Dream Interpretation

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Dream Interpretation
By: / Novice
Post # 1
Okay is a scientific meaning behind the mistakes to avoid in learning dream interpretation, I figured that you could also make these in a non scientific sense as well so thought it important to post it, the original source of this information is:

http://scientificdreaminterpretation.com/blog/?p=1833

Dream Interpretation Lessons – Mistakes You Must Avoid

Dream interpretation according to the scientific method is a very serious practice. The scientific method of dream interpretation was discovered by Carl Jung after arduous research, and simplified by me, who continued his research for two decades.

Thanks to the work of two generations, today you can easily learn the meaning of all dreams. In other words, you can immediately understand the wise unconscious messages contained in the dream images.

However, there are a few common mistakes that many people make while trying to learn the dream language and solve their problems thanks to this knowledge. I’m going to show you how to avoid these mistakes, so that you may easily learn how to translate all dream images. This way, you’ll easily understand the precious meaning of your dreams, without wasting time without reason.

Inventing the meaning of the dream images you ignore

The most common mistake most people make when trying to translate the meaning of their dreams is to invent the meaning of the dream images they ignore. In the beginning, they follow the scientific method. They translate the meaning of the most important dream symbols they detect in their dreams, but when they find dream images they ignore, they tend to invent their meaning in order to complete their translations.

This attitude is misleading. When you translate a document written in a foreign language to your own language, you must translate all words based on the meaning that they have in the foreign language. You cannot invent the meaning of the words you ignore.

Dreams give you many messages in only a few images. When you ignore the meaning of various dream images, you should simply stop your translation. Don’t translate the meaning of the images you cannot understand based on your suppositions.

Read your dream again, and try to understand the dream story. If you are not able to complete the meaning of the ignored parts after following the dream story, you should wait for your next dreams in order to have more information about the points you couldn’t understand.

The generous unconscious mind repeats the same messages in many dreams, through many different ways, until you are able to really understand its lessons. Therefore, don’t worry if you cannot understand something in a dream. You will understand it when you’ll analyze your next dreams.

Lack of Elasticity

There are people who cannot understand the symbolic dream language because of their lack of elasticity and abstraction. The symbolic dream language is totally different from a common language.

The dream language is poetic and philosophical. In order to completely understand the meaning of dreams the dream translator must have elasticity. If he or she keeps looking at the dream images the same way he looks at these images in his daily life, he won’t be able to follow the unconscious logic.

Forget the meaning that all the animals and objects have in your daily life when you are translating the meaning of dreams. You must have the elasticity to replace the meaning of these images with the meaning that the unconscious mind gives them. Look at these images based on the unconscious logic, without distorting your translations with your conscious ideas.

For example, when you are trying to translate a document from Spanish to English, you have to change many expressions because the Spanish logic is different. In Spanish we write the adjectives after the verb, while in English we write the adjectives before the verb. You have to adapt your translations, while respecting each language’s rules.

You have to respect the dream language’s rules, the same way you respect the rules of any language made only by words.

If you’ll have a dream where a dog is driving your car, don’t start thinking about how illogical this situation is. Don’t start imagining that this dream is trying to show you that you must be careful and never let your dog alone in the car or something like that.

The dog in dreams represents infidelity and immorality.

Your car represents your own life.

If a dog is driving your car, this means that your immoral tendencies are driving your life. This is the unconscious message.

When you translate dreams you translate the dream language made by images to your language, made by words. Therefore you have to exchange the images of the dream with the words of your language, the same way you exchange the words ‘Buenos dias’ with the words ‘Good morning’, when you translate a document from Spanish to English.

You have to exchange the image of the ‘dog’ with the word ‘infidelity’ and the image of ‘your car’ with the words ‘my life’. Don’t waste your time thinking about your dreams based on your conscious logic.

Lack of Abstraction

You must be able to capture the abstract meaning of a dream symbol without being narrow-minded.

For example, if you’ll have a dream where you’ll see a snake when you avoid looking at the sunlight, this means that you will pass through a bitter experience in your life in order to correct a mistake. This is the meaning of the appearance of the snake in a dream.

The sunlight represents the real truth.

Since you saw the snake after avoiding the sunlight, you must conclude that you are making this mistake because you don’t want to see the real truth.

In other words, you have to link the dream images based on the unconscious logic, and conclude what the unconscious mind is trying to show. The unconscious mind is your teacher. It gives you clues. Then, it lets you think and discover the solutions you need by yourself. You must become more intelligent instead of being dependent on the unconscious mind. You have to think.

Since you see a snake after avoiding the sunlight, this means that you are going to be punished by a bad event that will correct your behavior because you don’t want to see the truth.

Therefore, you must conclude that you keep being eluded by your imagination. If you don’t want to see the truth (because you avoid the sunlight), you’ll have to pass through a bad experience in order to open your eyes. You cannot keep avoiding the truth and living based on lies. You will be punished by the consequences of your negligence because you don’t want to learn this lesson without suffering. You refuse to recognize the truth.

This conclusion is not written in the dream images. It is a logical conclusion that you have to understand alone.

In other words, the unconscious mind shows you that 1 + 1 = 2.

Then, you must conclude alone that if 1 + 1 = 2, this means that 2 – 1 = 1. The unconscious mind doesn’t give you the final answer because it is your teacher. It waits until you, the student, may discover the right answer thanks to your own calculations.

The unconscious mind helps you develop your intelligence and learn how to solve your problems alone, without depending on its guidance. Of course, you will have the unconscious guidance forever in your dreams, but you must be able to solve your problems without having to ask what to do in each situation.

Therefore, you have to abstract the unconscious lessons after making your own conclusions.

Since a bad event will appear in your life because you don’t want to see the truth and you act based on your imagination, you have to urgently correct your attitude in order to avoid suffering.

Not putting the unconscious lessons into practice

I’m going to mention the case of one of my patients. He was regularly sending me his dreams for professional dream translation because he suffered from insecurity and depression.

However, he was indifferent to the unconscious guidance. For example, one of his various problems was the fact that he was overweighed. I’m not going to talk about his case because my translations are private and because this case is quite complicated. I’m only mentioning this detail in order to give you a practical lesson.

I translated for him a dream in which the unconscious mind was showing him that he was indifferent to his appearance. What should the dreamer conclude after understanding this message?

I believe that the answer is quite simple. The unconscious mind was showing him that he didn’t pay attention to his appearance because he had to stop being indifferent to the fact that he was fat. The dreamer had to do something in order to solve this problem.

However, the dreamer kept eating ice creams, going out for dinner with his friends, and basically living as if he didn’t have to pay attention to his weight. He didn’t seem to understand that he had to work and cooperate with the unconscious mind.

The unconscious mind showed him that he shouldn’t be indifferent to the fact that he was overweighed. The unconscious mind didn’t tell him that he had to follow a diet and go to the gym. This is a conclusion that the dreamer had to make alone.

However, he was waiting for a magical solution, without doing anything in order to solve his problem.

He knew that he was fat. He logically understood that he should care about his appearance after learning the meaning of his dream. However, he wanted to overcome his depression without trying to become thinner, and without changing his lifestyle.

Have in mind that the unconscious mind shows you the truth in your dreams, expecting something from you. After seeing the truth, you have to change your attitude. If you are indifferent to the lessons you have, nothing will miraculously change in your life.

Fortunately this dreamer was sending me his dreams for translation and I could encourage him and give him my personal advice, besides translating his dreams. He always showed apathy (extreme indifference), in all matters of his life, not only concerning his appearance.

Recording & Interpreting
By: / Novice
Post # 2
http://library.thinkquest.org/11189/nfinterp.htm

Recording Your Dreams

For all of those people out there who are interested in learning about what their dreams mean to them in their life need to live by one rule. Always write down your dreams whenever you have them, soon after you have them. However well you think you can remember your dreams, you should have a record that you can work with to help you see any patterns that occur in your dream. The best way to interpret your own dreams is to first begin with having your own dream journal. You should allow yourself an area where you can write the dreams on the left side of the journal and the interpretations on the right side, or vice-versa. By having this journal will already get your mind set into the idea of having dreams, since you already have the journal to record them in.


Interpreting Your Dreams

The first thing you need to know about interpreting your dreams is that you should never use a dream dictionary, except for entertainment reasons. The reason I say this is because dreams are yours and yours only to interpret. What you are doing by looking in a dream dictionary, though some objects may relate, is opening up a fortune cookie and expect what you read inside will come true. Often times it will come true, for the simple fact that the topics are so broad that your "fortune cookie" could happen to any person on any given day.

Now that dream dictionaries are out of the picture, we must find our own way to interpret our own dreams. The best way seems to be asking your dream questions. By doing this you can gain valuable insights into what the dream means. You may want to start large with the dream itself and asking it questions, such as:

1. What were you doing in the dream?
2. What are the major contrasts and similarities in the dream and how do they relate?
3. What are the major symbols and relationships between these symbols?
4. What are the issues, conflicts, and unresolved situations in the dream?
5. What relationship does this dream or the symbols in the dream, have to do with any other dream?

After you have answered all these questions to yourself you can begin getting to the specifics:

1. How am I acting in the dream?
2. What symbols in this dream are important to me?
3. What are the different feelings in this dream?
4. What are the major actions in this dream?
5. Who or what is the adversary in this dream?
6. What is helping in this dream?
7. What would I like to avoid in this dream?
8. What actions might this dream be suggesting?
9. What does this dream want from me?
10. Why did I need this dream?


Interpretation Problems

It's not uncommon to have problems with interpretation. The main thing that you have to realize is that you have the answer. Sometimes it's easy to see. Sometimes it isn't. The best approach to tackling a tough dream is to relax. If you become worried easily and find that when trying to work with and analyze one of your dreams you quickly begin to become exasperated by its difficulty, it may be a good idea get relaxed first. Just because it doesn't come to you right away could be a good sign. It has been found that the more difficult the dream, the more important it is to your life.

The main thing you need to realize is that the dream will come to you, whether it takes a few mintues, hours, or possibly the next day. Give it some time, because it may not be ready to reveal it's true meaning. All you need to do is make a record of the dream and one day it may make so much sense to you that you couldn't possibly imagine why it gave you so much trouble. Give it some time, because it may not be ready to reveal it's true meaning.

Re: Dream Interpretation
By: / Novice
Post # 3
Ok I have put this together from a couple of sources by yes just copy and paste, but I do know the same dream could have a complete different meaning between two people depending what circumstances are going through there lives. In understanding the dream I believe one must understand themselves or the other person and the problems going through there lives but also you must not just jump straight to the conclusion of why that dream is as it is, they may be subtle things which you may need to realize, which may be things also contributing to problems.

Dream Interpretation is not a simple thing to learn by any means and I am far from an expert, but in understanding the fundamental points I have put in this thread it can help you to avoid mistakes which some make and help you on a self discovery of your dreams so then maybe you can move on to helping others learn there dreams. It is easy to write about something you have not experienced yourself of what you have read from others, but to understand and experience is to really understand and help, I hope this helps those who want to learn Dream Interpretation, I am currently studying it myself so please feel free to ask me a question and I will help best I can.

Re: Dream Interpretation
By:
Post # 4

Much of the psycho-analyst work I've ran into suggests. as Jung often does, that dreams are personifications of the unconscious and that by analyzing them we grow as individuals, because we begin to form an awareness of this unconscious level.

As Freud so blatantly says: "Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious".
I tend to look mainly at Freud's work (it's a personal favorite) and I think he presents some ideas that give pause for thought and go quite well hand-in-hand with Jung. For instance, the "four elements of dream-work":

  • Condensation Information is condensed into a single thought or image and many different things are pushed into a short time span.
  • Displacement Emotional meaning gets disguised by the dream work and can confuse the important and insignificant parts of the dream.
  • Symbolization Repressed/unconscious ideas present themselves through latent content and symbols- be it through objects, people, actions.
  • Secondary Revision This is the final stage of the dream-prcoess in which bizarre or strange elements of the dream become recognized in order for the dream in its entirity to make sense to the dreamer. This creates 'manifest content of the dream.'

Nightmares, to me, tend to be one of the most interesting things to analyze. (As they can be raw emotions given form in dream, and 'ugly' aspects of ourselves.) Dreams based off of guilt, trauma, emotional issues and etc captivate me more than anything else. In your experience, what is most interesting to you?You pointed out a lot of great things, especially towards the end when you listed questions to lead to interpretation. And I greatly appreciate this article, as it is such a lovely and fascinating subject.


Re: Dream Interpretation
By: / Novice
Post # 5

Thank you for the information, as a student to this subject I welcome anything that can help me on my path and I although look forward to looking at nightmares more, it also scares as you may find something you did not realize.


Re: Dream Interpretation
By:
Post # 6

I think that to be the wonderful thing about dreams. They can be tools for self-exploration. We have to know ourselves, even the nitty-gritty details, to reach self-actualization. Sometimes it can be brutally shocking, even terrifying, when you realize certain aspects of yourself that you hadn't before- but you learn so much from it, it's always worth it.


Re: Dream Interpretation
By:
Post # 7

Ah...I am so proud.. ^.^


Re: Dream Interpretation
By:
Post # 8

Beautiful discussion going on, and to add to it I have but a couple questions for all three of you including Mara since she chose to comment. :-P

1. How has this information helped or hindered you in interpreting your dreams?

2. Have you ever attempted to dream to solve a problem or gain insight?

3. Is there anything in your research that you would wish to challenge?

And yes there is a method to my madness with these questions. I promise.


Re: Dream Interpretation
By: / Novice
Post # 9

1. How has this information helped or hindered you in interpreting your dreams?

Helped to a degree but dreams can have so much depth behind them I still wonder if I am missing something when trying or getting it all wrong maybe.

2. Have you ever attempted to dream to solve a problem or gain insight?

no I haven't

3. Is there anything in your research that you would wish to challenge?

I would challenge if the dream actually had a meaning or if its me looking for something that is not there, how do you really know.


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