Every person on earth dreams pretty much every night, and evidence suggests that all mammals dream also. It follows then that something extremely important must be going on while we sleep and dream, yet in the industrialized world, the majority of people pay little attention to dreams and dream interpretation, and sometimes shortchange themselves on sleep because it is perceived as lost time, or at best unproductive.

How astonishing that we generally ignore this third (and possibly far more) of ourselves - our dreams. An appropriate analogy to the grandeur of this mass misunderstanding is the incredible inertia in the middle ages against the idea of earth being other than flat until repeated point-blank evidence like Galileo’s observation of other planets and their moons and the journeys of Columbus and other explorers across the ocean proved conclusively otherwise. The challenge was that people’s everyday experience contradicted the idea of a spherical earth because nobody had yet gained perspective from outside of the system. Airplanes and especially photographs from space were not yet available, so there was little first hand evidence of a new paradigm that was a great leap beyond the old. Fortunately, people eventually began to come around, and the shift triggered an ensuing surge of exploration as the realization and acceptance finally dawned that our world really isn't flat after all.

Dreams, in the same way, encompass yet another entire dimension of experience, a world as yet unexplored by most, where a fascinating sphere of activity awaits investigation and possible harvest for greater fulfillment in waking life. The challenge is again the same — common daily experience for the average person offers little proof of this other reality that dreams encompass, let alone the possible value of this other dimension of experience, unless one can gain perspective from outside the 9-to-5 work day framework and the scientific purely-objective system.

Dream-related mental skills such as dream recall, dream interpretation, and lucid dreaming and information on subjects such as the meaning of nightmares or precognitive dreams isn’t often taught in our schools, and the majority of our parents knew or passed on little about the value of remembering and understanding dreams as we grew up. So it's no big surprise that many adults remember few or no dreams, and even less ponder the meaning of dream symbolism or set out to interpret and mine the jewels of guidance and creative inspiration hidden just below the surface of consciousness -- in dreams. Basically, nobody told us or showed us how dreams can be extremely practical.

Current misguided concepts about the value of dreams not only represent a crucial lack of understanding, but also represent and even bring about a lack of connection with the subconscious and our own deeper, intuitive mind. This long-standing trend of modern society often disregarding dreams and especially nightmares has created an artificial rift within many individuals, and may indirectly or even rather directly be the source for many of our current cultural, social, personal, political and planetary environmental challenges.

One solution towards rebalancing and integration on a personal and eventually a planetary level, is for each of us to realize and begin to investigate how our personal dreams, at very least, each night offer a direct means to explore inner reality and gain unique, undeniable experiences that have deep personal meaning. Further, there is overwhelming evidence that dreams can be applied in many ways to improve waking life, supporting Shakespeare's age-old claim by MacBeth that sleep and dreams are the "chief nourishers in life's feast". Dreams do indeed offer opportunities for fun, adventure, wish fulfillment, creativity, deep personal insight and healing — and dreams offer all this at no cost and with no line-ups!