Spiritual Dreams for Our Journey to Eternity

I met Alicia Harley at a series of talks I gave about Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle. She stood out because she is beautiful, intense, and radiates eagerness to learn.
During the talks I would sometimes ask if anyone in the group had experienced similar graces to those St. Teresa wrote about. Alicia was one of the few who would respond.
When the sessions ended, she began to tell me about some of her dreams. Unfamiliar with the theology of spirituality, Alicia wasn't aware that "dreams" of the type she often had are what is called "interior visions."
An interior vision is not seen as outside the recipient's body as, say, in the case of apparitions. It is like an interior locution, sometimes called "a word in the heart," which is not heard with the ears, but "listened to" within the soul. The "interior vision" is like a dream but its content is not a fantastic jumble of images. It is a coherent series of pictures with a spiritual theme.
Now, when a recipient of such interior visions tells a priest or some other spiritual mentor about such happenings, the mentor is always cautious. After all, if everyone believed everything they saw in such dreams or heard in such locutions, evil spirits could mislead anyone at any time.
However, in Alicia's case, the priests she spoke to never thought these many dreams were coming from evil spirits.
Since I have written many books about Catholic spirituality and the saints, I asked Alicia to show me some of the pages she had compiled of such dreams. Never did they seem to me to be from evil spirits. Instead, each one seemed to me to convey Catholic truths in the form of vivid imagery.
I suggested that Alicia put them together in the book that is now in your hands.

As I was reading Alicia's dreams, I commented on how I would apply what I thought was a meaning of a dream to my own spiritual life.
Dr. Ronda Chervin