What Do You Think Of Dreams? How Do You Interpret Them?

[a e l i]

Dreams are part of ourselves, so there must be something up with them. What do you think they are? Was Freud right? Do you try to give your dreams meaning and how do you do that?

[JeffR1]

@a e l i Hi. I find I tend to dream more when I'm feeling stressed, not grounded or have much going on in life. My take on it is that it is the subconscious mind processing what the conscious mind cannot during our waking hours. I also feel our dreams can sometimes be a way in which our subconscious mind communicates with our conscious mind. If I dream and I can recall what I dreamt, I'll usually give some thought to what the dream(s) mean. To me, dreams seem to be metaphors which will often require interpretation; others can be quite direct and the correlation to my waking life is quickly apparent.

I remember one dream I had quite a few years ago. At first glance, one might think this dream is somewhat macabre - to me it wasn't. In my dream my father was laying dead on the floor. There was kind of like curtains or blinds or material hanging around (not walls). My sister was there with me. My father's face looked nothing like my actual father's face, but in my dream, I knew it was my father. I had this idea that I was going to cut his face off with a sharp knife that I had in my hand. I told my sister what I intended to do; she started crying and said something to the effect she couldn't be there for that and left. That is all I remember from the dream.

So back to my life at that time, in which I was doing a lot of inner work and working on forgiveness, acceptance and releasing judgemental thoughts. My upbringing was somewhat difficult as my father was an aggressive, abusive and sometimes violent alcoholic and this brought much chaos and fear in the family. I had many years of holding onto a range of feelings, emotions and thoughts about my father. Then, one day, I had what some call an epiphany. I felt complete understanding that it wasn't my father who behaved as he did - it was the alcohol! In that instant I found forgiveness for him and our relationship has since changed dramatically for the better. (I might add he eventually stopped drinking after nearly dying numerous times and hasn't had a drink since).

My take on my dream was that seeing my father dead represented letting go of my perception of who my father was as an alcoholic - ie. The alcoholic died, not my father. Hence also why in my dream he looked different. My take on cutting his face off was that I was revealing the 'real' father and letting go of the alcoholic. And it was my hope in the dream that others could them see him and not the alcoholic. My sister couldn't stay there, as she wasn't ready to forgive (in real life that was and to some extent still is).

Good question aeli. Perhaps it might generate much discussion. I feel dreams have a purpose and I am okay with looking at my dreams, trying to work out what they might be telling me or guiding me. Best wishes.

[Pallero]

Dreams are fascinating. I remember my dreams often. They are vivid and full of action, adventure and fantasy. I often spend some time pondering my dream in the morning - they are just so interesting. I'm not good at analyzing dreams though, because they are complicated to analyze.

[FindingPeace]

I think dreams are actually the brain's way of running scenarios and preparing itself for taking action. We tend to dream about things that are on our minds. So our brains are trying to prepare for dealing with those issues. They're kind of like a simulator.

Animals dream too. You can watch them twitching and jerking. Probably devising stragegies for running away from predators or finding food, or mates. Some research in to birds suggested that they practice singing in their dreams, getting their tunes just right.

I don't think there are any deep, abstract meanings within dreams. If anything they are more of a reflexion of our anxieties or pursuits. I don't believe that they are symbolic or analogous to anything more meaningful.

I see dreams as an evolutionary advantage - allowing the brain to reherse potential scenarios, see the potential cause and effect of situations so that it can be written in to memory and refered to in real-life when a real scenario presents itself.

But as usual, we humans like to find meaning in everything. So we assume that there is deeper meaning to our dreams. But the fact that other creatures dream and they don't have the ability to question or conceptualise any meaning begs the question as to why there should be any 'spiritual' meanings or other interpretations to dreams. In fact this, to me, just points to a more rational and evolutionary reason for dreaming - which is to reherse and speculate on potential situations.

[JevinR]

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Has some sort of connection with the subconcious mind, usually symbolic.http://www.dreammoods.com/ To help interpret. You can also keep a dream journal to go further.

[Markus]

They do come from your own mind, conscious and subconscious (which I guess is the significant thing here). I've never really dealt with interpretation though. I mean, sure, some things are really clear, but usually my dreams are just trippy stuff I don't bother analyzing.