When lights are turned off and sheets tucked in and you drift into deep sleep, everything seems to be suspended. This is the time when your innermost desires and fears—those that you won't recognize in your waking life—are unleashed.

Do you know what your true wishes and needs are? How do you make up for not being able to meet your goals and fill your voids? Your dreams have something to say about these things.

Dreaming is creating. Otherwise, how would you explain all those perfectly constructed scenes and images from the most hidden and unknown corners of consciousness, the very depth of your being? It is your soul showing, through these psychological pictures, your innermost desires, your secret hopes, your hidden fears, and your unmet yearning for affection, security, or solace. Dreams free all these for you.

Impossible things come to life in your dreams. Your thoughts and wishes become reality and for the length of the dream. For the moment, they are real facts, sometimes seeming even more real than the things you experience in your waking life.

There are several types of dreams:

• Emotion-Packed Dreams: Resulting from the tensions created by your unmet wishes, failed hopes, and many fears dwelling in your soul. These can include fear of death, of insecurity, of loneliness, and of failure.
  
  Emotion-packed dreams usually take the form of nightmares: they are there to remind you that you have slighted and neglected your inner world. Many times, events on the surface distance us from our inner core. Our unconscious mind reveals these images as nightmares so that you don't need to actually go through them in the real world.
  
  
• Transparent or Lucid Dreams: Drawing from the wealth of the personal and collective unconscious, these dreams are easily remembered and are usually related to the dreamer's present situation.
  
  
• Premonitory Dreams: The bulk of your inner wisdom lies in your unconscious mind, where time is different from the conscious, waking idea of time. For the unconscious mind, everything exists in an eternal present time. Sometimes, your soul needs to warn you against certain experiences—either positive or negative—and it resorts to premonitory dreams. For instance, they may warn you against certain conflicting relationships in your life which, for some reason, you are ignoring. You then dream about the consequences that the situation might produce. This kind of dream gives you the chance to become aware.
  
  
• Mystic Dreams: These dreams show you psychic scenes, facts, or situations revealing your everyday worries or just your beliefs regarding ethical, moral, or religious problems relating to your spiritual life. These dreams can also show angels, saints, or mystic symbols related to certain faith or religious belief.
  
  
• Erotic dreams: unlike our waking sexual and social behavior, erotic dreams can be violent, crazy, gripping, or perverted because they stem from very intimate erotic conflicts and hidden emotional needs. They are usually the result of our fear of intimacy, and they are very frequent in teenagers or people who, for some reason, are undergoing a period of abstinence.

Dreams are a door to the mysteries of your inner world. You can learn to remember your dreams using certain techniques. When you do remember them and pay conscious attention to them, you will create a bridge that connects your unconscious activity with your waking hours, and your personal energy will be more at ease.

Dreams reveal our true functioning, what is going on below the surface of our conscious lives. If you wish to have a real knowledge of yourself, follow your dreams.

Eroticism and dreams
How many times have you had erotic dreams you have been unable to understand, let alone put into practice? How many times have you daydreamed about a better sex life?

The language of dreams is comprised of symbolic representations produced by the unconscious mind, and fueled by the energy of the emotional and mental experiences of our waking lives. These symbols and emotions, translated by our minds into images, reflect our current reality with all of its ups and downs. The symbolic expressions in our dreams do not necessarily fit our waking experiences. This is especially true of erotic dreams, where we can generate infinite unexpected representations.

As stated above, erotic dreams can be quite different from our sexual and social waking behavior. They are the product of very intimate sexual conflicts and emotional needs hidden in the remotest nooks of our unconscious mind. Erotic dreams can be frightening, joyful, or frustrating. The content of the dream will indicate the degree of repression of the dreamer, the latent violence—real or denied—that can't be channeled into social life. And the meaning of the dream points to the wide range of possibilities the dreamer has available and could enjoy.

Women and Erotic Dreams
A survey conducted in the States revealed that around 70% of the women surveyed had had erotic dreams some time in their lives, of which a major percentage confessed to having experienced orgasms during those dreams. The report also showed that erotic dreams in women tend to increase in number in the time right before menstruation and ovulation and during pregnancy. Women who experience these dreams usually lead a more restricted sexual life.

Many times, women's erotic dreams are frightening, painful, or frustrating—indicating the degree of latent violence being denied by the woman and which clearly cannot be channeled through her social life. It is also typical for women with a very inhibited sexual attitude to have dreams of rape or harassment by strangers. On the flip side, women with a good sexual attitude and a satisfying sexual life, but feeling frustrated in that respect for some reason, might dream of having gratifying sex with somebody they know, or somebody they are having fantasies about.

Men and Erotic Dreams
Men usually fantasize about and have erotic dreams of fiery, uninhibited women who want them more than anything in the world and are therefore ready to make all their hard-core fantasies come true. Men also dream of collective acts of love-making, or orgies. If a man is acquainted with a woman who won't pay attention to him, his dreams may show a reality where he dominates her completely. Sometimes, men also have homosexual erotic dreams. In most cases, and especially for adolescent males, men will experience ejaculation during or at the end of an erotic dream.

Whatever the case, dream analysis is always an effective tool for self-knowledge. In the specific case of erotic dreams, analysis can be a useful tool for learning to handle sexuality with more freedom. Talking about erotic dreams can help turn fantasies into reality.

Sexual magic explores the content of a dream with a view to increasing self-knowledge, to achieving erotic ecstasy, and to a deep communication with the magical partner.

Erotic Connection Exercise
Is it possible to connect to someone sexually in a dream?

During the first stage of a dream, our bodies are in a state of quiet vigil and we tend to daydream. This is the stage at the very beginning of a dream, or when we are about to wake up. It signals the midway point between consciousness and dreaming. It's important that we get in touch with the unconscious self at this time so that we can access the information and the knowledge it possesses during our dreams.

We can learn to transmit messages and help solve conflicts through dreams.

It would be a great idea to do some creative visualization before going to sleep (see Sex and the Perfect Lover). For this purpose, you first need to breathe deeply and then relax, either with your partner or on your own.

If you are doing this exercise with your partner, you both should focus on the reason or the issue your partner needs to express or observe in his or her dreams. Both of you should be clear about what you're trying to subtly put through to the other through the erotic dream.

If you are doing this on your own, remember to write down all the results you get from this experience.

After having achieved the state of complete relaxation, try to focus on reveal ing the sexual or emotional conflicts that you two are undergoing, or to understand why you can't connect in your waking lives.

After this, repeat the following affirmation:

"I (your name) want to connect with the superior self of (the name of the other person—someone you're interested in or your magical partner) during my dream and I will understand and remember the dream. When I wake up tomorrow, I will write it down clearly."

You connect with the superior self of the other person so that you do not telepathically disturb your partner during his or her dream.

Once the reason for your conflict (or the information you needed) has been revealed, you'll be able to understand the problems you're having. Your relationship will be more open, depending on what you're after.

You might be now wondering: have I had an astral flight to connect with my partner? The answer is no, you have simply searched through your unconscious files for all the knowledge that the superior self can transmit to your conscious mind.

If you delve into the analysis of your dreams, you'll be able to understand all the barriers sexual impulse sets on our consciousness.

Illuminating our inner beings has to do with consciously handling our lives as a unique and eternal entity that transcends all conscious or unconscious actions. Remembering our dreams allows us to make spiritual allowances for ourselves. When this precious work is done with our partners, we are in a position to experience a magical initiation of opening ourselves to the other. Then we can shed the light of love on the darkest side of our hearts.