I often dream and most of the time if I wake up immediately I know what the dream is about but in the morning whatever it was has gone from my memory – vanished forever.

There are some, however, that I do remember. The one that happened to me yesterday (Wed 6) will be etched into my memory forever and I bear the painful scars.

On the High Existence website under the heading “The Real Meaning Behind Your Dreams” the article states:

“Dreams are a very interesting feature of the human mind. Every dream you have ever had has the very same roots, causes, and components that, if you are aware, can be seen and traced back to your daily life.

“PURPOSE: The major purpose of dreams is to resolve unfinished thoughts left over from the day before. They occur every night, but we only remember certain ones for their strange nature, desirable experience, or fearful story lines.

“CONTENT: The content of a dream is mostly determined by the unfinished thought processes left over in your brain from the day before. For instance, a dream about a brown cow riding on a boat, may have derived from a commercial you saw on TV that day about a brown cow and from watching the movie Titanic.

“However, these thoughts only make it to your dream because you were interrupted whileyou were thinking about them. So, like any good computer, your brain takes the incompleted thought and moves it to a folder to be dealt with later.

The Janitor

“While you are dreaming, your brain is collecting all the unfinished thoughts from the day before. Perhaps most importantly, however, it is collecting the small, seemingly insignificant and unresolved thoughts and superimposing them onto a story that makes sense to you, at the time (during the dream, your brain accepts the story in context, when you wake up, and logic is applied, it stops making sense).

“Now that your brain has a story to associate those loose thoughts with, they  can be stored as a single memory (the dream’s storyline), rather than a bunch of scattered details. So, essentially, this is the janitor of the mind. He’s going around, picking up little unfinished art projects, personal issues, and puzzling ideas and mashing them all together into a story.”

Hmm.

This Janitor made sure I would remember this one:

MY DREAM

I was lying on my bed (I actually was – asleep) and fearing my operation I was to have today at 1:30pm. I looked at the clock beside my bed. It showed 6:30pm.

I was frantic. I looked out of the window and my wife, Joan was in the garden talking to a friend. (the garden was not where I live now but the one where I grew up in in England where I lived from my birth until I was 9 years of age!). I yelled at my wife:

“Why didn’t you wake me up? You know I had to go the hospital to have my operation 5 hours ago.”

“It’ll be all right,” she said, soothingly. “Just go there now and they will perform it.”

“I bet they won’t,” I angrily shouted back.

I am at the hospital. How I got there I don’t know. I am talking to two nurses in a surgical room. I am showing them a piece of paper that lists everything I was to have done on the operating table.

“Sorry,” one of the nurses said. “You are much to late.”

“Can I reschedule?” I asked hopefully.

The other nurse laughed.

“You’ll be lucky,” she said. “It will be months ahead.”

“So I might as well tear this paper up?” I said to them.

“Yes,” was the reply.

I did just that and angrily threw it on the floor and walked out to the entrance of the hospital And it really was Grand Cayman’s George Town Hospital.

I immediately noticed a Hispanic looking man outside by the entrance. He was unshaven with about a three day growth of whiskers around his chin and under his lip. He was acting very strange. His eyes were shifty looking at everyone but not really seeing them. He wore a white ‘T’ shirt. I do not remember his pants. He was clutching something tightly to his chest and he looked directly at me as I did him. It was then I saw what he was holding. A gun. A small hand gun. Black.

I yelled out pointing to him.

“He’s got a gun! Call the police! Get security!”

I rushed him trying to grab the gun. We struggled and then the gun went off with a loud bang and I felt a searing pain.

The pain was real. The side of my face was burning and my head was hurting dreadfully. I was now wide awake. I was on the floor by the bed having just rolled off it!! I had cracked my head on the stone floor but it was the side of my face I was more concerned with. There was blood coming from a wound and the whole side of it, from below my ear down to my chin, felt like a flame was licking at it.

The noise of the fall and my cries of pain awoke Joan and she turned the light on. She peered down at me and said, “You’re bleeding.”

I thought the worse. Ambulance. How to stem the flow of blood? Panic set in.

I managed to turn over as I was face down. It soon became apparent things were not so bad as the blood immediately stopped letting out.

I staggered into the bathroom to examine.

The side of my face was a mess. I had a 3 1/2 inch fine red line down the left hand side but it was only at the bottom, under the chin, that had actually punctured.

It looked as if Zorro had slashed at me with his sword. I even looked for his trade mark – the “Z”. Nothing.

So there you have it. The terror of the dream had caused me to roll the wrong way and off the bed. The damage to my person could have been much worse. I had actually scratched the side of my face on the bedside cabinet from the corner of the glass top.

The aforementioned article goes on to say – How this can help you.

I can answer that.

DON’T ROLL OVER ON THE BED THE WRONG SIDE!

I now have a painful dream to remind me of this for life.

Last word from article: “Now, if there is something dramatic or traumatizing in any of your dreams, focus on it! These are the parts of your dreams that will help you see what you are NOT dealing with in your everyday life”

Really?

“So, look inside your own dreams, and try to see what they are telling you. They are telling you what you are avoiding thinking about, and that is usually something that SHOULD be dealt with. Once dealt with, happiness and ease can follow.”

Yea.