Many people get premonitions, from the ordinary to the life changing. A week before the World Trade Towers were hit, I dreamed I was in one of the towers rushing about looking for an escape. There was a hole in the side and a dizzying drop below. People were rushing about trying to find a way down in the vast building. The dream was vivid, a quality I’ve come to associate with prophetic dreams.
Some premonitions are more ordinary and less emotion-infused. Yesterday morning I was making coffee when a client popped into my mind, someone I haven’t spoken to in years. This thought tells me she is thinking about me and will probably contact me, and sure enough, I get an email today. It tells me that we are receiving thoughts from people long before they actually contact us. I have to wonder if I’m sending something to them too, like healing or a warm embrace.
Everyone including you, is hardwired with the ability to sense the future. So even if you aren’t aware it, you have probably have had intuitive signals coming to you that get mixed in with your other thoughts. The more you become aware of the possibility of having premonitions, the more you will notice them happening to you.
Premonitions are part of our evolutionary advantage. Cornell professor emeritus Daryl Bem, one of the most respected social scientists of his generation, has been studying psychic ability in ordinary people for 20 years. His studies show that the average person does in fact sense the future before it happens. He noticed that men are especially adept at sensing future sexual opportunities and women at sensing future danger. He calls this capacity an evolutionary advantage that has enabled our species to survive. In other words, we might not have made it as a species these 200,000 years without men’s exceptional ability to sense reproductive advantage or women’s ability to sense danger to themselves and their young.
The Difference between true premonitions and anxiety. As security specialist Gavin DeBekker pointed out in his book, the Gift of Fear, when you are really in danger, there is a powerful knowing that fills you and directs you. Signs of resonance will arise in your nervous system, like goosebumps, hairs standing on end, or chills. You will become hyper alert, and you may feel that someone is guiding you through the danger.
The rest of the time, what you are feeling might be unnecessary worry, neurotic fears, or just plain anxiety. Anxiety is energy in your body that has nowhere to go. You’re like a horse in the starting gate. It is not necessarily psychic. More likely it’s an over reaction to something that originated in a trauma years before.
How can you increase your chance of having premonitions? Intuition happens when we are not distracted. If you want to receive those signals more, then work on quieting your mind. You do this by unplugging from the day to day stress. Go into meditation where you are focusing more on your senses. Take a walk or go for a jog or a swim. Try closing your eyes and taking a nice breath right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel whatever your hands are touching; feel your feet on the ground; and notice your breath going in and out. You are now listening, via your body’s senses, to the energies of consciousness around you. You now have a heightened awareness of the energies around you.
Your senses are like antenna to the world. The more you practice these moments of presence, the more intuitive you will become. I get the strongest visions when I’ve been on a meditation retreat for several days, or when I sit in meditation before bed. I use meditation to get visions of the future. But this is not the same as premonitions. Reading the future is a conscious process where you focus on a target, i.e., your country at a certain point in time.
Premonitions happen to you. You don’t just create them by meditating on the future. When I get premonitions, I try to react to them with wisdom and perspective. For that I need to be present and calm. Otherwise, I when I feel energies on the horizon, I may react to them fearfully which is not productive. In other words, if I don’t unplug and breathe, then the intuitions I get, will fly through my mind which will then take off like a runaway train.
Symbols that come in visions. Ever since I first started meditating for visions 35 years ago, I noticed that many came in symbols and metaphors. Over time I began to understand the symbols. For example, I see a cactus as a symbol for drought. Last year I was returning to Massachusetts from Europe when I noticed upon waking that I was seeing the cactus. I thought, Mass in having drought. It turned out to be true. I also see fire, rain, stock market graphs going up and down, tears (for public grieving), hearts, and square root signs for market corrections. I also have a set of symbols for reading an individual’s personal future. Carl Jung wrote about the symbols we get in Man and His Symbols. He suggested that we have universal symbols that we all get, cultural symbols particular to our culture, and personal symbols.
If you begin meditating for visions of the future, you are likely to also get a set of symbols. Notice what thoughts you get when the symbols appear, and write it down. You will learn an alphabet of consciousness.
Some people don’t see visions when they meditate on the future. Instead they hear words, or get a thought. Whatever comes into your mind, write it down!
Dreams: I know when I’m having a prophetic dream because it is particularly vivid and doesn’t seem to apply to my life. For example, in April I had a horrible dream of a woman being killed in a terrorist attack. Just the one woman, no one else. I saw her vividly on the ground, with others trying to come to her aid. It was jarring, the vision was ghastly, but I didn’t feel fear for myself. I posted it on my website and a few weeks later a British member of Parliament was viciously murdered in the street. My hope is that I unconsciously sent healing to her in her terrible moment. Perhaps others also felt the event before it happened and also sent soothing thoughts to her. But the reason for my seeing her tragedy is a mystery. We are all connected, so her pain is everyone’s pain.
When we are dreaming, our intuition is not drowned out by everyday noise of people’s thoughts. When we are awake, there is a non stop ticker tape of thinking flowing through our heads, most of it is just junk we expose ourselves to in books, the Internet, and the media.
Most of the dreams we have are about our own lives. When it’s a prophetic dream about the world, it may feel different. You may feel like an observer. But this distinction is tricky since you are part of the world, and even when a dream is just about you, you can experience yourself as an observer. The best way to tell the difference is to keep a dream diary and start checking it over time for accuracy.
If you would like to explore premonitions and other forms of intuition further or discuss your own questions, try this section of our World Predictions Forum.
Thanks for sharing. It could be a dream of what will happen or it could be a dream of what you wish will happen.
I’ve been having premonitions for the past 7 years but for a strange reason it has gotten stronger in the past two years! It use to and still does scare me at times but I am learning to except it! At times I want to share with someone who understands or whose just there to listen! I can also feel when something is going wrong with someone or when someone’s about to call me! My intuition has been spot on also! Most of my dreams are also very vivid! I can also feel people energy and that sometimes can be very draining.
Enjoy, Thanks for sharing. You not only have the gift but you are aware of it which I creases it. I feel that spiritual energy is intensifying because a time of great change is upon us and we need celestial guidance to get through it.
Dear Jeanne,
I have had premonitions in the past that have come true and has been accurate to the vision or jolt in the stomach that I actually had. I have been recently having another one. I have been trying to push it back out of my mind. Sadly they have only been about family members. I don’t want to lose this person.
Ruby, thanks for your comment. Perhaps you could start by sending healing to your loved one. I made a wonderful meditation here that works wonders for sending healing and protection to another. During the meditation you also send it to yourself.
Replace that feeling with gratitude for them and their life.
Finally consider talking with them, not about your premonition, because that’s your issue and it is frightening to people when they hear that someone has had a bad premonition about them. But check in with them. See if there is some positive energy you could infuse into this situation. http://jeannemayell.com/brief-guided-meditations/
I had a dream about a plane crashing just couple years back and the next morn i awoke to the news of the plane that crashed went missing it was a bizzare dream. I just cant get over the death thing how do i know healthy people are going to die in the past 10years its happened 8 times to me i get the feeling and then couple months later they die all unexpected its like a slow motion few sec weird feeling in stomach gut im always calm but few mins later my mind races over n over coz i know death is near them then it passes i forget it for awhile couple weeks/ months they die am i cursed is there badness in me to predict horrible things nothing nice or good in what i do unaware of course it just happens.
I get a weird feeling every now and then in my stomach at first i didnt understand it but now i do its like when i see some one local or family or friend it has happened and they die it feels like a curse i know when it happens that there death is very near i also had few dreams woke up and in reality it was real it scared me abit i seem to have some gift that trying to come out i just dont understand am i cursed or blessed ?
Stacey, it’s not a curse. It’s likely an empathic gift that you have, that once you learn to use it, you can use it to send caring and comfort to people. Be careful how you use it. You wouldn’t want to tell people they are going to die because you could really mess them up. But you might send them healing and love.
You have a gift from God. One time an Angel showed me the future. I had a premonition that I would die at 32 or 33. I think God told me a part of me died and it will come back alive. A part of me was dead until my counselor made me realize the real me. I believe God sends Angels to watch over us. Our gift is to watch for the wrong people.
A few things on this: I believe that I have these random precognitive dreams about things that aren’t really useful to anyone. For example, last year I dreamed that I was sitting in one of my lectures. I’m friends with the guy who sits next to me, and in my dream he dropped his pencil and it rolled over to my side of the lab table. He leaned over to take it and sort of fell out of his chair, and then right after that happened my professor sneezed. The girl on my other side made a smart comment about the ordeal, and then I woke up. I told my close friend about the randomness of it, and didn’t think much of it. Fast forward a few months; the exact same thing happened during my lecture.
Another one that I found particularly unsettling was one about my brother. The dream showed him in his car with a boot on, as if he had broken his foot. The perspective wasn’t my own, and when the perspective switched to my point of view my mother came in the room and told me that he had died in a car accident. A few months later, my brother broke his toe playing soccer and had to wear a boot for a long period of time. I was extremely paranoid about this and couldn’t help but wonder if the rest of the dream would come true; which it didn’t.
Thanks for sharing. Glad your brother is fine. Strange dream. I don’t think dreams are random. They come from our consciousness. But it is possible you’ve worried about your brother and that surfaced as a dream.
I just woke up from a nap having a vivid dream with an angel laying down with me holding me healing me and saying everything will be ok!
She said I would have a baby boy and when I asked if I was already pregnant she smiled and I woke up !
Before I had my nap I did ask the universe to help me financially and to help the journey of having a baby easy than it feels like now !
I always have to have dream about murders that happen around two days to a weeks later.
It bothers me as what can I do with this information (?) they are always strangers but I had one last night about a friends daughter. I did contact her and just asked her not to put herself in a certain situation.
:(
Hi Jeanne Mayell. I have had dreams of premonition dreams I think. One dream was my fiancee saying to me “do I wanna move where there are no neighbours” then I woke up. Another one was seeing his son when he looks 16 which is two yrs away. He was walking down a dirt track towards us. Another one was my wanna be lawyer in handcuffs walking down the corridor police station and I broke down and collapsed in tears and he turned and looked at me and said “im sorry Trace” i woke up in tears. My last dream quick dream was my fiancee’s ex mrs( his boys mother) saying to me why am I lying for chris. I don’t know what that is about. Can you please tell me if these are premonitions. I only ever had these dreams once.
Kind regards Tracey
Many of the dreams I’ve been having in the past six months have been coming true. I’ve had dreams like this for the past two years. I notice that I’ll have a dream of a situation that manifests about two weeks later in real life. I’m not sure why it is always two weeks, although I had a dream a year ago that manifested just a couple months ago. That is odd to me that in the past six months however, most of the dreams actually happen almost exactly fourteen days later. The dreams that end up coming true have a different feeling to them. I know they are significant because I always remember them as soon as I wake up. It does not feel as a dream. Instead, like a snippet of life. They are very short in duration but I recall them very vividly. I know they hold meaning as well because it seems almost TOO random. I will wake up and immediately think that the dream was so exact, yet so misplaced. Then it unfolds in real life. I have found with regular dreams that seem to be guided by imagination, are remembered later in the day, are quite fuzzy or patchy on the details of the dream. My precognitive dreams seem to attach themselves to my waking consciousness. As soon as I awake, that snippet is internalized into a picture. The crazy thing is that I never realize it’s coming true until after it happens. Right after I realize it’s like the last piece to the puzzle is placed on the board. The snippet I took of my dream weeks ago aligns with exactly where I am once the dream unfolds in real life. The two pictures align into one. It is a very, very strange feeling. I wanted to comment because I feel as though my abilities are getting stronger. I can not control when I have these dreams. But I can tell when I’m having them based on some of the things I’ve stated before. I was hoping to connect with others, as I would like to hear any thoughts or comments on my experiences or yours.
Jordan, I would love it if you would repost this in the Forum under the Dreams topic so more people could respond. My own experience with prophetic dreams is that they are more vivid than usual, as if they are connecting to waking consciousness. I can play a role in remembering my dreams, though, unlike you who say it’s just happening and out of your control. If I make a point of remembering my dreams before I go to bed, I’m more likely to remember them.
Hi Tee, thanks for these questions about dreams and visions. There’s a section now in the forum on dreams. It would be great to also post these visions here so others can weigh in and people will learn from the responses.
Visions come from consciousness which is another word for thought. We live in a sea of consciousness that flows throughout the universe.
Because they are energy, they behave according to quantum physics, which means that they can be about thoughts and/or events that are happening far away (the term in physics for that is non local) and in another time dimension (past and future). So those thoughts can be events that are going to happen that you will become aware of later. They could also be events that happened in the past that your psyche has determined you need to be aware of for some important reason. Or they could be happening someone in the present moment, far away from you. Having a present moment vision is useful for insight. We tune a lot on this website into present moment thoughts about world figures and the collective. There are many such visions in the Forum.
I don’t know who the man was in your vision who was walking around the kitchen, but it’s likely he existed in some way and you picked up on it. I don’t think these visions are random. They are usually significant, but figuring out the significance is difficult. The more vivid the vision, the more significant it is. Your psyche wants you to see it. If you are still remembering it after all these years, then it’s likely something that is still significant for you. Perhaps something that was going on at the time that has been hidden from you. Your dream about the car came true, so you picked up on thoughts that were about to happen – i.e., your bf reaching out to you for help about the car. Studies show that humans are pretty good at picking up on things that are just about to happen.
I don’t know exactly if what I experienced was a premonition but I did dream of someone I know about like a year or 2 ago. In my dream it was a scene where we were walking in some kind of street and I was shocked to see our hands was holding each other. We were happily walking that time and he drove me home and stayed for awhile then left saying he’ll see me again tomorrow. Then the next scene was I woke up with him in a room and I woke him up too to ask why the heck are we together. Then he said why am I asking a silly question because its just normal for a married couple to sleep together. Then he raises my hand with a ring. Then suddenly her mom knocks on the door and says our babies are fast asleep now and we could go out. When I blinked again we ere outside and staring at the sunset together and he says to me he will never get tired of marrying me all over again. When I finally woke up from that dream I was confused and somewhat felt crazy to think about it because I we both have our own girlfriend and boyfriend that time. But we were just friends. Not until a year later after we are both single we somewhat got into liking each other. So we became a couple just like what happened in my dream. But after of 6 months together we broke up. And we are supposed to be a year next month on October. Then suddenly he keeps on bugging me. I still love him. And his mom keeps on chatting me to keep in touch with him because she likes me very much for her son. And he kinda loves me still but he won’t tell. And I keep on thinking about that dream I had before. Could it possibly continue what isn’t finished in my dream?
No. Like dreams, that vision could mean many things. Peehaps you picked up something that was happening or will happen to someone that will be in the news. We live in a sea of consciousness (or thought) Ao that vision could have come from an event that is about to happen or already happened.
I don’t think I’m getting premonitions but all the time I get this really Strong feeling of déjà vu for example I was sitting in class and someone put their hand up and asked a question and it was like they already asked the question and when the teacher answered I recognise the answer but she hadn’t said it before so I’m not really sure what it is that I’m feeling but I was wondering if maybe you can help me figure out what it is. This happen about 4-5 times a week,
Hi Charlotte, Thanks for asking the question. Sounds like precognition.
Thanks for posting. Your visions sound like thoughts from a vivid imagination that other people pick up. Our thoughts emanate from us like rays of light and other people pick up on them. Then sometimes those people will mention that they too thought your thought. Only most people don’t realize they are simply picking up on your thoughts.
This is going to sound really silly but I have dreams that seem to come true in part weeks later. Nothing massive like natural disasters or bad things happening, just things that create a sense of knowing. I had a dream about few weeks back, in the dream I was on a farm/plantation and there was this big grand house which was painted a kind of salmon pink colour with a wrap around porch and a bignore balcony and a terracotta tiled roof. Yesterday I was watching a programme on tv that I’d never seen before and there it was the house that was in my dream was on the TV. I don’t understand how I could’ve dreamt of something and then see it weeks later when I’d never been there or seen it before? It’s not the first time it’s happened I’ve also dreamt of a view from the top of a hill in Wales before weeks before I’d ever been there. I spontaneously moved to Wales later that year and just round the corner from where I moved there was that exact same view.
Can a feeling towards someone be a premonition. And i feel heartache and sadness in me. I feel like crying. Is there a way that I can see or know what is going to happen??
Bianca, thanks for asking this question. There is no quick answer however the people who have attended my classes have learned to begin to see the difference between their own emotional reactions to people and a true intuitive or psychic feeling.
One method to see the future is to meditate on a target, in this case it is your friend, and call out the months ahead and write down the feelings and visions you get as you focus on points in the future.
Then keep track of those feelings and then watch if they unfold.
In my classes I give lots of examples of how we know when something is truly a premonition versus just our anxiety. It is important to know your anxiety triggers — i.e., the traumatic events in your life that cause you to overreact to situations and spread unnecessary fear.
If you are someone who mediates regularly or knows how to breathe and be present and still you get these feelings then those feelings are more likely to be correct intuitive hits.
Come to the next Read the Future night on September 17 and get some practice.
I have a question. i get premonitions frequently along with feelings of deja vu and i could ask 1 million questions but i will sum it down. I recently had this premonition with someone screaming ‘don’t do it’ and a glowing green stone pendant thing. Now i know what the don’t do it part was about, it was about the fact that before this premonition i had another one about a friend who was recently very (like hospital) ill and it said that she was going to give me some kind of news relating to her and i had half a mind to tell her. And i also know who was screaming don’t do it. it was a family member of mine i am almost positive. Now to my questions: my first one is what do you think that the glowing green stone pendent thing meant because i am struggling to figure it out. And my second question is relating to the voice. The voice I am positive like i said is a family member however this family member is deceased and has been for a long time and there is the small fact that this family member died before i was even born so my question is, can premonitions be linked to the spirit realm or is that something else entirely?
Sounds like you received instructions from your family member who is in the spirit world. My belief is that once they pass over they have a better view of what’s going on down here. They are in the light and it’s dark (as in harder to see) down here. Always use whatever you receive from them with discernment, but do listen to it. As for the emerald crystal, sounds like something good and very positive, even healing.
Jeanne I would like your advice about disclosing a premonition to a friend. I believe I have been having one…it is quite intrusive and I thought it was my own voice. I felt the need to reach out to her the past couple nights and felt compelled to visit her at her home after work today. While there I had a starting premonition too loud to be ignored. On my drive home I realize the two are linked and the nagging one is not about me but about her. I am not skilled in premonitions and have a lot of self doubt. My question is do I warn her when I risk scaring her half to death since probability points to me being wrong about all of this.
Allison, use discernment about telling her. I wish I knew what it was you were feeling coming but I don’t think you should put it in this public forum. I don’t share my premonitions unless I am certain they are right and even then only if it is constructive. Then I still don’t share them outright, but I might try to steer the person to avoid the calamitous event. Think about whether it can be avoided. Above all, do not harm.
I accurately predict world events. Don’t really know what to do with them. I can’t prevent tragedies even though I see them beforehand. Then, fate exists.
Dew thanks for weighing in. Premonitions don’t necessarily end in prevention. Sometimes they do when it’s personal to you and so you can change your path, or at least have a greater understanding about the direction you are going. Still, this field is part of the great mysteries of life, so it’s going to raise questions we can’t necessarily answer.