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At the end of my junior year in high school, I took a class on Death & Dreams. We studied the stages of death, & the interpretation of dreams. This class has continued to affect my daily life, & interpreting my dreams into meaningful messages has helped my hectic life become more stable, & has helped me learn so much more about myself than I ever thought was possible. I've decided to open this subforum in the hopes that I can help others interpret their dreams in the same way the class helped me.
There are several rules about interpreting dreams that must always be taken into consideration. Here are a few of the more important ones:
1. Everyone in the dream is you. Everyone else that you see in the dream symbolizes something that you see in yourself. Like, if you see an older sibling, that could be the more authoritative part of you.
2. A dream interpretation is never true unless it's true for you. If some one else interprets a dream for you, & their answer doesn't feel correct, then it probably isn't. It has to feel like the right answer. Only you can truly judge what a dream means or not, others may just help you figure it out.
3. Dreams tell you something you need to know. Nightmares tell you something you need to know RIGHT NOW. Nightmares usually tell you that you are in immediate danger. This could be physically, emotionally, academically, any way at all. If you chose to ignore your dreams, then you are choosing not to accept help on these issues, & you could pay the price for it.
4. There is no such thing as a dream with only one or no meaning. All dreams have many many MANY messages, but it's up to you to find what those messages are.
5. Never rationalize a dream. Many of the things that will happen in your dream will not be possible in waking life, & it is VERY important that you never try to rationalize them. By rationalizing the happenings of your dreams, you may lose the message the dream was trying to give you. If you're in the middle of doing something, then next thing you know, you're somewhere else, don't say you walked there if it didn't happen. You may have walked there, or you could have just been one place one minute, then been somewhere else in the next. By assuming that you walked, you are rationalizing the dream.
Some other rules that may or may not apply to your dream are as follows:
1. Take out the garbage. Take out the garbage dreams are usually just the visual that comes from the act of your brain moving your short-term memory to your long-term memory. The images you see are the things your brain does not see as important & your brain is simply trying to discard them. Anything in this dream will be things you have seen all day that have little or no significance, like that poster on the wall that you've never paid attention to, or that kid who sits in the back of your class that you never noticed. While these dreams usually do not have great significance, there may be a small underlying message hidden within. It is up to on whether or not you choose to try & interpret these.
2. Word Play. This is taking a thing from your dream & making the word mean something. Say you have a dream that you are an alien. With Word Play, this could mean that you feel alienated.
3. Symbolism & Archetypes. Certain things in dreams usually mean something else. Sometimes things in your dream will mean something that you wouldn't expect. For example, dreaming of a large body of water can mean that you are dreaming of sex. Dreaming of sex can mean that you want a closer connection to whoever else is in the dream. If there is no one else in the dream, then it may mean that you want a closer relationship with yourself. Dreaming of death could mean that you are going through a serious transformation. There are tons of other Archetypes out there, but not all of them will be true for you. To find more Archetypes, there are dream or symbol dictionaries you can buy, & there are even websites you can go to. A website that I particularly like is www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/dreamwork.html
4. Geography within or without the dream.
Without: Sometimes when you sleep in a bed other than your own, you will have dreams that greatly differ from what you would normally dream about. This is important to remember when interpreting dreams because the dream may say something about where you are sleeping.
Within: Where you are in the dream may be very important to the dream itself. For example, a sex dream could just be a sex dream, but if you are having sex in a library, that could mean that you want to learn more about the person you are having sex with.
Something I'm always asked is "What if I don't remember my dreams?" Here are a few things you can do to help with that:
1. Having a place to talk about them always helps, so just having this thread here should help you a little.
2. Vitamin B. Take a Vitamin B supplement in the morning. Not only will this make you more active & awake throughout the day, but there's something about it that helps your memory, especially dealing with dreams. Don't take it at night because it will keep you up all night, & you can't dream if you're not asleep.
3. Don't focus on it too much. If you put a lot of strain on yourself trying to remember your dreams, for some strange reason, you will actually remember them less. Hold the idea lightly in your mind before bed, & it may come easier to you.
4. Write it down. Keeping a dream journal next to your bed every night will remind you in the morning to write down what you remember about whatever you dreamed about.
5. Honor what you do remember with some small action. Occasionally, draw an image from a dream, or tell a trusted friend about it. You could even carry around a small item that reminds you if the dream. By thinking about past dreams, you are allowing new dreams to come to your memory.
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