Dream Interpretation

Reality Replayed: Dreaming without symbolism.

Always keep in mind that a dream dictionary defines the symbolic use of the things in your dreams. There is a way we dream that is simply reality replayed. In these instances the symbol would be what it represents in reality. A plate would be a plate, a kitchen would be a kitchen, and a donut would be a donut. Maybe you’re on a diet and you wanted a donut, so you dreamed of eating one! No symbolism was involved; simply a very enjoyable dream. These dreams do not need interpretation, they are what they are.

How to know the difference.

In a reality replayed dream, when you wake up, you will understand the dream and what it meant to you personally.

In a symbolic dream, in most cases, your dream will make no sense to you. This is the type of dream that needs interpretation. You were obviously making use of the symbolic meanings for the physical items in your dream.

Why do we dream in symbols?

Many people theorize that we do this when we aren’t consciously connected to the information. This implies that the language of the subconscious is one of a symbolic nature. Dreaming is only one medium through which the subconscious becomes conscious and in order to understand the information being sent, you need to learn the symbolic dream language.

A problem with the dream language is that it is personal to each individual, and may be hard to decipher.

I have written Dream Journaling posts to help you in your understanding of your personal dream symbols. Also, see my post on Creating a Dream Dictionary.

Does dream information come from any other source?

There are many dream things that defy explanation.  Some examples are:

• Dreaming an event that hasn’t yet taken place.
• Dreaming of an event that has taken place that you were physically unaware of.
• Remote viewing in dreams; spiritually traveling to a location which exists in physical reality and bringing back information while you’re dreaming.
• Talking to another person in your dreams and comparing notes the next day to find they talked to you too.
• Receiving information in a dream from someone who is deceased that you couldn’t otherwise have received.

In answering the question, “Does dream information come from any other source?”

I would have to answer, “Yes!”

Exploring these dream capabilities and how they could possibly work is something I find very exciting. How could they possibly come from your subconscious when they weren’t there to begin with? Where did they come from?

Although I love every aspect of dreaming, these unknowns are my favorite areas to ponder. Theory after theory abounds within my head as to why and how these things can occur! If you’re interested in anything of this sort, you can look forward to many more posts on them in the future.

Or, for more information on things of an unexplainable nature, see my posts in Dream Phenomena, or read an example dream near the end of my post Building.

As always, thanks for reading,

Michelle

Creating a Dream Dictionary

Whenever you have a dream it is an opportunity to add every symbol in it to a dream dictionary. In part 3 of Dream Journaling, I guide you through the process of creating a dream symbol chart. That chart is a useful tool for creating your dream dictionary, so have it ready. Below, I will walk you through the steps to take when trying to define your dream symbols.

Learning how to work with an unknown symbol and define what it means to you:

Using a list of symbols, possibly from your dream symbol chart, pick one that you feel won’t be too hard to define.  Then, follow the steps below.

Step #1:

Ask the standard questions:

What is “the symbol”?

What does “the symbol” mean to you personally?

At this point you may understand how you’re using the symbol in your dream and be able to write your first entry in your dictionary. If so, jump to Step #4.

If not, continue to follow the steps below.

Step #2:

Research the symbol by looking it up in a dictionary, on the internet, in a book, etc.

Step #3:

Now that you understand this symbol better than you ever have before, you can examine the way you’re using it in your current dream.

Step #4:

Write your dream dictionary entry.

Choose a notebook or your computer for this purpose.

If you use a notebook, I suggest using the spiral kind and make a separate page for each entry. In this way you can insert new pages in alphabetical order whenever you choose.

I’ll go through the steps myself to show you how simple it can be.

I’ll use Water as my example symbol.

Step #1:

What is water?

It is essential to life. You need to drink water.

Without water you will die.

Water represents a key to life.

What does water mean to you personally?

I love the water. I love to swim.

I love sparkling clean water.

Represents happy times at the pool and the beach.

I am in awe of the vastness of the ocean.

I do not like water I cannot see through.

I fear things in the water that I cannot see.

Note: I didn’t have to go through steps 2 and 3, because I knew what the meaning of water was.  Had I not known, I would have researched, which is what steps 2 and 3 are about, and then hopefully come to the same conclusions that I have below in Step #4.

Step #4:

Your dream dictionary entry could look like this:

Water: Essential to life. A key to life. Without it you will die.

Water in a dream could represent life.

Clear water could speak about being able to see the things that are moving through your life. It could represent that childlike joy of seeing something in your life with clarity.

Water that you are unable to see through could speak of the inability to see things. It could also be about your fear of things you cannot see.

Continue the Process

Follow the steps above for each symbol that appears in your dreams and you’ll eventually have a substantial dream dictionary to pull from for assistance when interpreting and analyzing your dreams.

To get a feel for what your dream dictionary will look like, I have made my personal dictionary available for you – simply click here: Dream Dictionary. You can also find it in the navigation bar at the top of every page here at Dream Talker.

As always, thanks for reading!

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

Dream Journaling – Part 2

In part 1 of my on-going series of posts about dream journaling I talked briefly about how to remember your dreams and how to record them when you only have a few minutes. In part 2, I will be focusing on the best way to record an entire dream in order to have the most success at analyzing it.

Journaling an Entire Dream

The basic steps.

• Remember your dream.
• Find time to write it down.
• Write the date.
• Write the dream.
• Give it a title.
• Focus on writing only what is in the dream, and not what you are thinking at the present time.
• Think about where you were in the dream.
• Were you the actor performing the action or the watcher watching it? If you are unsure what identity you had, reference the post Identity: Are you the actor or the watcher?

Staying in the dream.

The best way for me to explain this is with an example.

Someone told me a dream. They mentioned something that happened while they were on vacation in the mountains the week before. I asked them if there were mountains in the dream. The answer was, “No.” I then asked them if they were on vacation in the dream.  Again a “no” answer. There was nothing in the dream that indicated it had anything to do with their vacation. I directed them back to their dream; asking what they were doing, thinking and feeling within the dream. It turns out that their dream was about a bear happily eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They associated bears with mountains then mountains with their vacation. They associated themselves away from the dream!

What happened in the example above is called free-association. We all have a tendency to do it. We need to overcome the habit in order to get to the true meaning of our dreams. Always redirect yourself back to the dream when you find that you are moving away in that manner. Stay in the dream.

A bear eating a sandwich in a dream could be about many things.

Things including but not limited to:

• Children or grandchildren
• Food
• Someone who loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• A need to go into hibernation
• A silly random happy thought
• Etc.

When you free associate away from the dream, you lose all of the opportunities to explore its true meaning.

How to stay in the dream.

The best way I know to do this is to ask the following questions:

• Was this action actually in my dream?
• Was this thought actually in my dream?
• Was this feeling actually in my dream?
• Was this object in my dream?

Teaching yourself how to stay in your dream will also teach you how to keep from free-associating away from it. They are inter-connected principles.

After you have mastered this, you can begin to record what I term now-thoughts.

Explanation of now-thought versus dream-thought.

You may be writing down a dream and you remember something that happened two days ago that could be meaningful. The fact that it popped into your head at the moment when you wrote down a particular part of your dream tells you that you need to pay attention to it. In order to keep it from being confused with your dream thoughts, feelings and happenings, you need to note that it is a now-thought. Simply write the words “now-thought” before you write the actual thought.

I stress over and over to only write what is in your dream, so why am I telling you how to incorporate your now-thoughts?

Once you’ve mastered the art of staying in the dream, then you can begin to incorporate now-thoughts when you’re writing. This will add more depth when it’s time to analyze your dream. When you begin to analyze the dream, you will decide whether the now-thoughts pertain to the meaning of the dream or lead you away from the dream. You can incorporate them into your analysis if relevant or discard them if irrelevant.

In part 3 of dream journaling I will discuss some steps that will help you find meaning in the dream you’ve just finished writing down! I will be discussing the clues you give yourself to help you understand the dream better. In the first paragraph of my blog post on Cars: Moving through dreams, I introduce dream clues, if you want to take a look.

Dream Journaling – Part 1

A guide to creating your own personal dream journal.

An interest in understanding your dreams leads to the basic knowledge that you’re going to need some sort of dream journal in which to record your dreams. The most fundamental reason is that you will seldom remember your dreams when you don’t write them down. It’s kind of hard to interpret your dreams when you can’t even remember them!

To answer this need in an age where journals are fast becoming obsolete, I am offering this guide. The first part is for those of you who don’t have time to journal. I have been in the situation many times where I have to leave for work and I remember the most amazing dream, I realize I have about 5 minutes. Now what?

Journaling with Little Time

How to remember your dreams.

• Simply wanting to do something doesn’t get it done!
• Wanting to remember your dreams does not bring remembrance.
• While lying in bed, you have to repeatedly tell your mind that you want to dream.
• You have to set your mind on what you seek to accomplish.
• You have to set your mind on telling yourself that you will remember your dreams.
• Then you set your mind on the fact that you will journal them.
• Amazingly, this produces more and more memorable dreams with enough clarity to work with.

Everyone has their own personal style.

A notebook and pen are the journal of choice for some; a computer for others. A personal recorder also works well. I use all three depending on the situation.

Write key words, thoughts and feelings.

Writing down a few key words will many times enable you to come back later and remember your entire dream.

Write only those that were in the dream. See Step 1 in Analysis for a more in-depth discussion on how to focus and record dream information.

An example might look something like this:

Dream#1. zombies, fighting, swords, winning the battle, triumph.

Dream#2. tall house, dark, no windows, afraid.

Dream#3. Ridley Park, hotdogs, clowns, having fun.

Give your dream a title.

When you give your dream a title you are capturing its main theme. This can bring back the whole mood of the dream and greatly aid in remembering.

For example you may choose:

Dream#1. Zombie Attack

Dream#2. The Scary House

Dream#3. Baseball game

Date your dream.

There’s nothing worse than finding a dream years later and having no idea when it occurred.

When using a recorder.

For those of you who drive to work alone, a mini recorder is great. Just tell your dream to the recorder. You can always write it down later if you choose. The important thing is that it’s there when you’re ready to work with it. Once again, don’t forget to speak the date into the recorder.

Conclusion

The information described above is the shorthand version of writing down your dreams.

A tablet works just fine for it, but I would recommend using your computer. You may choose to keep your journal in a similar shorthand style, and that’s ok. You will at least have some words and clues that you can work with to determine the meaning of your dreams. I suggest going back later when you have a few extra minutes and writing the rest of the dream down. The more you have to work with, the more successful you’ll be at determining what your dream means.

In Part 2 of dream journaling I will discuss the best way of recording your dreams for those of you who wish to write the entire dream from beginning to end, whether you’re starting from scratch or expanding on your shortened version. Thanks for reading!

Identity: Are you the actor or the watcher?

Connecting with the identity in your dream will give you another perspective from which to analyze your dream. Normally when you awake from a dream you give very little thought to who you were in the dream. You will just assume that you were you, but were you really? The question you need to ask yourself is: Where am I in this dream?

One way to determine who and where you were in your dream is to think of your dream as a movie.

First: The Actor

When you are the actor in your dream you will have a sense of performing the action. You experience things as though you were looking out through your own eyes. You feel yourself reaching out to open a door, or give someone a hug. In this case the identity would be centered in you as the actor.

As the actor, you could also be someone, or something, else. You could be having these experiences as a stranger, or even an act of nature. For example, in one of my dreams, my identity was centered in a tornado. I was living my dream experience as a tornado.

Second: The Watcher

When you are watching the movie you will see everything that is going on from some vantage point. You’ll have a sense of watching the action; of seeing the dream. You might even see yourself in the dream – watching the action that your physical dream-body is doing, but not experiencing the action through that body.

An example: My son had a dream in which he was watching himself looking at goldfish in a tank. He then transitioned into his dream-body and experienced himself talking to a sick fish in the tank, which subsequently healed and smiled at him. His dream began with him being the watcher, and then transitioned to him being the actor.

As I said in the beginning, identifying with the dream, the “knowing where you are” in the dream, adds another way of analyzing your dream. The fact that you are performing the action or watching the action can make a huge difference.

Analysis – The Actor

Here are some important points about being The Actor:

• Most of the time, this dream is about you personally.
• Start your analysis from the perspective that this dream is about you.
• Concentrate on remembering what you were thinking and feeling while you were dreaming.
• In this type of dream, you will find that you have an added ability to remember the thoughts and feelings you had as the dreamer.
• This can be tremendously helpful when you figure out what personal life situation you are dreaming about! (I will talk about how to do this in my next post – Journal.)

While the dream is normally about you personally, there’s a very rare chance that you are experiencing the dream action through someone else’s eyes. I know this sounds strange, but this encompasses psychic dreaming. If you find yourself having these types of dreams, and the only way to know this is when the other person confirms they were doing what you were dreaming, you’ll need to study psychic dreaming in more depth.

Analysis – The Watcher

Now, here are the important points about being The Watcher:

• Most of the time when you’re watching the dream action, the dream is still about you.
• Almost all of your dreams will be about you and things that are going on in your life.
• Dreams provide a connection between your inner self and your outer experiences.
• When you are watching the action, you are trying to see and understand a situation. You would, therefore, begin you self-analysis from this point of view.
• The main question should be: What am I trying to show myself?
• Another good question would be: What am I trying to understand?
• If you believe in communication from others, you could ask yourself: What is someone else trying to communicate to me with this dream?
• If you believe in remote viewing in dreams, you could ask yourself: What am I seeing here? Why am I seeing it? What relevance does it have to my life?
• When you believe in psychic dreaming you need to ask even more questions: Am I seeing a future event? Am I dreaming about me, or someone else?

Whereas an acting dream tends to be more intensely personal, a watching dream opens up to many different possibilities. To me, dreams are connectors between: thought and action, heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, and everyone and everything. They are powerful tools which can be used and built upon. The better people are at learning about and controlling their dreams, the more they can achieve within them. Lucid dreaming would be an example of this.

Lucidity in Dreams

The reason I mention lucid dreaming, being aware that you are dreaming while still in the dream, in this post is because understanding your identity in a dream is one way in which you can take the first step to lucidity. The more you think about yourself and where you are in a dream, the more you’ll connect with the dream, and the better chance you’ll have of realizing you are dreaming. Think of yourself as 2 parts of a consciousness. One part is your awake consciousness and the other part is the asleep consciousness.

What I actually mean when I say you’re more connected with the dream is that your awake self and your dream self are both present in your dream. They have to be in order for you to realize that you are dreaming. Your awake self is the one who realizes this fact, not your dreaming self. The more connected your dreaming self and your awake self are, the better dream recall you will have, because, of course, it is your awake self who remembers the dream. This will then open up different perspectives, better dream recall, and better journaling. Your analysis will have more depth and be more complete.

You can be connected and aware that you are dreaming as both the actor and the watcher. The simple act of thinking about yourself, your identity, in the dream is what creates the possibility of waking up your awake self into the dream!

I sincerely hope that I gave you something to think about here that will enhance your dream recall and enjoyment, and allow you to experience the feeling of being personally involved while in your dreams. Open yourself to the possibilities.

Simply because a blind man can’t see is not proof that sight does not exist.

Happy dreaming and thanks for reading!

Michelle

Analysis

To analyze anything is to separate its parts or elements to find out what it is made of. When thinking of the word analysis many people think of the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. This is actually psychoanalysis. I am not a psychologist, I do not practice psychoanalysis. My fascination with the world of dreams leads me to analyze them, to examine them closely and in detail to determine why something has happened or may be expected to happen. I believe that the analysis of our dreams leads us to a broadened perception of how we interact with the world.

There are two basic steps I take to analyze a dream. I am going to list them, in detail, for you, my readers, to use as a beginners guide to dream analysis. The steps are as follows:

Step 1 – Write down your dream. Write down only what is in your dream. I can’t stress this enough. You have to learn to differentiate between what you’re thinking now, as opposed to what you were thinking in your dream – huge difference. It’s amazing how quickly our conscious- self can add all kinds of things to our dreams. What we’re trying to do here is get beyond our conscious, awake selves. When you mingle your conscious, aware self with your subconscious, dreaming self, you can get the dream analysis totally wrong. The ultimate goal is to bring the subconscious message to consciousness and to integrate it with your aware self. Always remember, YOU gave yourself the dream!! In simpler words, when you write down only what was in the dream, will you be able to correctly analyze the dream. You can separate its parts and elements to find out what it’s made of.

Step 2 – Make sure you wrote not only what was happening, but also any thoughts or feelings you were having in your dream. You absolutely do not write any thoughts or emotions that weren’t actually in the dream as this could lead you away from the dream’s meaning. For example: you could be running from monsters and think that this is a scary thing even though you weren’t scared in your dream. Your conscious-self could possibly write that you were scared when you really weren’t. You need to get beyond your conscious-self and remember what your dream-self was feeling.

Now, we have a dream completely written down and we understand none, or maybe some, or maybe all, of it. Sometimes, when we’re lucky, we just look at it and understand exactly what it means. Awesome. When it’s total mumbo jumbo we then have to dig in to some serious analysis.

This is the really difficult part. The reason I say this, is because, although there are many “universal” symbols, we each interpret them individually. For instance, when I say “dog”, some people think:

a. outside in a dog box

b. curled up in my bed

c. fear

d. comfort, companionship

e. love or hate

Then we have to take into consideration the fact that we think differently about the same symbol. For instance: We love our dog very much, but we’re very sad because we recently lost our dog, yet we hate and fear the dog down the street that attacked and bit us, etc., etc…What I am saying is that every single symbol has the potential to mean something else. What we are trying to determine is what the symbol means to you. We then have a clue to what your dream means.

This is what the analysis of a dream means. Picking it apart, combining the clues with the action and the feelings and thoughts in the dream and hopefully coming to some understanding that helps you in your daily life. There are times when I can’t make sense of my own dreams, no matter how hard I try. I have learned to let it go. I’ve found that if the issue is important enough, it will come to me in other forms that I can eventually figure out.

One of my pet peeves with many of the dream books I read was how simple they made it seem; always giving examples that made perfect sense. I hope I don’t go too far in the other direction and make this seem too complicated. Sometimes your dreams are really simple to understand, sometimes they’re extremely complicated. The important thing is to take the time to analyze them, and then explore the new world that opens up.