Your Dreams Count

Welcome to a study that could easily improve your life. What makes Your Dreams Count truly unique is that it is a handbook to supplement whatever dreamers’ dictionaries you may now be using. This book found its genesis when I was a freshman in college. The dream dictionaries of the time did not always fulfill a need for an interpretation of my dreams. With my early background in spiritual metaphysics, I yearned for definitions that would present the meanings of dreams at the physical, mental and spiritual levels. Somehow, I seemed to miss the connection between the definitions given in the dictionaries and the manifestations of the dreams in my real life.

For instance, when I dream of a bird, does this image come to me at the physical, mental or spiritual level? At the physical level I see a bird in flight; at the mental level I sense a new idea approaching; at the spiritual level I soar above mere earthly things into the ethereal. The same might be said of clouds, stars, boats, horses, and all of the other symbols one finds in a dreamer’s dictionary. There are extensive possibilities for accurate dream analysis.

The languages of Tarot, Numerology, Chinese and Western Astrology add to the dreamer’s vocabulary. Patiently, I put together charts and tables to help me with the work of interpreting my dreams. One would be surprised at how many definitions there are for a single motif or symbol! It took many years to evolve a comprehensive dream language to go with the dream journals.

            The Holy Bible was and still is a favorite resource and mainstay for research into dreams. I like especially the Book of Revelations and the chapters having to do with the Breastplate of David, Solomon’s Temple, and the dreams of Daniel and his three friends. As a matter of fact, most of my dream analysis work finds some roots in Scripture. There is more. I use Cruden’s Complete Concordance of the Bible as my constant reference. It, together with a dictionary and thesaurus are at my elbow as I write and study day by day.

            Reading Hobbes, Freud, Jung and other philosophers and psychoanalysts helped me to understand the philosophy of dreams. I embrace their teachings in my dream analysis work inclusively, but not exclusively. My major degree is in Education, not Psychology, but I find this to be no drawback to this work with dream analysis. My work in family counseling, in teaching a dream class for more than twenty-five years and as a guest on radio and television stations in several cities expanded my ability to decipher the codes in which dreams often appear to the dreamer.

Along the way I became a Freemason, taking all 32 degrees and joining the Scottish Rite and York Rite bodies of that organization. Needless to say, there are infinite symbols in these studies, as there are in the Knights of Columbus, Daughters of the Nile, Eastern Star and other such organizations.  Even the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts fill youngsters’ minds with symbolism. Fraternities and Sororities are the same. You see, there are symbols and motifs all around us. We need but embrace them in our dream language.  Symbols are found almost everywhere we look.

This eclectic approach to embracing several bodies of symbolic teachings widens the playing field for effective dream analysis. Dream dictionaries are still viable sources of information. However, this handbook permits you to expand upon those definitions to make your dreams more meaningful to you, to make your dreams really count in your daily life.

Paying attention to dreams has been a fruitful habit, recalling and recording them day by day. A constant flow of dreams was recorded in dependable steno pads, and presented an opportunity to go over past dreams, and to track the timing between my dreams and their manifestations in my daily life.

            For many years, I taught Your Dreams Count classes, using the fifteen major chapters of this book as the syllabus for our work. Our class members kept dream journals, and learned to share even the most intimate dreams with their companions in the classroom. The students and I would go over the material in each chapter carefully, year after year, until it became the finished product that you hold in your hands. You and your friends may wish to form a dream class using this handbook as a steady guide.

            The chapters are arranged logically. In the first four chapters (Part I), I lay the foundation for dream analysis by discussing the definition of dreams; understanding man’s three-fold personhood: physical, mental and spiritual; determining one’s life purpose; and considering three vital triads that apply to daily life. The next section of four chapters (Part II)) discusses important practices and belief systems to expand one’s dream language. These are: Western Astrology, Eastern Astrology, Numerology, and Tarot.  The final section (Part III) describes in detail the terminology of certain common, and not so common, objects that appear in dreams, giving a more perfect definition to them. The answers to your questions about last night’s dream, for example, will become clear as day. In fact, each definition clarifies meanings for the dreamer, making dreams count more and more in daily life.

You will sense the inherent symmetry of what is presented. As a handbook, I’ve tried to keep it interesting for you; I want you to enjoy yourself. Also included in this volume are many examples of dreams and the solutions to them as they were worked out by the dreamer(s) and myself. In these cases, I simply use the word “Dream:” followed by the dream as it was reported; the dreams are in Italics.

            The benefit that Your Dreams Count holds for you becomes apparent as you learn to recall and record your dreams and then begin to decipher your dreams at three levels: physical, mental and spiritual. For instance, there are four major areas of your life that may benefit from your dreams. These areas are, briefly, health, wealth, work and love. Often, when stumped by a problem relating to my job I would have the issue clarified in a dream. This happened more times than I can recount. Why? It was because I paid attention to my dreams, and then acted on them. Needless, to say, there were events in my life that could have been avoided had I but listened, really listened to what my dreams were telling me.

It is true that dreams alone are not going to make your life better; they are not the only avenue of help in solving dilemmas. We go to bankers for help with our finances, lawyers with legal problems, doctors with health problems. At the same time, one’s dreams may be of great assistance with these things. In addition, we each must take responsibility for diet and exercise, and laying aside harmful substances. The practical things in life must be heeded.

            This work has been more than fifty years in the making, combining my dream journals, notations on scraps of paper, syllabi for classes, workshops, and from what my students have taught me along the way. I am a compulsive reader and learner, and this has proved to be a boon in this study.

             Please carefully note the “Supplemental Reading” section toward the end of the book. It contains names of authors and their works that provided acute knowledge and wisdom in my studies of this material. I haven’t read these authors in many years, and am not sure whether their books are still available. While I cite specific authors of material in the text of the book, I do not knowingly quote from anyone else. To all of these, my teachers of the past, I give grateful thanks. 

            From this dreamer to you, then, Your Dreams Count: A Layman’s Approach to Dream Analysis is dedicated to assist you with your dream analysis. Enjoy!

Sincerely yours,

Reverend Paul Lachlan Peck, M. Ed.