Spirit Communication in Dreams

Spirit Communication in Dreams

by Diane Linsley

In this article, I will describe some personal experiences in which

deceased friends and relatives communicated with me while I was

in the dream state. I'm not a medium or practicing psychic, although

I do have strong intuitive abilities. I have spent many years working

on developing dream recall and lucidity, which you can read about

in my articles on dreamwork and lucid dreams.

My Client Gita

In late 2025, my coaching client Gita died from a very aggressive breast cancer. She had been my client for 5 years. Like many of my clients, she had a difficult life with narcissistic abuse and other painful challenges. I remember the day I received her coaching request by email. As I was reading it, I heard my inner voice say, "This is the client I've been waiting for all my life." My conscious mind didn't know what that meant, but I trusted my intuition.

When Gita first started working with me, she was in such a bad state that she couldn't remain in an adult voice for the duration of a coaching call. She kept falling into the voice of the Inner Child. It was almost like a split personality. Other people in her life had also noticed this about her, but they didn't know what it was. The first year of coaching was spent helping her develop her adult voice and take care of her Inner Child from an adult consciousness instead of being lost in the Inner Child. By the time she had been with me for 4 years, she had made amazing progress. She was achieving her goals and living a happier life with a new circle of friends.

Then the cancer struck. After her diagnosis, I wondered if I was still the best coach for her. I prayed and meditated on it, and the answer came that, yes, it would be hard, but I would be guided to know what to do one day at a time. I asked Gita what she thought about continuing to coach with me, and she cried as she said, "I was afraid you would abandon me like my health coach did." I assured her that I would never do that, and we got to work on the new problems in her life.

The last year was extremely difficult for her, and it was painful for me to witness everything she went through. But the spiritual progress she made was incredible. She developed the ability to stand up for herself against doctors, friends and family members who pressured her to do things their way. She took charge of her own healing plan and did more than I would have thought possible. She also continued to work on other aspects of her life and relationships. She finally quit coaching when she was in hospice and too weak to talk anymore.

Dream Communication with Gita

About two months after Gita died, I received a message from her in a dream. This was a very unusual communication because up until then, deceased friends and relatives had appeared to me in dreams in visual form. For example, the last time my grandpa appeared to me, which was the third time he had appeared since he died 31 years ago, he was standing off to the side while I was talking to a dream character. When I noticed him, I became lucid in the dream and turned my attention to my grandpa. We had a nice chat, and he introduced me to my future granddaughter, who was born 18 months later.

Gita's communication was unique because she didn't appear in the dream itself. Instead, she used the dream as a way to bypass my conscious waking mind (which is not very good at receiving messages from the other side) and communicate with my semi-conscious dreaming mind. Years of dreamwork had prepared me to maintain awareness in this state and remember most of the details when I woke up. So here's what happened.

I was talking to a dream character about his health problems (I do a lot of coaching in my dreams). Suddenly, I heard Gita's voice. It sounded far away and airy with some static - like it was being transmitted through a telephone or radio with a weak connection. I had to concentrate to understand what she was saying, but I was able to hear her whole message.

It was so wonderful to hear Gita's voice again! It was just like the old days of coaching. She used to spend the first 15 minutes of every coaching call telling me what she had done since the previous week's call. But this time, there were no problems or complaints. She told me about things she was learning in the spirit world. She explained why we come to Earth to have physical experiences, even though there's lots to do in the spirit world. She also talked about the continuous learning that goes on in the spirit world.

She told me about her soul's learning preferences. She said, "I like to take things slowly and go into a lot of depth and detail because I want to learn things thoroughly." She knows I have a different soul personality. I like to go fast and try lots of different things. I am big-picture-oriented, while Gita is more detail-oriented. I'm one of those curious souls that Michael Newton mentions in Destiny of Souls who likes to explore the spirit world and learn how things work.

Gita assured me that she is happy. She said with joy and wonder, "I see the sun all the time now!" Of course, she is speaking metaphorically. The spirit world is a place of divine love and light. Near the end of her message, she said, "Diane, thank you so much for everything you did for me. I love you." This made me very happy. I replied, "I love you so much, Gita. Thank you." Then I woke up.

The Dream Continues

Interestingly, the whole time Gita was talking, the dream had continued on its normal course. I had to continue operating in the dream while listening to Gita. The dream had begun in a room full of people. As soon as Gita started to communicate with me, I told the dream character I was coaching that we needed to find a quieter place, and we started walking down a hallway. I was able to focus on Gita's voice with fewer distractions. I couldn't stop the dream because that would have ended the connection with Gita, since it was reliant on the dream state. She seemed to know this, and there was a sense of urgency in her voice. Dreams only last for a certain length of time. Her message was well planned to fit into the available time, which was about 3 minutes.

I've learned from previous dream communications that it's important to get to the point quickly. I didn't understand this years ago, so I often wasted time with small talk, missing the opportunity for important messages. When I woke up from this dream, I immediately reviewed everything I could remember and wrote it down. Then I awakened my husband and told him about it, which helped me remember more details. I later told my daughter about it, which helped me make sense of some vague parts. My daughter is an experienced lucid dreamer, so she knows how to ask good questions.

Mechanics of Spirit Communication

The way that Gita chose to communicate with me was both unusual and brilliant. At first, I wondered why she didn't appear visually the way my grandpa does. But it makes sense that she would design it like a coaching call because that's the way we communicated on Earth for 5 years.

In this format, she was able to deliver lots of detailed information without the interruptions and distractions that occur during a visual encounter. I'm often distracted by my grandpa's appearance, noticing things like how he is dressed and other such irrelevancies. It's nice to have a visual impression, but it wasn't necessary in Gita's case. In life, she lived in England, and we never met in person. But I knew her very well because she shared so much of herself with me.

My grandpa's visits are less about delivering messages and more about showing me aspects of the afterlife. He first appeared to me one year after his death. When I saw him, I exclaimed, "Wow, grandpa, you look great!" He looked like he was 22 years old. Then I asked, "What is it like being dead?" He took me on a brief tour of the universe, flying past stars and planets. He has visited me twice since then, and each time I've seen how he has changed as he continues to progress in the spirit world. I've also visited with my other grandpa three times, and each time he showed me what he is currently working on.

Purpose of Spirit Communication

Even though I've always been interested in the spirit world, I've never intentionally tried to communicate with any deceased friends or relatives. The experiences happen when I least expect it, and they are initiated from the other side. In several of my experiences, I saw a spirit guide standing off to the side. The spirit guide was probably there for support or supervision.

According to Michael Newton, there are rules for these things. But spirit guides don't usually interfere, and they often remain invisible. There have been two cases - both of them with my grandmas - in which I spoke to the spirit guide instead of the grandmother. My grandmas didn't see me because they were busy with things they were working on, and I was just there to witness the scene for my own learning.

There are many reasons why we might receive communications from the spirit world, and it's not to gratify our egos. I've come to the conclusion that it's my soul, not my ego, that needs these experiences. My soul is working on something in this lifetime that I don't understand, and I can only guess what it is. I've gained a lot of insight by reading Michael Newton's books, beginning with Journey of Souls. Before I read these books, I made a lot of silly assumptions about my experiences. I recommend reading these books and practicing dream recall. You never know when someone might want to contact you.