Feature: What's in a dream?

CHICAGO, April 23 (UPI) -- What's in a dream?

Shakespeare may have had it right when he wrote: "To sleep: perchance to dream ..." because the symbols we see in our dreams can help us understand ourselves, according the School of Metaphysics.

"Dreams bring perspective," said Pam Blosser, president of the school located in Windyville, Mo. "Sometimes you do something and you don't know why you do it. A dream will help you understand why you're feeling the way you're feeling or think the way you're thinking. It helps you understand if you need to make a change in your life or if you're running away from something. ... People innately want self-understanding."

Laurel Clark, national coordinator for the National Dream Hotline, which will conduct a four-day telephone session in more than a dozen cities beginning Friday, said there is a "universal language to dreams."

The School of Metaphysics has been researching dreams for about three decades and invites people to not only call the hotlines, but to e-mail them as well to som(at)som.org.

Dreaming of a person? That person represents an aspect or quality in yourself. House? That's your mind. Animals? Those are your habits.

"If you dream about a bear chasing you and you turn around and kill it, what this symbolizes is there is some king of habitual way of thinking that is threatening to you," Blosser said. "By killing it, you're changing that habit."

Other symbols include stones (willpower), food (knowledge) and hands (purpose).

"If you dream about holding rocks in your hands, you're becoming aware of a purpose for willpower," Clark said.

"People often dream about being naked. The dream means you're becoming open and honest. It's a common dream. Someone find themselves in a public place. If you dream you're embarrassed, it means although you can be open and honest in your waking state, you get embarrassed by it."

There are literally hundreds of symbols.

Efforts to interpret dreams extend to ancient civilizations. The Greeks thought dreams were a means of telepathy while those in the Orient and Native Americans viewed them as a means of communicating with gods or ghosts.

It wasn't until the 19th century and Sigmund Freud that dreams took on a personal aspect.

Clark calls dreams "communication from the inner self to the outer self.

"We dream so that we can have greater awareness of who we are, why we're here," she said.

"People want to know why they don't dream. We've found in research everybody does dream. They don't remember their dreams (because) ... most adults unfortunately have learned to forget their dreams because they've been told dreams don't mean anything.

"Learning how to remember dreams is a fairly simple process. Put a notebook by the bed, tell yourself you want to remember and when you wake, first thing you do is write down whatever you remember. By giving it attention, you actually remember. People can learn to remember several dreams in one night."

People often worry their dreams are forecasting a disaster.

"We've had people call the hotline, disturbed about dreaming they are having an affair," Blosser said. "The dreams have haunted them. But it doesn't mean what they think. They fear that dreaming about an affair with an old boyfriend or an ex-husband means they're really going to have an affair. Or it's raising hopes. It doesn't mean that. A dream about an affair is about becoming more in harmony with yourself. A killing dream is about change.

"By interpreting those kinds of dreams, we dispel people's fears."

Though most dreams are strictly symbolic, some are precognitive, forecasting things that have yet to happen, Blosser said.

"Often they will be of events that are catastrophes rather than other events," she said. "I think that's because there is more emotion involved. It is more powerful vibration ... (that goes) through the subconscious mind. They (the vibrations) do exist.

"Everything begins with your thoughts. And because of the way you think it forms a collective thought form that is very alive and real. ... It moves through the mind and becomes experience. Some people feel it before it happens. They're more in touch with their intuition. People who are more intuitive or psychic might have dreams of events that are going to occur.

"If Thomas Edison had a question in his mind, he would take a short nap. When he woke, he usually had the answer."

Well-known psychic Irene Hughes said some of her predictions have come to her in dreams.

"One of the most memorable, I think, was the fact I dreamed Bobby Kennedy was going to be shot through the head," she recalled. "The dream indicated to me it would be shortly after his brother would be assassinated."

She related this dream during a seance to a Methodist minister and former Iowa Gov. and Sen. Harold Hughes, who wrote a letter about the incident.

"I don't have dream predictions that often," Hughes said.