What If You Don’t Have Spiritual Dreams?
I know what it is like to feel saddened or discouraged when we long for a beautiful and special dream, such as seeing RasulAllah ﷺ, the awliyah (saints, or Friends of Allah), or having a dream that gives us confirmation of our spiritual standing, only not to have such dreams.
I used to feel this way, especially when I was more engaged with social media years ago. I would often see posts of people sharing their powerful and special dreams, or posts explaining that if we recite this or do that, we will see RasulAllah ﷺ in our dreams.
Alhamdulillah, Allah eventually showed me something profound about these longings, something I am so grateful to understand now. He not only freed me from the longing, but taught me how to connect to RasulAllah ﷺ and the awliyah in my waking life, rather than waiting for them to appear in my dreams.
Before you continue reading, I want to offer a little warning.
This may be an uncomfortable article to read.
Not because there is anything wrong with wanting beautiful dreams or spiritual experiences, but because we are going to look at something challenging: nafs al-ammarah (the ego, or lower-self) and the ways it can quietly and subtly attach itself even to our spiritual aspirations.
Tazkiyah al-nafs (purification of the self) becomes uncomfortable precisely because it asks us to look at motivations we would rather believe are purely spiritual.
If you notice yourself feeling defensive, irritated, resistant, or wanting to stop reading, you don't have to judge yourself for that either.
Simply observe it.
You might ask yourself gently:
“What is this reaction showing me?”
The purpose isn't to accuse ourselves or assume that every uncomfortable reaction is the nafs. It is to become curious enough to see ourselves honestly.
Because the nafs does not always reveal itself through obviously harmful desires, sometimes it hides inside the things we consider beautiful, noble and spiritual.
And that is what I want to explore here.
The ego does not always want worldly things
We often think of the ego as wanting money, status, beauty, attention or recognition.
But the nafs can be much more subtle than that. It can also want to be spiritually special.
It can want to be the person who had the extraordinary dream.
The person who received the special sign.
The person who saw RasulAllah ﷺ.
The person who met an awliyah.
The person who experienced something that other people haven't.
And because these experiences are sacred, we may not immediately recognize what is happening.
We may think we are simply longing for closeness to Allah, but sometimes what we are really longing for is reassurance about ourselves.
We want to feel chosen and loved.
We want to feel advanced.
We want to feel that our spiritual journey is real.
And this is where something very subtle can happen.
The nafs can take something sacred and turn it into another form of validation.
When spiritual experiences become something we can “obtain”
All those posts on social media saying things like:
“If you want to dream of RasulAllah ﷺ, recite this.”
“Do this for seven nights and you will see RasulAllah ﷺ in your dream.”
“Read this before sleeping and you will have a spiritual experience.”
I think we need to be very careful with this kind of content.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with making dua to Allah to see RasulAllah ﷺ in a dream, or with sending salawat upon him before sleeping.
But have you ever asked yourself, why do you want these dreams?
When we are told, “Do this and you will see RasulAllah ﷺ,” we can very easily begin approaching worship with an expectation:
“I did this. Where is my dream?”
And then, if the dream doesn't come, we may feel disappointed, spiritually inadequate, or even wonder whether Allah is withholding something from us.
We have turned something that was supposed to bring us closer to Allah into a transaction. The point of tazkiyah al-nafs and the Sufi path is to get deeper into our motivations so we can shatter falsehood and live from truth.
It is about asking:
If I get a particular spiritual dream, what does it mean to me?
If I don't get the dream, what does it mean to me?
The nafs is very good at turning even beautiful acts of worship into something it can use to seek an outcome.
So perhaps the question should not be, “How can I have this dream?”
But: “What am I training my heart to seek?”
A spiritual experience does not make someone spiritually advanced
I have encountered people in my own life who shared extraordinary spiritual dreams with me.
Over time, however, Allah taught me to observe things that made me realize a crucial truth: what someone claims or experiences spiritually does not necessarily reflect who they have become inwardly.
Over time, their actions often revealed something very different from the spiritual image their experiences seemed to suggest.
And this taught me something important.
Even if a spiritual dream is completely genuine, what matters is what we do with the experience.
I have observed two very different ways people can respond to such dreams.
Sometimes, a person becomes attached to the experience itself. They begin to see the dream as evidence of their spiritual standing, and instead of becoming more humble, truthful and devoted, they can actually become more careless about their own behavior.
Other times, the dream becomes something they use to influence how other people perceive them. They share the experience in a way that communicates, “Look how spiritually special I am,” rather than allowing their character and actions to speak for themselves.
And this is where we need to be careful.
A spiritual experience can be real, beautiful and meaningful, and yet the way we relate to it can still become an opportunity for the nafs to invite us to attach to other than Allah.
The experience itself is not necessarily the test. It is what we become because of it.
Someone can have an extraordinary dream and still have a great deal of work to do with the nafs.
Someone can see something beautiful in a dream and still struggle with jealousy, dishonesty, pride, attachment or the need for recognition.
And this matters because we can easily make the mistake of assuming that an extraordinary experience means an extraordinary spiritual station.
It doesn't necessarily.
A dream is not a certificate of spiritual attainment.
And the absence of a particular dream is not evidence that Allah is distant from us.
Dreams that help us heal
I personally have never had a dream with RasulAllah ﷺ or the awliyah.
I can only testify to having one dream, many years ago, before Sufiquest, involving Aisha, the wife of the Prophet ﷺ. It was very simple. There was no dialogue that I can recall. I was in a desert, surrounded by sand, and she was sitting down looking at me. She moved her head as a gesture of welcome, and when I woke up, I simply knew it was her.
I did not think much about the dream, nor did I share it before, because I do not have any conclusions about what it meant. Nevertheless, I am grateful for it.
I have had several dreams that were impactful and were the catalyst to help me look deeper into my soul and my own wounds.
If I had to summarize my dreams in a very concise way, I would not necessarily describe them as good or bad. Some of them may have looked frightening at the time, but in retrospect, I can see them as revealing something that needed to die within me.
Our nafs will naturally resist its own death.
The saying “die before you die” speaks to this inner process: allowing parts of the ego to die while we are still alive, so that something more truthful can emerge.
I once shared one of my dreams on my Instagram stories, but I want to briefly mention it here because it illustrates how I have learned to relate to dreams.
About 2-3 years before Sufiquest was born, Allah was leading me through a profound period of purification and awakening from the illusions of my own lower-self. I had to surrender to His plan rather than obtain something I deeply wanted at that point in my life.
During that period, I repeatedly dreamed that I was near the ocean among many people I did not know. We all somehow knew that we were going to die soon because a tsunami was approaching.
My role in the dream was to warn the people around me not to be afraid of the wave that was about to come and crush us. I was calm, comforting, wise and helpful to the many terrified people around me. I kept telling them not to fear.
What struck me most was that the person I was in the dream did not feel like the person I believed myself to be in waking life.
I looked brave and spiritually strong in the dream, in a way that felt very different from how I was actually living at the time.
And that became much more meaningful to me. The dream did not make me feel special. It showed me something about who I could become and that made me feel scared because the gap between me at the time and the person in the dream felt too wide.
So, the way I believe Allah has taught me to understand my dreams is that they can either highlight my limitations, fears, and ideas that are holding me back, or remind me to release my overwhelming sense of duty and make room for fun, rest, and relaxation.
Dreams can be deeply personal, reflecting the particular lessons our souls are being asked to learn.
Connecting to the Awliyah and RasulAllah ﷺ
I personally no longer hold a longing to have spiritual dreams, and I believe this is because Allah has taught me how to connect to the awliyah and RasulAllah ﷺ in waking life.
And of course, you can too. Anyone can learn this.
We can achieve this by becoming more aware of the tactics of our nafs al-ammarah (which is what I try to share in my work) and actively weakening its grip by doing the exact opposite of what it demands.
We can connect through embodying their teachings.
Through their character.
Through allowing their words to challenge us.
Through trying to live what they taught.
Through remembering RasulAllah ﷺ when we are making choices about how we want to live.
Through learning from the awliyah and allowing their wisdom to expose what still needs purification within us.
We can long to see RasulAllah ﷺ in a dream while neglecting the opportunity to bring his mercy, truthfulness, patience, and character into our waking relationships.
We can hope an awliyah will appear to us in the unseen while overlooking the transformation their teachings are asking of us right here, in our ordinary lives.
I believe the deeper connection to them was never dependent on seeing them, just as Uwais al-Qarni (May Allah have mercy on him) did not see RasulAllah ﷺ. It is about allowing what they carried to transform us.
What if the real spiritual experiences do not happen while we are sleeping?
What if you don’t have spiritual dreams? Having them or not having them does not make any of us more or less special. Allah loves those who do good and those who seek to purify themselves from the ideas and influences that pull them away from Him.
Surely Allah loves those who always turn to Him in repentance and those who purify themselves. - Quran 2:222
If anything I’ve written here needs clarification, feel free to leave a comment so we can learn and reflect together.
And if you’re reading this by email, give this article a 👍 if you found it useful, or a 👎 if you didn’t. I’d genuinely love to know why. May Allah reward you.
