Just maybe our really strange dreams are us working out something in symbol form rather than a bad case of indigestion.

"Dreaming Is Less About Sleep Than About Waking Up

By Robert Moss in Manifesting Dreams on January 18th, 2008

"The great secret of fulfilling our heart's desires and living in joy and abundance is an open secret. It is a power to be claimed as soon as we awaken to its existence and adopt the tools and habits required to bring it through.

The lesser secret involves the law of attraction: whatever we think or feel strongly, the universe says yes. If we carry around feelings of failure or dread, the world will give us lots of reasons to feel those things. If we follow our creative passions and are willing to make a leap of faith, the universe will support us and will bring us resources and opportunities in magical ways.

The greater secret is that to work the law of attraction successfully, we need to be aware of which part of us is doing the willing and choosing, and we need to develop a practice that engages the body and the larger self, not merely the calculating ego.

We have the tools we need. They are at play within us and around us, every day and every night. They are the three "only" things we too often dismiss as "only" a dream, "only" a coincidence, and "only my imagination." They are incredible guides if we will only give them a little room and respect in our lives.

In dreams, we have access to an impeccable physician, counselor and mentor who does not lie to us but shows us what we need to do to stay well or get well. In dreams, we rehearse for challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us. Dreams are a "secret laboratory" (as quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli observed) where we cook up new ideas and life projects. Dreams put us in touch with our soul partners and our soul's purpose.

Fundamentally, dreaming is less about sleep than about waking up. In much of waking life we go about like sleepwalkers, propelled by routines and other people's agendas. In dreams, we wake up to the bigger story. The ancient Egyptians, who knew a lot about dreams, recognized this in their language. In ancient Egyptian, the word for dream is rswt, which means an "awakening".

To make dreams your friend, reserve five minutes a day to record something from the night in a journal. Better still, use those five minutes to share a dream with a friend - but don't let the friend tell you what your dream means. Have them practice saying, "If it were my dream" and tell you what the dream means to them.

We say, "it's only coincidence". Yet when we start paying attention to coincidence, chance encounters and the play of symbols around us in everyday life, we enter the weave of magic. The stream of coincidence alerts us to the fact that we are not alone, that we have invisible sources of support, and that we may be on the right course even when the whole world seems to be going the other way - or alternatively, that we may need to adjust our goals and behaviors to a deeper agenda. We discover that every setback offers and opportunity, and that mind and matter interweave at every level of reality.

To make coincidence a guide, you again need only five minutes a day. Schedule five minutes of unscheduled time, anywhere you like, and pay close attention - using all of your senses - to everything that enters your field of perception in that brief interval. Be open to getting a message from the world through the flight of a bird, or a vanity license plate, or a snatch of conversation, or a sudden gut feeling you hadn't acknowledged before.

We say, "it's only my imagination", yet we live by images. They turn us off and turn us on. They have the power to make us sick or make us well. Mark Twain said, with devastating accuracy, "You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."

Part of the great secret is that if we can see and sense our destination, we are better than halfway there. To claim the power of imagination, and the fabulous fun of "making things up," we want to devote five minutes a day to picturing a place in the where we can indulge ourselves in tasting and touching and feeling the fulfillment of our heart's desires. Bring in anything you want or need - ocean waves at your front door, a shelf of books you have published, your dream lover, a space of deep healing.

When we make dreams, coincidence and imagination our guides and our daily delight, we become citizens of two worlds. We learn that there is a world beyond the obvious one, and that it is here we will reawaken to who we are and what we are meant to become. Reawakening to that world is like discovering colors after living in black-and-white. That other world is actually the multidimensional universe within which our 3D reality bobs like a rubber duck in a bathtub. Science knows it is there, and may be the secret source of all the events that will manifest in the world of the senses."

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/dreaming-sleep-waking-up.html