Dreams and Their Interpretation

Dream interpretation as an actual profession goes back at least as far as ancient Greek and Roman society, but informal dream interpretation is likely as old as dreaming itself. There is good reason to believe that people have been experiencing dreams as long as their have been people, and we know that dreams and their interpretation date back at least as far as 3000-4000 B.C. We know that because the interpretations of various dreams were recorded on stone tablets and found later by archeologists.

Many scientists and anthropologists believe that ancient peoples were unable to distinguish the difference between the real, or physical world, and the dream world, or the world of the unconscious. Too many of these people, there was no distinction, and the dream world was simply an extension of the physical world.

In fact, many of these ancient cultures, and some modern ones as well, felt that the dream world is more powerful and real than the physical universe, and that dreams are the soul’s way of communing with the infinite, and gathering knowledge and wisdom from the past.

While science knows a great deal about dreams and their meaning, in many ways dreams remain as much a mystery today as when the first cavemen dreamed about the thrill of the hunt or the fear of running from faster predators.

For instance, scientists still do not know why we dream, or what the purpose of dream sleep is, but they do know that people need to dream. Volunteers deprived of dream sleep experienced all manner of psychological problems, ranging from problems concentrating to visual and auditory hallucinations.

Dream interpretation has a long and storied history, and dream interpreters have been in high demand throughout history. The interpretation of dreams was so important to the ancient Greek and Roman societies that they rode along with soldiers in battle, and advised rulers on the best course of action. Dreams were taken quiet seriously in these societies, and a dream thought to be an ill omen was enough to derail a piece of legislation or even put off a long planned battle.

The culture of ancient Egypt also gave dreams great importance, as well as religious significance. The Egyptians believed that dreams contained messages from the gods, and these messages were to be heeded. We know about the importance the ancient Egyptians placed on dreams, because dreams and their interpretations were recorded in hieroglyphs.

People who had particularly vivid dreams were given a special place in society, and thought to be blessed by the gods. Those who had special abilities to interpret those dreams also enjoyed a blessed status and a special place in Egyptian society.

Egypt was not alone in the Middle East as a source of dreams and dream interpretation. The Bible contains over 700 mentions of dreams, and many dream interpretations as well. the dreams of prophets, and the interpretations of those dreams, played a large role in Biblical history.

Dream interpretation was often looked upon as a form of prophecy, and dreams were often analyzed to provide clues to future events. Dreams were seen to be messages from gods, spirits or from departed relatives.

Forget Conventional Dream Interpretation: Learn to Cultivate Your Dreams Today!

One of my favourite quotes of all time and I am sure many of you share my thoughts, is the speech by Martin Luther King at the civil rights march in Washington, 1963, which went like this:

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood..."

"I have a dream..." Indeed. Inspiring stuff. I want to discuss our dreams in a very practical way today.

I want to talk about how to cultivate your dreaming. It really is a tremendously valuable thing to do. I want to steer away from conventional dream interpretation and will explain why.

As of today, pay attention to your dreaming and your daydreaming. Dreams are important to us in many ways, because they do the following:

Firstly, when you dream you actively process information and feelings.

Secondly, dreams are always involving many senses, so the highly sensory experience is very rich. It is quite rare for us to use all our senses at once as we do when we dream.

Thirdly, dreams give us valuable information about what is going on in our lives, whether directly or more often in a disguised or symbolic form.

Fourthly, dreams are strongly sequenced, though often in a way which is emotionally rather than logically organised.

Finally, dreams draw upon a rich range of unconscious, associative, creative links between many kinds of information.

Some people remember their dreams; others tend to forget all but the most dramatic bits as soon as they wake. When you dream or daydream, take time to replay as much of it as you can in your mind before the events of the day overlay it. Relive the story of that dream. Remind yourself of the events, pictures, sensations and other sensory information it involved.

This dream was the product of your mind. Marvel at your own creativity! This is amazing stuff here; get excited by it.

If you get into the habit of asking yourself when you wake, “what did I dream?” you may at first only remember a few particularly strong feelings or vivid images: write them down and review it regularly. I actually used to write a dream journal and wrote everything down as soon as I opened my eyes each morning. It provided me with such inspiration when I required it.

Naturally, lots of you may want to start with dream interpretation straight away. Resist the urge for dream interpretation, ok?

Do your best not to assume that there is necessarily a single clear meaning which can be interpreted according to psychological theories or books on dream significance or dream interpretation. How can your dreams have the same meaning as someone else? Is your brain the same as that persons? For now, ease off the dream interpretation.

I have found that the most useful assumption to make about dreams is that they have some kind of significance for you, the dreamer: they come from your internal, unconscious mind’s storehouse of feelings, experiences and images, and are an active and useful way of processing that is quite different from – and just as useful as – the processing that belongs to the logical conscious part of your mind.

Often a strong feeling will be your first clue to the meaning a dream has for you: so note it, and wonder about it, but don’t try to rush to tie it down by conscious analysis. The real work of the dream is often done simply in the dreaming of it: the conscious mind does not always have to understand, and when it tries to translate dreams into its own terms it may be limiting it, just as poetry translated from another language usually loses something of its more subtle tapestry of meanings.

Think about the value of dreams.

Dreams demonstrate a different level of mental functioning from conscious, disciplined thought. When you pay attention to them, and even cultivate them, you are learning to become familiar with, to trust and to draw upon a fuller range of your own mental resources: in other words, you are using more of what you’ve got. Hey, this stuff is going to keep happening, so why not really use it.

The mind works both consciously and unconsciously. Conscious thought is formally taught in our education system. Its strength is its systematic and disciplined way of handling information. Its limitation is that it tends to be rule-bound and too narrow in its problem-solving approach.

The brain also processes information at an unconscious level: mostly, this is associative and depends on links, similarities and feelings. This processing produces dreams, as well as much of our other “creative” or “expressive” experience. That is why we are often surprised by the spontaneous connections we make or insights we have, and by our imaginative inspiration: it is not what we would have come up with consciously at all, yet it seems somehow completely “right”. This way of thinking works “laterally” – it expands, goes sideways and finds multiple avenues rather than just one.

We need both kinds of functioning if we are to make the most of our brain power. Logic and intuition, discipline and divergence, are all vital tools that enrich and enable us. But whereas we are used to working with the conscious mind, in part because we are aware of it and can monitor it as it works, many people are less at ease trusting and using the unconscious processes. Paying attention to your dreams, and deliberately cultivating daydreaming, are both ways of stretching yourself into this area.

So let us have a look at the value of deliberate daydreaming. Where dreams come unbidden, you may find it useful to deliberately evoke the conditions for daydreaming, if, like many people, you have not really valued the activity before now.

How is it valuable? Daydreaming brings us escape and relaxation; visions of the future that inspire and help us to bring about what we have dreamed of; solutions to apparently unsolvable problems; inventions and creative possibilities. Daydream states allow the unconscious, associative parts of the mind to work in their own playful and imaginative ways, bringing not only pleasure but results that our usual deliberate, attentive, rational thought does not. We need space in our lives for both ways of processing if we are to realise ourselves as fully as possible.

The key to daydreaming is to be in that right state. If you want to practice, please visit my website and download the free hypnosis session there, or learn self-hypnosis, read my book "The Secrets of Self-Hypnosis" or invest in the self-hypnosis masterclass audio programme, there is nothing else as good in the world today, really there isn’t. There is a kind of automatic abstractedness that goes along with daydreaming. Mostly it just seems to happen – but when you know about creating and changing states, you can choose to make it happen.

Here are some ways you can cultivate and work with your daydreams:

Firstly, notice when you have been daydreaming. Is there any pattern of circumstances that helps bring about your particular daydreaming state?

Some people find that repetitive, relatively automatic, activities such as jogging, ironing or walking create the right state. Perhaps it is a warm bath, swimming a few lengths, or sitting in the garden. Or it may be swaying to the movement of a train, staring into space, looking out of the window of a bus on the way to work, or going on a long drive.

Once you find what helps you daydream, use it and make space for it in your life on a regular basis, imagine that you are in that experience, recreate those circumstances inside of your mind. Let daydreaming come to you, and notice what kinds of windows it opens from our ordinary world into what other kinds of possibilities. Some of your best ideas and inspirations may come at these times.

Secondly, next time you have a decision to make, or a problem to solve, or a challenge to overcome, you can set up the circumstances so that you can trigger your daydreaming state – and allow yourself to explore your problem or decision in this way. When you have done so, make some notes of what you experienced and discovered. Add that to your conscious thinking on the subject: you now have much more information, and the advantage of having engaged more of your mental resources.

Thirdly, for today, forget dream interpretation. That is a conscious and limiting thing to do. Did I make myself clear? Forget conventional dream interpretation. For now use your dreams in personal ways to you.

About the Author

Adam Eason is the best selling author of 'The Secrets of Self-Hypnosis' please visit his website for a vast range of resources from the fields of hypnosis and to receive your amazing, free, instantly downloadable hypnosis session: http://www.adam-eason.com

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Fun Facts about Dreams and Their Meaning

Dreams have been around for at least as long as human beings, and dreams are universal, experienced by men and women, young and old, and people of all cultures and ethnicities. In some ways, dreams are a universal language, and there are certain themes, such as falling, flying, taking a test and finding your self naked, that show up in dreams throughout the world. Dreams, it could be said, represent a kind of universal human language.

Dreams have been studied throughout history, and dream interpretation is an old art form indeed, dating back at least as far as 3000-4000 B.C. Even today, dream interpreters are highly sought out for their help untangling the sometimes puzzling world of dreams.

You may think you know everything there is to know about dreams and dream interpretation, but did you know that:

• A third of our lives are spent in sleep, and a good amount of that time is spent in dreams.
• The average person dreams from between four to seven times every night. That means that by the time you reach the age of 80, you will have had between 116,800 and 204,400 dreams.
• That number may be even larger, since there is evidence that dreaming begins even before birth. No one deigns to know what unborn babies dream about, but there is evidence that they do dream.
• In the average lifetime, a person will have spent approximately six years in dream sleep, equivalent to more than 2,100 days of dreaming.
• There are records of dream interpretation, written on clay tablets, dating back more than 4,000 years.
• Those who could interpret dreams were held in high regard in Roman and Greek societies, and their counsel was sought before making significant political and military decisions.
• Everyone dreams every night, even though only a tiny fraction of those dreams are remembered upon waking.
• Many animals dream as well, although no one has been able to ask them what they dream about.
• People have to dream, though no one really knows why. What we do know is that preventing people from dreaming can cause irritability, mood changes and even hallucinations.
• The average person spends about one quarter of his or her sleep time in dream sleep, and dreams an average of four to seven times during that time.
• The average episode of dream sleep lasts about 10 to 15 minutes.
• Dreams slip away very quickly upon waking. It is estimated that as much as half the dream’s content is forgotten within five minutes, and after only ten minutes up to 90% of the dream can be gone forever.
• Men dream more about other men than about women, but women tend to dream about men and women equally.
• The brain is actually more active, not less during dream sleep than during wakefulness.
• People who are awakened during dream sleep are able to recall their dreams vividly and in great detail, while those who wake normally generally are not.
• Both men and women experience sexual arousal during most dreams, regardless of whether the nature of the dream was sexual or not.
• Smokers who are quitting often experience more intense dreams than either non smokers or current smokers.
• Babies and toddlers dream just as adults do, but studies have revealed they do not dream about themselves. Toddlers generally do not appear in their own dreams until they are at least three or four years old.
• It is not possible to dream and snore simultaneously.
• Nightmares are a common trauma of childhood, with the first nightmares usually occurring by the age of three, and typically lasting at least until the child is seven or eight years old.
• Many people report having experienced Déjà vu in their dreams, but dreams involving Déjà vu are more common in women than in men.

Dreams about Arms

Seeing arms, either your own or someone else’s in a dream is very common. While arms do not always have special significance in dreams, arms can be very significant under some circumstances.

Dreams in which details about arms remembered are likely to be significant, since it tends to be the most significant details that are remembered upon waking. Since dreams fade so quickly, if you are able to remember how arms figured in your dreams, chances are the dream had something important to tell you.

When you see your arms in a dream, especially when they represent an important part of the dream narrative, those arms may be symbols for your nurturing side, and for your desire to reach out and care for the people around you. Dreaming about arms is particularly common in people who are currently caring for, or worried about, a sick friend or family member. Reaching out with the arms in a dream is your mind’s way of telling you how important it is to connect and care for those around you.

Dreams about arms can also be indications of the challenges and struggles in your life. Again, the exact meaning will depend on the context of the arms within the dream narrative. Using your hands and arms for defense can indicate you feel like you are under attack, or that you need to defend yourself.

The impetus for this kind of dream about arms could come from many sources. For instance, perhaps you feel like you are being unfairly singled out for criticism in your job, and you feel a desire to strike back or defend yourself against the onslaught. Or perhaps you feel overwhelmed by events in your life, and you feel the need to struggle against those challenges.

Dreams in which your arm is injured, or dreams in which you appear with your arm in a cast, can signify that you feel an inability to care for yourself. These kind of injured or broken arm dreams an also mean that you are feeling helpless in being able to care for others. People who are caring for a friend or family member whose medical condition is beyond their control may experience dreams in which their arm is injured, or they may see themselves in a cast.

A dream about a broken or injured arm can also mean that the dreamer has been feeling restricted or limited in his or her activities. Seeing yourself constrained in the dream, by a cast or a broken arm, can be a symbol of your perceived restriction of freedom or movement.

The specific arm featured in the dream also carries a significance. The right arm is often seen as a symbol for an outgoing nature, and the right arm is often associated with the masculine side of the dreamer’s nature. The left arm, on the other hand, is more associated with female characteristics, such as nurturing and caring.

A dream in which the dreamer injures someone else’s arms, or even rips them from their sockets, indicate that the dreamer has been repressing anger towards another person, but has been prevented from expressing that anger for one reason or another. Like most dreams about violence, this type of dream stems from a repressed anger and a perceived inability to do anything about it.

Dream Interpretation - Understand Your Hopes and Fears

Dreams are defined, loosely, as a "sequence of sensations, images, thoughts, etc., passing through a sleeping person's mind”.

Dreams reveal a lot about our personality, our hopes and fears and that’s why dream interpretation is considered so important by many people.

Dream interpretation falls into several different groups that can be categorized as:

• Dreams from the physical body

• Food (digestive dreams)

• Health

• Psychological

• Dreams from the spiritual realm

• Precognitive and future

• New Information and Knowledge

• Dreams of the deceased or spirit guides

With dream interpretation it is important to understand our dreams in the context of our thoughts, conscious and unconscious, expressed or repressed.

Our dreams are free and unhindered

Dreaming can serve as an outlet for our thoughts and stimuli we repress during the day.

Dreaming can serve as a platform to warn for the future, explain the past, or even teach lessons about ourselves and how to grow and improve.

As we go to sleep at night and slip into our dream state, we are liberated and can behave and act in a manner that we do not allow ourselves in our waking life.

Dream Interpretation

Let’s look at dream interpretation and see what our dreams can mean to us.

We will not present to you a Freudian or Jungian psychological approach to dream interpretation, but a traditional, age-old and ageless system for understanding what you dreams can mean to you.

• Commonplace Dreams

Here you can see a more cursory analysis to some of the commonplace dreams that most people may have at one time or another. You may dream of losing your teeth, seeing or riding a horse, or of flying. These are all dreams shared by a great many people.

A mysterious element of dreams where people of diverse backgrounds, of varying experiences, and of different ages can all share the same dreams.

This serves to remind us that we are all not that different as we may imagine.

Philosophers and psychologists have argued that our shared dream experiences connect us as a human race. After all, we share similar concerns, hopes and fears.

• First Steps in Dream Interpretation

The first step in dream interpretation is to record your dream as soon as you wake up. Have paper and pen next to your bed.

Should you see a dream, as soon as you awaken, write down what you saw. Underline any important points (those that impressed you, and to which you had a reaction – positive or negative.

• Obtain a Reliable Dreamer’s Dictionary.

Readily available in bookstores or on the net, get yourself a reliable dreamer’s dictionary.

• Determine the dream’s main theme (or theme symbols)

All dreams have one underlying theme to which the dreamer relates. “I dreamt of my mother last night” (where the dreamer’s mother is deceased). This describes the theme.

• An Example of Dream Interpretation

A dreamer dreamt of seeing his mother (deceased), and she was preparing bread and sweets for him. While sitting in the kitchen with his mother, the dreamer noticed the garden, and it was full of flowers.

Roughly interpreted, seeing one’s dead mother could mean she actually visited him (in sleep we are closer to the veil that divides the material and spiritual world). The fact that she was preparing bread and sweets may have meant that his efforts in life (personal of business) are coming to fruition.

Seeing the garden full of flowers may have been the confirmation that indeed, he is about to receive the credit and success for which he has labored.

• The final step in learning to interpret your dreams

This can lead you into understanding your dreams, and applying that understanding to address and confront your hopes and fears.

About the Author

Sacha Tarkovsky

For more on dream interpretation AS well as, other alternative topics to gain a greater understanding of yourself and life please visit:

http://www.net-planet.org/newage.html

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Did Carl Jung Underestimate the Significance of This Transformative Dream?

No prisons are more confining than the ones of which we are unaware. - Shakespeare, The Tempest

In 1913, a frustrated thirty-eight-year-old Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, broke with Freud, who had been an important mentor for many years. It was a scary and traumatic experience for Jung. He was leaving the popular authority of his time; he was leaving a system of dream interpretation, a body of techniques, ideas, and theories of analysis. And he was leaving what surely must have felt like a father-son relationship with Freud along with understandable feelings of betrayal, for both Freud and Jung. Of course this break-up also marks one of the most significant transitions in Jung’s own process of individuation—a process of finding his own life, his creative spirit. Shortly after disconnecting his life’s work from Freudian psychology and setting out on his own, he had a dream-like vision while alone on a journey, a foreboding drama that seemed to predict a disaster.

In October, while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke. “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.” *

At first, Jung was concerned that his visions were predicting the onset of a psychosis. But on later reflection and world events, he believed they were warning him about the approaching world war, which began in August of 1914. Immediately after these disturbing images, Jung described going through a time of deep turmoil and self-reflection, attempting to find a way through the landscape of his own dreams, his fantasies, and their relationship to his life, to his work, and to political and social events unfolding throughout Europe. In his autobiography he wrote: “I was living in a constant state of tension; often I felt as if gigantic blocks of stone were tumbling down upon me. One thunderstorm followed another.” **

First we need to place Jung’s visions into the context of his life at the time. Jung was in a turbulent transition; he was leaving the “ordinary world” of Freud’s psychology and striking out on his own, beginning to enter the forest where there was no path. He was stepping into the unknown and into his authentic life, and then he has the visions.

Next we need to imagine the images and the geography in his vision as the ground of his psyche, the landscape of his life at that time. And, following Jung’s well-known admonition to “leave your theories at the door,” we will do our best to allow the images to speak for themselves. If you were to imagine being the “monstrous flood,” you are an elemental, powerful, unstoppable, natural force that some deep cataclysmic event has created a shock wave, a spiritual tsunami, moving up out and over the land. The ideological walls of convention cannot hold back or contain this aroused sea. From an alchemical perspective, the waters dissolve Jung’s former life so that a new being, a more authentic Jung can emerge.

For Jung, many of Freud’s constructs about the unconscious and dreams, the structures that had contained Freudian psychology were collapsing. Now the flood begins to feel more like Jung’s creative life and all that it contained being released, freed from the limitations of Freud’s psychology—opening the flood gates of his potential. The waters cover all the “low-lying lands,” which could mean all the common ground of popular psychology where nothing stands out; the areas of Jung’s life in which he felt he had to lay low, conform, remain on a level playing field with Freud were now in chaos.

Jung lived in Switzerland, his home and where, in his dream, the mountains “grew higher and higher to protect our country.” The dream’s growing mountains around Jung’s home-land might well be saying that by rising above the low-lying lands, by standing out with his own philosophy, that his “homeland,” meaning his life, his authenticity, and his creative potential will be protected. The flood is after the low-lying lands—conformity and the propensity in all of us to put down our creative ideas, telling ourselves, “That idea will never work. What makes you think you can make any difference anyway? We are afraid to go against the world’s accepted doctrines, to walk upstream against the current of popular ideas. So we “lay low,” keeping our authentic life in exile in the “low-lying” land. We are afraid to “exist,” which also means to “stand out.”

So how might we interpret the “floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands?” Here, we can see the dream referring to the collapsed structures of Freudian psychology that had contained Jung and, until he broke with Freud, had prevented Jung from fully living his own life. The “drowned bodies” most likely refer to the ideas, the inhabitants of Freud’s world. The waters sweep away “civilization,” everything that has been built on—put upon—the low-lying land. Dead bodies, a fairly common dream motif, would represent the death of old ideas that no longer fit into Jung’s developing psychology—multiple deaths of ego-built structures based on Freud’s theories. For sure, the tremendous implications of this dream-vision would explain Jung’s troubled state of mind just after his split with Freud and finally setting out on his own.

This brings us to the blood: “Then the whole sea turned to blood.” If we imagine being a sea “turned to blood,” we would probably feel disturbed, bloodied, changed from some traumatic event, a massive dying, an ending that has released its lifeblood into the sea. We also have the symbolism of blood released from the death of “uncounted thousands” of old ideas and theories that can no longer contain Jung’s essential spirit. We could say that Jung’s lifeblood—his essential nature—that had been circulating through the body of Freudian thought, is now useful, a necessary experience, a valuable ingredient in the new psychological being that would now rise from the rubble of civilization, the internal chaos created by leaving the house of Freud. As the sea, I’ve been changed—blood, the vital essence necessary for life, has moved into me (the sea). And for Jung, I am the source of his life, the unconscious, the “zone of magnified power,” the mysterium, the special world. Jung’s passion, his life’s work that was “in his blood,” has been freed, perhaps also telling him that his work would be to explore the “sea,” the depths of the collective unconscious and its relationship to the individual psyche.

This is not saying that Freudian psychology did not also make significant contributions to our knowledge of the human psyche. But Jung’s vision, which so eloquently portrays this archetypal drama, points out the profound importance of his own individuation, his own process of psychological differentiation, which then enabled him to uniquely follow his own journey. And let’s not forget the “voice” in his dream that reinforces the transformation and reassures Jung: “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.” Still glimmerings of a precognitive dream but with a very different slant: a dramatic explanation of the sweeping consequences for Jung and his life when he pulled Excalibur from the monolith of Freudian psychology. By stepping wholly into his authentic life, Jung was free to create Jungian psychology, which has had a tremendous impact on the world.

- ### -

Notes:

Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 175.

** Ibid., pp. 175-176.

About the Author

John Goldhammer, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist and author of three books. He lives in Seattle, Washington. This exploration of Jung’s dream is adapted from his most recent book: Radical Dreaming: Use Your Dreams to Change Your Life (Kensington Publishing / Citadel Press). Website: http://goldhammer.com/publications.htm.

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Analyzing and Interpreting Your Dreams

The meanings of dreams are as personal and unique as the people who dream them. No one interpretation, no matter how universal, will apply to every dream, dream symbol or dream situation. When analyzing or interpreting a dream, it is always important to pay attention to the details of the dreams, your feelings within the dream world, and of course, what is going on in your own life. If you do wish to interpret your dreams, either purely for fun or to pursue personal and spiritual growth, there are a few pointers that will help you get the most from your dream world.

• As you awaken, immediately replay the dream scenario in your head. It is important to do this immediately, preferably before you even open your eyes. The dream world slips away quickly, and as much as 50% of it can be gone in a mere five minutes. By the time ten minutes has passed, more than 90% of the dream’s contents may be lost. Replaying the dream in your head will help you remember more of those tantalizing details.
• Immediately write down a description of the dream, focusing on key objects, symbols or feelings. Write a few words about each key element in the dream quickly, before they are forgotten, they go back later and fill in the gaps. Again, it is important to write your dream down as quickly as possible. Keeping a notebook by the bed will be a big help.
• Choose a quiet place in your home to begin your interpretation process. Cutting yourself of from sources of distraction will be very important. The space you choose should be as quiet and peaceful as possible. If no such space is available, review your notes a final time, fill in any details you can remember, and come back to them later.
• Use your intuition as you review your dream notes and try to make sense of your dream. You may already know on an instinctual level what your dreams are trying to tell you. Connecting with your intuition can help you connect with your unconscious mind. If you meditate, a short meditation session can often be a big help. Connecting with your inner self is always a huge help when it comes to interpreting and analyzing dreams.
• As you review your dream notes, pay close attention to the emotions they stir in you. Paying close attention to your emotional state, both at this moment and during the dream, can help you to understand what your dream really meant.
• Think very carefully about any vivid details, situations, locations, sensations or symbols that make the dream memorable. Open your heart as well as your mind and carefully explore the possible meaning of each symbol, situation and event. It may be helpful to jot down the impressions in your dream journal or notebook. As you search for meaning, don't limit yourself to obvious interpretations. For instance, dreaming about a missed appointment could simply mean you are worried about being late for work, but that missed appointment could also symbolize a feeling of missed opportunity in your life.
• Running an inner dialog with the people or objects you dreamed about is often helpful as well. This inner dialog is especially useful when trying to determine why you dreamed about certain people. Try asking them in your head "why am I dreaming about you?", "what are you doing in my dream?". It is also helpful to know that often people in our dreams are symbols of aspects of our own personality instead of literal people.
• If you are stuck for an interpretation, it is a good idea to leave your dream notebook and come back to it later. It may also be helpful to discuss the dream with others, or to consult an expert on dream interpretation.