Five ways to prevent bad dreams

I have a longer, prosier post to share on this subject, but today I'd just like to give you five things you can do to reduce the number of bad dreams you have.

(1)  Do not watch horror movies or occultish TV shows, and do not read scary books.  I find that even when things do not seem the least bit frightening during the day, at night the images they stimulated my mind to store can go sour and become terrifying.  I vigilantly work to protect my mind from cataloging fodder for nightmares.

(2)  Do not eat meat or cheese after 7 p.m. in the evening.  Rich foods require your body chemistry to work hard to metabolize them.  When your body is working hard on metabolism, your body temperature tends to go up.  And when your body temperature is a bit higher than normal, you are at higher risk of bad dreams.

(3)  Sleep in a cool room with good air exchange.  Hot, stuffy rooms can raise your body temperature and induce bad dreams in much the same way that rich food does.

(4)  Deliberately meditate on good things as you fall asleep.  My favorite sleep thoughts:  the attributes of God (start here for an alphabetical list of them).

(5)  Make peace.  Live at peace with others and with God so that disturbing thoughts of hurt, anger, fear and unforgiveness do not plague you in the night hours.

If dreams came true

I wouldn't want most of my dreams to come true.  They are just too weird and random, even when they aren't bad dreams.  If my dreams came true...

• I would spend a lot of time exploring strange buildings.
• People would appear with and without animal masks on their faces, unpredictably.
• Cats, rats and marmot-like creatures would stalk me, climbing all over my furniture and my body.
• Most of the plumbing in the world would be broken.
• There would always be an impending test in a class I had forgotten to attend.
• My friends and family would turn into each other at the most inopportune times.

These are just a few of the recurring themes of my dreams, examples of why I absolutely do not long for my dreams to come true.

Now, it would be altogether different if we could order up our dream content.  Imagine if you could just lie down at night and say, "Tonight I would like to dream that I am on vacation on Bora Bora."  And then, just for the asking, you would have a beautiful dream of lounging in one of those over-the-water bungalows all filled with fresh flowers, and in the morning they would bring your breakfast out to you in a boat, croissants, smoked salmon, fresh pineapple and piping hot coffee.

Or you could say, "I miss my family that lives so far away from me.  Tonight I would like to dream that we are all together."  And then you could dream of a grand family reunion--maybe, maybe it would be Christmas with big, soft snowflakes and a roaring fire and everybody singing carols all together in four part harmony.

You could even say, "Tonight I would like to dream that I am eating a hot fudge sundae..." and you would dream of all the creamy coldness and chocolatey gooey-ness with none of the calories.

Except... when I dream about delicious food,

somehow...

I can never seem to get to the first bite.

Does that ever happen to you?