Jan Brehm of Portland woke up from a dream confused and shaken to her core. Lisa Espich of Tucson woke so deeply disturbed by a dream featuring her husband that she knew her marriage would never be the same. Jennifer Lambert of Virginia Beach felt such agitation over her dream that she cried for 30 minutes straight when she woke up — and then called her sister, from whom she'd long been estranged.
波特兰的简布阑从梦中惊醒，内心惶惑。图森的丽萨艾碧醒来后心烦意乱，她梦里的主角是丈夫，她知道自己的婚姻将要发生变化。弗吉尼亚海滩的詹妮芙兰波为梦所感，醒来后足足哭了30分钟——然后打电话给她疏远已久的妹妹。
Dreams can rock us, scare us, and in some cases, inspire us. But is listening to our dreams right up there with calling a psychic hotline? Not at all, say leading experts. "People are now using their dreams as tools to make their lives better," comments Marcia Emery, PhD, a psychologist at Holos University.
梦境会使我们受到震撼、惊吓，有时是鼓舞。但是倾听我们的梦境仅止于象打一个灵媒热线吗？权威专家说并非如此。“现在人们把他们的梦作为工具，使生活变得更美好。”霍洛大学的心理学家玛莎艾默里博士评论道。
This is relatively newfound respect. Many researchers used to believe that dreams simply reflected the random firing of nerve signals while we sleep. "The thinking was that the dreams were meaningless and didn't serve any function at all," says Harvard psychology professor Deirdre Barrett, PhD. But today, many scientists feel that dreams play the vital role of clarifying what truly matters to us. "Dreaming is thinking — just in a different biochemical state," explains Dr. Barrett, author of "The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving — and How You Can Too." "It's a mode of contemplation that's much more visual, intuitive, and emotional, as opposed to the patterns of waking thought."
这是相对较新的发现。过去很多研究者相信梦仅仅反应了我们睡觉时神经信号的随机发射。“他们认为梦毫无意义，不起任何作用。”哈佛心理学教授戴隹巴瑞博士说。但现如今许多科学家认为梦在澄清什么是我们真正的问题上，扮演了一个重要角色。“做梦就是思考——只是不同生化状态而已。”《睡眠委员会——艺术家、科学家和运动员如何利用梦境创造性地解决问题——及你如何也能做到》一书的作者巴瑞博士解释道。“梦是沉思的一种形式，相对于清醒的思想模式，它更形象化，更直觉，也更情绪化。”
It's that intuitiveness that makes so-called "epiphany" dreams such a valuable resource. "Dreams can provide inspiration or help you get unstuck from problems because your mind is working on things in this different way," Dr. Barrett says. Case in point: When she gave subjects instruction in a technique called "dream incubation," half of them dreamed about a problem they had focused on prior to going to sleep, and a full 25 percent had a dream that provided an actionable solution.
直觉使得那些所谓“顿悟”的梦成为宝贵的资源。“梦可激发灵感或帮你摆脱问题，因为你的心智在以这种不同的方式工作。”巴瑞博士说。案例分析：她给受试者一项称为“孵化梦境”的技术指导，一半人梦到睡前苦思冥想的问题，而25%的梦提供了可行的解决方案。
Finding the meaning in your dreams is like growing a garden, the pros say: The more you do it, the greater the insights it yields. "If you're regularly tending your dreams, once in a while you'll have a breakthrough that grabs you by the throat," Dr. Barrett says. Here are two women whose dreams provided just such a revelation.
发现梦的含义就象培育花园。韵律学云：多思多得。“如果你经常留意梦境，有时会有关键性突破。”巴瑞博士说。以下两位女士就从梦中得到了启示。Jan Brehm, 56, Portland, OR
简布岚，56岁，波特兰，俄勒冈州
Actress with two daughters
演员，有两个女儿
The dream: "I went into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. There was my daughter, now twenty-six, at age ten months. I felt a wave of horror. She was sitting in the tub shivering, and her lips were blue. I had forgotten I'd left her there. When I woke up, I was so disturbed that I couldn't shake off the image."
梦境：“我走进浴室，拉开浴帘。我的女儿在那儿。她现年26岁，而在梦里是她十个月大的样子。我感到一阵恐惧。她站在浴缸里发抖，嘴唇是蓝色的。我不记得自己把她留在那儿了。醒来后，我心乱如麻，无法摆脱那个形象。”
What it means: According to Loewenberg: "When you dream about someone very close to you, human nature is to figure out if the dream is literally about that person. But it may instead represent some part of your current life. I asked Jan what was going on with her daughter: Was there any guilt she was feeling? Jan said that was not the case, which was why the dream scared her so deeply.
释义（据娄温伯）：“当你梦到某个非常亲近的人，人性需要弄清楚梦是否如表面所见，的确跟那个人有关。但其实它可能代表了你目前生活的某一部分。我问简她女儿发生了什么事:她感到愧疚吗？简说没这回事，因此才被梦吓到了。
"Since there didn't seem to be an issue with her daughter, I suggested that the infant might symbolize something else in her life that she'd been neglecting. We often refer to our ventures and projects as 'our baby,' because, like a baby, they are things that we must nourish and care for so they can reach their potential.
“既然看来问题与她女儿无关，我提出那个婴儿可能象征了她生活中一直以来忽视了的别的东西。我们经常用“我们的孩子”来指我们的企业和工程，因为它们象孩子一样，得到养育和照顾才能发挥潜力。
"You might not expect such a frightening dream to be associated with something joyful. But Jan's dreaming mind chose to send the message through a strong negative emotion in order to grab her attention."
“你大概不会想到把这么可怕的梦和快乐的事联系起来。可简的梦中心智为了抓住她的注意力，选择了通过强烈的负面情绪来传递信息。”
What she did: "Several years back, I'd started to write and produce a DVD series on menopause, but when I couldn't get the funding for it, I stopped working on it," says Jan. "So when Lauri asked me if I had a creative project that I had abandoned, it stopped me cold. I knew instantly that the shivering baby was the menopause series. I plunged myself into the work, and I launched the DVD two years ago. The dream gave me the impetus to move forward."
她的说法：“几年前，我开始创作一个关于更年期的DVD系列。但我拉不到资金，就放下了。所以当罗莉问我是否有放弃了的创作项目时，我不再害怕了。我立刻明白那个颤抖的孩子就是更年期系列。我投入工作，两年前推出了DVD。那个梦给了我前进的动力。”Jennifer Lambert, 35, Virginia Beach, VA
詹妮芙兰波，35岁，弗吉尼亚海滩，弗吉尼亚州
Her grandfather had died 3 weeks earlier
她祖父3周前去世
The dream: "My grandfather came to our house, and I was so excited to see him that I wrapped my arms around his neck for a hug. His first words were 'Don't be angry at your sister anymore.'
梦境：“我祖父来到我们家。我见到他非常高兴，用双臂搂住他的脖子拥抱他。他的第一句话是“别再生你妹妹的气了。”
"At the time, my sister and I couldn't even be in the same room. While I'm the older one, she is definitely more aggressive, so I always held back what I thought for fear of her retaliating. When I woke up, I cried for about thirty minutes."
“那时我和我妹妹简直都不能待在一个房间里。尽管我年长，但她肯定更气盛。所以我总是克制对她的报复的恐惧。我醒后哭了得有三十分钟。”
What it means: According to Dr. Barrett: "Sometimes it takes a dream to 'see' our grief and sadness, like what Jennifer felt toward her sister. Dreams are more likely to let the more divergent feelings inside us rise to our consciousness.
释义（据巴瑞博士）：“有时我们需要用梦来“发现”我们的痛苦和悲伤，正如詹妮弗对她妹妹的感受。梦更容易把我们深埋内心的歧异感情上升到意识层面。
"The timing — just three weeks after her grandfather's death — suggests that this loss may have stirred up feelings about someone else Jennifer was missing: her sister. Her grandfather is someone she associated with a loving attitude, and it's usually people with a particular trait whom we select in dreams to voice an aspect of ourselves that's getting shortchanged in waking life. It would be difficult to offer her sister an olive branch when their relationship appeared so deadlocked, but the dream gave a clear push in that direction."
“时机——正好在她祖父离世三个星期后——提示失去亲人可能激起了詹妮弗对其他让她牵挂的人：妹妹的感情。在她心中，祖父是与爱意相连的人，而且我们通常也会选择这样一个特定的人，在梦里向他表达我们在清醒生活中越来越畏缩的一部分自我。在关系陷入僵局时，向妹妹伸出橄榄枝是困难的，但梦境起了明确的推动作用。”
What she did: "A few days after the dream, I spoke to my sister and told her that I didn't like the way our relationship was going," recalls Jennifer, "and that I wanted our connection to be more like our mom and our aunt, who were very close. We still had a few rocky spots after that conversation, but now we're best friends. I don't know if our reconciliation would have happened without that dream."
她的说法：“做了那个梦后，过了几天，我告诉妹妹我不喜欢我们一贯的相处方式。”詹妮弗回忆道：“我希望我们的关系象妈妈跟阿姨那样，她们非常亲密。那次谈话后我们还是有些不对付的地方，但现在我们是最好的朋友。如果没有那个梦，我不知道我们会不会和解。”