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, lucid dreams and dream interpretation, and sometimes even short-change 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 as well as 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 in order to interpret their experience from a larger view point. Airplanes and especially photographs from space were not yet available, so there was little first hand evidence of a new understanding that was a great leap beyond the old interpretation. Fortunately, with continuing research and analysis, proper understanding grew, and people eventually began to come around to an alternative view. The shift in understanding 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, an alternative world as yet unexplored by most, where a fascinating sphere of activity awaits investigation, interpretation, and potential harvest for greater meaning and 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 that understanding, interpreting, applying and thereby harvesting this other dimension of experience can bring - unless one can gain perspective from outside the 9-to-5 work day framework and the scientific purely-objective analysis of the system.

Dream-related mental skills such as dream recall, dream interpretation, and lucid dreaming and information on subjects such as the perhaps-bitter-yet-valuable-medicine meaning of nightmares or precognitive dreams isn’t often taught in our schools; the majority of our parents knew or passed on little about the value of remembering and understanding dreams as we grew up, or the great potential that lucid dreams can offer for our personal evolution. Therefore 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 research, 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 and dream interpretation 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 personal integration and thereby eventual rebalancing on 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 and research inner reality directly and thereby gain unique, undeniable experiences that have deep personal meaning and creative insight to help us solve the problems we face. Further, there is overwhelming evidence that dreams, lucid dreaming, and dream interpretation can be applied in many practical 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, skill mastery, deep personal insight and healing — and dreams offer all this at no cost and with no line-ups!