WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN? HOW TO INTERPRET DREAMS

Article about What do dreams mean.How to interpret your dreams. Magazine asks Craig What do dreams mean and about how to interpret dreams meanings. Find out what you latest dream meaning online.

Interview with Craig Hamilton Parker to discuss "What do dreams Mean" Article about What do Dreams Mean? Magazine asks Craig What do dreams mean, and about how to interpret dreams.

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Find out what you latest dream meaning online. Article interview with from People Magazine (S.A.) about dreams

JUMP LINKS: What do Dreams Mean & How to Interpret Dreams | Why Do We Dream? | Greek Dreams | American Indian Beliefs | How To Interpret Dreams | Dreams About Past Lives | Dreams About The Dead | Common Dreams |

What do dreams mean?
How To Interpret Dreams

THEY say the rules of reality don’t apply in the fantasy world of dreams but in some way what you dream is connected to your reality. For years I have had the same reoccurring dream. I’m standing at the top of a mountain that’s covered for as far as the eye can see with baby birds that have fallen from their nest. They’re abandoned and starving to death. I try to pick them all up but there are too many of them. And so, week after week, the dream continues.

Aside from nudging curiosity, I’d never really given my dream much thought until someone explained its significance to me. They said dreaming of a helpless, small animal means you’re not taking care of your ‘inner child’. Maybe I need to laugh more, play outdoors, express my creativity, be more spontaneous, or enjoy more personal warmth and intimacy. With that said my spiritual journey into the world of dreams began.

WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN?
Why Do We Dream?

We spend about eight hours a day, 56 hours a week, 240 hours a month and 2 920 hours a year sleeping – that’s a third of our lives! Sleep is essential to every living being because it plays a significant role in brain development. There are two basic forms of sleep: slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Most dreaming occurs during REM sleep, which is characterised by rhythmic breathing and limited muscle activity. If we are woken during REM we don’t adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes.

Some children experience bed-wetting, night terrors, or sleepwalking during this stage. We enter REM sleep about five times in an average eight hour period of sleep. Keeping in mind that we dream during each of these REM periods, in one year, we will have had 1 825 dreams – many of which we wont remember. Dreamers who are awakened right after REM sleep are able to recall their dreams more vividly than those who slept through the night.The mysterious and often bizarre nature of dreams has led many to interpret dreams as divine gifts or messages, as predictions of the future, or as messages from the past. Dream interpretations date back to 3000 BC where they were documented on clay tablets.

WHAT THE GREEKS BELIEVED DREAMS MEAN

In the Greek and Roman era, dreams were seen as messages from the gods and believed to have healing powers. With this belief in mind temples were built were sick people would sleep and be sent cures through their dreams. In Egypt, dreams were seen as prophetic and an omen from outside spirits. The Chinese believed that the soul leaves the body to go into this world. However, if they should be suddenly awakened, their soul may fail to return to the body. For this reason, some Chinese today, are wary of alarm clocks.

WHAT THE NATIVE AMERICANS BELIEVE DREAMS MEAN

Some Native American tribes and Mexican civilisations share this same notion of a distinct dream dimension. They believed that their ancestors lived in their dreams and take on non-human forms like plants. They see that dreams as a way of visiting and having contact with their ancestors. During the Middle Ages, dreams were seen as evil and its images were temptations from the devil. In the vulnerable sleep state, the devil was believed to fill the mind of humans with poisonous thoughts. He did his dirty work though dreams attempting to mislead humans down a wrong path.

In the early 19th century, dreams were dismissed as stemming from anxiety, a household noise or even indigestion. Hence there was really no meaning to it. Later on in the 19th century, Sigmund Freud revived the importance of dreams and its significance and need for interpretation. He revolutionised the study of dreams.

WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN? HOW TO INTERPRET DREAMS
How To Interpret Your Dreams

“Dreams have been a mystery to us since Adam first breathed life. The stuff of legends, myth and fairy tale, dreams have always fascinated mankind,” says astrologer and dream interpreter, Michael Thiessen of Dream Central. “Dreams are a communication of body, mind and spirit in a symbolic communicative environmental state of being. Our brains are in constant activity. Different states of consciousness (like awake, asleep, alert, drowsy, excited, bored, concentrating or daydreaming) cause different brain wave activity. Our conscious mind, or the part we think with, only takes up a very small portion of our brain activity.

Other areas control things like breathing, heartbeat, converting light to vision, sound to hearing and balance when we walk. Another area controls imagination. And then there is the activity called dreaming. I think that to a certain extent, we dream all the time. Even while awake! But the process is functioning in our subconscious mind. If defined precisely, they may not be referred to as dreams technically, but the activity is very closely related. During certain cycles of brain activity while asleep, we can ‘view’ these dreams with our conscious mind and record them in our memory. This is why we sometimes remember them.

Your brain mind and spirit, while at rest review and analysis in its own way long term, short term and spirit memory. It kicks around emotions, thoughts, ideas, actions and interactions of the short term memory. All this data is a form of chaos, and your mind puts it all together in a form of visual ‘screenplay’, a medley of sight, sound, emotion and imagined interactivity. The end result is a dream! We can learn much from our dreams, if we only but listen with a trained ear. There is nothing psychic about understanding dreams.

There is a certain degree of intuition, coupled with logic and a working knowledge of dreaming involved though.” Michael explains that the best way to learn how to interpret your dreams is to start keeping a record of what you dream. “You can’t interpret your dreams if you don’t remember them so get yourself a Dictaphone which you should keep besides your bed. As soon as you wake from your dream record what happened, then identify the basic theme of the dream. Take away all the details, names, things and places and leave only the action and then look at the dream as a whole. For example: You have a dream of a beautiful hall with shinny marble floors and incredible works of art on the walls. The pictures are framed in solid gold. You get the distinct impression that you are alone, and in charge of the gallery’s upkeep. You here a faint scratching sound and to your horror you see a mouse chewing on the corner of a magnificent painting. You realise if you do nothing at all, the work will be rendered worthless and ugly. But you know if you catch the mouse you can save the painting since little to no damage has been done. You wake up feeling disappointed and remorse, as you do not want to see something so important to you destroyed.

So here is the theme when you take away the details. Someone sees something precious being senselessly destroyed. There is a chance to put an end to it, if acted upon quickly.” Michael says that one should always assume that the dream is about you, and a message to you. Since you made the theme, you should be able to place it into some aspect or condition present in your life. “Sometimes your sleeping mind can arrive at conclusions far better then our normal thinking processes. As you can tell, theming-to-life is best done through emotion.

Only by examining your own emotions as you try to fit the theme into a given situation can you know you hit the mark. Our lives are sometimes so complicated that we many have so many things going on that could fit the theme, our emotions are our best clue to pin pointing the exact application. Emotions are a very good clue to the dream itself. Pay strict attention to ‘your emotional state’ while in the dream, whether you felt happy, sad, angry or scared in the dream.”

What Does It Mean?

Animals: They symbolise our own traits, good and bad. When you see an animal doing something in your dreams it usually represents a bad trait. As it is far easier for us to accept and watch an animal doing something negative then to take the credit for it ourselves. For example: A woman on a diet really wants to loose weight but is prone to binge eating. In a moment of weakness, she eats a big slice of cake and a bowl of ice-cream. That night she dreams of being on a farm and watching in disgust as a big manure-covered pig eats and sucks non-stop at its trough.

She is astonished and ashamed when she sees that the pig is eating cake and ice-cream. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the dream means, or what the animal symbolises. Her dream is telling her that she would feel as good about herself as she felt about the pig if she did not control her eating.

Children: A child represents to most of us, something new, different and joyous. Using this logic, it is easy to see why a child represents a new phase in your life or a new project as well. How well the child gets along and fares in the dream is an indication as to how well what it represents is doing. Also, a child symbolises innocent parts of yourself sometimes, and at other times, immaturity and childishness. It all depends on the theme and emotions used in the dream.

WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN? HOW TO INTERPRET DREAMS
Dreams And Past Lives

Craig Hamilton-Parker, medium and author of Remembering Your Dreams, and Dream Dictionary, says some dreams may even be ‘windows’ into past lives. “Nobody knows for certain why we dream but we all dream every night. It is my belief that dreams unlock the hidden part of ourselves and reveal our secret wishes and desires. In addition dreams give us access to area of the mind that has immediate intuitive knowledge of the past, present and future. There are no limits to the human mind's ability to generate an infinite abundance of dreams but amongst this mass of imagery are a few common dreams that happen to almost everybody.

Have you ever dreamed of falling, being chased or dreamed of losing your teeth? Most people have. Dreams like this are part of shared human experience that cross the cultural divides. They remind up perhaps that we are there is only one race – the race of humanity. There are certain dreams you are likely to have had that cannot be explained away as symbolism, metaphor, or allegory. In my own dream records I have cases I am convinced are about past lives. For example, I had many dreams about being a shaven-headed monk when I was a child. At the time I had never heard of Tibet or the doctrine of reincarnation. In particular I would have a dream about walking around in a circle on what looked like high walled tower.

Together with other monks, I chanted mantras. The scenery was spectacular. I would awaken feeling tremendously inspired. I have also had recurring dreams about dying of exposure near a dried-up riverbed, which I now believe to be the source of the Yellow River in Mongolia, a place where there were many Tibetan monasteries. Although I do not follow the Buddhist way today, I feel that Tibetan wisdom and teachings still influence me. Perhaps the strangest past life dream I had was about being chased from behind by raging dogs. A small group of people and I are near a castle. Our way is blocked by a moat. As the dogs catch up with us, soldiers start attacking us from behind with swords.

There is a lot of noise and commotion. I can smell fire and blood. I feel a terrible pain in the back of my neck. There is searing pain, then nothing. When I met my wife, Jane, who is also a medium, we talked about our dreams and were amazed to discover that we had this same dream in common – right down to the smallest detail. Neither of us knows the historical time period it relates to, although it hints at the Medieval era, when mediums were persecuted as witches. It could of course all be fantasy, except that Jane, myself, and our daughter Danielle each have the same brown birth mark at the top of the neck just under the hairline. Perhaps we three are beheaded soul mates?”

WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN? HOW TO INTERPRET DREAMS
Dreaming Of The Dead: A Spiritual Explanation

Ruby Gradidge-Zanner left her career as a doctor to become a clairvoyant. She does personal readings and emotional healing, teaches meditation and development courses and conducts self-realisation workshops.

Ruby says she has also had a reoccurring dream that began when she was a child and possibly relates to a past life. “In my dream I’m a little Jewish girl of about three years. I live with my parents and older sister in a split level apartment. My mom tells us to hide underneath a flight of stairs. I look up and see someone wearing brown boots walking down the stairs. The man wearing the boots takes my father away. The dream changes and I’m standing with my mom at a train station, waiting to board. A man a few steps away wearing a soldier’s uniform calls me over and I tell him where my mom and I are going. I shouldn’t have told him.

The scene changes again and I’m surrounded by grey mud accompanied by a strange old woman. I’m cold, hungry and scared and then everything goes black. For years I was troubled by the dream until I realised I actually lived in that era and was the little girl in the dream who’d actually died in a concentration camp. I was finally able to understand why I act the way I do in this lifetime. I hate wasting food; I have Jewish features according to the stereotype, even though I’m not; I married a German man whose father refused to believe the Holocast even happened; I’m scared of saying the wrong thing in case I get other people into trouble.”

As a practicing medium Ruby also believes that the spirit world can contact us through dreams. “I believe that every night when you sleep your soul leaves your physical body and depending on your level of consciousness it goes somewhere. Sometimes it just hovers around the physical plane but most of the time it returns back ‘home’ to reconnect to a loved one in spirit, or a guide, in order to get advice, work through problems, or sometimes just to be with someone who you loved very much in life,” says Ruby. “Many people feel a jerking sensation while sleeping, that’s when your soul comes back into the body into a state of wakefulness.

Sometimes dreams are difficult to make sense of because when awake we are bombarded by a million different stimuli and input. So in addition to the physical body resting and going through physiological changes and the soul leaving the body our conscious mind also sifts through all the stuff we haven’t dealt with during the day and mixes it into the dream. That’s why you’ll often remember being with your dead loved but also experiencing things that happened during your waking state. It’s important to keep in mind that there may be unresolved emotions with the person past and that dreaming of them can brings these emotions to light. It’s common to dream that your past loved one is angry with you but most of the time the emotion stems from yourself – you’re angry because they’ve past on. Some times those people in mourning become frustrated because they say they never dream of their loved ones. The truth is that the majority of times they just don’t remember. Another reason could be that the person’s human belief system prevents them from believing that there is a possibility of connecting to their past loved one and so the channel of communication through dreams becomes harder.”

Dreaming Of The Dead: A Scientific Explanation

Scientists say that dreaming of the dead indicates that you miss them and are trying to relive your old experiences you had with them. In trying to keep up with the pace of your daily waking life, you dreams may serve as your only outlet in coping and coming to terms with the loss of a loved one.

What Does It Mean?

Angels: Since earliest times, angels have been known as messengers from God. In a psychological sense, this may be a message from parts of yourself which could lead to greater fulfillment and happiness. Its wings suggest flight and transcendence. If the angel is sinister, recognise it as something in your life that may cause trouble. Pay attention to these things and give them expression in your life. If you dream of the angel of death, it may not necessarily be an omen of death. It may symbolise your anxiety looking for a way to express itself.”

Funerals: The person being buried may represent an aspect of yourself that you are trying to repress. Is there something that you want removed from your life? Perhaps you have feelings, desires or thoughts that scare you. You may be worrying too much about your health or perhaps you want to bury the past. The only constant in life is change. The past is dead and buried so now embrace the present and look forward to the future. Who is being buried? Do you feel resentment towards this person or do they symbolise something happening in your life or something about yourself? If it is you that is being buried in the dream then you may have a fear about being overwhelmed by your emotional troubles or unconscious forces. First, you must to get in touch with these hidden feelings and find out what they are. What has happened recently or a long ago to give rise to these emotions? Don’t keep burring them. Start by examining them, then accept them, and finally start to control them. The problems you try to bury are probably not as bad as you think. Occasionally dreams of funerals do foretell the future. Abraham Lincoln dreamt of his own death just days before he was assassinated. However, in the vast majority of cases dreams of funerals are a metaphor for your own state of mind.

Bad Dreams And Nightmares “Almost everyone has experienced one or more dreams that contain anxiety or outright fear. For some, unpleasant dreams or nightmares recur repeatedly; for others, the content may change while the theme remains the same, such as scenes of falling, or of being pursued or attacked, late or unprepared for a presentation or an exam, stuck in slow motion, unable to move or scream, or naked in public, to name a few common themes.

This type of experience, when unpleasant, is usually associated with lack of progress by the dreamer to recognise and solve conflicts in life,” says Craig Webb, Executive Director of The Dreams Foundation. “The majority of nightmares represent opportunities for personal healing through much-needed emotional release. They are often indirectly warning us about current behaviour patterns or psychological imbalances that we need to remedy if we don’t want such unpleasant dreams to repeat, or worsen. Sometimes, such imbalances or patterns resolve themselves as the dream percolates into waking thought and we unknowingly respond and make adjustments in our life.

But if we block, deny or ignore such messages from the subconscious for too long, then it usually speaks ‘louder’ to get our attention often by bringing related events, which I call daymares, into our waking hours. These daymares show up as sickness, accidents, relationship difficulties or other unfortunate personal circumstances that force us outright to deal with the issue at hand.”

Craig continues to say that renown psychologist Carl Jung observed that portions of our whole personality are frequently projected outward in dreams, taking the form of aggressors, devils, monsters, intimidating animals or natural events (such as tidal waves, fires, earthquakes and so on). “Jung referred to these symbolic figures as ‘the shadow’. Whether we become aware of such elements of our shadow through nightmares or daymares, reaccepting these judged and disowned portions of ourselves is the message and the awaiting gift.

So, we truly are lucky to have such nightmares, since they provide a natural ‘pressure-release’ therapy for the psyche, and especially since they may even provide what amounts to an early cure if we listen to, make an effort to understand and then act upon the valuable insight that dreams try to bring us. The goal is still to put an end to nightmares and recurring dreams, but by evolving them into more beneficial scenarios, and not by blocking, ignoring or denying them.

“It has been extensively demonstrated that various nightmare and recurring dream themes are quite universal, even cross-culturally, and that such situations can be transformed into positive and even pleasant experiences. The key to such evolution is a change of perspective, often accompanied by a new emotional response to the situation such as taking on an attitude of acceptance, curiosity and exploration to replace the existing reaction of fear or judgment (as in the dream example above).

When these types of dream are connected with deep traumatic waking events, such as abuse, war and death the evolution of the dream into a more positive form may understandably take longer and require more waking attention and focus. Though there is no unerring rule as to what any given dream might be about, a good rule of thumb is to re-experience the feeling of the dream and find out where this same feeling shows up in our waking life. This is the rule of associative logic – the dream associates to our life, and sometimes to our past, by a specific feeling.”

What Does It Mean?

Chase or attack: Chase dreams may represent your way of coping with fears, stress or various situations in your waking life. Instead of confronting the situation, you are running away and avoiding it. The pursuer usually represents a fearful aspect of our shadow, and hence an exaggerated version of a denied or inhibited portion of our own personality that would benefit us if integrated and appropriately expressed.

• Falling dream: Falling is an indication of insecurities, instabilities, and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life. This may reflect the way you feel in your relationship or in your work environment. Falling dreams also often reflect a sense of failure or inferiority in some circumstance or situation. It may be the fear of failing in your job/school, loss of status, or failure in love. You feel shameful and lack a sense of pride. Ask yourself, am I feeling heavy, unsupported, worried about something? How can I feel freer?

• Failing an exam: These dreams usually have to do with your self-esteem and confidence or your lack of. You are worried that you are not making the grade and measuring up to other people's expectations of you. You may also experience the fear of not being accepted, not being prepared, or not being good enough. These dreams also suggest that you may feel unprepared for a challenge. Ask yourself, am I feeling unprepared for some upcoming event? Unconfident about my performance? Am I worrying needlessly or do I actually need more preparation in order to feel confident and do a good job?

• Naked in public: You may be hiding something and are afraid that others can nevertheless see right through you. The dream may telling you that you are trying to be something that you really are not, or that you are fearful of being ridiculed and disgraced. If you are in a new relationship, you may have some fears or apprehension in revealing your true feelings. Nudity also symbolises being caught off guard. Ask yourself, where in life am I feeling unconfident, embarrassed, unskilled?

• Teeth Falling Out: Having your teeth crumbling in your hands or falling out is one of the most common dreams. It represents your anxiety about your appearance, the consequences of ageing, how others perceive you, as well as your fear of your sexual impotence. The loss of teeth in your dream may be from a sense of powerlessness. Are you lacking power in some current situation? Perhaps you are having difficulties expressing yourself or getting your point across. You may be experiencing feelings of inferiority and a lack of self-confidence in some situation or relationship in your life. This dream is an indication that you need to be more assertive and believe in the value of your own opinion. In the latest research, it has been shown that women in menopause have frequent dreams about teeth which may be related to getting older and/or feeling unattractive.

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