Problem-Solving Dreams

Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams. -Anonymous In addition to the personal relevance of dreams it is becoming increasingly clear that they are also a source of knowledge for understanding issues beyond the individual concerns of a given dreamer. Social problems, some physical diseases, parallels with the findings of modern physics are a few of the domains that we know dreams address.. - J. Gary Sparks I took the family alarm clock and went into the spare bedroom that night, and set it for an hour and a half. And thereafter when I was working on a story I would waken myself every hour and a half through the night - force myself to wake up, think of the story, try to solve it, and even as I as thinking about it I would fall back asleep. And in the morning there would be a solution for that particular story problem. Now, that's penetrating the sub-conscious in my opinion. It's penetrating it in a way that I don't think they'll be able to do any better, thirty centuries from now. - A. E. van Vogt, in Dream Makers Both Thomas Edison and Harry Truman had one thing in common. Whenever they faced a problem for which they had no solution, they excused themselves and took naps. When they awoke, each invariably had the answer to his problem. - Dusty Bunker I have known advocates who have pleaded in dreams, mathematicians who have sought to solve problems; and poets who have composed verses. I have made some myself which are very passable. It is therefore incontestable that constructive ideas occur in sleep as well as when we are awake. - Voltaire On one level the personality attempts to solve problems through dream construction... and often this gives freedom to actions that cannot be expressed within the confines of waking life. - Seth (by Jane Roberts) The fact is indisputable that when our ordinary waking consciousness or will goes to sleep or rest, or even dozes, that instant an entirely different power takes command of the myriad forces of memory. ... This power ... knows things hidden from Me, and can do what I cannot. - Charles Leland, the historian of witchcraft