My personal attitude towards dreams changed many years later, after meeting a boy of ten or eleven years of age. He was under treatment in the clinic for infectious diseases for a second time, but with another problem. His story gave me a basis to consider dreams in a new light.
Before he was taken to the medical facility for the first time, he had a dream in which a snake, coiled under a log, bit him. In a week, he was in the clinic for infections. In a few weeks, after he was released from the hospital, he again experienced a similar dream with the snake.
Nobody believed him or paid any attention at that moment. But in another week, he again found himself in the same hospital, but with another rare disease. All of the medical personnel were astonished by this case, since it was not possible to get this disease in the hospital, not to mention at home or school.
From then on, I started to analyze dreams. The majority of dreams do not leave a trace in memory, but some of them are not forgotten despite long time periods that elapse.
Some of them are to warn, others to encourage; yet still others allow us to look into the future, sometimes years before they come to be true in life. My aroused interest in the dreaming process inspired me to seek literature devoted to investigating this millennial “mystery of mysteries” of our being.
Historically, individuals who were capable of decoding dreams were honored in all civilizations and were at the service of pharaohs and monarchs, oracles and priests, visionaries and researchers.
How many have dealt with our nightly “journeys?” Plato and Socrates, Freud and Jung, Adler and Fromm, Pavlov and Heidegger, as well as many other world renowned scientists, have left their mark in this science, with discussions that never cease, while actual results from dreams, enter our daily lives.
I did not attribute much significance to dreams for a long time, despite the fact that my mother treated them as trustworthy. She learned the art of deciphering dreams in her childhood.
Almost every morning, we told her about our dreams. The meanings of positive ones she eagerly deciphered, while the ones that were unfavorable were simply avoided. This became a morning ritual accompanying our preparations for school.
In the Old Testament, we learn that “When there are prophets among you, I the Lord make myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams.”
© Rachel Madorsky