I often have dreams about friends in my past, although I believe that dreams have no significant meaning in the literal sense, I still think that our brains are receiving some form of information. The brain does not know how to translate these signals into a language that our conscious mind can understand. It breaks it down into a mixture of symbols, memories, and information collected in the past 24 hours. Once you break the info down and strip away the nonsense, I believe that it can give little clues on occasion.
When people break into your dreams, on some plane of existence you did encounter them and it is a form of astral projection. If you do not know what astral project is, it is an interpretation of an out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of an “astral body” separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it.
What I have found is you cannot take the actions of what people do in your dreams in its literal interpretation. You have to focus on what the dream in its entirety made you feel, which means you are the only person to find that precise meaning. Some instances I have found the typically ‘safe’ could feel wrong, and vice versa. Majority of the time, when someone asks me to interpret their dream for them, I ask how the dream made them feel. That is a telltale signal of what your take-away purpose of that experience was.
An example of a pretty typical dream scenario is of your significant other cheating on you. If there is no reason to warrant having these feelings, then it is based on your own fears being projected onto someone you are vulnerable to. In my own personal experience, I have had that dream twice in my life; the first time was because I was ignoring the obvious signs of infidelity from a past significant other. The second time, I knew right away that I had dreamed it because I had been burned before and the happiness in my current relationship was hard for my subconscious to accept. When I woke up from the first experience I felt pure fear, it was the knowing that I was going to have to make some seriously hard decisions. When I awoke from the second, I laughed and shook my head in the sheer absurdity of it. They were both essentially the same dream, but my immediate prior feelings attached to it said to me what it actually symbolized.
I could go on forever about different examples of dreams and their interpretations, but I will tell you – they are all different and subjective. No two are the same, ever.
How to break down the important details in your dreams:
- If you could describe your dream in 3 words, what would they be?
- What are 3 feelings that stuck out the most about the dream?
- Was the dream focused around the location, the people seen, or the feelings?
Now that you have these things written down, go online and find a free online Dream Dictionary, or if it has to do with animals of any kind, I highly suggest going to an Animal Totem page. Go through and define your 3 description words (#1) in the dream dictionary. Attach the 3 feelings (#2) you wrote down to the meaning of those first three words. You can mix it up until it feels right, but I prefer to keep it in the order I put it down, because the most important details tend to come out first. Then take into account what your dream mostly focused on; Location, Person, or Feelings.
- Location: What did the dreams placement of that specific location mean to you? This is representative of your current emotional health, strength, and capability at the time.
- People: What did their presence do to you emotionally during the dream? They represent the outside influences in you life.
- Feelings: How did you feel while going through the dream overall and what was the immediate reaction to the dream upon waking? This represents what you either need to work on or how far you have come emotionally, in regards to how you viewed the entire situation.
How all this information is compiled and interpreted is now completely up to you to determine. Try to notice any patterns that have shown themselves. Have you gone through big changes recently, because that will most likely show through as well. Like I said, your perception of the information experienced is entirely your own. No one could ever live your own experiences for you. The best I could do is walk you through the process of understanding what you experienced.
Another thing to consider is that your subconscious will only acknowledge what it feels your conscious can handle at that time. Keep that in mind, you are seeing something that you need to see. You may not want to see it, but the universe has other plans that involves you learning right now.
My last bit of advice is one of the most obvious, but least used. Write everything down. No matter how absurd it actually is, write it down like you are taking notes on a science project. Note dates, names, locations, weather, outside factors, hormone imbalances, life changes, moon phase, and anything else you may decide to be important to note. After a couple months, check back on the information you wrote down. Keep it as long as you would like, but if you wish to start a new chapter in your life, get rid of them. The point is to be self aware, not to torture yourself.
I hope this information helps you in your pursuit to understand yourself better.
Go with light and love.