Dream Journaling – Part 3

In part 2 of my ongoing blog series on journaling, I talked about how to record an entire dream. I gave some tips on how to stay in your dream and how to record your now-thoughts as you were journaling.

In part 3, I will be concentrating on separating your dream into the clues you give yourself in order to better understand your dream. Keep in mind that each symbol that you dream has a universal meaning as well as your own personal meaning to it.

You will begin this section with a completely written dream. You will need to separate each component, analyze them, and then put them all back together in a way that gives your dream the correct meaning. I use Dream Chart – 1, below, for this purpose.

Charting a Dream

The easiest way for me to explain how to do this is to give an example dream. This is a real dream that was given to me to analyze. You will simply substitute your own personal dream and follow the exact steps I am using.

The Dream as told to me:

I have titled this dream Zombie Swamp.

I am in a boat in a swamp. The boat is broken in two. A woman is in the other 1/2 of the boat. We come to a blockade of sticks and branches. There are bad guys. They resemble Night of the Living Dead zombies. I get out of the boat and start running. They chase me. The zombies transform into really fast little goblins when I start running. I use a maneuver I know – stop real quickly, then use my shoulder to fling them over me onto the ground using their own momentum. Stop, grab, and drop. I wake with my arm and shoulder killing me from flinging the goblin. I am the actor in the dream, performing the action.

Now chart the dream, as I did below, by separating it into the following categories.

Dream Chart – 1

When charting a dream, just as in writing your dream, an important thing to keep in mind is that every single thing in your dream means something. It’s in your dream for a reason. The more you work with your dreams and add to your personal dream dictionary, the more these symbols will make sense.

Examine the items from your chart. Write anything you know about each item. Use a dictionary when necessary.

1. What is a zombie? Basically, a dead thing that has life.
2. What is a swamp? A stagnant body of water.
3. A Boat? A means to travel through the swamp.
4. The woman could be personal or universal; universal meaning the other 1/2 of the self. The union of male/female representing wholeness.
5. Blockade of sticks and branches? A barrier. This actually reminds me of a dam, the kind that beavers make. A dam blocks the flow of water and could create a stagnant swamp. Water, universally, is life energy.
6. Stopping is the key to defeating the goblins — interesting clue. Is there something the dreamer needs to stop in order to create positive life-giving energy flow back in their life? The zombies have created a barrier to this positive energy flow.
7. Instead of cool, clear, running water, they have a stagnant swamp.

The key here is to figure out what the zombie represents in their awake-life.

The dream points in the right direction and further dream analysis may reveal how to “bring back clear, flowing water.”

Next, examine any current, past or future life situations to determine if the dream is about them. If anything leaps out at you, it could be the key you’re looking for.

The main life event that leaped out at me concerning the zombie dream was:

The dream was told to me during the dreamer’s 50th birthday party. Could it be about the thought of growing old?

Imagine that time, as in “aging over time”, is the zombie/goblin.

Using the chart above, I’ll analyze the dream picking out the most noticeable things first.

• The dreamer is performing the action. He is the actor. This is a clue that the dream is about him. See post Identity: Are you the actor or the watcher?
• The boat represents floating along.
• The swamp represents stagnation.
• The blockade represents the 50th birthday.
• The zombies represent how time slowly lumbers along.
• The goblins represent how time suddenly speeds up.
• The dreamer is feeling scared as he runs; it is scary how fast time moves.
• Running represents using a more personal energy, using his own legs, in running from the issue. (As opposed to floating along.)
• Flinging the goblin represents using personal energy to work on the issue.
• Stop, grab and drop; lay it out cold!

The message is, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could stop time?”

My Interpretation:

• The dreamer is running away from turning 50.
• Those time goblins are way too fast, he’s not going to get far!
• His answer, time’s not going to get the best of him.
• He has a few tricks from his youth up his sleeve.
• He’s going to stop, grab, and drop time in its tracks!

That’s not to say that there aren’t other interpretations for this dream.

The dream interpretation changes based upon what you determine the zombie/goblins to represent. In the above example I determined that the zombies represented time. They could represent a different worry that the dreamer was running from. Ultimately, the decision belongs to the dreamer, which is why I enjoy teaching how to interpret your own dreams using a dream dictionary that you personally create. I will be showing you how to write your own dream dictionary in a future post.

Analyzing A Dream – In Short

1. Begin with a completely written dream.

2. Give your dream a title if you haven’t already done so.

3. Chart the dream by separating it into the following categories:

• symbols
• actions
• thoughts
• feelings
• misc. (I use miscellaneous for those things I think are important yet don’t seem to fit into any of the categories.)
  

4. Examine the items you have listed on your chart and write anything you know about each item. Use a dictionary when necessary.

5. Examine any current life situations that may be relevant to the dream.

6. Interpret the dream, if possible, by fitting the dream clues in with a current, past, or future life situation.

Conclusion

When I first began studying my dreams, I read a lot of books trying to understand how the interpreter came to the conclusions they did concerning the meaning of a dream. I needed to know how they were analyzing the dream and coming up with their interpretation in order to understand the meaning of my own dreams. These journal posts, in fact this whole blog, is my way of trying to make available to you what wasn’t there for me. One of the most important tools for dream interpretation is the ability to understand your own personal symbols. My next post, creating your personal dream dictionary, should be very helpful with that.

Is there anything you’d like to see in future posts? Leave me a comment here or send me an e-mail at Dreamer@words2words.com.

As always, thanks for reading,

Michelle