Beyond Interpreting Individual Dreams

Perhaps others have posted this sort of thing already, but I've only seen discussions of interpreting individual dreams. After paying attention to and recording dreams for several years, I personally rarely find invidividual dreams of much use. I do, however, have a few individual dreams that stick out, sort of along the lines of what Jung called a "big dream" (if I recall correctly) - a dream with clear and profound mythological imagery. This seem to occur at times of major - and sometimes minor - transformation in my life.

However, I take a different approach to the overwhelming majority of my dreams, focusing on the big, long-term picture. I do so, figuring that this will reveal the really important things in my life, or the important things I need to learn or deal with. And paying attention to dreams in this way has led to some major breakthroughs for me.

1. Every two weeks or so, I go back through my dream journal and reread my dreams. I look for common themes, contexts, etc. I also compare these with longer-term trends I have noticed in my dreams over the last few years - or from my teens, when I used to record dreams as well. I often find these sorts of commonalities: dreams frequently involving travel, transportation, and exploration; struggling to perform some sort of activity, but have an inexplicable difficulty doing so; experiencing a threat; and so on.

2. Having found common themes, I then go back through all of the dreams involving one particular theme. These could occur in a variety of contexts and using a wide variety of characters, symbols, etc. But I look for commonalities within each particular type of dream. To find these, I ask myself questions such as, during travel dreams, do I arrive at my destination or does the dream focus on the journey? Or do I always get lost or end up at the wrong place? How do I feel during this - frightened, frustrated, elated? Do I have a common goal in these dreams? Having found common issues, I then try to relate them to my life and figure out what my dreams want to tell me. Of course, I work from the assumption that the important things in my life, whether conscious or unconscious, will shape my dreams more than the transient things that may have just happened on any particular day.

3. After doing this for a few months, or even while doing it each time, I try to look for changes in the patterns that may reflect changes in my life, subconscious, or whatever.

I'd love to hear about any variations on this or different approaches that y'all do.

I agree with you that trying to interpret someone's dream is extremely difficult, especially if it's only based on one dream and no other information is given.

The Blue Meanie wrote a Sticky that addresses this problem. Sadly, most members don't even glance at these guidelines before posting.

Also it seems like a lot of people become a member, and they're only post is in the interpretation forum to have someone try to figure out what this one dream meant, and then never hear back from them again, even after a few other members have taken a stab at it. I think the best person to interpret your dreams is YOURSELF! :wink:

And like you said, a lot of times, you need to refer to several dreams, or try to find a pattern in your own dreams to find meaning in one. I barely ever post in the Interpretation forum, because I think it's virtually impossible to interpret other people's dreams with such minimal information. It may be fun to try, and sometimes there are such obvious meanings that jump out at you, but the majority of these dreams can only be interpreted by the dreamer himself.

Dear Sasha,

Good!

I hope a lot of the newbies read this particular post.

Sometimes I would like to say that although a dream being asked about seems to be important and puzzling, that the dreamer really should hold off and wait and only be concerned if they can recognize a trend.

A dreamer may have a wickedly complex dream that they can barely start to comprehend, but if it does not recur... if it does not trend into any further development, then what is most likely was that it was able to get its message across.

What we need to worry about is repeating and recurring dreams and developing motifs... patterns... themes that we see again and again. That type of thing would indicate that we are in the middle of a process. And in such a situation we could anticipate that some degree of insight might help in resolving whatever issues are being addressed by the Dream Process.