Why does God need to communicate in a dream - why is deliberate and open meditation (sometimes) necessary?

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Reading scripture, it is striking how often God communicates important message in a dream - and chilling to realize how such communications would almost certainly be ignored altogether, and not given even a moments consideration, in the intellectual climate of today.

Presumably revelations may come in a dream, or in states of dream-like altered consciousness, such as trances or meditations - because that is the only time that God can get our attention. Our minds are, as a rule, so purposive and/or distracted that we are turned away from divine communications, try to ignore them as a distraction - at any rate, cannot hear them above the hubbub of everyday life.

If this was the case in ancient times such as the eras of Scripture - how much the more so in modern times.

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Even in solitude our minds are likely to be 'working overtime' or else in some way deliberately impaired (eg intoxicated); and if we regard revelations as subjective, as nonsense, as random events, as wish fulfilment, as self-deceptions - well then although we may get them, we won't perceive them.

That seems to be the way things work - and for reasons which may be understood: Men have the power not to receive communications from God, if they choose not to receive them.

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But this 'refusal' of revelation may be indirect - a Man may live such that in practice the divine revelations cannot penetrate the wall of distractions he has erected about himself, or has chosen to allow around himself. A Man may be unable to perceive revelation because of what he insists must dominate his life and his attention.

And this may be true even if a Man says to himself that he is open to revelation, seeking revelation, searching for the meaning and purpose in life...

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