How to interpret our dreams

To get a true sense of who we are, become more complete and integrated human beings, we must set up communication with our unconscious.

In my first two blogs on dreamwork, I spoke to the two most important steps in setting up communication with the unconscious—first, by valuing our dreams, and second, intentionally learning how to better remember and record your dreams. However, your unconscious speaks in its own unique language, the language of symbols. So, for us to understand what is being relayed to us, we must learn how to interpret these images.

I have broken down the process of interpreting dreams into 4 steps: making associations from the dream images; amplifying the image; connecting these images to our life and inner dynamics; and finally, making the interpretation.

Step 1: Finding the Associations

An association is any feeling, idea, word, memory, or mental image, that comes to you when you think of your dream image—it is literally the first thing that spontaneously pops in your mind!

There are many elements in a dream and they all require association. So, people, objects, animals, and also sounds or speech, and colors all count as their own image to be looked at on their own.

When you have a dream with, say, a flower in it, you ask yourself: “What comes to me as I reflect on that flower?” The first step is noticing our personal associations. So, you may think, “It looks like a flower that I saw while walking with my grandma at 10 years old,’ or ‘It reminds me of the flowers I gave to my mother on her 50^th birthday.” Or when working with an object ask, “What words come to mind? What ideas? What beliefs?” As we write these personal associations down, we grow in curiosity about what that flower ‘lights up’ in our memories.

Another example, when looking at a color, say, red, ask yourself: “What feelings do I have when connect with this color? What memories?”

Once you have one association, go back to the image and let another one come to mind. It is important that you keep returning to the image rather than making an association from another association, like making a chain.

For example, do not go:

red-hot-burn-beach-ocean-waves-boat-etc.

This is a technique called free association and takes us further from the original dream image and reminds me of the game: telephone.

Rather, your associations look more like:

Red-hot-Red-blood-Red-sensual-Red-angry-Red Hot Chili Peppers… And so on.

And when looking at characters in our dreams, it is helpful to come up with around 3 personality traits or characteristics that first come to your mind when you think of that particular person. Our unconscious will use whatever person that best represents the message it is trying to get to us to play the part in the dream. So, things come to mind FIRST. For example: confident, outspoken, out-the-box thinker… Whatever it is, jot that down.

When animals show up in our dreams, they often represent our primitive, instinctual drives and urges—like the need for sex, food, exercise, and rest. So, if we dream of a fight with an animal, it may be telling us that our instinctual side is in conflict with our more civilized conscious mind. But since they have characteristics just like people do, we can apply the same method to find their associations and connection to us personally. For example, what characteristics come to mind when you think of a monkey? Playful, cute, cuddly… Or, annoying, loud, aggressive?

Keep returning to the image, or the symbol or character until you have both exhausted yourself and, most importantly, until you have found one that clicks. When I say clicks, I mean it lights you up, it stirs something inside, it generates a surge of energy, it spontaneously connects you to a deep part of yourself that has longed to be touched. Dreams are created from the energy of our unconscious so to find the essence and meaning of the dream image, we must go where the greatest potential of energy is. Every image in our dream is calculated and crafted with such care and intention in order to connect us to the energy of the image, and ultimately wake us up and rouse the lifeforce within us. So, when you find the association and connects to the energy source, sparks fly.

Step 2: Amplify the Image

Amplification requires that we amplify the images and themes in our dreams beyond the personal experience and into the collective by looking to fairy tales, myth, cultural and historical themes, and other collective meanings to find more associations and a deeper understanding.

For example, let’s take a star. Now there’s a five-pointed star, a pentagram, which is often associated with pagan practices and represents the elements: fire, water, air, earth and spirit at the top. On the other hand, the six-pointed star is associated with the star of David, a religious symbol in Judaism. Finally, an eight-pointed star can be associated with one of my favorite bands, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So, as you can see, there are many different meanings for a star, and many different types of stars. So finding what it means to you first is more helpful, then we may think of amplifying it.

Even when you come across a dream image that resonates as a collective symbol of the Great Mother herself, we have to ask ourselves, “What does it mean to me, personally?” It is only after we have found our personal associations that it would be of use to us to look into the collective associations or see how the symbol has been used in folktales and myths. In this way, amplification can serve to confirm in our personal associations and work to build our trust muscle in our own knowing.

Step 3: Connecting the Dream Images to Our Life

In the third step, we figure out how our dream images are a representation of what is going on in our inner lives—how the dream world mirrors our personal world. We do this by tying the dream images, feelings, events, people, etc. to specific dynamics in our waking lives. And this step is not finished until we have found specific examples in our lives that correspond to the images and events in the dream. Most often, dreams represent events and feelings etc. that have happened in the past one to two days. This is just another reason why it is important to stay up to date with our dream and value them in real time!

After you’ve described what characteristics come first to mind in terms of the people in our dreams, then ask: “How do I see these traits in my own personality? And where and when have I noticed these traits functioning in my life recently?” In this way, we are waking up to the lives of our inner selves, and the paths that these inner lives are traveling.

A trick is to think of each figure in your dream as a living person inside you, an autonomous personality that is just one part of you that coexists in there with others to make up the whole of your total Self. And then ask, “What part of me behaves like that, thinks like that, feels in that way? And how have they been showing up in my life lately?”

The few dreams that are directing the dreamer’s attention to something outside of them often serve as a warning: either a warning of a collective disaster or about something happening to a friend or family member some distance away. As a general rule though, it is best to assume that our dream images apply to our own interior world—and this may take some discipline to get in the habit of doing.

When we dream of animals, we might ask, “Where could my instincts be at odds with my conscious attitudes?” The more domesticated the animal, the more conscious the instinct is, versus a wild animal may be referring to a more unconscious instinct.

We can amplify and make associations to numbers, colors, places, animals, symbols, characters… but then, we always ask: “What does it mean to me now?”

Step 4: The Interpretation

Interpreting our dream is the result of the work we put into the earlier steps. It is the tying together of all the different meanings into one, central and unified message—a final statement of what the dream means to us as a whole. So, in this stage, we might ask: “What message is this dream trying to convey and communicate to me most? What meaning stands out as most central, most important? What is it strongly advising me to do? What is the ultimate, overall message, meaning, lesson, advice of the dream for my life?”

It’s okay if your interpretation doesn’t come out as coherent or succinct as you’d like on the first try. Jot down the ideas that come to you around how the whole dream fits together and the meaning you believe it has for you. And simply keep at it until your interpretation resonates with the collected images and overall pattern in the dream.

In this way, our dream interpretation should clarify how we can apply the dream’s message to our personal life and help us make better decisions about how to live our life in the future.

There’s a trick to testing our interpretation out. Since our dreams are made of energy, your interpretation should also have strong energy behind it. It should arouse feelings—perhaps feelings of liberation, feelings of unstuck-ness—or provide insights, and, ultimately, stir energies and material within you. And if it simply lacks energy and doesn’t connect to any lifeforce inside you, that is a good sign that is not the right interpretation.

If you are still having a hard choosing between interpretations, try playing devil’s advocate: first, take the side of one interpretation, then argue the other point of view. Another way of doing this is letting each interpretation have its time to share their points and saying, “Okay, I hear you, now let’s listen to what the other interpretation has to say.”

It is a safe bet to always opt for the interpretation that does not confirm your previous prejudices and points of view but, rather, teaches you something new. Remember, our dreams are always trying to communicate something to us that we do not already know. Therefore, your interpretation will always challenge pre-existing beliefs, ideas and assumptions. Dreams are meant for our psychological growth, not for our ego’s satisfaction. So, if you find yourself feeling pretty smug with your interpretation, it is likely it’s not accurate.

Dreams don’t lean towards inflating our egos, but towards what we need to take accountability for and face next. And they are absolutely not concerned in the slightest bit with pointing out other people’s faults or how other people in your life need to change. With that said, our dreams are not here to blame, either. Their purpose is to help us grow, mature, and become more conscious, integrated humans. So, it makes sense that they are geared heavily towards helping is accept responsibility for our behavior and our choices. And this should not scare us. In fact, our dreams are like that enlightened best friend we wish we had that is honest and up front with us, but not from a place of judgement. They purely want the best for us: for us to live as our highest, most magnetically authentic, and whole selves.

And if, after all that, you still cannot choose one interpretation that clearly resonates with you, instead, choose to sit with it for some time. It can be challenging to come to a definitive interpretation when our dreams are full of meaning. But as time passes, the dust begins to settle and the ripples being to smooth and we are able to see more clearly.