Welcome to Dream Interpretation
The dream interpretation group meets on a regular basis to help individuals understand their dreams. We use a straight forward, easy to use worksheet that helps you to understand the basic symbols in your dream and place them within the context of the action of the dream. Everyone can quickly learn to use the worksheet in a single evening. It’s easy and fun to learn this technique. Join us and share the fun and excitement of dream interpretation.
One of the most highly acclaimed books on dreams and dream interpretation, “The Mystical, Magical, Marvelous World of Dreams” written by Wilda B. Tanner, states:
“ …our dreams act as our inner guidance system, helping us to locate, isolate, correct, and delete the errors and ignorant beliefs which not only hinder our progress but cause most of our conflicts. Our dreams will guide, correct, encourage, retrieve forgotten facts, show us new ideas and ways of doing things, and generally help us to solve whatever problem is uppermost in our minds when we go to sleep.”
There are three different types of dreams according to her book. There are physical dreams which are caused by physical noises or sleeping discomforts. These dreams tend not to be symbolic in nature and can usually be forgotten. Then there are dreams from the subsciousness. These are dreams that are highly symbolic and are well worth our time interpreting. According to Tanner, “They mostly concern the conditions of the body, symbolized by vehicles, the mind, represented by hair and clothing, and emotions, often indicated by water.” The last type are dreams from the superconscious. These are usually classified as visions, spiritual experiences, or revelations and can generally be recognized by the background setting. The settings are generally outdoors and located in beautiful, pristine places that inspire spiritual contemplation.
Dream interpretation is really very straight forward and can be richly rewarding. We use a simple worksheet that alllow us to begin to understand the meaning of the synbols in the dream and the action. The following steps are adapted from her book.
1. You begin by writing the dream down in a somewhat concise manner. Hopefully you have faithfully detailed the dream in a separate dream journal.
2. Then you write a feeling associated with the dream. The shorter the feeling the better. For example, “frustration”!
3. Next you write down the general themes of the the dream like what action is taking place, how do you feel, and what are you trying to accomplish.
4. Then you provide the background by providing the general type of location of the dream, for instance at home, at work, driving.
5. Now you decide what the most important symbol is to you.
6. The next step is to create a list of key words or phrases like driving my car or shopping or feeling helpless.
7. Relate those keywords to your own personal experience. If one of your key words is “snake crossing my path,” that has a different meaning depending on your personal experience with snakes. For one person it could cause them to run in fright and another it could cause them to observe with interest. Each symbol can be either positve or negative to you depending on how you perceive it. This is the heart of the interpretation. We highly recommend that you try to determine the meaning of the symbols and images in your dreams before consulting a book. When you put your own meaning to the keywords, you begin to understand the meaning of the different parts of the dream and you begin to see how they fit together.
8. Now comes the time to write the interpretation of the dream in your own words. When you have completed the interpretation you now finish by writing the summary which ties it all together. The summary relates the dream to your life and the issues you are currently dealing with. You may be amazed with what your dreams reveal.
Dream interpretation can be a wonderful tool in solving some of the key problems in our lives. It also shows us some of our symbolic linkages and tips us off as to how we interpret those symbols. Dream interpretation can be used effectively every now and then or it can be used for an ongoing program of self discovery lasting months or even longer. The benefit comes from understanding more of ourselves based upon our dream interpretation and incorporating this new found insight into our lives.