Before we discuss the mechanics of dream interpretation, we feel that it is critical for you to first understand the importance of dreams in our daily lives and how you can personally enhance your dream experience. What is the real meaning of dream?

Trying to discover the meaning of dream and its importance to man has intrigued us for thousands of years. Even the earliest man contemplated and feared the meaning of dream.

The dream dictionary describes the meaning of dream as, “Imaginary events seen in the mind while sleeping.”

I quote the famous bard, “To sleep, perchance to dream”. Did Shakespeare contemplate the meaning of dream as he wrote these famous words?

When someone would question the meaning of dream to Freud, he would relate everything in dreams back to sexual issues. Timothy Leary’s definition of the meaning of dream took on almost frightening proportions due to the acid that he purportedly dropped on a regular basis throughout the years.

So let us suffice to say that throughout the ages, the meaning of dream has been discussed, dissected and argued by countless individuals. We are not going to argue the meaning of dream in this website. We are going to provide you with the scientific and psychological basis of dreams and the critical role that they play in our lives.

Without a small amount of base knowledge of what dreams are made of and how we can personally improve our personal dream life, your efforts to determine the meaning of dream as it relates to you will be in vain. So spend the next few minutes reading a few simple facts about your dream life.

Attempting to take a single dream and try some form of dream interpretation, without first putting it into a larger dream context involving proper sleep, improved remembrances of your dreams, keeping some sort of diary of your dream experiences and understanding how your dreams relate to your waking life will probably result in coming to an interpretation of the meaning of dream in your life that is highly inaccurate. These are not issues that you will find in a dream dictionary.

Many people seeking dream interpretation do not realize the critical importance dreams play in our daily lives. Dreaming is the subjective occurrence of fantasy imagery, sounds and intercommunications, terms and feelings or feelings while we sleep. Dreams are so integral to our lives that even people that do not think that they dream, in reality dream every night.

What is exciting in the process of dream interpretation is that while for the most part dreams are involuntary, we can play an active part in enhancing and remembering our dream life. There are several critical factors involved in creating the perfect dream world where we not only experience exciting and pleasurable dreams, but we have the ability to remember the dreams to enable us to apply dream interpretation to understand their meanings.

Many people ask, “Why should we remember our dreams”?

Dreams that can be remembered and undergo some sort of process of dream interpretation are usually a result of Rapid Eye Movement sleep and what is commonly known as REM sleep. REM is a lighter form of sleep that usually occurs during the end of your sleep cycle during which you experience and involuntary rapid horizontal eye movement.

Generally associated with REM sleep is a temporary paralysis of the body and an increased heart and respiratory rate. Doctors and research scientists pretty much agree that REM sleep is not only important to the improvement of our dream world, but is critical to our well being of our waking world.

It is universally agreed that to have an active REM sleep experience that it is absolutely critical that the initial phases of our deep sleep where our dreams we experience that quite often we do not recall, known as Hypnogogia, are present in a good night of sleep and that when we do fall into our deepest sleep, that it is undisturbed and restful.

One of the worst things to hinder a good night of sleep that will lead to successful dream interpretation is taking drugs to try to sleep. Any type of drug, regardless whether it is a prescription or otherwise, will generally have an opposite effect on our sleep life and will not improve our REM sleep. In our opinion, drugs should never be used to try to enhance sleep and should only be used during the rare and temporary occasions where a doctor feels that they are necessary to our health.

Natural sleep aids do not have the same effect as drugs. As an example, we are hearing of thousands of people that are saying that the natural sleep aid called Goji Juice has significantly improved their sleep and has helped them to naturally relax their bodies and allow for a deeper, more restful sleep. As a result, their dream recall is off the charts allowing them significant strides in their dream interpretation. There are a number of other similar natural sleep aids available on the market today.

A lack of dreams may also signal an imbalance of proper vitamins in your body.  A lack of dream activity can also point to a possible personality disorder or possibly a protein deficiency or other physical or metal health problem. If you have tried a number of natural sleep aids and they did not seem to help, you should contact your doctor and have them do a through physical on you to determine if your lack of sleep is due to some physiological or mental problem that would require the doctor’s attention.  

Ó Copyright 2005 Phillip P Gilliam, All rights reserved.