What is the connection between your dreams and your waking life, present and future? Do dreams really come true and what is their meaning? Can the dream books interpret your dreams accurately?

What is the connection between your dreams and your waking life, present and future? Do dreams really come true and what is their meaning? Can the dream books interpret your dreams accurately?   We all wonder about dreams and most of us have experienced them in one form or another. Dream guides and experts tell us to monitor our dreams, keep a journal and look for patterns from one dream to another. In this way we can begin to interpret our dreams and correlate them with what we are experiencing in our waking life.   Dreams can be tricky and often elusive and misleading. But all of them are subject to interpretation. The books are not definitive and because we are trying to explain the subjective in objective terms, there is a vast margin for error and misinterpretation.   Some of the better books are based on research. Subjects keep track of their dreams and the researchers correlate the results with current or past events in a subject's life. So if fifty people are dreaming about flying and they have similar life experiences then a statement about dreaming can be made. I pulled three dream books from my library and looked up flying and I can see why reading these books and applying what is written to your own experience can be difficult and most frustrating.   Dreams I believe, are a close personal experience that is created for you, by you, and is in itself an interpretation of your thoughts, not the other way around. They are manifestations of a life in a different realm of existence which may or may not have anything to do with your waking state other than you remember some of it. They are also an opportunity for you to create a connection or meaning to them or not.   Because we are creative beings, our creations only have personal significance and that changes the more we think about them as we recreate our creations differently. Thinking about a thing is like adding another ingredient to the recipe, it becomes something different.   There are people who are very passionate about their lives. They are passionate about their futures and where they see themselves, and they dream about it. It is a constant companion during their waking hours as well. So these thoughts spill over into their dreams. They dream of the future and they see things and these things are manifested into their waking experience. So passion may be the grease that moves things along. If one is passionate about a thing, then they are totally into it, it is a state of being that excludes anything else. It is the passion that has life, not the person, it is the idea being born that takes precedence over ones own personal being. Thoughts are in fact life - things are the manifestation of thought. You are the result of a thought and it is your thoughts about your life that are real, not you.   Dreaming may or may not have any significance in your life, and does it really matter? I believe that some of us are here as observers and not participators. Personally I don't dream about my future. I have always been a loner although I am always involved with people in one way or another. I became an author eight years ago, and I am now a published international author of books, articles and websites. I have never dreamed about my future. I have a desire to be a recognized, accomplished international author, and I have set that as my goal. I have a new future in site, but I have to constantly remind myself of it. I don't see into the future and I don't dream about it, even though it comes naturally for me and therefore a part of who I am. I have the connections, the expertise and the desire, but not the dreams.   With all the people I have around me, I stand alone, an observer and possibly a portal - the one that holds the door open, a beacon with no hands. Or a light that shows the way, but not the driver.   There is no meaning to life other than the meaning you give it. Dreams have no meaning unless you think they do. And again, as Freud put it, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Sometimes things are - just because!