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Acts 2:17 · World English Bible

Acts 2:17 Meaning It Will Be in the Last Days

‘It will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.

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What does Acts 2:17 mean?

Dreams and visions are the natural language of the deeper mind, and they come to everyone, young and old, not just to a chosen few. This is worth taking seriously.

From the Psychoanalysis reading below.

Acts 2:17 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Psychoanalysis

Dreams and visions are the natural language of the deeper mind, and they come to everyone, young and old, not just to a chosen few. This is worth taking seriously. The images that rise in sleep are not noise; they are the deeper mind trying to tell a person something his waking mind has missed.

When these images are poured out on ordinary people, it means the wisdom of the deeper self is not locked away in temples or reserved for experts. It is open to anyone who will pay attention to what comes to him in the night and take it as a message worth reading.

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Psychoanalysis lens

Live Acts 2:17 today

  1. Before you reach for your phone in the morning, lie still for one minute and see what is left of the night. Keep whatever image stays, even if it makes no sense.
  2. Ask someone at dinner what they dreamed about, and actually listen instead of laughing it off. You learn things about people there that never come up otherwise.
  3. In a stretch of the day with no input, the commute, the line, the walk to the car, leave the earbuds out and let your mind drift where it wants. What it keeps returning to is telling you something.

What has your sleeping mind been bringing up that you keep waving away in the morning?

The same truth in other traditions

Taoism · Zhuangzi

He dreamed he was a butterfly and woke unsure which one was dreaming the other. He did not dismiss the dream; he let it ask him something.

Judaism · Talmud

A dream nobody interprets is like a letter nobody opens. The message was sent either way.

Sufism · Ibn Arabi

The imagination is a real country, not an empty one. What comes to you there is addressed to you, and you are meant to read it.

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