How to Interpret Your Dreams Without Outside Influence or Dictionaries

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By mollylenore
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Interpret Your Dreams Without Outside Influence or Dictionaries

This article will help aid you in the interpretation of dreams by using your own definitions and life experiences instead of consulting "psychics" or dream dictionaries.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Meditation, journal/note pad, pen or pencil.

Step 1

The most important step to interpreting your dreams, is to try and dream better. There is nothing worse than trying to interpret a dream that seems very chaotic and senseless. Your dreams will be a lot easier to interpret if you go to sleep in a calm, relaxed mood, with your mind as clear as possible. In order to do that, you will need to meditate. Meditating is not as hard as people try to make it out to be. All you need is to sit or lay down in a room with no distractions, low or no lighting, and breathe deeply while letting go of any aggravating thoughts you've had throughout the day. In other words: Quit cursing the guy who cut you off in traffic earlier that day ;)
Step 2

Now that you are as relaxed and calm as you can be, it's time to get dreaming. Keep a notepad or journal as close to where you sleep as possible (I keep mine on the night stand). Some times, the simple act of just waking up can already erase memory of what you just dreamt about, so it's good to have the journal nearby and ready to be scribbled on instead of stumbling through your room, half awake, trying to find it.
Step 3

When you wake up after dreaming, grab your journal and write down a numbered list of anything that stood out in vivid detail. I don't recommend jotting down the whole entire story of the dream since doing this can take some time and cause you to forget some of the more important details. All you need is the numbered list of things that stood out most to you.
Step 4

Now on another sheet of paper, take each item from the list and write down what that particular thing means to you. For example: Say number one on your list of dream details is "I was walking down the street of an abandoned city." On the second sheet of paper you will write the number one and next to it you will write down how you feel about walking down the street of an abandoned city. To some people this may be a frightening, lonely experience. But to some others, they may enjoy it and feel a sense of freedom (and this is why I rarely use dream dictionaries, because everyone is different and not everyone is going to have the same point of view and emotion on the same subject and environment in a dream as someone else).
Step 5

Now that you have written down all the meanings on the second sheet of paper, it is time to add it all up and make an analysis! You will be surprised how accurate this is for you and can also remind you of surpressed emotions and memories. Things that seem to have made no sense at all will fall together like a puzzle, right there before your own eyes. I'll give you an example dream of mine I had recently and how it interpreted for me, to help guide you through the process.
Step 6

I dreamt I was going shopping (my definition of shopping: fun, relaxing environment, the receiving of good energy). I had endless amounts of 100 dollar bills flowing out of my pockets (my definition of money: an object created and used for maintaining balance, equality, physical manifestation of labor and efforts). I could not find anything I wanted though. Nothing at all. Everything I looked at was wrong color, wrong size, etc. and I got very aggravated (my definition of the situation and emotions it caused: aggravation, irony, sense of failure). After waking up and writing the dream events and their meanings as instructed in these steps, I realized the dream was a reflection of how I recently had felt as if a great deal of my potential in life had gone unnoticed and unappreciated in the ways I wish that it had. I was getting plenty of what other people might think is a good thing, but hardly nothing of what I really wanted deep down. Having the dream and analyzing it like I did helped to awaken me to how I need to re-evaluate my goals and change my priorities around so that things don't go so out of balance again. To "invest" more into more important things in life.