Anna Sayce

Tag: dreams

  • 7 Surprising Signs You Have the Psychic Gift of Dreaming 

    I’ve written extensively in the past on my blog about the various clair gifts that a person can have, which can be used to communicate with Spirit. However, there is another psychic gift that I haven’t written too much about — the gift of dreaming.

    Dreaming is another very powerful way to connect with Spirit and get guidance about your life. And in this article I’m going to go over 7 clear signs that you have this gift.

    But first, let’s have a look at why dreaming is such an effective way for Spirit to give you guidance.

    Why Dreaming is such a great way for spirit to get messages to you

    When you go to sleep at night, your soul leaves your body (although it also remains tethered to the physical body), and it goes off exploring in the astral planes.

    What are the astral planes?

    Have you ever felt like in your dreams, that you are visiting a ‘place’ or you recognise some mysterious landscape in your dream, that you’ve been to before? It isn’t just in your mind! You feel like you’re visiting a familiar place because you are “visiting” the same places in your sleep — but they’re in the astrals.

    There are believed to be seven positive and seven negative astral planes around our planet, and most people visit the positive astrals in their dreams.

    Note that the astral planes are not the same as the ‘other side’. They are located halfway between heaven (AKA the other side) and Earth.

    So how does this make for easy spirit communication?

    Well, usually when you communicate with Spirit, you have to meet Spirit halfway and Spirit has to meet you halfway, in order for that communication to happen. This is because the spirit realm is far removed from the earthly realm. And the astral realm is halfway between the two.

    So, when you go to sleep at night, you’re in the astral realm, which is halfway between the two realms. And so you’re already in a convenient “location” in which to communicate with Spirit.

    Spirit may be trying to communicate with you during the day, but perhaps you are too busy or you don’t notice because your clair gifts are not yet honed and so you’re not able to build your half of the “bridge” to contact Spirit. For that reason, it’s much easier for Spirit to come to you in the astrals when you’re asleep. And some people are very good at receiving messages this way. Let’s find out if you’re one of them.

    So here are some signs you have this psychic skill of dreaming. Let’s have a look at the first one:

    1. You have a very active dream life

    You know you have an active dream life if you have interesting, eventful, symbolic or meaningful dreams at least once or twice a week. This is probably the biggest sign that you’re a strong dreamer — you dream a lot. This shows that you’re already in a position where you will easily receive guidance from Spirit in a dream.

    Personally I’ve always been someone who regales those close to me with the stories of all the crazy things I got up to last night in my dreams! If you often find yourself doing this, you’ve clearly got an active dream life and this is one of the big signs you’re a strong dreamer.

    Let’s have a look at the second sign:

    2. Your sleep is a bit weird!

    I’m not sure why this is, but I’ve noticed that those with a strong dreaming gift often have something a bit unusual going on with their sleep. Sometimes they have a sleep disorder, they often need a lot more sleep (or a lot less) than the average person. They often have had experiences of sleep paralysis, and they may sleepwalk or talk a lot in their sleep.

    This doesn’t apply to everyone who is a strong dreamer, but it is something I’ve often heard about among strong dreamers.

    3. You find it easy to remember your dreams

    This one is pretty obvious, but some people don’t remember their dreams. And so of course, if you don’t remember your dreams, you’re not going to be able to receive guidance this way — messages from the spiritual realm are simply not going to be able to reach your conscious mind.

    So in order to be a strong dreamer, you have to be one of those people who remembers your dreams.

    4. You feel you have had dreams with spiritual beings in them and you tend to have these dreams just before waking

    If you have had an experience before where you sensed the presence of an otherworldly being in your dream, this is another strong sign you have the psychic gift of dreaming.

    The being you met could have been an angel or it could have been your Spirit Guide or maybe it was your Higher self. It doesn’t really matter which being it is, but for this one to apply, you have to have had an experience where you felt Spirit came to you and gave you a message in a dream that was helpful for your life.

    How will you know if the being you met in your dream was a real spiritual being, or if it was just a regular dream?

    I would say, you’ll just know (or at least you’ll have a pretty strong inkling). You’ll wake up from that dream feeling touched by a positive energy, or with a lovely feeling when you wake. And you may have received helpful guidance for your life, too, during the dream.

    In this article: Angels Defined & How They Can Help You, I detail an encounter with an angel that took place in the astral planes while I was asleep:

    I dreamed that I was waiting in line to buy a ticket at the local coach station. There was a woman right in front of me, with her back to me. In the dream, she turned around and looked me in the eye and said ‘you go in front of me’ and smiled. Looking into her eyes, it was clear that she was an Angel. A wave of emotion swept me and I felt very nurtured and loved. The eyes of the Angel were kind and gentle but also the kind of gaze that burns when you look at it. I woke up moved from my dream and that feeling lasted for hours.

    I hope that gives you an idea of how these dream encounters often feel.

    Let’s have a look at the next sign:

    5. You have dreamt of a deceased loved one in the past…

    …and you felt that it was a real visitation from your loved one.

    Perhaps your dream had a certain ‘feeling’ or atmosphere to it that felt magical, otherworldly, or just different from usual. Or perhaps the dream from your loved one came at an opportune moment (such as an anniversary or birthday) which felt meaningful to you. This can be another sign you’re a strong dreamer.

    When a loved one dies, those who are strong dreamers do often get visited — perhaps not always straight away — but usually at some point after the death. In some cases, you may be visited by someone who is long dead.

    Now let’s look at the sixth sign you have the dreaming gift:

    6. You have dreamt of something which later came true

    This is another experience that is common among strong dreamers — they tend to dream of the future. This is because dreams do sometimes allow us to see into a possible or likely future scenario, and know how things will likely play out. Sometimes these glimpses into the future can be warnings (i.e. what will happen if we or someone else continues on a particular path.)

    Personally I have dreamt of the future many times before and I detailed some of my experiences in this article: Precognitive Dreaming — Are You Dreaming of the Future?

    Now let’s look at the final sign you have this gift:

    7. You have had a lucid dream or an astral projection experience before

    A lucid dream is a dream where you become aware, within the dream, that you’re dreaming. (Our guest writer Debra Reeves wrote about lucid dreams here.) So, if you have had a lucid dream before, that’s another sign that you are a strong dreamer.

    And if you’ve had an astral projection experience, you get extra points for this, too. An astral projection experience is an out of body experience that you can have intentionally or unintentionally (i.e. it just happens.) The only time I had what I believe to be an astral projection experience was several years ago while I was napping and I described the experience in this article. I’ll quote it below, as well:

    A few years ago, on an afternoon in January, I had an amazing spiritual experience that I still think about on a regular basis.

    That afternoon, I lay down on my bed for a nap with my cat. I went to sleep and had an ‘astral projection’ experience. I dreamt that I asked a higher being what it felt like to die, and I was granted permission to experience it.

    Here was my experience:

    First of all, my soul shot out of my body through my heart chakra and it felt amazing – I felt immense joy and bliss. It was as if my body was like a heavy, old coat that I had been wearing for a while and was quite happy to take off. I slipped out of it joyfully and left it discarded on the floor.

    And there was an invisible trajectory above me in the sky – I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there. I was flying. I was above my house and I wanted to continue on because it felt so good. But I knew I shouldn’t. I saw my cat sleeping on the bed and thought about what I wanted to achieve in this lifetime and I knew I had to stop. And straight away I was back in my body and I woke up. It was exhilarating, but scary too – it felt like flying too close to the wind.

    Other signs of an astral projection experience include: feeling a vibration sensation in your whole body just before the experience, hearing a buzzing noise, or seeing things that are not there.

    So if you’ve had an astral projection experience, too, this means you are likely to have the dreaming gift.

    How many of the above signs did you relate to?

    If you related to 5 or more, it’s likely that you have the dreaming gift. If you related to all of them, you almost certainly do.

    I’m going to end this article with a quote from the spiritual writer Robert Moss:

    You are born to fly, and in dreams you remember the soul has wings.

    ― Robert Moss, The Secret History of Dreaming

    Further Reading:

  • Where Is My Dead Father Now & How Can I Communicate With Him?

    Where Is My Dead Father Now & How Can I Communicate With Him?

    Where is my dead father now; I want to talk to my dad who passed away

    Hi Anna,

    I have a question about mediumship and the afterlife. I want to talk to my dad who passed away in 2018. Do I have to do this through a medium or can I do it myself? Where is my dead father now?

    – Mirush

    Hi Mirush,

    Thanks for your question. I’m sorry to hear about your father’s death.

    First of all, I wanted to say that your father most likely crossed over fully to the other side following his death. Soon after death, his soul would have undergone a ‘life review’ which is where his soul gets to go over what happened in his most recent lifetime and what he learned from it. Then most probably, he will hang out in the afterlife for a while before incarnating again into a different body. Even if your dad is now reincarnated, part of his spirit will be on the other side, and you can talk to him any time you like.

    So, the answer to your question “where is my dead father now” is:

    (1) Either his soul is in the afterlife or (2) he has reincarnated into a new body. He will have moved forwards on his soul’s path in some way.

    If you have things you want to say to your father, say them out loud. He will hear you. In order for you to have a 2 way conversation with your father, you both have to build your half of a bridge. This bridge is between heaven and earth. Your dad builds half of the bridge and you build half. That means, to communicate ideally you will develop your psychic sensitivity to reach him and he will lower his spiritual vibration to reach you.

    You need to “build” your half of the bridge in order to communicate with your deceased father

    Many times, deceased spirits are already communicating with us, but we haven’t noticed (which means that they have “built” their half of the bridge, but we haven’t built ours). So I would say it is a good idea for you to sensitize yourself further. Be really observant and pay attention to see if you notice any of the following ways deceased loved ones communicate with us from the other side. You can also ask your father to send you some of these signs.

    (Note, if you would rather watch this article as a video, instead of read the article, scroll down to the bottom!)

    #1: Through Dreams

    When we are dreaming, we are very open to communication from deceased loved ones and from the other side in general. This is because we’re already in the astral planes, which is a non-physical place that we visit when we’re asleep. It’s easier for our deceased loved ones to ‘meet us half-way’, energetically speaking, by visiting us there.

    I had a dream visitation from my great-grandmother (my mother’s grandmother) a few days before my mother got remarried in 2007 (although I didn’t realize at the time that it was a dream visitation.) Great-granny turned up, looking frail, grey and old – just how I remember her. The only thing she said to me in the dream was “your mother looks lovely in brown”. I felt a great deal of affection coming from her even though I hadn’t known her very well when she was alive. It was a nice dream, but I forgot about it soon after I woke up.

    A couple of days later, I was out shopping with my mother for something to wear on her wedding day and we had looked all over town for the right dress for her to get married in, but we hadn’t found anything suitable.

    Then, just before the shops were shutting at the end of the day, we found a gorgeous brown dress. My mum tried on the brown dress and it fit beautifully and she looked gorgeous in it. It was perfect. Then all of a sudden I remembered the dream where great-granny had told me that mum looked lovely in brown and I told mum about it. She smiled and said, “Great-granny always used to tell me how nice I looked in brown.” Mum thought it was just a coincidence that she had found a brown dress but I felt like it was great-granny giving her blessing from the other side.

    How do you know if your deceased loved one is visiting you in a dream or not?

    I’ve had a few dreams with deceased spirits in them since then and they’ve all ‘felt’ very similar to me.

    It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but for me, the ‘climate’ or ‘mood’ of the dream changes when a deceased spirit shows up. You might feel their love or affection for you, transmitted in the dream whereas before there was no particular mood or feeling to the dream. The setting of the dream may suddenly change to somewhere quite symbolic and it may become more vivid. You will often have the dream just before you wake up so that you remember it.

    #2: Deceased Spirits Can Move Objects

    Can the dead move objects? Yes, it is possible. Don’t ask me to explain how deceased spirits manage to mess with objects. I just know they can and do.

    My mum’s sister who passed away from ovarian cancer around two years ago made her presence felt in a few different ways after her death.

    Shortly after she passed away, my mother’s sister visited me in a dream and told me that she was messing with the clocks in my grandmother’s house. I rang up my grandmother the next morning to tell her what I had dreamt and she told me that the grandfather clock in their lounge had stopped overnight with the pendulum in the wrong position and they couldn’t get it to work again (it had never happened before and they’d had it for decades.)

    Another time a book that belonged to my mother’s sister about ovarian cancer fell off the bookshelf while my grandmother was in the room.

    #3: Communication Through Signs from Nature

    The world of Spirit is entwined with and superimposed onto the physical world and the natural world. You just have to be looking for Spirit in order to see it. I’ve heard of deceased spirits sending natural symbols which were meaningful to them when they were alive – such as flowers, birds, animals or animal symbolism. Other signs from nature include rainbows, the person’s favourite flower taking up residence in your garden randomly – that sort of thing.

    A while ago my mother told me about a local man here in New Zealand who died in a diving accident. He hit his head and drowned while diving in some coastal caves. When they recovered his body, three whales were sighted nearby, on the coast, hanging around the area where the body had been recovered. (Whales are the Maori symbol of divine protection.) In this area of New Zealand, whales rarely show up on the coast – you have to go many miles out to sea to see them. So that was interesting in itself. Then a few weeks later they were having a memorial service for this man in the place where he died, three whales showed up again.

    #4: Communication Through Mediums & Through Your Intuitive Senses

    Deceased spirits are energy, like your Spirit Guides, so they can impulse us and connect with us in a similar way if they are around. But I do believe that it is easier to communicate with Spirit Guides than it is to communicate with deceased spirits. This is because guides are connected to you, so if you tune into a person’s energy, you can also tune into their guides fairly easily if you know how. But deceased spirits are not attached to you as such.

    So, if you cannot connect with a deceased loved one through a medium, don’t despair. There are many reasons why the communication might not be successful.

    Remember that the ether is far removed from the physical plane. Communicating with the other side is a little like building a bridge (made of energy). It’s like you are on one mountain, in the physical plane and the dead on another in the ether. In between you is a valley. In order for you to make contact, someone, or both parties has to build a bridge. You can build an energetic bridge by raising your vibration and opening up your psychic senses and the deceased spirit can build half of the bridge by lowering theirs to meet you halfway. Sometimes deceased spirits may not be available to build their part of the bridge because they’re working on the next stage of their soul’s journey. Some recently deceased spirits want to build the bridge but they’re not yet fully comfortable in their new energetic state and cannot.

    Even if you cannot connect with your deceased loved ones through a medium or if they are not showing you signs of them being around you, you can still honour and love them in other ways.

    One of the best ways of honouring another soul is by letting them go.

    You’ve probably heard the saying ‘if you love someone, set them free’. This is as true in death as it is in life. Deceased spirits can really benefit from permission to leave and go and pursue the next stage of their long journey. I know deceased loved ones who still have one foot in this dimension one year after their death because they feel guilty for leaving their family behind.

    My grandmother told me about a friend of a friend who punched her dying husband in the face (he’d had a heart attack) because she was so angry that he was leaving her. My grandmother always found that story quite funny and sad at the same time. I’m thinking of this story because we do send out clear messages to dying and deceased loved ones about whether they are allowed to cross over that will affect their willingness to move on. And of course it is natural to want to hold onto people.

    Something that is very powerful is to give your loved one permission to die while they are still alive. My grandfather did this in the moments before one of our relatives was on her deathbed. He talked to her to sleep like a little child, telling her that it was OK to go and to not be afraid. She died shortly after.

    During the funeral, some native cultures consider that the spirit of the dead person is there, so they address them directly and tell them that it’s OK to cross over fully now. Then, they promise to honour their dead and check in with them at certain times, like on the anniversary of their death.

    Even after they are gone, you can speak to your deceased loved one and tell them that it’s OK to move on. They will hear you.

    You can also honour the dead by focusing on new life

    Death is not just an ending. With it, new life begins, although you do not see the new life and the new stages in the evolution of the soul of your loved one (you only see the ending which is what causes grief). Know that your loved one lives on, and experiences new life and goes on to the next stage in their soul’s evolution, even if you cannot see it. You can honour and witness this cycle symbolically through planting something beautiful and seeing it grow.

    How have your deceased loved ones got your attention? Please leave a comment if you have something to share.

    Further Reading & Resources:

    This article is the third part in a series of articles about the afterlife. The first two articles were:

  • Why Do People Dream?

    Why Do People Dream?

    I went to work in a hotel in France in the summer of 2001 (when I was 18) with the aim of improving my French. While I was there, I had the strangest dream I’d ever had. This is what happened in the dream:

    I was in Paris, outside a locked car which was parked in the street. Inside the car was a baby of African origin. There was no air, water or food in the car and the baby was dying. There were many people around the car – some wanted to rescue the baby, and others were just observing. There was a sad, inevitable atmosphere in the dream – we were waiting for the baby to die and we could not prevent his death.

    In the night, I woke up, feeling quite disturbed and haunted by this dream. When I went back to sleep, I dreamt of the same thing. It was so awful that I kept waking up. I tried to sleep a couple more times but each time, I returned to the same dream.

    The very last time that I fell asleep, the baby was out of the car and someone was holding him. He died in their arms. After that, I gave up trying to sleep as I did not want to dream about it again.

    I went into work really tired that morning and the radio was on, as usual. Literally the very first piece of news that I heard was that a baby of African origin had been found dead in a locked car in Paris – he had been left there overnight. Of course, when I heard that a shiver ran down my spine, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I got goosebumps (OK – maybe not all at the same time, but suffice to say that I was freaked out!)

    I thought about this experience a lot over the next few days, and wondered – was it just a dream and a coincidence? Or had I actually been there in Spirit?

    If I was of a more skeptical mindset, I would probably have attributed my dream to a coincidence. But instead I concluded that my dream was somehow linked to the actual event. I felt haunted by the dream, in a way that a dream had not haunted me before. I felt some sort of connection to the baby and it felt like it had been a real event.

    Prior to that experience, I had never really thought too much about dreams – I had had lots of strange dreams in the past, sure, but I did not pay so much attention to the meaning of them or think they were ‘real’.

    The Real Significance of Dreams

    Through my work in the Akashic Records, I have learned that our dreams ARE real experiences which take place on the astral planes. Some dreams we have because we need to learn something from them. Others we don’t need to remember as much.

    Here are three common activities that we do when we’re dreaming:

    1. Learning Through Role-Playing

    Have you ever had a dream that taught you a real lesson? And when you wake up, something big ‘clicks’ for you? Some of the dreams we get may have a lesson contained within them, that we are meant to remember and take on board.

    Here’s an example: if you are someone who is very giving (to a fault) in your daily life, and you need to learn to balance giving with receiving, you could be in a dream situation where you experience the direct negative consequences which can occur as a result of giving too much to others. And when you wake up, you realize that it doesn’t serve you to be the one who’s always giving and never receiving.

    Sometimes your Spirit Guides can be involved in this type of ‘role-play’, to help you to learn these lessons. At other times, you may see souls in your dreams whom you do not recognize. These souls are often what we call ‘Dreammasters‘, who serve you by playing parts in your dreams, to help you to learn something. You could be a Dreammaster yourself, especially if you have lots of dreams that don’t make sense.

    2. Consulting with Spirit Guides, Angels and Other Spiritual Teachers

    Sometimes people don’t connect with their guides or angels in their daily life because they’re too afraid to open up to the spiritual world. But the most un-scary (and quite common) way that your guides can pass on a message to you is in a dream. However, not all of our dream messages from our guides are always remembered by the conscious mind.

    Sometimes guides might show you metaphors within your dreams, and in other dreams, you might have conversations with them. Mine have even played songs to me (in a dream) to give me a certain message. If there is something which I am missing about any aspect of my life that I really ought to be seeing, I know that my guides will come to me in a dream and let me know about it.

    This happened several years ago, when I heard from an old school friend of mine that our former Spanish teacher had passed away. I was sad and sorry for his family – he was only in his early sixties. But then shortly after hearing the news, I had a dream in which one of my guides informed me that our teacher wasn’t dead and that it was just a rumour.

    I wanted to check, so I wrote to my old German teacher to ask her if she’d heard the same news. She replied to say that she rang the Spanish teacher and he was alive and well – so, it was a rumour, nothing more. That experience really taught me to pay attention when my guides give me a message in a dream!

    If you are looking to connect with your Spirit Guides, it can be helpful to set the intention to receive messages from them in your dreams. It’s so easy for your guides to reach you when you’re asleep – they may even have some tips or instructions for you to contact them in your waking hours.

    Let’s look at another activity that we can be doing in our sleeping hours…

    3. Helping Other Souls to Cross Over (Third Order Work)

    The Third Order is the spiritual order (essentially a group of spirits) which comes for you when you die, to help you to cross over to the other side. Some of us have worked in the Third Order in between our physical incarnations and when that is the case, we often bring our Third Order skills into the physical with us.

    Obviously, when you’re in a physical body, you can’t work as a member of the Third Order. But I have read for plenty of people who belong to this spiritual order and a few of them have told me that they often dream of helping earthbound spirits to cross over and find their way back into the light.

    Perhaps this was what I was doing in my dream about the African baby. Lately I often dream I’m helping stuck or earthbound souls and the souls that I dream about seem extremely real to me.

    (By the way, you can read more about the Third Order here.) 

    So, voilà – three ways in which dreams can be very, very meaningful. Contrary to what you may have heard, dreams are not always about our subconscious mind trying to make sense of our day – they can also be spiritual.

    A Note on Unpleasant Dreams

    Those who have nightmares are often travelling to the negative astrals in their dreams – a pretty unpleasant place to visit. Many who have nightmares actually have a portal way open in their subconscious to the negative astrals.

    You can close a portal way to the negative astrals by lighting a candle, sitting quietly and focusing on your breath for a few minutes. Then by reading the following prayer:

    “Archangel Michael, please close the portal way in my subconscious, that leads to the negative astrals, for all time, so that it may never be re-opened. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

    If you’d like more information about interpreting dreams, check out this article I wrote: How to Interpret Dreams