Two
Reviews
Dream Moments
Ruth Frances Hoskins, Ph.D., LCSW, BCD
Reviewed by Barbara McDuffie
In Dream Moments,
Ruth Hoskins attempts to show the importance of working with our dreams
to
recognize their messages. Her belief is
that a “Voice”, with a capital “V”, speaks to us at night during our
sleeping
dreams and in the daytime during our waking dreams. She
uses her own dreams and vignettes from her
life as illustrations. Hoskins writes
that she has been receiving messages from her dreams since she was
three years
old.
From a personal viewpoint, I agree with the basic premise of
Dream Moments. Sigmund
Freud and Edgar Cayce documented many
cases where they helped individuals to work with their dreams to find
answers
to questions in their lives. But Hoskins’
attempt to introduce readers to the idea of accessing information from
dreams
falls short of the mark. As she skips
around from her dreams to her real life and from the present to the
past and
back again, the book seems choppy and the reader is left confused. She fails to realize that any messages in her
dreams are meant for her, and that her dreams require much more
explanation
than she offers in order to make any sense to anyone else.
I was left with the feeling that in a rush to
complete the book she left out some vital parts of the various stories
she
told.
The book emphasizes Hoskins’ dreams concerning her mother’s
illness and eventual death. In the first
chapter she writes about waking from a dream in which she is told the
exact
date when her mother will die. She jumps
from bed and throws on an angora sweater over her flannel gown and runs
outside
in her slippered feet. She fights the
snow and ice to reach her car and get it moving down a slippery
mountain road
so she can find a phone and call her mother.
She finally finds a phone booth and while dialing home she
attempts to
keep warm by hopping from one foot to the other and by lifting the
collar of
her jacket around her ears. But …..what
jacket? In her desperate rush she ran
out into the cold morning wearing only her nightgown and sweater. In another chapter she writes about sitting
by the bedside of “Daddy’s wife” who is
dying. Is the dying woman her mother or did her father remarry? Hoskins doesn’t make it clear. Perhaps Dream Moments would have been better
told from the viewpoint of Hoskins as an outsider trying to help others
understand their dreams.
Reviewed
by Sabrina Williams
Dream Moments: The Voice in Your Dreams, Prophecy
and Intuition is Ruth Frances Hoskins compilation of twenty-nine
separate instances of prophetic dreams and intuitive signals. Each
chapter contains an anecdote, and while character specifics reveal some
stories are obviously told by the same person, it is never confirmed
that the narrator throughout the book is the author. The reader has to
rely on this assumption. It is probably a pretty sound assumption since
several of the anecdotes speak of teaching workshops, and the author
teaches workshops on meditation, dream study, and other various
holistic ventures.
After a brief introduction mentioning the significance of dreams,
chapter one opens with a prophetic dream about the death of the
narrator's mother. The story never confirms if the specific date
envisioned in the dream was the actual date of the mother's passing. As
the chapters progress, the reader learns of communication with loved
ones who have died through dreams, inspirational symbols that arrive in
a moment of need, and the benefits of meditation. Animals play a large
role in several of the tales.
These are not instructional chapters, however. They are narratives of
another person's individual experiences. Most of the stories tend to
feel incomplete like the first chapter, as if there should be closure
where there is none. They lack the inspirational qualities they were
probably intended to have, and they don't contain much information
regarding the interpretation of dreams that the reader can learn from.
I closed the book feeling neither invigorated nor disappointed; I just
felt indifferent. At 160 pages with a very large, double-spaced font,
it is an incredibly fast read with little substance. Perhaps Hoskins
first book, No Time for Down Time, offers more useful information, as
it promises the secret to balance and stress-reduction.