The subconscious is a hidden world that locks up our deepest secrets. We don’t even know the secrets that we hold within ourselves. However, when we dream, we are given certain keys that unlock doors to that hidden information.
The challenge is that we often forget our dreams after we awake, or we don’t give much credence to their meaning. If you let a dream slip out of your conscious awareness, you are letting the code and language to your own subconscious slip away with it. However, if you pay attention to the symbols in your dreams, you can decode your own dream language and gain insight into the deepest layers of your being.
How do you interpret and decode the symbols in your dreams? The best way to decode symbols from your dreams is to keep both a daily journal and dream journal. When you begin to treat the events in your waking life and symbols in your dreams as being connected, you bridge the worlds between your conscious and unconscious mind. This allows you to tap into a deep intuitive part of yourself which will allow you to intuitively interpret the symbols in your dreams.
This article will go over the ways to journal your daily events and dreams, as well as provide a pdf download that you can print at home and use yourself.
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What Is Dream Interpretation?
Dream interpretation is a way to analyze the events, elements, and symbols in your dreams and relate them to matters that are happening in your waking life.
To do dream interpretation, you have to recall the dream and analyze the elements. This is an analysis of the objects, animals, colors, people or events, and your feelings associated with it.
Using this information, you can translate hidden meanings of events happening in your waking life, gain clarity on a decision, or get a different perspective on a certain value or belief.
Understanding your own dream language is a powerful way to become more self-aware, embodied and intuitive in your waking life.
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Reasons Why Dream Interpretation Is Important
Below is a great video showing some beliefs of why we dream:
However, this video doesn’t discuss the reasons why it is important to record and understand your dreams in the form of dream interpretation. Here are some reasons why it is valuable to be able to interpret your own dreams:
Reason 1: The Dream Seems Significant
Often times, people want to know the meanings of their dreams because it just seems significant and they can’t stop thinking about it.
For example, someone asked me how to interpret a dream he had about driving his car into a grocery store. This seems like a bizarre and unimportant dream, but for some reason, he felt that this dream was very significant. He couldn’t stop thinking about it and wondered why he had this dream.
There are some dreams that you just can’t shake, and these are the ones you should pay attention to and try to decipher.
Reason 2: To Help You Make A Key Decision
Another reason why people want to interpret their dreams is because they believe the dream is giving them critical information that may be important to consider when making a big decision in their waking life.
For example, if you are deciding whether to buy a house or not, you may have a dream about rats in a basement. This might prompt you to get an inspection of the house, particularly issues in the basement.
Anytime you are having a hard time making an important life decision, it is wise to pay attention to your dreams. They will show you your hidden fears, desires, potential hurdles, and predictive outcomes.
Often times we are too busy or stressed to listen to our intuition in our waking life. Dreams are another way to access your intuition, which can help you avoid making the wrong decision.
Reason 3: Give You Information About Your Relationship To Others
Dreams often show you helpful information that you cannot see in our waking life. This usually relates to people or situations that are energetically harming you. You may not be able to see it because you are distracted or being manipulated.
A lot of times we choose not to see things because it means we will have to make a hard decision. Dreams can show us the things that we are trying to avoid.
For example, if you have a dream that a snake is biting your eye, it may be a warning that you are being deceived by someone or a group of people. The dream is trying to bring attention to your sight, and to let you know that you may not be seeing things as they really are.
Another example could be of specific people that are energetically draining. I often have a dream that someone else is driving my car. This is usually when I don’t feel like I have control, and specifically if I have given energetic control over to someone else. Using this information, I can start to set energetic boundaries.
Dreams can also give you warnings about friends or loved ones in danger. For example, dreaming of a friend falling in a hole may be a dream to pay attention to. This may prompt you to call them and make sure that they don’t feel overwhelmed or depressed, and offer support if they need it.
Reason 4: To Communicate With The Spirit Realm
This isn’t a popular psychological and scientific reason for dream interpretation, but I believe that dreams contain spiritual messages.
When we sleep, we are accessing energies that we cannot connect with in our waking life, because the physical realm is a lower vibration.
Many of the things we dream about are spiritual matters, and because we have access to our energy bodies that have a higher frequency, we can communicate with our own spirit or other spiritual forces.
This communication is usually never in words; it is in frequencies that show up in our dreams as symbols, such as a yellow bird or a green dress.
Learning to interpret dreams is a way to build a relationship with yourself spiritually, and other spiritual forces that you believe in. It is a great way to strengthen your faith or bring spiritual meaning to your daily routine.
Dream interpretation is often a core spiritual practice for people, and they communicate with the spirit realm through their dreams. Without this connection, they feel lost and disconnected from Source.
Reason 5: To Get Peace Of Mind
In the Buddhist tradition, dreams are a powerful way to understand the law of nature and our own reactions.
In Buddhism, there are two types of dreams: karmic dreams and wisdom dreams.
Karmic dreams are your way of energetically balancing out the decision and consequences that happened in your waking life. You often apply the 4 elements to navigate these dreams depending on which elements are out of balance: earth, air, fire, water. These elements relate to our reactions: physical force, mental force, energetic/passionate force, or emotional force.
Wisdom dreams are related to the 5th element: ether. The 5th element is the empty space all around you. It doesn’t react to the dream, it observes it and learns from it. This element represents the Spirit. These are often related to lucid dreams, where you have control over the dream and don’t let your reactions overpower your equanimity.
By interpreting your dreams, you are more likely to start dreaming with lucid dreams, or with more wisdom. When you can have wisdom dreams, you can sustain a regular state of mind, both in your sleeping state and in your waking state. [Source]
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Learning To Interpret Your Own Dreams
I get many questions from people asking me to interpret their dreams. While I love interpreting dreams, I like to disclose that my interpretation will never be as accurate as an interpretation that comes directly from them.
It is important to give yourself permission to analyze your own dreams. You know yourself better than anyone else, and therefore you have the best explanations for your own dreams.
The key is practice, and with practice comes confidence. Developing a routine to analyze your dreams intuitively takes courage and trust. At first, it may feel uncomfortable or confusing, but over time you will know exactly what your dreams are trying to tell you.
While dream dictionaries are helpful to get you started, there is always a point where it is best to put the dream dictionary away and come up with your own interpretation.
The best way to do this is to record your dreams in a journal and using that journal you can begin to create your own dictionary that helps you decode your dreams. More information on how to do that is discussed later in this article.
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How to Analyse Your Dreams (7 Easy Steps)
So, you’ve decided you want to start analyzing your own dreams. Where do you start and how do you do it? Here are 7 easy steps to get you going:
Step 1: Get a Journal
This is the easiest step, but also the most crucial. You want to pick out a journal that lets you record and analyze your dreams in a way that will give you a better understanding of your dreams in the long run.
You can get a simple blank composition notebook, or find a preformatted journal specifically for dream interpretation.
If you don’t know where to start, get the blank notebook and organize it yourself.
Step 2: Organize Your Journal
The most effective way to properly analyze your dreams is to connect your feelings and events happening in your waking life with your dreams. By writing about both your conscious and unconscious realities together, you form a bridge of understanding between these two worlds.
To set up your journal, skip the first page and start where there are two blank pages side by side.
The right side should be reserved for journaling events that happen in your day. The left side will be reserved for recording your dreams.
Set extra space aside on the bottom or the sides to make a note of things that stand out. For example, I like to draw a box at the bottom where I can bullet point out colors, emotions, animals or objects that stood out to me in that dream.
Step 3: Write Consistently
Now, it is just about keeping a routine to write every night before you go to bed, and every morning when you wake up.
The more consistently you write in your journal, the more you will add to your understanding of your dreams, and the easier it will be to decipher them.
I keep my journal on my bedstand near my bed, so I remember to write before I go to bed and when I wake up.
If you can’t think of what to write about for the day, write about your emotions or any goals that you want to achieve. The best thing to write in your journal is to ask your subconscious to solve a problem for you. You can write “I would like to figure out the next step to take in my life. Please send me dreams that will help me with this.”
You’ll be surprised at what information your dreams will give you that night. Dreams love to solve problems.
In the morning, if you didn’t have a dream or can only remember bits and pieces, write about how you feel. Do you feel tired or depressed? Do you feel hopeful and excited for the day? Make a note of how you slept.
Note: When recording dreams in the morning, it is best to do it right away when you wake up. Do it even before going to the bathroom. The most time that passes between when you wake up and writing down the dream, the more details will be forgotten.
Another note: Don’t dry to analyze your dreams. Just record them as you remember them, and don’t try to assign specific meanings. You will do this later in the week.
Step 4: Make a Note Of Synchronicities, Signs, and Symbols
Make sure to include in your journal any overlaps between your waking life and your dream life.
For example, if you dream of someone and the next day you see them, record it in your journal. This is a significant development in your dreaming. You are beginning to form a bridge between these two worlds.
As you continue to record your dreams, you will notice these signs and synchronicities happening more and more.
Even little signs and symbols that might not seem important, write them down anyway. There is a reason why we experience a certain reality, no matter what that is. If you dream of a bluebird, then you see a bluebird the next day, it may be a sign that these two worlds are connecting.
Step 5: Every 7 Nights Review Your Dreams
After you have recorded your dreams for seven nights, look back through your past seven days and reflect on the events that happened and what you dreamt about.
Notice any repeated signs or symbols that kept showing up. For example, if you dreamt of a green cat in two of your dreams, write it down. If you had a recurring dream of something, write that down.
With a wider view of the past week, write down any themes that you noticed. Where you depressed, anxious, happy or hopeful? Did work come up a lot in your dream? Was there someone on your mind a lot that week?
Step 6: Pick One Dream And Try To Interpet It Using Your Intuition
Now, pick one or two of the most significant dreams over the past 7 days and try to analyze the elements. What do you think that dream meant? What was it trying to communicate? Write your own interpretation of the dream.
This is where you will actively engage your intuition and listen with your “knowingness.” Try not to understand the dream in a logical sense. Go with what you feel the dream means.
For example, if you had a dream that a bird died in your dream, write what you think that means and what it represents. Depending on the events happening in your life, it could mean something very different for you than it does for me.
When you have your days journaled out from the past week, you can easily recall emotional events and connect them with symbolism in your dreams.
Letting some time pass before you interpret the dream gives you distance from it, which is like having someone else interpret the dream with an outside perspective. You may see things in the dream that you weren’t able to understand at the moment.
Step 7: Keep Track Of Your Personal Dream Symbols Using a Dream Dictionary
It is a good idea to keep a running log of symbols that appear in your dreams.
Everybody has a unique dream language, and keeping your own dream dictionary will be the key to deciphering your own dream language.
Write down what the symbol is, what color, how it made you feel, and the date you had the dream.
Below is a free pdf download that you can print out to start putting together your own dream dictionary.
You can download a copy of that here: Dream Dictionary Free PDF Download
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Summary
Interpreting your dreams is a powerful way to connect to the deeper layers of your experiences. It can give you a lot of insight into your behaviors, thoughts, worries, decisions, and many more.
Keeping a dream journal is a great way to establish a relationship between your physical reality and your subtle bodies so that you can start to connect with the language and symbolism of the energetic and spiritual realm.
Feeling empowered to interpret your own dreams will give you clarity and confidence to begin to make decisions that will lead you towards the best version of your reality.
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