Understanding Your Dreams

1. Remember your dreams: There are several techniques to help you remember your dreams. The most important is just to decide that you want to remember. The second most effective is to put a journal and pen right next to the bed. As soon as you wake up, even if it's in the middle of the night, write down whatever you remember, even if it's small disjointed scenes. The more you do this, the more you will remember.

2. Only the dreamer ultimately knows what their dreams means: While dream symbol dictionaries can help you, ultimately what matters is what the dream symbol means to you. There are certain symbols that are archetypes, which make them virtual universal. There are others that are very common. So, consulting a dream dictionary is very helpful, but don't get too hung up on literally translating symbol by symbol. It doesn't work that way.

3. Feelings/emotions matter most: What you feel during the dream matters more than what happens. When you record your dream, record what it makes you feel. Remember times in your life that you felt the same way. This can be a huge clue about what the dream means.

4. Most often the people are you: Most of the people in dreams are actually aspects of yourself. The exception to this are people you are in a close relationship with, like your spouse, child, mother or father. That doesn't mean the person in the dream is doing exactly what you would do. They are more likely representing a repressed aspect of you or even what Jung may call your shadow self; but not always.

5. Actions are as important as things: Too many dreams dictionaries focus only on objects, not on actions. That's one thing I like about the book I recommended in the Amazon section of this lens called, The Power of Dreaming by D. Jason Cooper. He has an entire section on the actions in dreams.

6. Don't be upset by events or actions: Some people get upset because of things they do in their dreams, like murder, stealing, etc.; or things that happen, like death, etc. Don't be. Everything is symbolic, even death and murder. Death almost never actually represents real death.

7. Don't give up: Dream work takes work, but it is worth the effort. We spend about a quarter of our lives in the dream state. It's a universal human experience that offers each of us a key to understanding ourselves. Dream work can be a vital a step on our personal quest to gain wisdom.