Everyone dreams: During Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep 90 - 100 minutes apart, 3 to 4 times a night, and up to 45 minutes each. Most dreams are in color.

        Most dreams are very meaningful for people. Dreams are useful in learning more about the dreamer's feelings, thoughts, behavior, motives, and values.

        Dreams can help people solve problems. Artists, writers, and scientists often get creative ideas from dreams.

        The most important thing to remember is that your dreams reflect your own unique underlying thoughts and feelings, and that the people, actions, settings and emotions in your dreams are personal to each person.

        There may be some dream elements that are common to different persons, cultures, and times because humans have some common traits.

        For example in the west a lion may represent strength while in the orient a dragon might represent strength. Some of the "picture images" representing concepts are probably culture based. Others are not.

        Usually, however, the same image or symbol will have different meanings for different people.

        Recurrent dreams, may be Recurrent thoughts, feelings, behavior, and motives of the dreamer.

        Nightmares may be caused by stress, traumatic experiences, emotional difficulties, sickness, drugs or medication.

        dreams that seem to predict future events but your behavior changes future events. We make your own future.

        dreams are neither meaningless nor simple wish fulfillment, but an biological and mental process.

        Freud had Dreams serve to discharge pent-up energy associated with unsatisfied wishes. He was big on sexual fantasies (which were more repressed in his time)

        Consciousness, -- what we call "attention." works in a symbolic way much as the work "Water" is a symbol for it but wont get you wet where as "mindless" existed in earlier animals but can only be expressed in a concrete way such as images and sounds.

        feelings (emotions) are just one of many ways to deal with problems.

        This may be though of as the gut feeling, which are (I believe) often right. The new and old brain speak a different language entirely.

        Sleep seems to be necessary for mental health at least. The mind needs the sleep more than the body

        sleep may consolidation the memory or allow stockpiles of neuro transmitters in the brain to be replenished.

        Whatever it is, sleep is necessary. Dreams seem necessary as well. Possibly dreams transfer memories from one system to another.

        A traditional view of consciousness is as a gate keeper which focuses on one or more of the messages from subconscious memories, experience, feelings and such and decides which should be acted upon.

        By being immobile in sleep makes it possible to transfer waking experiences to various of the subconscious elements "off-line" so the consciousness is not busy with any current incoming stimulus.

        The interest in dreams has been influenced by the discovery that understanding our dreams can help us conquer phobias and overcome personal problems.

        Dreams can be a key to self-knowledge in that we can where certain ideas come from. Sometimes by remembering what was going on in our life at a past time, we can understand why we came to believe a certain thing.

        Subsequent experience, knowledge or whatever may change that. The dream process may let us "get through to" the subconscious elements and tell them to "Clean up their act".

        It is important to remember that dreams are people-specific, and the same dream will mean something totally different to different people.

        Dreams are a communication of body, mind and spirit (soul, inner self, subconscious mind, ego or what ever you call it.) using symbolism, with sleep setting the environment state of being where this is possible.

        Different states of consciousness (like awake, asleep, daydreaming, excited, alert, drowsy, bored or concentrating) cause other brain wave activity.

        Our conscious mind, or the part we think with, our "window" into life, only takes only a small portion of our brain activity.

        Some other small parts control stuff like balancing when we walk, breathing, heartbeat, changing light to vision, sound to hearing, and so on.

        Imagination is used in more then dreaming. For example the ancients seen figures in the constellation such as Andromeda, Orion and like that. A favorite childhood activity is to look at clouds and see shapes.

        The mind cannot deal with chaos very well, and often make order of things that really have on order. This is also important to the dreaming process.

        Then there is memory which is vast! And occupies a lot of the brains resources.

        The activity we call dreaming. We dream all the time Even while (in a slightly different form) we are awake.

        It is those thought that are not directly seen in our "window" from which we see the world.

        Both Imagination and dreams kick around thoughts, emotions, ideas, actions and stuff in the short term memory.

        It is influenced by our background, spiritual ideas, beliefs, any communication from God, and life philosophy.

        Our mind and spirit together with our brain, is the greatest computer ever devised. So dreams are a way to make sense of the world. In dreams all things are possible (as are most things are also in life).

        So dreams are way to guide our lives, as in our lives we should follow our dreams.