Examine any emotions which accompany the dream. If the emotion seems
inconsistent with the thing you dreamed, pay more attention to the emotional
content than to its apparent stimulus.
Explore your associations with a puzzling symbol. If, for example, a dream
person has blond hair, free associate on the phrase "blond hair,"
jotting down anything that comes to mind.
After recording a dream, quickly and instinctively give it a title. This will
often provide a clue to its meaning.
Pay attention to any involuntary slips of the tongue, pen or fingers which you
make as you speak or write about the dream. These are sometimes significant.
Pay particular attention to symbols and situations which occur repeatedly in
your dreams.
On waking, imagine endings or continuations for your dreams. Record these and
examine them along with the dreams themselves
Waking, place yourself in the position of another character in the dream. How
would the dream appear, and what would it mean, to that person? (For example,
if you dream of being pursued by someone, place yourself in the position of the
pursuer instead of the pursued.)
Give creative expression to your dreams in drawings, poetry, dance. This
extension will often fill in missing meaning in your mind.
Be aware that any one dream has multiple levels of meaning. The possibilities
include, but are not confined to:
- Processing and integrating experience from the previous day.
- Wish fulfillment.
- Messages from your unconscious to your conscious mind.
- Self exploration and analysis; often one possible interpretation of a dream involves seeing each character in the dream as part of the dreamer.
- Symbolic representations of physical conditions in your body.
- Dream symbolism may include puns or plays on words.
- Contact with spirits or Deities often occurs more readily in dreams than in waking.
- There may memory of the distant past, of early childhood, or of other existences.
- Experiences of precognition, telepathy and clairvoyance are more common in dreaming than in waking.
- Your mind may use a dream to take control of a problem and solve it.
