Dreams are practical reflections of feelings and concerns that were present in your mind at the time you had the dream. You are smart and practical. So are your dreams.

The goal of dream study is to increase one's contact with and access to the abilities of their subconscious mind. I became interested in dreams as an avenue to increase my knowledge of the subconscious mind, and increase my psychological and emotional effectiveness. I have been recording my dreams since I was seventeen.

By understanding the meaning of common dreams, you can identify issues that want your attention in your waking life.

Dreams are more original than images we see in the media, and are surprisingly unaffected by media. For example, the average person watches several hours of television per day, yet dreams are rarely about shows we have watched or news of the day.

Dreams are selfish, in the sense that they always concern issues and events that were weighing on your mind at the time you had the dream. Dreams will warn you about concerns in your career, in your family life, in your relationship with your spouse, and give insight into problems with your children.

Everybody dreams, but memory for dreams is famously elusive. Even Sigmund Freud, without the benefit of modern technology's electroencephalogram, or EEG, did not know that adult humans dream 90 minutes per night, and that newborns spend eight hours per day dreaming (out of their 16 hours of sleep). REM sleep helps grow the brain!

Dreams are self-created, but dreamers often do not understand the images that their own minds produce. Therein lays the essential paradox of dreams; dreams reveal that we all possess subconscious ability. Furthermore, our subconscious mind, as it is revealed through dreams, proves itself to be talented, artistic, insightful, perceptive and intelligent.