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Your Dreams: A Life Therapy Perspective, Part 3 of 3

How to Interpret Your Dreams

Which Dreams to Interpret

The emotional impact, mental effect, or both of some dreams make them stand out from others. They are worth your time and attention. Analyzing them might release their meaning and give you an important message.

Recording and Analyzing Your Dream

In Life Therapy, you analyze a dream by separating its parts and attending to each one. As you do, you allow the dream to release its meaning to your mind’s awareness. With only your attention, not effort, the meaning emerges on its own.

First, write the story of your dream. You’re not writing for publication or anyone else to read. You’re writing for yourself, to understand your dream.

Let go of concerns about spelling and grammar. Just write the story of your dream. Include the important settings, people, their actions, and the events that occur.

Second, make four lists in parallel columns. One each for the important settings, people, their actions, and eventsof your dream. Make your list look something like this:

SETTINGS	PEOPLE	THEIR ACTIONS	EVENTS

Third, on a new page, with plenty of room between each one, write one word or short phrase for each setting. Draw a circle around each one.

Fourth, relax and gaze, one at a time, at each setting. Each setting is an image. Allow memories and emotions associated with each setting image to freely arise. 

Fifth, around the circled setting you’re gazing at, write one word or short phrase to record the associated memory and emotions as they arise. Allow associations to arise until they stop. Circle each one. Now draw a line from the setting to each association to connect them. Make your drawing look something like this:

Complete all five steps above for each important setting, person, action, and event.

Interpreting Your Dream

After you analyze and record the elements of your dream, you’re ready to interpret it.

The images of your dream—the settings, people, their actions, and events—are words. Instead of words written in letters, they are image-words.

The image-wordsand their associated memories and emotions are the language of your spirit. Your spirit uses them to speak to your mind.

The definitionsof the image-words are the associated memoriesand emotions they stir up in you. Specifically, your emotions tell you what the image-words mean. 

As you attend to the image-words and emotions, you allow your spirit to speak to your mind. Focus your mind’s full attention to what your spirit is saying to it. Listen. Listen deeply.

Make notes of any connections between the emotions stirred up by the image-words of your dream and your awake reality. If you feel fear in response to an image-words in your dream, how does it relate to your awake reality? Is something threatening you in your awake reality? If so, how are you addressing it? 

If you feel anger, sadness, guilt, or any other emotion in response to other image-words in your dream, how do they relate to your awake reality? What action do you need to take?

Attend to your whole dream and all of its image-words. Allow the meaning of your dream to come together and emerge out of the process of mentally attending to what your spirit is saying to your mind.

Write the meaning of your dream and take its message seriously. 

Your Dreams: A Life Therapy Perspective, Part 2 of 3

In Life Therapy, not all dreams are the same. There are at least seven different types. The outstanding feature of a dream determines its type. The types include—

Process dreams: Process dreams feature events of the previous day or two. They’re generic, neither remarkably good nor bad. Your emotional responses are mild. They’re forgettable.

They’re often narratives about difficulties getting where you want to go, falling, being busy, going different places, or being in crowds of strangers. They might or might not give you insight from reflecting on them.

Pleasant dreams: You wake up smiling after pleasant dreams. They feature pleasurable stories about things in safe places, being loved, sexual pleasure, receiving help or gifts, and other enjoyable experiences. They stir up emotions of contentment, gratitude, desire, and gladness. Milk them. Get every drop you can out of them.

Nightmares: You wake up feeling troubled after nightmares. Sometimes they shock you awake. Some are toxic and infect you the rest of the day.

They feature troubling stories about being threatened, wronged, doing wrong, not getting what you desire, being repulsed by horror, and tragic loss.

They stir up intense and painful emotions of fear, anger, guilt, disappointment, disgust, and sadness. They’re also mentally confusing and difficult to understand.

Message dreams: Message dreams feature stories in which you receive information. The information might be an insight, guidance, or foreknowledge.

• The insight might be an answer to a question, solution to a problem you’re struggling to solve, or knowledge of something that just happened to someone you’re emotionally connected with.

• The guidance is often a directive that either warns you against or encourages you to take some specific action.

• The foreknowledge gives you preview of events to come. Like many insight dreams about something that just happened, foreknowledge dreams are often about someone you’re emotionally connected with.

Visitation dreams: Visitation dreams feature narratives of visits with people you know. You usually have a strong emotional connection with them: family members, lovers, close friends, or pets. Often those who visit you are deceased and come to comfort you. 

Recurring dreams: The outstanding feature of recurring dreams is their recurrence. You dream the same dream two, three, or more times. Rarely, if ever does a process dreams recur. A recurring dream is usually a pleasant dream, nightmare, or message dream. But it is the same every time. 

Lucid dreams: Any of the above six types of dreams can be lucid, but the outstanding feature is how vivid and realistic it is. Regardless of the story, it is like it is actually happening at the time.