Sageous,

I'm with you that you can't interpret the words and images correctly without being present in the underlying experience. Where this is different for me, is the underlying experience doesn't go away when I'm awake. And remembering the words and images can help move my mind there.

That's not what I was trying to say about prophetic and non-prophetic dreams though. My analogy with words was probably ill chosen because its too close to the subject its supposed to represent. Trying again: There are no events which are not reflective of the 'deeper' reality, whether you're aware of it or not. Yes a prophetic dream feels different than a non-prophetic one when you're having it, and for me the memory feels a lot different too. But this is because there's a connection that is more conscious, direct, and perhaps easier to make accurate sense of as a prophecy, and not because the the non-prophetic dream is 'random' or unconnected to anything deeper. Maybe this has been a major lesson for me in the past year or two. Almost all of the metaphors which I previously would have gotten in transcendent-feeling dreams have been showing up in waking life experiences instead. The hawk killing the squirrel and hanging it on the fence where I had just climbed over would be one example. My point is that everything is like that, notwithstanding that if you try to interpret all your mundane experiences as messages from God you're going to interpret them incorrectly almost all of the time. Events do all mean something, in the sense that they're a part of a larger story, even though they usually don't mean anything that makes sense as a 'sign from heaven'.