Five Keys to Accessing the Guidance of Your Dreams

"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of reality." — James Allen

Dreams—they're not as diaphanous as they may seem. If anything, much like British Author James Allen describes above, they are seeds: hardy, potent, and here to reinvent our everyday. We love talking about "waking dreams" as being central to our way of life—inspiring and driving our heart, mind, and body. But your "sleeping dreams" offer just as priceless a medium of self-exploration and growth.

If anything, things get more expansive and potent with the latter. For here, unlike your "waking dreams" that mostly dwell in the conscious alone, your "sleeping dreams" give voice to deeper wisdom, to greater knowing from the depths of your subconscious.

Your sleeping dreams (hereon referred to simply as "dreams" in this article) aren't always comfortable. But as seeds of change, they're geared to pull us out of our comfort zone into new energy. They're tuned to bring greater insight and understanding of our own lives and path to us. They're configured to shake us out of our slumber and take another look at the path or choices before us.

These aren't comforting reminders or calm affirmations.

Dreams are teachers—ruthless in their honesty and generous in their teachings.

If only we stop seeing them as momentary musings of our mind when asleep, and recognize the voice they give to our deeper knowing—speaking to us at the one time we're most inclined to listen: while we sleep.

The Language of Dreams

I've dreamed vividly for as long as I can remember. Dreams rich with symbols, metaphors, and little signposts that have made sense of my experiences during the day. From being chased by crocodiles to swimming with a gigantic python in the Amazon basin, from diving into the heart of trouble to escaping a city under attack—my dreams have been amusing, inspiring, intriguing, and insightful.

It didn't take me long to recognize that there was a rich vocabulary to these, and that they often offered a commentary on the ongoings in my life. Sometimes this drew my attention within to my own thoughts and emotions, sometimes outside to the energies at play around me.

With each step on my path, working actively with my dreams has only further amplified this understanding.

Personally, and based on my own experiences, I align with the Jungian assertion that dreams are impartial, spontaneous, and don't lie to you. Think of these as manifestations of your energy, much like you manifest the world and experiences around you in waking life. The content of your dream is an expression of your energy: who you are at a given point in time, expressing different aspects of your mind, body, and intuition through its stories and experiences.

Your truth—your whole truth—is painted across a visual canvas when you dream, giving voice to what may go unnoticed or unknown during your waking hours.

Paying closer attention to your dreams can, therefore, evolve as a discipline in self-awareness on your life path, helping you hear the guidance of your unconscious and subconscious self, in addition to the voice of your conscious mind. Understanding your dreams the way you understand manifestation, and looking at your dream space as a projection of your own mind, body, and intuition can help establish an active dialogue with yourself, giving you a window into the known and the unknown here.

The Wisdom of Dreams

Dreams can offer fascinating possibilities for exploring your own energy and world. At its very basic, working with your dreams involves three steps:

1. Accessing the dream consciously, to bring its wisdom into your waking state

2. Interpreting the symbols and structure of your dream, to recognize the focus of your dream

3. Observing the signs or message being offered through the dream, so this wisdom can be applied in your everyday life

Having worked with clients and their dreams for years, and from my own experiences, I feel it's best to evolve your own practice and methods of bridging your dreams with reality.

These are after all creations of your own mind and energy—no one is more in tune with them than you. However, here are a few key points to keep in mind when drawing out this path, so you can best unravel your own potential and energy through your dreams.

1. Your Dream is a Three-Dimensional Projection of You

You are the architect and the subject of your dream: every dream is like a three-dimensional projection of your energy. Different facets of your psyche find expression as different elements in your dreams. Taking note of these different details can help you build a picture of your own mind, body, and intuition—any little glitches or imbalances are likely to show up in your dreams.

As such, your dreams could employ a highly personalized vocabulary, even if some fundamentals are likely to be at play. But no detail is too small when it comes to your dreams—each offering another layer or clue to the message or insight emerging from your subconscious.

Cloudy skies can signal a very different state of mind from clear ones, just as muddy water may indicate emotional confusion when crystalline waters infer clarity.

These elements may draw from real-life situations and persons, but in your dream, they are symbols of your own self. Just as you manifest the world around you in waking life, when you dream your experiences mirror your own state of being.

A friend may emerge as a symbol of loyalty in your dream; a co-worker may appear as a symbol of challenge. Dreams playing out in your school from childhood may point to a learning experience at play in your life; finding yourself in a crematorium in your dream may indicate the end of a cycle in your life path.

Understanding this process, and its vital elements, can help you draw out a storyboard of your life, or where you stand in it.

2. Stay Wary of Being Too Literal

Dreams are built layer by layer, one symbol interacting with another. They can feel real like your everyday experiences, but it may be important to not always take them as literally in order to access the insight they offer.

What may appear like a pleasant dream can sometimes hold little clues to deeper turmoil within you, and what may appear as a disturbing dream may actually be a positive message from your unconscious. In fact, with dreams geared to seed change and new insight, the unsettling ones can be particularly significant.

You may find, that more often than not, an unsettling dream may only feel this way because of our own presumptions and expectations. The sight of blood or the vision of a vicious beast of prey is likely to evoke certain responses from us—even if these come as symbols of something more positive, aligned with our own interests.

Similarly, a dream playing out in the black of the night can make us feel nervous and anxious, when really this darkness may come as a metaphor. Our own associations with blood, beast, or night-time may paint these dreams in tones that they may not hold by themselves.

A beast of prey could represent our own hidden power and strengths, blood in a dream could be drawing our attention to our own family and bloodline, the darkness could herald a journey into the unknown or our own unconscious. These symbols are powerful representations: even if they leave us unsettled, they are allies in our own path of growth and personal evolution.

Learning to look beyond outer appearances, to read a dream as a system of symbols and metaphors, can help us read our own energy and its multiple facets—without those fears or knee-jerk reactions getting in the way.

3. Emotion is Very Often the Key

Let's face it: symbols and metaphors can make dreams a cryptic experience and it can be tricky to decipher them. This is a vital step to better understanding your dreams, and how you break these down can determine what message you draw from them. Finding your way with this can get challenging—especially if your dreams are vivid, dramatic, or cinematic like mine.

Luckily, dreams are more than just a visual experience.

If there's a clear and steady anchor to your dreams, you're likely to find it in the emotions it evokes in you—specifically when you're in the dream. These are usually quite simple and clear and can help you identify the tone of the dream—no matter the visuals and storyline. In fact, focusing on emotions can help you avoid the pitfalls that come with pre-set expectations or those knee-jerk reactions, and enable you to interpret your dream more accurately.

These emotions can often draw your attention to the overall state of your being in waking life. Stress at work may conjure an anxious experience when you sleep, while a suppressed romantic interest may play out in your dreams. Taking note of how you feel in your dreams can help you take the reins of your thoughts and emotions, and better address or temper these through the awareness these dreams bring.

But there's another dimension to the anchor emotions offer in your dreams. They can help you interpret the symbols and metaphors at play more accurately. For instance, facing a beast of prey in your dream and feeling at ease can reveal the animal—and what it represents—as an ally on your journey, no matter how large its fangs or claws may be. On the other hand, feeling anxious when you spot this beast or feeling indifferent toward it can put a whole different spin on your dream, and what it represents.

It's easy to get caught in the conscious thoughts and feelings you feel once you wake up. Waking up from an unsettling dream can find you feeling scared, confused, or anxious when you wake up. But if you felt calm through the dream, then this is the emotion you want to anchor in when interpreting it, in order to connect with its true essence.

4. Some Symbols are Elementary

Dreams are specific to your life and energy: the meaning a symbol may hold in your dream may not always translate to the next person and their dreams, for your internal landscapes may be markedly different. But, much like our everyday manifestations, dreams too relate to our internal states. Therefore, where the more intricate symbols in our dreams are likely to be personalized to our individual psyches, the building blocks may well be something we all share in common.

For instance, the four essential elements—air, fire, earth, and water—are the building blocks of the world around us. These translate into the building blocks of our dreams—each relating to specific states of our own energy.

Air and water, for instance, relate to our thoughts and emotions respectively. When you dream of water, emotions are being brought into focus: the colour of the water, the kind of water body, and the state of the water are all clues into your own emotional well-being at the time. In fact, your own relationship to this water in the dream could tell you how well you're handling the changes or energies on this front: are you a silent observer to the water, are you swimming in it, or do you find yourself drowning under?

The state of the air in your dream offers similar analogies for your mind and thoughts, while earthy elements connect to the tangible aspects of your life—finances, lifestyle, physical body and health, etc. Fire is an element of change and dreaming of it can signify shifts and evolution in your path. Again, your relationship and emotions to the fire in your dream—big or small—could shed light on your relationship to change in your life.

5. Stay with the Dream

Working with dreams to better understand and empower your waking journey is an active discipline. Even your mundane, ordinary dreams could hold clues and guidance on your day-to-day affairs. Yes, the more dramatic dreams do seem to leave a greater impression. But if you dream as regularly as I do, there's likely to be some little message from your subconscious on a nightly basis.

But where the big dreams tend to stay with us the following day, the seemingly "mundane" dreams may not always jolt us out of our sleep or have as strong an effect. It may require an active discipline on our part for us to recollect and work with these, so that dreams become an active and consistent part of our personal reflections and explorations.

Being mindful of your dreams takes a little practice and patience. A common challenge is forgetting your dream once you wake up. Dreams are subtle vibrations that we experience as we sleep. Our everyday offers more defined and tangible manifestations of our energy, and these stronger vibes can draw our attention once we get going with our day—away from the story or symbols of our dream. It can be hard to reconnect with these once our day kicks in.

A simple technique, therefore, to help you recollect and remember your dreams is to take some time to connect with these—before you step out of bed and begin your day or interact with anyone. You may find it easier to remember your dream this way: you could jot down the little flashes as they come to you, or relive the dream in your mind in its entirety.

Either way, taking some time to connect consciously with your dream before it dissipates can help bring these into your awareness more clearly.