I Dreamed In It Last Night

You dreamed a short exchange in it and woke up holding the whole thing.

Two lines. Somebody said something to you and you answered them, and neither half of it was in English, and you were still inside the ordinary shape of a dream where none of that seemed remarkable until you woke up.

And then you lay there for about four minutes with your heart going.

And then, somewhere in the fourth minute, you started taking it apart. It was probably not real language. Your brain probably made sounds that felt like it. You cannot be certain that what you said in the dream was correct, or even that it was words.

By the time you got up you had more or less decided it did not count.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful, and I want to be careful about it because this subject attracts nonsense.

Nothing was given to you in the night, and I am not going to suggest otherwise.

This site does not teach that God hands over vocabulary while people sleep, and a language is learned by study and by saying it badly out loud, and anybody who tells you different will cost you years.

What happened is something else, and it is more interesting than the nonsense version.

My reins instruct me in the night seasons

There is a line in Psalm sixteen about something continuing overnight.

I will bless the LORD, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons. (Psalm 16:7, King James Version)

My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.

Now the word reins is the old word for the innermost part of a person, the deep interior, and the psalm says that part of him keeps working while he is asleep.

Notice the verb. Instruct. It is not receiving something new from outside in the night. Something inside him is going over what is already in there, and the psalm describes that as ordinary rather than as a revelation.

You have an interior that goes on working when you are not operating it, and something turning over at night has never once been the same thing as something arriving from outside. Psalm 16:7 has the instructing done by his own inward parts rather than by a visitation, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who lay awake for four minutes.

Now stay on the first half of that verse, because the order matters and it is the whole safeguard.

Who hath given me counsel. That comes first. The counsel arrives in the daylight, from God, in the ordinary way. And then the night seasons are where the inside of a man goes over what he was given.

Nothing new arrives in the night in that verse. What arrives in the night is understanding of what was already put in.

You have been going over what was already put in rather than being handed something, and a thing turned over in the dark has never once been a thing delivered in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives the counsel in the daylight and lets the night do its own work, and Psalm 16:7 puts the giving before the instructing.

And here is the third thing, which is why the psalm mentions it at all.

He blesses God for it. That is the frame of the whole verse. A man noticed that something in him had been working overnight and thought it was worth thanking God for, which means an ordinary mechanism is being received as a kindness rather than explained away.

You have permission to be glad about a mechanism, and an ordinary thing has never once been disqualified from being received as a gift. Psalm 16:7 opens with a blessing and then names something entirely ordinary, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who spent the fourth minute taking it apart.

What a dream like that actually reports

Here is the practical half, and it is what nobody has told you about dreaming in a language.

It is a report rather than an event.

Here is what it means, mechanically. A language becomes available to a dreaming mind only when it has stopped being a foreign object and started being one of the materials. The dreaming part of you does not do effort and cannot assemble sentences, so it uses what is nearest to hand, and last night it reached for that language and found it there.

You cannot produce a dream like that by trying. It is a readout of something that had already happened.

You have been handed information about yourself rather than an experience, and a report has never once been the same kind of thing as a performance. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what has been stored in a woman over eighteen months, and Psalm 16:7 has the inward parts go over the day's counsel through the night.

Now here is the answer to the objection you raised in the fourth minute.

The objection was right about one thing. The grammar cannot be verified. Dream language is frequently nonsense in the details and there is no way of checking what actually got said.

And it does not matter at all, because the grammar was never the finding. The finding is that your mind reached for that language rather than English when it was not trying. That is the part that cannot be faked and cannot be produced on purpose, and it is true whether the sentences were correct or not.

You have been checking the wrong thing entirely, and a mind that reaches for a language unprompted has never once needed the grammar verified to have reached. Psalm 16:7 names the night instructing as ordinary and blesses God for it anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a mind reached for at four in the morning.

And here is the thing about the taking apart, said plainly, because you will do it again tomorrow with something else.

You are quick to dismantle good news about yourself. That is not humility and I do not think you would call it that if you looked at it squarely. It is a habit, and it moved in fast last night, and it had the thing disassembled before you were out of bed.

You have been disassembling good reports about yourself faster than you receive them, and four minutes of gladness has never once been a thing anybody had to justify. The Spirit of God is the one who was with a woman in the first minute rather than the fourth, and the written word blesses God for a thing that is entirely ordinary.

Write it down and keep the paper

So here is the assignment, and it is late but it still works.

Write down the sentence you understood and keep the paper.

Whatever you can still recover of those two lines. The shape of them if not the words. Who spoke, what it was about, what it felt like when you answered.

On paper. In your own hand. Today, before any more of it goes.

You have something to record before it goes, and a report written down has never once been as easy to dismantle as one kept in a head. Psalm 16:7 blesses God for a night's work rather than letting it pass unremarked, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman writing down what is left of a dream.

And here is the second half, which is what to write underneath it.

One line about what it actually means. Something like: my mind reached for it when it was not trying.

Because in five weeks the memory of the dream will have faded and the dismantling will have finished its work, and the only thing that survives will be whatever is on the paper. Write the conclusion down as well as the event, in your own words, on the same day, while you can still see it clearly.

Then stop, because one piece of paper is the assignment and nothing else is required of you today.

You have permission to record the conclusion as well as the event, and a finding written down on the day has never once been overturned as easily as one left to memory. The Spirit of God is the one who will be with a woman on a flatter morning in five weeks, and Psalm 16:7 puts a blessing over an ordinary night's work.