The Dream Dictionary from A to Z [Revised edition]. Theresa Cheung

This could be because your unconscious has already solved the problem and ‘sleeping on it’ gives your unconscious a chance to express itself. Many famous inventions were allegedly prompted by a dream. For example, Scottish engineer and inventor of the steam engine James Watt (1736–1819) dreamed of molten metal falling from the sky in the shape of balls. This dream gave him the idea for drop cooling and ball-bearings. The model of the atom, the M9 analog computer, the isolation of insulin in the treatment of diabetes and the sewing machine were all ideas that sprung from dream inspiration.

       Telepathic Dreams

      This is the kind of dream when someone you know appears in your dream in acute distress, and you later learn that that person was experiencing a real-life crisis at the time – such as extreme unhappiness, an accident or even death. It is thought that telepathic and empathetic dreams are a meeting of minds between two people who are close to each other emotionally.

       Vigilant Dreams

      These are processing dreams that involve your senses. For example, if your cell phone rings or a picture falls to the floor while you are asleep, the sound may be incorporated into your dream but appears as something else, such as a police siren or a broken window. The smell of flowers in your room may also become a garden scene in your dreams.

       Wish-fulfillment Dreams

      These are the kind of dreams in which we quite literally ‘live the dream’: we might win the lottery, date a celebrity, ooze charisma, or simply go on a long vacation. In these kinds of dreams our unconscious is trying to compensate for disappointment or dissatisfaction with our current circumstances in waking life.

       Walking and Talking in Your Sleep

      Sleepwalking or moving about while asleep is an attempt to put a dream into action. Most likely you have grown out of the habit – if you ever had it – but if an occasion arises which is very stressful, you may, like Lady Macbeth, re-enact the nightmare in this way. Talking in your sleep springs from similar causes to sleepwalking. It is an attempt to carry a dream on verbally. You are more likely to walk, talk, or move in your sleep when you are under mental pressure. Most of the time this is totally harmless, but some sleepwalkers and talkers can put themselves in real danger. Precautions should therefore be taken. Make sure windows are closed and, if stairs are a hazard, doors locked. If you’re really worried about your sleepwalking, seek advice from your doctor. If someone you live with sleepwalks, don’t try to wake them – just guide them quietly and gently back to bed.

Can You See the Future in Your Dreams?

       For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that could be.

      – Tennyson

      Déjà vu dreams involve dreams of a person, place or thing and then, the following day or a few days afterwards, you encounter whatever featured in your dreams. Precognitive dreams are similar in that they offer glimpses of the future, but they differ in that they predict real-life events the dreamer is typically not familiar with or can have absolutely no conscious awareness of. Déjà vu dreams, in contrast, could be explained as simply being highly likely scenarios because the people, things, and situations you later encounter in your waking life are ones that you are personally familiar with.

      Precognitive dreams are rare but there have been many instances when people claim to have dreamed of events they couldn’t possibly have guessed or known about before they happened. For example, many people reported dreaming about 9/11 before it occurred. Other people tell of canceling trains or flights because of a foreboding dream, only to later hear that the train or plane has crashed. There are even reports of people who dreamed the winning numbers of the lottery.

      Research suggests that up to 30 percent of people have had precognitive-type dreams. Most dream researchers dismiss precognitive dreams as coincidences, but in recent years a select group of scientists have warmed to the theory that dreams might actually be able to offer us a view of our future or a potential future. Their theory is inspired by the scientifically proven phenomenon of ‘presentiment’: bodily signals, such as a raised heart rate and increased sweating, that something is about to happen before it actually happens. If this intuitive physical sensing of the future can happen to us when we are awake, then it may also happen to us in our dreams while we are sleeping.

      Science has a long way to go to prove that it might be possible to see the future in your dreams but the fact the theory is being researched and taken seriously is wildly exciting. We know even less about time – what it is and how it works – than we do about dreams. Both time and dreams remain elusive but enduring mysteries, united by the theme of eternal possibility.

       How to Interpret Your Dreams

       If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.

      – René Magritte

      If you have ever wondered why dreams often appear so difficult to understand or make sense of, it is because the information they contain is relayed to you in a different language: the language of symbols. If you want to understand your dreams you need to learn their symbolic language.

      People alive or dead, known and unknown; animals both domestic and wild; landscapes and buildings familiar and strange; and any number of symbolic objects such as shapes, colors, signs, numbers, jewelry, food, clothing, and so on, are just some of the countless number of images that can populate your dreams. These images are not to be interpreted literally but personally. They are your own thoughts, feelings and ideas translated into a series of images that are like ordinary scenes in your daily life. For example, if you feel overwhelmed, you may have a dream you are swimming but finding it hard to keep your head above water. If you feel stressed, you may have a dream where you are being chased by an unknown threat. The number of images that your mind can translate into dream symbols for you to interpret is practically endless.

      Words just can’t convey the countless powerful thoughts and feelings that symbols do. These symbols are often chosen from something that has caught your attention in waking life, triggering a memory, conflict, or concern that resonates both in the present and in the past.

      Remember, in the majority of cases everything you see, do, feel and sense in your dream is about you. Everything in your dream says something about you. It really is the world of your dreams. If you have seen the movie Inception you may recall the scene when everyone turns to stare at the dreamer. That’s exactly how dreams work. The people in your dreams are all aspects of you, the things in your dream all say something about you, as does the storyline or plot. Waking up to the reality that you are dreaming about yourself is illuminating and gives you a head start as far as dream interpretation is concerned.

      Now that you understand that you are the world of your dream, the next step is to interpret the symbols your dreaming mind is sending you. One tried-and-tested way to uncover the meaning of your dream images is by association. You simply express the first thing that pops into your head when a trigger image from your dream is given. If you don’t immediately get an associative thought, try working through all your feelings about that image. For example, say you saw a bird in a dream. Do you like birds or do they make you nervous? Try to discover what the image means to you right now, for the meanings of your symbols will change over time.

      The more you think about and try to interpret your dreams, the more you will begin to understand the significance of your personal images. You’ll probably find that you dream the most about the things that you are familiar with: your family, your colleagues, your friends, your pets. Each time you dream about these familiar things they will have personal significance for you alone. What aspects of your personality do these symbols represent to you?

      Remember, most dreams are not to be taken literally and you need to do a bit of detective work to get to the real message. Just because you dream that a friend is dying does not mean that they will die, but rather that some aspect of your relationship with him or her or some aspect