Journaling Your Dreams Part 1 – Beginning

It’s easy to forget your dreams if you don’t write them down while they’re still fresh in your memory. Journaling is an important way to help remember dreams. Journaling dreams can make all the difference between getting a valuable piece of information and completely losing it.

Dream symbols

Dreams communicate meaning and emotion through the language of symbols. Dream dictionaries can help get you started decoding dream symbols. The meaning of a symbol will vary depending on the context of the dream, your unique personality, and the circumstances of your life at the time of the dream.

On occasion, dreams contain special symbols called archetypes.

Basics

Write down your dream. Read your dream aloud. As you read, see each symbol as a part of you. Use the phrase, “The _______ part of me…” While you’re reading, brainstorm other words you associate with each symbol in your dream. For example, if the phrase from your dream was “rescuing a baby from a monster”, you might say…

• “The rescuing part of me–the brave part of me, the strong part of me, the true part of me…”
• “The baby part of me–the vulnerable part of me, the helpless part of me, the weak part of me…”
• “The monster part of me–the scary part of me, the ugly part of me, the painful part of me, the wounded part of me…”

By doing this exercise, you can decode the symbolic messages in “rescuing a baby from a monster”. One meaning might be ‘you need to find the strength to do something vulnerable and face your wounds.’

Dream Interpretation

Dreams need to squeeze a lot of information from the big unconscious mind into the small conscious mind. To do this, dreams condense their messages into information-packed symbols and metaphors.

Interpreting dreams can take a while. Often you won’t have much time in the morning. But if can get a dream down on paper, then you can get back to interpreting it when you do have more time. Journaling dreams can make all the difference between getting a valuable piece of information and completely losing it. Even if you only get to interpret a dream a few days after…better late than never! Source.

Previous related blog post: Catch Your Dreams