Interpreting Your Dreams
Dreams are a very important part of every day life. It is said that dreams are a way for your unconscious mind to bring things to you that need your attention. It is also said that some dreams are a way for you to revisit things from you past or from your childhood. Also, it is possible for you have clairvoyant dreams about what will be happening in the future. There are all kinds of possibilities. Usually, however, your dreams are trying to tell you something in a way that you can understand and interpret. This is why they are seen as a link between the unconscious and the conscious mind. In dreams, you can see things without your current thoughts or stresses blocking your view. This helps you to find a solution to whatever needs your attention.
It is very important that you keep a dream journal. In your dream journal, you should write down as much detail about your dreams as possible. After you have wrote down the details, go over them and try to see what is significant to you or what the dream is trying to tell you. After you have figured out the main theme or things in the dream, then you can start on the questions that follow. In the book Dream Dictionary by Tony Crisp, he says that you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Are there particular feelings experienced, expressed, or dramatized in my dreams as part of the plot? If so, can I relate them to what I am meeting in my waking life?
- Is there a theme in my dream? Such themes might be: running away, looking for something, feeling lost, finding something new, relationship, work, etc. If possible put a name to the theme and consider how it relates to you. Also make a note of it to see if it occurs in other dreams. In this way you can see what the important issues are that your dreams are dealing with. Your life is itself a theme, and certain parts of your life story are extremely important and are explored in your dreams.
- What aspects of me do the people, places, and animals depict? Try to define what these are. See if you can discover what comment the rest of the dream is making on these different aspects of yourself.
Your dream journal will enable you to figure out if there is a pattern to you dreams. By looking over a series of dreams, you should be able to find out if there is something you are missing or overlooking. A dream journal will help you narrow down the common themes, items, animals, places, or people in your dreams. This should give you even more valuable insight on what you should change or the problem you should solve.
Activity:
Think about a recent dream you can recall in good detail. Write down everything you can remember (it's okay if you can't remember all of it, just as long as you remember most of it). As a class, we will all discuss this and try to help you interpret what you have seen. What is the theme of the dream? Where did it take place? Was it a familiar place? Who was in the dream? Did you know them? What was the main action of the dream? What age were you in the dream? Were you yourself in your dream? Was this a good or bad dream? What does this dream represent? Does it show an aspect of yourself that you need to work on? Does it reveal you hopes and fears? There are lots of possibilities here. Let your imagination go as you try to figure this out. This can be your first page in your dream journal.
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