The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination by Robert Moss

corrections.
    Carl Jung tells an illuminating story about how a businessman got clarity on the ethics of a certain situation. The night after receiving an attractive proposition, the businessman dreamed that his hands and forearms were covered with disgusting black dirt. Though reluctant to relate the dream to waking circumstances, he accepted that the dream was a warning that he was in danger of getting involved in “dirty business” and bowed out of the deal.
    The Bible contains a marvelous story of a dream that invited a king to make a course correction. In his dream, Nebuchadnezzar saw a tree that grew all the way up to heaven, and he gave orders to chop down the tree but leave the roots intact. Daniel warned him about hubris, but Nebuchadnezzar disregarded the caution, with disastrous results.
    The dream advisory on the need for course correction may come in less dramatic ways.
    Dave, an airplane mechanic, shared his personal version of the very familiar “late for class” dream. A recurring theme in his dreams was that he was trying to get to class on time, but felt his legs dragging, as if fettered or coated with cement.
    We've all had that “legs in cement” feeling. I get it when I am pushing myself — or letting others push me — to do something that in my heart I really don't want to do. Dave agreed, after discussion, that he would think about ways in his life in which he might be struggling to get to the wrong class, and how he might want to shift his focus.
    Jack was expending a great deal of energy trying to stay in a situation that had become very conflicted and was draining him both emotionally and financially. Then shortly before the November 2006 U.S. elections, he dreamed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was hiding out at his house. Rumsfeld was weary and sick, and, wearing his pinstripe suit, he got into bed with Jack. Jack said he was aware in the dream that “I don't feel this is right.”
    Jack had once admired Don Rumsfeld and thought him a brilliant man, but he had become strongly opposed to the Iraq War and Rumsfeld's policy of “staying the course.” Looking into the mirror of this dream, Jack concluded: “I have to get out of this situation. If I try to stay the course, I'll end up hemorrhaging blood and money.”
    In the dream mirror, we not only see how we are driving, but when to take a different road. Our dream mirror offers us the great gift of objectivity . Its pictures do not lie. They carry us beyond the illusions and idées fixes of the little everyday mind. This is especially true of the dreams we do not ask for or do not want.
    Mirror dreams not only compensate for lopsided attitudes and offer course correction; they serve the role of conscience. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is a marvelous case study in the dreams of conscience. While the demented student Raskolnikov is growing fantastic daydreams as he plots a terrible crime, his true dreams hold up the mirror that shows him the evil of his designs.

4. DREAMS SHOW US WHAT WE NEED
TO DO TO STAY WELL
    Dreaming is medicine. This is true in ways that are easily evidenced by medical data. For example, clinical studies strongly suggest that people suffering from symptoms of depression start to recover when dream function increases — as monitored by brain waves and/or the length of the phases of rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep — and that they experience a decisive shift for the better when they increase their dream recall and their sharing of dreams. One of the physicians who works closely with me, Dr. Robert Weissberg, sometimes says to depressive patients, “I will be happy to prescribe medication for you, if it is needed, but I also want you to bring a dream or two to our next meeting.” He has noticed that the patients who are most successful in remembering dreams are often the ones who experience the most rapid improvement in their condition.
    Let's be clear about what dreams mean for our health.
    We have