Explore Your Dreams

Following your dream life can become an excellent way of tracking your emotional progress during different periods of your life. Now that we know how to record and remember our dreams, it is time to consider how to further explore them.

Keep a record
To begin, however you choose to record your dreams, be sure to make a note of the day, date and time of your dream and describe it in the present tense. You may even want to give your dreams titles – doing so offers new insight regarding their meaning. You’ll soon find that many dreams are actually “theme dreams,” that is part of a sequence of similar ideas.

If you would like to expand on this emotional tracking, remember to write down significant daytime events that were taking place during the times of your dreams. After all, your day to day is the basis for the subconscious reactions and observations that are highlighted as you sleep.

Although a single “aha” moment in a dream is a significant part of dream interpretation, know that dreams have many levels and therefore can have many (often unexpected) “aha” moments. Always look for multi-level meanings to your dreams.

Channel your inner artist
I always find illustrating dreams to be very significant in revealing true objective meaning to the dreamer – and you don’t need to be an artist to do it. The act of drawing is a creative process and as such, reaches deep inside the creator, revealing more of what our inner psyche knows. For instance, see if your drawing is done in light fanciful strokes or poured on with thick deliberate heavy marks. This act reveals more about your emotional mood at the time of your dream. Remember to put color into your drawings.

For those who love to write, another wonderful way to record dreams is to put them into poetic form. Your word choice, rhythm, symbols and tone will provide additional information and wonderful objectivity. Try it for yourself and see!

If acting is your inclination, try physically enacting your dream from the viewpoint of one of the characters in it. This is best done with others, so employ your friends to help out – offer to take turns with their dreams. If you don’t have any luck finding co-stars however, simply act out the character roles one by one, addressing empty chairs or props for the other people in your dreams. Frequently, body memory will allow an emotion of recollection to spring forth during this exercise.

More of a hands-on artist? Create a dream mask of one of the more important characters in your dream. Note your feelings while creating the mask. You will be calling on your memory for details and may uncover more as you go. Plus, you can wear it while enacting that part in your dream, too!

Other interpretative tools
Another interesting way to interpret dreams is to add “Part of me” to everything you dream about. For instance, “I run through the dark forest, the ____ part of me chased by unknown parts of me.” I think you get the idea. This method can add amazing “aha” moments for you.

Likewise, if you were awakened before the dream came to its natural conclusion, give your dream an ending as you record it. Go with your feelings and just write stream of consciousness, using your heart over your head.

And lastly, please remember that dream fragments can give amazing insights to your dreams. Sometimes we recall only a fragment because our dreaming mind has carefully edited memory so that the dreamer gets a very clear and symbolic picture from the tiny fragment. So give these fragments credence (in other words, don’t impose an ending if it doesn’t feel right – or just ignore the information) and be prepared to work with them.

What are your dreams telling you? Share your experiences – and see what Psychic Ariel has to say!