Dreams are purposeful messengers from our vast subconscious – deliberate, meaningful, timely, and important. Even those dreams that seem to make no sense when we recount them, do make perfect sense when analyzed by an experienced dream analyst. Here’s why.
The visions, stories, symbols, colors, verbal messages, both the simple and complex imageries we see in our dreams come to us when our soul so desperately wants us to notice something – perhaps something brand new about ourselves or life, or something so old and forgotten yet something that needs to remembered and healed as soon as possible, such as childhood trauma, the effects of an accident, some information about our health whether emotional or physical.
As Carl Jung eloquently explained it, our subconscious speaks the language of symbols and images while our day-to-day conscious mind prefers words. A good dream analyst is someone who has studied the language of symbols yet they also understand that a symbol can be unique to a person based on their culture, upbringing, religion, personal beliefs, work, relationships, and past and current environment.
What do dreams mean?
The meaning of dreams is hidden inside each dream. A dream analyzer is someone who sits with you whether face to face, over the phone or online, and tackles the details of the dream. This person doesn’t just make meanings out of symbols; they also ask you how you felt while you were dreaming the particular dream you’re retelling. For example, seeing water might be refreshing and enlivening for someone yet frightening for another – perhaps if the person had a drowning experience.
While symbols do have universal meanings, a good dream analyst understands that you have a unique personal history both in the conscious and subconscious level, and even in the collective and karmic levels, including your last lives. So, what your dream interpretation answers depend not just on the dream but also on you!
Universal dream symbols
Symbols can mean different things in different cultures, geographies, and even families. For example, a family may have chosen a symbol long ago, which over generations might have become its heritage and image, like a brand logo or a flag. But many symbols tend to have universal messages, which we included below.
Sunrise: Sunrise means pretty much the same all over the world – it is when the Sun, the giver or life, warmth, energy, and light appears in the horizon and marks the beginning of a new day. For most dreamers, sunrise means a time of beginnings, like birth, rebirth, a new phase in life, starting a new project, hope, and positive expectations.
Darkness: Few people associate the dark with good things. For most, it’s a situation where one’s vision is undermined, where unknowns abound, and one doesn’t feel safe. If you saw yourself in the dark in your dream, try to remember how you felt while this was happening. You might be in the dark, metaphorically, about a situation in your life, or you might have lost hope for the future. It can also symbolize illness – what other elements were there in your dream?
Books: More often than not, for many around the world, books stand for information, knowledge, wisdom, answers, and a way out of a situation. Were you given a book in your dream? Great. But who gave it to you? And what for? What were the other symbols present?
A gift: Did you see a wrapped gift intended for you in your dream? Pretty much anywhere in the world gifts are a source of excitement, they show being loved and cared for, they connote a pleasant unknown.
An airport or a pier: Most likely, these symbolize leaving for a new journey or an adventure, a new chapter in your life, many new possibilities. In your dream, were you the one leaving or staying behind while someone else left? The answer to this question can shed light on the hidden messages.
A balloon: A metaphor for childhood, innocent joy, lightness. In your dream, were you holding the balloon? Were you given a balloon? Or were you giving other people balloons? What color was the balloon?
A bird: Birds are associated with flying, freedom, skies, the ability to leave, to go long distances, having a panoramic view of things. What was your dream about? Were you the bird? Did you have wings? Healthy ones or broken ones? Or were you seeing birds doing something specific?
Glasses: symbol of wisdom, intelligence, erudition. They also mean the ability to see things better, to understand a situation better.
Stars: mysticism, vast space, hope, mystery, unknown destinations.
Shoes: shoes symbolize many different things – previously they marked the difference between the poor and the rich. Only the rich had shoes in the old days and the poor went bare feet. Today, the symbolism of the shoes evolved to mean agency, independence, choosing one’s own direction.
While there are many more universal symbols or symbols that have a wide consensus on what they might mean, there are also nuances and the context in which they appear. Dream dictionaries are good to get started but they are by no means conclusive or personal.
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Why get your dreams analyzed?
Because whatever deep, subconscious message you ignore will find other ways to come into your life – whether through recurrent dreams that start to feel uncomfortable, or real-life events that might start to feel eerie or just too coincidental.
Native cultures and shamans believe, for example, that when you ignore an animal’s message in your dreams, that that animal finds a way and finds you in life. With most animals, it’s better to get messages safely in dreams; in real life they need to resort to extreme measures to get our attention. One ant in our kitchen won’t make us act; so get invaded by hundreds. A cat on the street might not attract our attention but when it jumps on us, it does. With spiders, snakes, and wild animals, it’s even worse.
Better pay attention to our dreams and attend to our emotional needs before they show up in our lives as undesired events and people. Talking about people, say you see your mother in your dream (and she isn’t deceased in real life), what you are seeing isn’t your mother – what you’re seeing is what she represents for you. Maybe she has been very critical or unsupportive. Or she hasn’t been helpful when you needed her. Whatever she means to you – that part of your psyche needs to be explored and healed – otherwise you’ll continue to bring into your life people who treat you the way your mother did or still does.
DIY Guide: Deciphering Your Own Dreams
There are a few things you can do to decipher the messages of your dreams. First, identify if your dream is worth exploring and analyzing. For example, if you dreamt it after eating exorbitant amounts of fast food and your stomach hurt before going to bed, chances are you had some meaningless nightmare.
Most dreams matter – so how can you know if your particular dream matters? If it lingers – if five minutes after getting you forget about it, then by all means let go. If, however, you had your coffee, breakfast, and even lunch, and hours go by and you’re still haunted by your dream, it means your soul is doing its best to keep the dream in your conscious mind, because it wants you to explore it.
If you decide that your dream is worth listening to, then what you want to do is identify the key theme and symbols as well as the key emotion. How did you feel while you were dreaming it? Identify the exact feeling – relaxed, afraid, anxious, jealous, humiliated, shamed, inadequate, full of energy and vitality, grateful? Did you feel big? Small? Hopeful or hopeless?
Identifying the feeling helps give the symbols further meaning because some symbols can be interpreted both positively and negatively. Fire could mean desire but it could also mean destruction. Knowing how you felt during the dream helps make this distinction. If you don’t remember how you felt during the dream, notice this: how are you feeling right now as you think about your dream?
The emotion you identify is a key part of your dream’s message – it tells you which feelings in your emotional vocabulary need a boost. We are all built to feel every feeling from time to time – if you haven’t felt any particular feeling in a long, long time, maybe even since childhood, then it’s time to explore that.
So, briefly:
1. Identify how you felt in your dream
2. List the main symbols
3. List the main events or story
Additional tips
Sometimes, despite an amazing dream dictionary, or our own personal efforts, we still are at a loss. We don’t understand what our subconscious was trying to tell us. It happens to all of us. The unique thing about humans is that we see ourselves the best in the mirror of another human being.
To make dream interpretation work, it’s best to talk to another person – someone who can take a step back, ask the right questions, and see the big picture. The average person would assume that if you saw your mother in your dream, that the dream is about your mother. But a good dream interpreter would know that your mother is a symbol.
If the person or people you saw in your dream are deceased, you might also want to talk to a psychic medium – sometime sour loved ones want to reach us from beyond and because we are psychically and spiritually open in our dream state, they reach us there. If you want to know more about what they wanted to say, just talk to a psychic medium.
Getting an Online Dream Analysis
There are many websites that offer “automated” dream interpretation services – what they do is they give you “interpretations” based on a dream dictionary. It’s nice but it’s not personal. The texts are generic, auto-generated, and not detailed enough to give you a good panorama of your dream’s messages.
To get a good online dream analysis reading, there are a few things you can do. First of all, make sure to talk to a live person, and not a bot, or some automated website. Second, once you establish that the platform provides live real personal guidance, then you want to choose the right dream interpreter.
To do so, check out the ratings and reviews the interpreter received from people who had their dreams analyzed before. A good platform will allow users to submit unedited ratings and reviews – make sure to check those out to get a sense of who the reader is. If you don’t have much time, just check out the overall rating – how many stars over five. That’s a good indicator.
If you have the time, look at several different reviews at least and pay attention to how people describe the reading and the reader. What are the qualities that speak to you? Compassion? Detail oriented? Direct? Accurate? See if the psychic dream interpreter qualifies.
Also, take the time to read each dream interpreter’s profile. A good interpreter will list their skills and experience, as well as the different divinatory techniques they have studied. Take a good look and see how you feel while reading their profile. Also pay attention to their reading method – do they offer email, phone, or chat readings?
We believe that chat readings work the best for dream analysis. On most platforms today, you see what your interpreter types as they type. It’s a marvelous way to get a reading, plus it gives you complete privacy – you can chat with a dream interpreter on your mobile phone wherever and whenever, including during your morning commute when the dream is still fresh in your mind.
Some people prefer talking and hearing someone’s voice – if this is you, then simply place a call. Make sure to either use an app to record the conversation or take notes as you speak. It’s important to be able to remember what your dream interpreter said. With chat readings, many platforms provide chat transcripts automatically – if you’re registered with the site, your chat never gets lost. You can also print it and insert it in your journal, if you keep one.
Next, use your time wisely. Many platforms today give you free minutes to get to know your live advisor. Use this time to get to know your interpreter, to start asking your questions and see how they answer. See if their style satisfies you. Continue on with a paid dream interpretation session only if you are satisfied with the first few free minutes. During a paid session too, use your time wisely – if you have other questions or want to get a psychic reading, feel free to do that – but make sure you know what you want first.
Before your session
To get the most out of your session, be prepared. Make a list of the emotions you felt during your dream, as well as the dominant symbols and the secondary ones. Write down what happened exactly during the dream. Note whether this is a recurring dream or a one-time dream with a big impact on how you felt.
Having your list and notes ready before your session will help you to be more targeted and goal oriented during your session. Be open to the questions your dream analyst might ask – questions you might not have thought out as you prepared your list. These questions depend on the symbols you had in your dream as well as the psychic insights your dream interpreter might be getting while talking with you.
Your dream might have several meanings including messages you weren’t expecting, whether positive, negative or neutral. Try to be as open and flexible as possible. One way to achieve a calm, open state of mind is to meditate before your session, or in the morning if that’s the only time you can. If you come to the table with a calm, peaceful, trusting spirit, your session will reflect that.
After your session, make sure to rate your time with your dream interpreter and write a review. This will help other wisdom seekers. Try to include as many details as possible to help others. Explain how the session was and what your reader’s style was – compassionate, attentive, detail oriented, deep, spiritual, practical etc.
