HomeARC ML 1838
WHY DO WE DREAM? DO 1838 8/84
1. I WAS THINKING & PRAYING ABOUT IT AWHILE AGO THAT I DON'T THINK I HAVE AS MANY NIGHTMARES NOW AS I USED TO since I have that bright light from the video clock shining on my face. Evil spirits don't like light! Of course I'm sure it's the Lord & prayer, but I believe the light is one of the instruments the Lord uses to help drive away the dark, that's for sure! The Bible distinctly says that they're lovers of darkness because their deeds are evil, so they flee the light. (John 3:19)
2. BUT WHAT I WAS THINKING AWHILE AGO WHEN I WAS PRAYING ABOUT IT--sort of wondering like I sometimes do, not really asking the Lord, just sort of wondering about it & He gives me an answer--I was wondering why I have so many of these odd dreams that I can only vaguely remember that seem to be virtually meaningless & are definitely not message dreams. They're not revelations or anything, but they're sort of like story dreams, they just go on & on & keep my mind busy. They say you can dream nearly all night even though you're sleeping, & the funniest thing came to me! It's funny I never thought about it before.
3. YOUR IMMORTAL SPIRIT DOESN'T NEED SLEEP! While your physical body is having to sleep or rest, your spirit needs to keep busy doing something, so the Lord lets it travel & have all kinds of experiences & do all kinds of things. It's learning even in your sleep, travelling & experiencing, so that while your body sleeps, your eternal spirit is very busy doing things & learning things, even making decisions & choices!
4. EVEN THOUGH THE DREAMS MAY NOT ALWAYS SEEM TO HAVE ANY RELATION TO YOUR PHYSICAL LIFE OR YOUR PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE, THEY'RE DEFINITELY SPIRIT TRIPS, lots of times back into your history, your early life. You're sort of scouting around exploring the past & sometimes the future. But you're busy actually learning & travelling & exploring & having experiences that are edifying your spirit while your body's asleep. Isn't that amazing?
5. AFTER ALL, YOUR SPIRIT IS ALREADY IMMORTAL & ALREADY LIKE YOU'RE GOING TO BE IN THE NEXT LIFE, WHERE YOU DON'T NEED SLEEP. Not even your body in the next life will need sleep. Your new immortal resurrected body will not need sleep or food or rest or any of these things, just like your spirit. You can enjoy physical things in the next life, it's amazing, but you don't have to have these physical necessities such as food & sleep. You can keep going 24 hours a day in your immortal body just like your spirit, because your immortal body will be like your spirit, only it will have substance.
6. YOUR SPIRIT IS ALREADY LIVING IN THAT WORLD! Your spirit is already really a part of that World, it is spirit & it is spiritual. So your spirit is already really living in the Spirit World & you're more conscious of that World in your sleep. When your body's asleep, your spirit is free to learn & wander about & explore, experience, see & decide & have all kinds of amazing experiences!
7. ALTHOUGH YOUR PHYSICAL CONSCIOUS MIND MAY NOT GRASP THE MEANING OF ALL THOSE EXPERIENCES, YOUR SPIRIT IS LEARNING, SO THAT IT'S NOT WITHOUT MEANING. Those spiritual experiences & dream trips in your sleep are actually edifying your spirit & keeping it busy learning & experiencing & making decisions, learning lessons while your body's asleep, because your spirit doesn't need sleep.
8. BUT YOU SOMETIMES WONDER ABOUT THESE FUNNY DREAMS YOU HAVE THAT DON'T SEEM TO HAVE ANY MEANING OR YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHAT RELATIONSHIP THEY HAVE TO THIS LIFE. Well, they may have no relationship to your physical life, although sometimes they do, & often you're actually making decisions, which is a part of the learning process, learning how to make decisions. The Lord's testing you in your sleep, He's putting your spirit through experiences & lessons & learning, & also testing & trying you & giving you examinations & tests just like school. He's keeping your spirit very busy & it's getting an education while your body is sleeping.
9. ISN'T THAT AMAZING? THAT'S THE FIRST TIME I EVER HAD AN ANSWER TO THAT! I always wondered why I had some of these crazy dreams that seemed to have no purpose or message or relationship to my physical Earthly life. I was having all kinds of trips & experiences & meeting all kinds of people in my sleep. It's almost like that time Abrahim said to you when we were in London, "Now that David's asleep, why don't we go take a little trip & see this beautiful city?" (Maria: But then he said no, we couldn't, because if he did you might not wake up any more.) (See No.1481:12) I think it has something to do with his protection & the battle with other spiritual forces that might attack me if I were alone.
10. I THINK THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE NIGHTMARES, YOUR SPIRIT IS ACTUALLY BATTLING SPIRITUAL FORCES! While your body's asleep the Lord allows that to see what you'll do or how strong you are & what effect it will have on you & whether you'll make the right decision or not, if you'll really call on Him for help even when your spirit is attacked by evil spirits in your sleep. So it's all a part of your spiritual experience & your spiritual life which continues in your sleep.
11. WHILE YOUR PHYSICAL BODY IS SLEEPING, YOUR SPIRIT NEVER SLEEPS! It's constantly busy all the time because it doesn't need sleep, the same as it will be in the next life in the Spirit World after the Resurrection. It'll have a body then with actual substance, but it will be a supernatural, miraculous, powerful body that's going to be like your spirit, that never needs sleep or food or sex or any of these physical necessities.--Although it will have sufficient substance to actually enjoy them if you want to, just like the Lord ate & drank with the disciples after He was resurrected. He didn't really need to, He just did it for fellowship. He even cooked for them! Isn't that wonderful?
12. I THINK THAT'S QUITE A REVELATION--WHY WE DREAM! That's a good title! (Maria: Well, why aren't some people conscious at all of their dreams or their nightmares? I almost never remember dreams & I never have nightmares.) It would probably wear you out & probably wear out your conscious or physical mind. You'd become weary & faint in your mind if you remembered them all. (Heb.12:3) It's sort of like He blocks out babies' memories of their pre-existence in Heaven so that they don't have to worry about it. It won't make them feel so bad about being in this World if they don't remember how wonderful it was in Heaven--Paradise lost! (Maria: Maybe some people are just less sensitive than others & it doesn't punch through or something?)
13. I THINK THE LESS SPIRITUAL ARE LESS SENSITIVE TO REMEMBERING THOSE DREAMS & EXPERIENCES, you know that's true, because some people do & some people don't. Maybe some people just have lazy spirits. Maybe the Lord knows you can't stand to remember them, that it would be too tiring on you, on your physical mind. Your physical mind is a part of your physical body. In a sense it's sort of a part of that union of your body & spirit.
14. MAYBE YOU'D SAY SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST MORE SPIRITUAL. THEY LIVE MORE IN THE SPIRIT & DWELL IN THE SPIRIT. They have, in a sense, stronger spirits so they have more spiritual experiences & more dreams & they live a great deal in the other World. You ought to know that, you live with one! Therefore they have more dreams & they remember them more & they're very busy in the Spirit World when their body's asleep. I mean, almost every night I have all kinds of dreams, funny dreams, interesting dreams! I'm busy travelling & having all kinds of experiences, almost like movies, only I'm in them! Sometimes I'm just watching them, but mostly I'm in them.
15. SO PRAISE THE LORD, THAT'S WHAT CAME TO ME WHEN I WAS WONDERING WHY WE HAVE DREAMS THAT SEEM TO HAVE NO MESSAGES OR ANY PARTICULAR SIGNIFICANCE OR MEANING, & YET WE REMEMBER THEM OR AT LEAST PARTS OF THEM. You probably don't realise what significance or meaning they have, which is edifying your spirit even though you don't grasp it with your conscious mind.--Just like Paul said about praying in the spirit & in tongues, your spirit is edified (1Cor.14:4), but what does this mean? It means your spirit is literally being educated & inspired! Your spirit is being lifted up, edified, educated!
16. YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND, YOUR PHYSICAL BRAIN IS NOT ALWAYS ENTIRELY AWARE OF IT, but sometimes you catch fleeting glimpses of those spiritual experiences with your carnal mind, as the Scripture calls it, your physical mind, & you remember them. They're retained in your memory cells just long enough that when you wake up you still remember scenes & fleeting glimpses of what your spirit was experiencing. It's almost like seeing a ghost, it just appears & then suddenly vanishes, like faint memories of the past that you recall to mind like a dream.
17. THINK ABOUT THE PAST RIGHT NOW, IT SEEMS LIKE A DREAM, DOESN'T IT? It's vague, hazy, indistinct. You remember things from the past that made a real strong impression on you & yet you don't remember everything. It would probably drive you out of your cotton-pickin' mind if you could remember every little thing that ever happened in the past. Your conscious, physical carnal mind just couldn't take it if you were constantly besieged by all those memories so strong that you would really relive them. You probably couldn't take it.
18. THE LORD'S BEING MERCIFUL TO US IN THAT WE'RE MOSTLY JUST CONSCIOUS OF THE PRESENT. We've got enough problems today to take care of without vividly reliving experiences of the past or even trips into the future. So the Lord is good to us by helping us forget the past & not to know too much about the future, except for certain people who need to know to tell others. So thank the Lord for it. Thank the Lord for a memory that forgets, & for a memory that even forgets dreams.
19. (MARIA: WE KNOW PRETTY MUCH BY SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION THAT EVERYBODY DREAMS, but mainly what I was saying was, why do you remember your dreams & I don't? Maybe there's something about being a deeper sleeper too, because to remember it you have to bring it into your conscious mind. So because you're such a light sleeper you can do that more easily than a deep sleeper, doesn't that have something to do with it?) Maybe so.
20. I'M ONE FOOT IN THIS WORLD & ONE FOOT IN THE NEXT! And they say that to have dreams & visions & spiritual experiences, clairvoyance, ESP, you have to sort of be half-&-half, partly here & partly there. If you weren't partly here, you wouldn't remember being there. And of course if you weren't there, you wouldn't remember being there. So you have to be with sort of one foot in Heaven or one foot in the Spirit World to have those experiences, & yet you have to have one foot in this World in order to translate them or transfer them to a remembered experience in your carnal memory in order to remember it when you're conscious or awaken.
21. SOME PEOPLE JUST HAVE A STRONGER SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS, & in a sense, a stronger spiritual memory to translate them from the spirit to the physical, from the spiritual mind to the physical mind so that they can remember them. Maybe it's a gift, a God-given gift, because I remember lots of dreams very very vividly. Even though sometimes they seem to have no particular significance or meaning or message, I still remember them very clearly, almost like I'd stepped into a movie house, watched part of a movie & then left. Well, my spirit was watching the whole movie, but my physical mind only remembered part of it, what my physical mind registered & grasped temporarily, so that when I woke up I still retained that in my conscious mind.
22. BUT THEY SAY THAT ACTUALLY NOTHING IS EVER LOST BY YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. This is what the psychologists call your spirit, their technical name for what I'm convinced is your spirit. They're always talking about your "subconscious mind" & that's where you have your dreams & all that sort of thing. The Bible simply calls it "in the spirit", the psychologists call it "in the subconscious". In other words, underneath the conscious mind is the subconscious mind, which is always thinking & dreaming & where everything is registered permanently. They say that in your subconscious mind you'll never actually forget anything unless it's somehow wiped out by some traumatic experience or something. Your subconscious mind, in other words your spirit, remembers everything. It's all registered right there.
23. --JUST LIKE WHEN YOU MEET THE ANGEL OF LIGHT AFTER DEATH & SOMETIMES HE HAS YOU REVIEW YOUR ENTIRE LIFE VIVIDLY & RAPIDLY, THAT LIFE-REVIEW EXPERIENCE. How does it happen? You remember things you didn't even remember before, that you'd forgotten. The Lord shows it to you & He just unreels, unravels your subconscious memories of past experiences like a tape recorder, only in very high-speed video! It's all still there, He just has to open your mind or turn on your key & let it run & you'll see the whole works from childhood to the present. This has been the experience of countless numbers of people in their after-death experiences, so that in a sense we're judged by our own spirits & our own spiritual experiences. In those after-death life-review experiences the people themselves, in a sense, are judging their own actions & motives throughout their past life. They see their own wrongs & their own evils & their own mistakes & they themselves are judging themselves. The Bible has several Scriptures about that. (Rom.2:15-16; Jn.8:9; 1Cor.11:31)
24. YOUR SPIRIT IN A SENSE BECOMES YOUR OWN JUDGE, & YOU KNOW, THEREFORE, THAT THE JUDGEMENT IS FAIR & JUST & HONEST & YOU'RE CONVINCED THAT IT'S RIGHT. The Lord uses your own memory to either convict you or exonerate you, just like in your dreams. He tests you to see what you're going to do in certain situations & even temptations, where you have to make decisions to see if subconsciously, you might say in your right mind, you'll make the right choices. Therefore your spirit or your spiritual mind is constantly busy & thinking & dreaming & having spirit trips all the time in your sleep, because it doesn't need rest, it doesn't have to sleep. It's immortal, eternal, spiritual. "The things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal!" (2Cor.4:18) The physical dies away but the spiritual is forever, & it's forever even in your sleep, busy all the time, having experiences, learning lessons, making decisions, exploring! It's wonderful!
25. SCIENCE SAYS EVERYBODY DOES IT, BUT NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE REMEMBER IT. It must be a gift to have your carnal mind opened up to remember those things, to view them. Sometimes you probably have dreams that you're supposed to remember, of course, that are lessons or they're messages & have meaning or significance. A lot of times you may have fleeting glances into that World or you may have fleeting memories of those dreams or experiences without getting the whole story, just having seen part of the movie or only remembering part of it. (Maria: You said it's probably a gift that you can remember that & translate it, but on the other hand, you said previously that maybe the Lord blocks it out in a way so you won't have to worry about it, & nightmares too, & that in a way it's a good thing that you don't remember all those things.) Yes, it's good that you don't remember it all. (Maria: So it can be both a gift, a good thing, or maybe in some cases a bad thing.)
26. IT'S A GIFT, IN A SENSE, TO REMEMBER THOSE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES & DREAMS, but it's undoubtedly a blessing that you don't remember everything that happens in your sleep & your spirit experiences that you're not supposed to remember. It would be too much of a burden for your carnal mind to be burdened with all that all the time & have to remember it when you have the present to worry about, today. You've got enough to think about today. The Lord Himself said, "Fret not thyself for tomorrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Mat.6:34) You've got enough to worry about today without worrying about tomorrow, much less the past which you can't even change. The only thing you can get out of the past is to remember lessons, to learn & not repeat former mistakes. It's an amazing World, the World of the Spirit, & its interaction with the World of the flesh!
27. BUT ANYHOW, THAT'S THE ANSWER I GOT OF WHY WE DREAM! Many of these dreams that we can only remember little bits & pieces or snatches of seem to be irrelevant or have no particular significance or meaning, yet you remember them distinctly. They're a part of something bigger, a whole, that you just sort of caught a little side glimpse into, & you only remember that little piece that you woke up with. You definitely have a feeling that it was only one scene out of a bigger movie, a story, that something had to go before & something apparently was following because you didn't see the end of it.
28. BUT IN THOSE DREAMS--I THINK I WOULD CALL THEM LEARNING DREAMS--YOU DON'T NECESSARILY HAVE TO REMEMBER THEM ALL IN YOUR PHYSICAL MIND BECAUSE THEY'RE ORDAINED TO EDIFY YOUR SPIRIT, to teach your spirit & for your spirit to learn. Perhaps in the next life when we're fully in the Spirit, then maybe we'll remember some of those things or be able to recall them if we want to.--Or maybe the Lord will just wipe it all out since it's had its desired effect of teaching you something in your sleep, sleep-teaching. So that was the answer I got to why we dream.
29. SO, MANY DREAMS THAT ARE NOT MESSAGES & SEEM TO HAVE NO SIGNIFICANT MEANING, THEY DO HAVE MEANING! They have meaning to your spirit & your spirit is learning even though you're not conscious of it. So you're getting a double education! You're learning all day & your spirit is learning all night while you're sleeping. Praise the Lord, Honey, you've got to go back to sleep. Your spirit may be busy but your body needs sleep. "The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak" is another good verse for it. (Mat.26:41) The spirit wants to learn & wants to stay awake, but the body has to have sleep.
30. YOUR SPIRIT DOESN'T REALLY SLEEP WITH YOUR BODY, IT STAYS BUSY LEARNING & BEING EDIFIED, BECAUSE YOUR SPIRIT DOESN'T NEED SLEEP. Not actually any part of your spirit is anything physical or carnal or fleshly, your spirit is all spirit & it's in a sense whole in itself, in its consciousness. That's why it can leave your body & go places in your sleep or when you die. In a sense your spirit doesn't really need your body, but your body needs your spirit, so the Lord lets them stay together in order to have this physical life experience in which to learn lots of lessons & make lots of decisions to prepare you for the spiritual life. Your spirit is absorbing all these at the same time, but it will carry on & live on & retain them after the body is gone.
31. SO YOU'RE GETTING A DUAL EDUCATION RIGHT NOW, BOTH IN THE BODY & IN THE SPIRIT. Your carnal mind is learning in the daytime, the conscious mind, during your waking hours, & your spiritual mind or your spirit is learning all night long while your body's asleep, taking trips & having revelations & even receiving messages that you're supposed to remember & bring back with you, praise the Lord! You should know, because you live with somebody who's been doing that for a good many years, thanks to the Lord! He's the One that helps your carnal mind remember it & retain it from your spiritual experiences, so that you can pass it on & you can remember it in order to help you & others in your physical life.
32. (MARIA: MAYBE SOME OF THE CONSCIOUS DECISIONS YOU MAKE IN EVERYDAY LIFE ARE THE RESULTS OF THOSE. Even though you don't realise that you remember it, all of a sudden it comes to you what you should do.) I believe it! When you come to having to make that decision when you're awake, you automatically make the right decision because you learned the lesson while you were sleeping. So when you're awake & the test comes, you give the right answer. (Maria: That's encouraging, that even though you don't consciously remember the dream, you still get something out of it.) Amen! I believe it! Honey, we've gotta be quiet or we're gonna wake up Techi! I love you! Lord bless & help her now to sleep, nice sweet dreamless sleep, Lord, to rest her body & her mind, in Jesus' name.
33. THE CONSCIOUS PHYSICAL MIND GETS TIRED & WEARY. You can lie sleepless sometimes for hours thinking about things & worrying about things or even planning things & figuring out problems etc., but that wears out your body because your conscious mind, your physical mind, is part of your body. Your brain is part of your physical makeup, so it tires your whole body. So if you could remember everything & all the experiences your spirit has in your sleep, it would really wear you out. Thank God we don't!--But we get little glimpses, little bits & pieces. Even though we may not understand the whole movie & what it was about--like sometimes coming in late or early or whatever--you know it was there & you had it.--Unless the Lord wants to really reveal something to you & He helps you remember the whole thing, which I think is sort of a gift of revelation.
34. REVELATION MEANS SOMETHING THAT'S REVEALED.--Reveal, revel, revel-ation. It reveals the thing & relates it to the present so that you can remember it. Otherwise you have'm & your conscious mind forgets'm. Thank God you don't daydream all the time! God bless you, Honey, you've got to go to sleep. PTL! Thank God for dreams! They're part of our education, our spiritual education as well as a revelation if the Lord decides that we need to remember it.
35. I REMEMBER SOME OF THOSE BITS & PIECES OF DREAMS THAT ARE REALLY INTERESTING & I SOMETIMES REALLY WISH I COULD REMEMBER MORE! I wonder why it happened or where it happened or what was happening, you know, what went before, & I wonder what the end of the movie was, but the Lord doesn't choose to burden my mind with all that, it's too much to have to worry about in your conscious mind. You've got enough to think about in your physical conscious mind & your daily activities without having to take these spirit trips & dream trips & live in a dream World all the time. You'd become so Heavenly-minded you wouldn't be an Earthly bit of good! Honey, we've got to quit because these people can't be burdened with too much either. You can only retain so much. PTL! GBY! ILY! XXX! Now go to sleep. In Jesus' name help her to sleep. She's done her duty, Lord!--Amen! (--If she hadn't recorded'm you'd never've gotten'm! God bless our faithful little Recorder, Maria!--In Jesus' name, amen!--Amen?)
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
