Some premonitions arrive as dramatic, vibrantly detailed dreams. Others sneak in as vague, gnawing gut feelings. They range from revealing the trivial, like where to find missing keys, to foreshadowing disasters, destruction, and death. 

In his book, THE POWER OF PREMONITIONS: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives, author Larry Dossey, M.D. sheds light on:

- How premonitions often herald tragedy…and how premonitions often save lives. Among many striking instances, Dr. Dossey shares how a young mother in Washington State took a frightening dream seriously, over her husband’s laughter, and saved her infant from being crushed by a fallen chandelier; how an Oklahoma City obstetrician learned to trust his chest pains as signals of impending delivery to improve patient care; and how hundreds of individuals all over the country had premonitory dreams prior to the events of 9/11. On that shattering day, many also followed their hunches and cancelled travel plans at the last minute. American Airlines Flight 77, for example, had a 78 percent vacancy rate when it crashed into the Pentagon.

- The value and routine practice of employing premonitions in business. Along with exposing “business intuition” for what it really is—a knack for predicting business cycles, trends, and strengths—Dr. Dossey spotlights experiments using premonitions to make money. Incredibly, two different series of trials of remote viewers’ success at picking winning stocks were right on the money—until greed became the objective. The lesson? Purity of purpose pays off.

- Why we should want to cultivate premonitions and how to do it. As Dr. Dossey makes clear, even when they present a fragmentary picture or a mere inkling, premonitions serve as welcome guides to navigating the future with confidence and compassion. For those who aspire to become more premonition-prone, he urges getting comfortable with ambiguity and chaos; embracing a sense of the “transcendent”—a certainty that there is something more than the here-and-now—and the unity of all life; respecting the unconscious; and staying attentive and positive. He also advocates employing common sense, with practices like keeping a dream journal.

Dr. Dossey has a talk and signing event at 7:00 Tuesday night at New Renaissance Books located at 1338 NW 23rd in Portland.

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