Dreams - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 9/25/23

life in the paranormal. Since graduating with a master's degree in Theology and English from King's College, Cambridge University, Teresa has written numerous Dreams after Life and other spiritual books and encyclopedias. She also hosts The White Shores, the podcast for spiritual beings. Teresa, welcome back. How are you?

came to dreams and sleep research. But I'm delighted to say that in recent years, particularly the last decade, there's been a massive shift in our understanding of dreams, lots more research into it, and a lot of it proving that dreams a really good sign of well being, emotional, psychological, physical wellbeing, and a lot of investment in dream research because especially during the lockdowns and COVID, so many people were dreaming vividly as a reaction to the problems going

on in the world. That's what dreams try to do. They try to help us problem solve. And it was unprecedented global event for dream research because people were going on social media for the first time and saying, I had this weird dream. Now it happened. I mean, people were having very precognitive and vivid dreams. Around nine to eleven, another event, but social media wasn't quite at the apex that it is now, and literally people will be waking

up in the morning and telling others their dreams. And this was unprecedented, and I hate to say it, because you know, it was a very difficult time. But for someone like me who's been writing about dreams for decades, for twenty five years at least, been championing dream power, it was a kind of a dream come true because suddenly people were realizing their inner world, what's within them matters,

consciousness matters, what's going on, what's the meaning. And since then, really I've just I've had so many wonderful opportunities to go on mainstream shows. I mean, yesterday I was on ITV. This morning, I was on BBC Radio and they're talking to me about dreams in a very mainstream way, and that's just an absolute joy because what they don't realize when they're talking about dreams, they're really talking about spirituality, psychic ability that we all have innate in us. But

the wonderful thing about dreams is they're the door. And I've found that a lot of people have comfortable talking about their dreams when maybe when you go to precognition, telepathy, or these other superpowers we all have, we just don't realize we have or believe in them, people get a bit nervous. So I sound that dreams are the door, the way to open people up to the possibility that there's so much more to us than meets the eye, and we are more than our bodies.

the dream, the more profound the meaning. I mean, you could compare that to art, you know, when you see them some art and it really doesn't make sense, but it's hailed as a great work of art because people look at that work art and find all these hidden meanings. So a dream that's really really surreal celebrates it because you've got a lot of work to do unpacking the

hidden meanings beneath the surface. Now, a dream that's more mundane is still very very helpful because it's shining the night light on something in your waking life that perhaps you haven't paid enough attention to, because your intuition knows it's important for your personal and spiritual growth, but for some reason you're either avoiding it, denying it, or simply

haven't noticed it. And the reason you haven't noticed it is because when we're awake, our ego, our conscious mind, reason and logic take over, and so any subtile hunches or gut instincts don't stand a chance. What our heart wants us to know doesn't really stand a chance. But however, when you fall asleep, your reason and logic and your ego fall assleep too along with your body, leaving your intuition,

your creativity, that inner visionary that you are. Because we're all artists and creators and innovators in our dreams to be unleashed. And I would love people to no longer fear that unleashing and to just write down their dreams when they wake up. Get in a of doing that, because the more you do that, the more you're going

to trigger more dream recall. Like anything in life, where your attention goes in the day is what is what where the reward is, And it's the same if you think about dreams during the day, listening to this interview actually may well trigger dream recall the following night because you've spent some time focusing on dreams, your awareness has gone to dreams and you're thinking, well, maybe this strange

maybe from the UK has a point. Maybe my dreams, my inner therapist is trying to tell me something really important that I'm missing. Maybe my inner creative artist can help me problems solve and get me out of a funk that I'm in or a block that I'm experiencing. Maybe maybe my intuition, when it's unleashed in the dream state, can make can connections between things I didn't realize were possible.

That's why so many great innovations in the world, from the speed of light, the theory of relativity, I'm signed to great literature, works of art, medical and scientific breakthroughs. Many of them have come in the dream state. When the scientist, innovator, artists woke up with a dream on their mind, wrote it down, and that dream triggered connections that they would not have been able to do in the waiting state. Dreams can change the world, and they

can also change your lives. And every time someone's life changed for the better, that changes the world for the better. In my humble opinion, because we're all interconnected.

your own mindset. It's you meeting aspects of your own personality and looking at your fears, your shadow side, the part of you you don't want to acknowledge, but also the part of you that needs to be unlocked, new potentials you need to discover. You kind of meeting aspects of yourself in the dream. However, I'm also a spiritual writer and an author of many many years I've written

about the paranormal. I work with psychic mediums experts in that field, and I believe there's also a part of dreams that is indefinable, that sometimes feels like it's being channeled from somewhere else that can't be forced. It can sometimes happen. Because the trouble is with dreams, whenever we try to put a definition on them, they wriggle, they

don't like it. Dreams are elusive, that they are mysterious, and we're always trying to solve them all the time and say, well, a dream means that or this is why we dream. The wonderful thing about dreams is that they are eternal question mark, and it's in the asking the questions about our dream life that we actually learn and grow as human beings rather than sometimes finding the answers.

And yes, the majority of dreams are about ourselves. We're dreaming ourselves help us understand ourselves better, because self knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom and growth. But there's also a part that seems to come from somewhere else. Call it soul, call its spirit, call it God, whatever you are comfortable with. So I hope that sort of answer the question.

self help and therapy. So yes, dream research is keeping up with the science of consciousness. And I love that, and I work with these scientists, have written books with some of them, collaborate with them, do presentations. I love that because they welcome me in because I'm not a scientist. I'm very open about that. Biomer geologiour an expert in

philosophy and mysticism spirituality. But where I've noticed recently, George, that dream research is going a lot of dream experts and myself included, are suggesting that every element in a dream has a precognitive element that you are kind of dreaming a potential future. We know the brain is a

predictive organ and that doesn't stop when you're asleep. So what the brain is doing is looking at your current waking life and saying to you, well, if you carry on doing what you're doing, thinking what you're thinking, feeling what you're thinking, this is the future that you are heading forward forward. So if you wake up with a nightmare beaver dream and you don't like what you glimpsed, your dreaming mind is trying to help you in saying

course correct. All we have is the eternal now. This is a potential future I've showcased for you, but you have the power in the now. Change your mindset, because mindset is everything, not just for dream work, but for life, because how you think and feel about yourself is what you attract. Change your mindset, change your daily actions, your daily rituals in a more optimum direction, because you will notice then that if your dreams start to shift, your

waking life does. And that's wonderful because what's happening in the dream state is you're meeting your unconscious what you unconsciously believe about yourself and your life. And that's a manifesting rule, isn't it That what you unconsciously believe is what you attract. However, in waking life, you may be doing your affirmations, your meditation, and all the right things,

but they're still not attracting the success you want. And that's because buried in your deep, because dreams are messages from the deep, there's some limiting beliefs that are stopping you in your tracks. The dream state offers you a chance to find out what those blocks are, and then either through lucid dreaming or the day dreaming state, which

is just as valid a way to dream. You can rescript that so that deep down you truly believe you deserve success and abundance and all these wonderful things that truly are our birthrights, but our fears and anxieties and limitations that we put on ourselves, and our obsession with the expectations of others trying to fulfill that in rather than trying to fulfill our own expectations. The dreaming state will highlight all that for you and say, get to

work on the deepest, deepest part of yourself. Do that, and then your waking life is going to start falling into place.

because it's so gentle and beautiful. Maybe you were dancing in a field or walking with animals, you didn't recall it. So what the dreaming mind is doing is shocking you into recall because it knows darn well if you dream of being uried alive, you are going to wake up and think about what did that dream mean? Much more so than if you were walking in a field, as I say, or singing a song in your dream or dancing. You're more likely to remember what shocks you. And it

does it for tough love. It really does it for tough love, because it's been trying to send this message over and over again. That's why you may have had recurring dreams, and recurring dreams sometimes morph into nightmares if you haven't learned the lesson, Because as soon as you learn the lesson of the recurring dream or nightmare, it will shift to another dream scenario for you to learn from,

because that's what our dreaming mind wants. It knows the meaning of our life is to learn and grow, so it's sending us all these pointers about how we can learn and learn and grow. So our life isn't a loop, it's a spiral. We're ever spiring upwards. Think of nightmare is also a bit like a fever. A fever is actually a good sign that you're trying to get rid of something toxic that's not helping you. So if you think of a dreaming mind, oh, this is a good sign.

I'm healing, I'm on the way, I'm letting go. But I need to find out what this nightmare is alerting me to.

creative part of you. As I said, when you dream, you become an artist. You meet the part of yourself, the latent artist and creative and innovator, and a lot of us and are waiting and thinking, Oh, I'm not creative. I can't draw, I can't paint, I can't sing, I can't be artistic, I'm not good with words, et cetera, et cetera, all these limiting self believes we put on ourselves. But you're dreaming, mind throws all up in the air and says, nonsense. You're born with all of this within you.

Go and discover it and enjoy it.

up without an alarm, an alarm clock. I know it's necessity, necessity sometimes, but it is the enemy of physical, mental, and emotional health because it shocks you too much into reality. You need to have that twilight state when you kind of wake up naturally, if you can do that as much as possible. And then when you're in bed, linger in bed a while. I know we're all taught to leap up and do a stretch and our affirmations and

all that. Just give it a few minutes, stay still, keep your eyes closed, and just ask what dreams come bubbling to the surface. If nothing comes, notice, tune into your body because often dream memories are hidden in our body. Because our body is also a predictive organ, it knows what we're feeling often before we do. And then sit up and write down I feel or I sense. Just

start writing and you're often find it's almost automatic. Images, thoughts, words, all of them are relevant when you wake up in the morning because they're all fragments of the dream. They've all come from the dream story that you may not be recording properly, and if you do that morning after morning for at least two to three weeks, you will have then your dream voice over to your waking life emerging. And that's another thing people get hung up on. They

get stuck on one specific dream. Dreams work like a Netflix, Netflix or TV series you love. They run and run and run. You've got to tune in every single night for the next string installment.