of details to write. This is when you will start to see how many of your dreams predicted future events.
Certain plants are known to increase dream recollection.
On the extreme end, psychedelic substances like ayahuasca can cause you to have vivid dreams for months following a ceremony. Shamans have been using these plant medicines for prophetic dreams and connecting to the spirit world for centuries.
Mugwort is a simple herb, (that will not cause a psychedelic trip) that makes your dreams more vivid. I’ve experimented with it myself and while it tastes awful, it definitely works for remembering your dreams! (Don’t ingest mugwort if pregnant or breastfeeding)
Mexican dream herb is another plant, while I did try a tea of this, I couldn’t stomach enough of it to feel the effects myself. Other people do have great results with it, so it depends on your taste and how important remembering your dreams is to you.
Another way to increase dream recall is to use Hemi-Sync brain technologies. These are meditation tracks that naturally sync the hemispheres of your brain, putting you in a deeply relaxed state. Hemisync meditation will definitely increase nightly dream recall, when used regularly.
Hemisynce meditations will also help you interpret the meaning of a dream more easily, as you get connected to the subconcious mind in the process.
Prophetic Dreams and Manifestation
The idea that you create your own reality has been discussed by spiritual teachers throughout the whole world. Now scientists are begining to prove it to be true with research into particles and quantum physics. It’s thought that atoms themselves arrange based off the perception of the person viewing them.
If you’re someone who is attempting conscious manifestation, it’s quite common to have prophetic dreams, or a vision regarding your manifestations.
For example say you’re affirming or visualizing for a new job, you may go to sleep and find yourself at that job in your dream.
Having a prophetic dream such as this, is an amazing sign for manifesting. It shows that what you’re wanting is in your future, and very close to being your real life.
Dreams are thought to be a vision of your pre-manifested reality. If you have a dream of something you don’t want, or the opposite of your desire. This is also a great message, don’t lose hope.
These prophetic dreams simply show you that you need to focus more on the reality that you do want to experience in your waking life. You may be over worrying, or excessively thinking about the opposite desire. Cut it out as best you can. Spend more time focused on what you actually want to happen.
Neville Goddard, one of the most famous law of attraction teacher’s, speaks greatly about SATS. SATS is a “State Akin To Sleep”. When you visualize, affirm, or feel your desire as true in a state akin to sleep it manifests quite quickly.
These are the moments where you’re falling asleep at night, and when you wake in the morning still drowsy.
He proves his theory by having students imagine climbing a ladder as they’re falling asleep, several nights in a row. During the day they’re to think “I will not climb a ladder”. His students always end up somehow needing to climb a ladder in their lives, following this exercise. Showing the power of SATS.
Manifestation is all about the subconcious mind afterall, if you’re curious try this for yourself. It will greatly increase your faith in the idea that thoughts create your reality.
Using Lucid Dreams to Manifest
If you have the ability to lucid dream, you can use these dreams to create your desired reality. Simply allow yourself to clearly and fully experience your manifestation in a lucid dream. The more real it feels, the quicker it will manifest for you, as it start to seem like a regular and normal experience for your conscious mind.
The trick is to essentially create a prophetic dream for yourself. This is an incredibly powerful way to manifest.
A Prophetic Dream About a Future Husband
You might hear of a friend who dreamed about their future husband / wife before their meeting actually happened. These dreams give a sense of fate and destiny, that fill a head with hope and a heart with longing.
More women have these sorts of prophetic dreams, however young men can have them as well. If both people dreamed of eachother, it’s a message that their future lives are definitely entwined.
If you want to have this sort of prophetic dream, you can ask god or spirit, each night for a vision of your future lover. You’ll likely awake in the morning with a clear message in your head, or an intuition about who they will be.
Having an actual prophetic dream of your spouse is also likely.
Can Nightmares Be Prophetic dreams
When your latest dream is full of fear, and terrifying images, you may wonder if this is a bad sign. Is a nightmare a warning of pain in your future?
Not necessarily, as you saw above in the types of prophetic dreams, it’s possible for warning dreams to happen. However, most nightmares do not fall into this category.
Nightmares represent the fear and anxiety you’re feeling in your everyday life. They’re your subconscious’ way of working through problems.
For example, you may be struggling with your boss at work. That night as you sleep, you dream you’re having a battle with a ferocious monster, that makes you feel completely powerless. This allows you to work through those difficult emotions you’re facing every day and can actually lead to more peace in your waking life.
Nightmares are thought to be the most spiritual of dreams, because they allow you to face up to the challenges in your life on a symbolic level. It’s actually been shown that when you fight back in a nightmare, you gain more confidence and ability to overcome the actual hurdles they represent.
A demon or monster in your dream can also represent an aspect of your shadow self that you’re running away from. For lucid dreamers that are able to lovingly embrace their dream monsters, they actually come to peace with themselves and become more in alignment in their daily life.
If you want to learn from your nightmares, it’s important to interpret the message of your dream. You can try writing the details of your dream out and than going through what is written asking yourself “what does this mean to me”.
While nightmares are definitely no fun, they may just be your subconscious attempt to grow. Powerful transformations of your mind, body and soul can in fact happen, in the dead of night.
What to Do if You Don’t Want A Dream To Come True
Maybe a prophetic dream told you something you didn’t want to hear. Don’t get it into your head that the future is set in stone. If you dreamed something you don’t want to happen, consider this your chance to avoid it.
What can you do differently right now?
The future is a web of potentials, changing anything will change the possible potentials you’re about to experience. Tap into your intuition, or ask a divine figure / spirit, for help with the situation in your prophetic dream. Than follow that guidance.
Understanding Visions and Dreams About Prophets
Visions of a prophet or god, are quite common in prophetic dreams. Many people use these visions to create art, literature, religious scripture, or to suddenly change their life.
If you dream dreams of a prophet, consider yourself blessed. These can be deeply meaningful and provide the answers to whatever you’ve been praying for.
It’s believed across many cultures that god, spiritual teachers or gurus, can communicate in prophetic dreams.
In the christian bible the holy spirit or god, speaks frequently in dreams. There are many instances in the bible, where, through praying, a figure recieves a dream of god, or Jesus.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is a story not everyone understands when they first read about it in the bible. To understand the meaning of nebuchadnezzar’s dream, one must become deeply aquainted with christian gospel.
If you’re praying for guidance and have a prophetic dream of Jesus, god bless. According to christianity, the holy spirit has entered your head to help you. The holy spirit helps many people in the bible and you are considered very lucky and close to god if you connect to it.
If you’re not christian and have a prophetic dream of Jesus, you may be confused. Because Jesus is a figure we see all around the world, and in media, it’s possible to have a dream of Jesus that is not prophetic, or religious. A dream that involves the actual holy spirit will feel meaningful to you, and will impact your life positively.
Many religions and even the bible, containt prophetic dreams of the last days of our lives. These are thought to be a sign of how the world will end.
The truth about these visions is hard to interpret. Is spirit / god showing us the ending of the world with a city burning down, and images of fire? Who really knows, prophetic dreams can only be confirmed after they’ve happened. There’s no other way to be sure they are truth.
Prophets can also appear in dreams and speak a message that’s than turned into art.
For example Daniel Ladinksy, dreamt of the poet Hafiz. He created an entire poem anthology through the voice of this spiritual prophet. Touching on themes and concepts Daniel had no knowledge of prior to his dream experience.
This is a story that causes great controversy, as his book is written as if it was by the sufi prophet Hafiz himself, and not Daniel.
Was he channeling the prophet? Did Daniel really hear Hafiz? Or was he simply inspired? You can talk endlessly about this and have no answer. The truth is, it’s impossible to truly know. By Daniel’s word they are Hafiz’s poems, not his. That’s all we’ll ever know.
How to Have Prophetic Dreams
If you read this entire article about prophetic dreams, congratulations! You may be wondering now, how you can have prophetic dreams yourself.
The first step to prophetic dreams is dream recall, in order to have these types of prophetic dreams you must be able to remember them. Refer back to the section above how to remember your dreams, for dream recall tips.
After you begin to remember some of your dreams you can get started on prophetic dreams.
A simple way to have prophetic dreams is to tell yourself as you’re going to sleep “tonight I will have prophetic dreams”. You can say exactly what you’d like to dream about, or you can keep it general.
If you believe in god, or a higher power, ask god to show you prophetic dreams. This is easy if you have a lot of faith in god already.
If you’re struggling, you can write what you want to dream about in your prophetic dreams on a small piece of paper and place it under your pillow before bed time.
All of these methods of asking for prophetic dreams can sometimes take a bit of time and practice. Make it a reoccuring habit.
Increasing you connection to your intuition will also increase your likelihood of having prophetic dreams. You can do this by mediating regularly, doing yoga practices (especially those related to the third eye), and practising using your intuition everyday.
Certain scents, incences and essential oils, are thought to open your connection to the spiritual realm. Which can also increase prophetic dreams. Myrrh, Frankincense, & Sage are popular ones for this.
936 hz frequency music is believed to open the crown chakra and cause prophetic dreams as well. To get prophetic dreams from using frequency music, play it while you’re sleeping, meditating or getting ready to dream.
For some people it’s easier to have prophetic dreams during a nap! So take any of the above suggestions and apply them to an afternoon nap, when you’re feeling drowsy.
Prophetic dreams are mysterious, magical and thought provoking. Signs from god? Indications of latent psychic powers? Or simply creations of the human mind? The only way to know for sure is to experiment and find out yourself!
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