While Philip was [still] in possession of his dominion, he saw a dream,—how an eagle tore out both his eyes. And he summoned all his wise men. But when each interpreted the dream differently, there came to him suddenly, without being summoned, that man of whom we have previously written, that he went about in skins of animals and cleansed the people in the waters of the Jordan. And he spake: "Give ear to the word of the Lord,—the dream which thou hast seen. The eagle—that is thy venality; because that bird is violent and rapacious. And that sin will take away thy eyes which are thy dominion and thy wife." And when he had thus spoken, Philip died before evening and his dominion was given to Agrippa. (Flavius Josephus)

We are objective observers, but subjective interpreters.

We have the data - more than anyone else - on what is happening in our lives. But as we organize our data, we can easily mis-label, neglect, and mix or separate in ways that produce confusion instead of information.

This confusion is monitored by our brain. Our dreams can serve as a sorting function to reexamine how we have organized, or potentially misorganized, our data.

Ernest Hartmann, a contemporary American psychologist writes, "Dreaming makes connections more broadly than waking in the nets of the mind. Dreaming avoids the "central" rapid input-to-output portions of the net and the feed-forward mode of functioning; it makes connections in the further out regions (further from input/output) and in an auto-associative mode... Dreaming cross-connects. The connections are not made in a random fashion; they are guided by the emotion of the dreamer. Dreaming contextualizes a dominant emotion or emotional concern."

We are much more than our waking selves. We are much more than the meaning we allow ourselves. The world is much more than the data as we have organized it.

John arrives and reorganizes Philip's data. The new information uncovers new (or newly recognized) knowledge, which is information placed in context. Based on this knowledge John speaks wisdom, which is knowledge applied to solving a problem or engaging a novel situation.

Dear God, help me to make the connections you have offered. Help my senses to know the truth. Help me to make sense of the truth and do with it what you intend.