GUIDING DREAMS & VISIONS: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT

This book is a record of some of my own dreams and visions over the past three decades. The main aim of this undertaking is to show that such subjective sentient experience often provides invaluable guidance for the experiencer. The guidance can be either tangible and extrinsic or intangible and intrinsic in nature.

In terms of the tangible and extrinsic guidance, my experiences have given me clear directions for the progression of my life's work. They have also shown me proper ways of handling stressful times and situations. I will give examples of my dreams and visions relevant to my life's work in chapter one and those related to managing stress in chapter two.

In contrast to worldly life, the intangible and intrinsic guidance has been concerned with my spiritual life. Many significant dreams and visions have led me to the learning of various wisdom and spiritual traditions. Others have taught specific and unique spiritual lessons including those about "heritage" and "afterlife". It is only with the benefit of hindsight that I was able to grasp the systematic and orderly fashion that this kind of guidance had come through. I will recount a selection of the dreams and visions that have guided my study of different spiritual paths in chapter three. Chapter four and five will provide examples of such experiences concerning "heritage" and "afterlife" respectively.

Although such guidance comes primarily through my own sentient experiences, it has also come clearly through one of my family members. Upon hearing such dreams, I would instantly see its guidance for me. But often the dreamer failed to know its meaning or significance in this regard. As I have also benefited greatly from this kind of guiding dreams that "come through another person," I will discuss them in chapter six.

In this book, I hope to clearly identify the variety of beneficial consequences that subjective experience may have for the individual's personal growth. In this context, the present book is a "sequel" to my 2003 book, Sentience: Companion to reason. That book places such experience in its proper and larger context of the human mind and consciousness. In terms of the beneficial consequences of these experiences, Sentience has only a very limited coverage. That coverage is also solely confined to the area of one's life's work. That book thus leaves unexplored all other types of significant guidance for the experiencer.

As a follow-up, this present book completes the discussion of individual consequences. To that end, I have used my own personal experiences over several decades as illustrations. I have learned that each experience carries not only just immediate but also other long-term beneficial effects. Each experience is further intricately intertwined and embedded within the individual's continual "stream" of consciousness. As such, a longitudinal account from a single perspective can perhaps better describe, and more fully capture, the multifaceted nature of the guidance.

The decision to record my own sentient experiences has not been an easy one. Today's intellectual climate of disengaged reason has effectively relinquished the topic of subjective personal experience to the domain of preposterous irrationality. But the fact remains that credible mystical experiences, inexplicable by contemporary science, are not at all uncommon. More importantly, these experiences almost always have profound and sometimes even life-changing effects on the experiencer.

I have also benefited, in ways that words can not adequately describe, from my own inner experiences. They have given me a deep sense of certainty that my life's journey is unfailingly fostered by a larger benevolent reality. While these experiences are the most treasured and intimate part of my very being, paradoxically, I feel that they also belong to all those who are interested. In this respect, I hope that my own records will help those who might be trying to make sense of similar personal experiences.