Big dreams are rare but highly memorable dream experiences that make a strong and lasting impact on the dreamer's waking awareness. Moving far beyond "I forgot to study and the finals are today" and other common scenarios, such dreams can include vivid imagery, intense emotions, fantastic characters, and an uncanny sense of being connected to forces beyond one's ordinary dreaming mind. In Big Dreams, Kelly Bulkeley provides the first full-scale cognitive scientific analysis of such dreams, putting forth an original theory about their formation, function, and meaning. Big dreams have played significant roles in religious and cultural history, but because of their infrequent occurrence and fantastical features, they have rarely been studied in light of modern science. We know a great deal about the religious manifestations of big dreams throughout history and around the world, but until now that cross-cultural knowledge has never been integrated with scientific research on their psychological roots in the brain-mind system. In Big Dreams, Bulkeley puts a classic psychological thesis to the scientific test by clarifying and improving it with better data, sharper analysis, and a broader evolutionary framework. He brings evidence from multiple sources, shows patterns of similarity and difference, questions prior assumptions, and provides predictive models that can be applied to new sets of data. The notion of a connection between dreaming and religion has always been intuitively compelling; Big Dreams transforms it into a solid premise of religious studies and brain-mind science. Combining evidence from religious studies, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Big Dreams makes a compelling argument that big dreams are a primal wellspring of religious experience. They represent an innate, neurologically hard-wired capacity of our species that regularly provokes greater self-awareness, creativity, and insight into the existential challenges and spiritual potentials of human life.

The spiritual leader of Eckankar, Religion of the Light and Sound of God, tells how dreams can help readers gain insights from the past and future, grow in confidence, heal spiritually, and make decisions about career and finances. 12 line drawings.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the nature of dreams as understood from a range of diverse perspectives, and their relevance for pastoral care. Its approach is both systematic and practical, enabling ministers, spiritual directors and counsellors to understand the nature of dreams and the role they play in the lives of those in their pastoral care. Dreams are a universal phenomenon and have a long established role in religious faith and practice. Yet many pastors feel ill-equipped to deal with this area of human consciousness. In this guide, twenty-two contributors from a wide variety of disciplines explore the potential of dreams to bring about renewal, healing, reconciliation and encounter with the transcendent. • Part 1 examines dreams from theological, psychological and cultural anthropological perspectives. • Part 2 explores the theme of dreams and religion through empirical data, theory and reflections. • Part 3 considers dreams and the practice of pastoral care for a variety of settings and groups.

In this guide book, Kaplan shows readers that when they dream they are connecting with the creative force of the universe, the collective soul. Using excerpts from her own dream journal she describes various forms of dreams which take readers closer to the soul.

1st Place Winner of the Chanticleer International Book Awards 2023 in Mind & Spirit category Enhance your dreaming with groundbreaking research and wisdom from vivid dreamers throughout history, sacred texts, and the present day. We're asleep almost a third of our lives. What if those sleeping hours hold wisdom, creativity, and even connection with the divine? What if our dreams offer spiritual insight and guidance—not just for ourselves, but for our communities? In The Spirituality of Dreaming, leading dream scholar and expert Dr. Kelly Bulkeley brings us a set of time-honored methods to stimulate innate dreaming capacities and amplify their impact in our waking lives. Dreams have been a perennial source of spiritual insight and guidance across all cultures and religions throughout history, he asserts, but the sacred energy of our dreams has often remained untapped. Relying on years of research, data analysis, and interviews, Bulkeley offers wisdom and strategies from "big dreamers"--people who have vivid, intense dreams and remember them. He also distills the latest findings on dreams: the impact of digital technologies on our dreams, the phenomena of lucid dreaming and dreaming incubation, practices of dream-sharing, the creative role of dreams in cultural innovation, and the growing evidence that animals dream too. In conversation with people who care about dreams and spirituality, Bulkeley makes a case for taking ourselves seriously as dreaming visionaries. By drawing on classic and contemporary works of theology, anthropology, and psychology, along with the latest dream research, Bulkeley maps the spiritual power of dreaming and argues that our dreams matter in ways we do not yet fully realize, both individually and collectively. Together we can learn how to unlock the sacred truths revealed within our sleeping selves.

There is no question that every person will have a dream at one point or another. Some will even have visions. Bestselling author Stone answers readers questions regarding the symbolism of dreams and what they mean.

Lucid dreaming—becoming fully conscious in the dream state—has attracted legions of those seeking to explore their vast inner worlds. Yet our states of sleep offer much more than entertainment. Combining modern lucid dreaming principles with the time-tested insights of Tibetan dream yoga makes this astonishing yet elusive experience both easier to access and profoundly life-changing. With Dream Yoga, Andrew Holecek presents a practical guide for meditators, lucid dreamers ready to go deeper, and complete beginners. Topics include: meditations and techniques for dream induction and lucidity, enhancing dream recall, dream interpretation, working with nightmares, and more.