by Ronnee Ruselle

Factors that can affect your dreams

As you no doubt know, your brain is an organic computer. It needs to process the information from each day and add it to what you already know. It does this every night, but on some nights, other information that is more important for your conscious self to be aware of will be shown to you - these are the conclusions or the realizations that the brain comes up with. It is the result of information coming together like pieces of a puzzle to create a clear picture.

Although there are some elements in dreams that can have common meaning, those same elements can also have an altogether different meaning from one person to another. Life's experiences, our opinions and beliefs will influence what the meaning is for each of us. Your brain will take in your views, your emotions, what is happening around you and how you feel about those events. These things are all entirely unique to each individual because they come from all of your experiences and your feelings, that's why the most efficient dream analysis will come from yourself only and also why although you can find some answers from dream analysis books and lists, those are only suggestions of what it could mean - not definite answers or interpretations. Only you alone will know for certain whether an interpretation is correct and you can do this by trusting your gut feelings. As you roam through several possible meanings, you'll get a feeling as to which is most likely to be correct. Your brain works in conjunction with your energy to say "Yes, this is the one." Time and practice makes this process easier.

Dream Information

To make dream analysis simpler, it helps to classify the source of the information and the types of information you can get. This allows you to break each part of the dream down into smaller, easier to understand pieces. One dream could carry any number of messages or focus on any number of subjects and this will help you to determine its meaning.

Sources of Dream Information

Over the years I have found that the information will generally relate to, and come from several different areas. The information will not necessarily fall into just one of the following categories, but it can be made up of any amount of each which is why dreams can be so different. Those areas are: processing daily information, current events, astral projection, spirit communication, events around you and past or prediction.

Processing daily information

Dreams can reflect the actual events that happened over the course of the day or they can be strongly influenced by them. This is the brain processing the information from that day. When you just process the daily information with no overriding conclusions or awareness coming through, then this is a good sign that there is nothing that you need to be aware of so the information process is showing through. For example, you may find that a show you watched replays in your dream or an event you experienced that day. You'll find that the information that has the most impact on you will be the overriding influence in your dreams. For example, if you are worried about an element of a relationship, that will tend to be the major focus overriding less worrisome things.

Use your instincts to tell whether there is anything special in your dream that requires your attention. Please don't assume that every single dream will carry intense messages or special meanings as they are often just your mind reflecting its daily processing of information. You can however, gauge from your dreams what your state of mind, health and happiness is like and that's good to monitor.

Current events

Named for the fact that the information is related to an event that is happening currently around you, outside of the dream. Even though you're sleeping, your bodys senses are still active and your natural warning system still works. Should there be an emergency situation arise around you, you can sometimes find that a feeling of 'fear' or the need to awaken will suddenly enter into your dream and will be sort of like having a message appear for you in the middle of a movie. It will attempt to draw your attention strongly enough for you to awaken and deal with the situation at hand. This is often the case for people whose homes are being broken into or if an alarm goes off in the distance, if someone is calling for help or if you have spirit presence that should not be there.

Astral Projection

In short, this is projecting your energy in the astral plane, but I use it to describe the action of your energy moving about with some conscious recognition of it. Sometimes your energy can visit a location and this location or the action of moving around can appear in your dream. Many flying dreams are in fact your true experience of your energy flying around. I had a client who had a nap one day and dreamed that she was at her local supermarket in the freezer section where she saw a friend and tapped the friend on the shoulder. When she later shared this 'lifelike' dream with her friend, her friend confirmed that she was in fact in the freezer section of the supermarket at the time my client had her dream and that she suddenly felt as if someone was with her, but couldn't place who it was or where the feeling came from.

Spirit Communication

Spirit communication or visitation can be represented in your dreams. This could be one of several possibilities:

• Visit from someone you know - Because you are at rest and your energy is not required to move all of the muscles around your body etc. that it does during the day when you are active, your energy is free to roam. Sometimes if someone is thinking about you, their spirit (which is their conscious energy) will float towards you and they may connect with you in their sleep. You may even share the same elements of a dream and recognize each other in the dream. This can be called spirit visitation because it's their spirit which is visiting you. Some people deliberately practice doing this, but it's better to try and experience your astral projection without seeking to involve others otherwise it could interfere with other elements that may be important to each of you in your dream state. Of course if it happens naturally, then it's fine and meant to be.
• Visits from Dearly Departed or other spirits - When you are asleep and your energy is roaming, it often removes some barriers of the physical world that are experienced by those on the other side. This can make it easier for those you love who have crossed over to connect with you, allowing them to send you a message which could come to you in any form.
  
  Also, if they come to visit and are in your physical presence while you're asleep, your dream can reflect that by showing them appearing in your dream. Your senses are still active even while you sleep so they will pick up on events happening around you and report to you, letting you become aware of loved ones around you.
• Guide messages - This can be quite intricate and a lot of guided messages will be symbolic. This is to help you receive the information without realizing that it comes from a guide. This can be for a variety of reasons. I would be likely for those people who might tend to become reliant upon their guide/s if they are aware of how easily they can connect with them. It could also be that this is the best way that you will understand the message they are sending to you. It could be to grab your attention to their message and sometimes they use your dreams to just send comfort. Sometimes the guide himself/herself may appear in the dream in some form and lead you to something that is important for you to learn or be aware of. It is the same for meditations. I recall one day I was meditating and a guide approached me in the form of a baby deer so that I would not feel intimidated or surprised by her sudden appearance. She then led me to something that became an important message for me. You can also experience healing from the guides being in your dreams.
• Your guides can also channel information and learning to you in your sleep so that the information is available to you whenever you need it in the future. You'll never know what this information is in relation to and try not to assume that this is what is causing the disruption to your sleep or dreams. It is just handy to know in case you've eliminate all other reasons for the side-effects it can have on you. The side-effects are that your dreams will be very active and you may even find it difficult to sleep because you will be having energy channelled into you and it's similar to having a big energy boost.

Events around you

Your brain puts together all the data you've gathered from your primary and secondary senses and your subconscious can see a pattern of events coming for you. This is not prediction. This is simply having enough parts of the information to see a clear picture forming about something that is going on around you. Subconsciously you have become aware of something and the information shows through in your dreams giving you a chance of becoming consciously aware of it.

Past or Prediction

Time is a physical thing, not spiritual, so when your energy roams, time is no barrier to you. You may inadvertently find yourself suddenly in a past life. It could be yours or it you could step into someone elses. This can be like seeing their life through their eyes and feeling their feelings, similar to having your own experiences.

The future is also an element of 'time' dreaming. This is where deja-vu comes in. Deja-vu is the awareness of a possible moment or event in your life. You can experience any number of deja-vu events when you are sleeping. You will not always remember the dream.

Deja-vu is helpful when it has a message or warning attached to it. Sometimes that message could be as simple as letting you know you are on the right path. Those should be written down to help you remember the message when the moment of deja-vu arrives. Unfortunately you won't always know which dreams will become deja-vu events which is why it is a good idea to keep records of your dreams.

Types of Dream Information

Simple information - will be things that appear in your dream that you can easily work out the meaning of. They may not necessarily depict something in an exact way, but they're obvious enough that you can easily work out their meaning.

Symbolic information - will refer to things that are not real or actual around you, but are a representation of it.

Symbolic information is usually the hardest to analyse simply because of the numerous possible meanings for each piece of symbolism.

Literal information - this is information that actually is what it is representing for example, your relative that appears in the dream may in fact be who the dream is about or the thing that happens may in fact eventuate.

Literal information can also be present in your dreams with visits from loved ones and guides. Although the dream can be filled with all sorts of action and symbolism, a loved one may walk through the middle of it and hug you or tell you that he/she loves you. This is your brain picking up on their message when they visit you in your sleep and passing it onto you through the dream. When you are in the dream state, it may be easier for a loved one to get a message through to you as you don't have the distractions and responsibilities of day to day life to draw your focus away from it.

Analysing - What To Do

Write it down

Basically the trick to analysing your dreams is to see 'the big picture'. Firstly, write down absolutely everything that you can think of about your dream. If you've already read the article How to get the most out of your dreams then you will already have seen a list of the types of things you're looking out for when writing about your dream. Use this as a guide and then add as many things as you can to it for your own list of what to look out for and write down about your dream.

Break it down

Take each single step of your dream and see what it contains. Take into account what you see, what you hear, what you feel emotionally about the dream generally and about each part of it, what your gut instinct tells you about it. Take into account colours, shapes, movements, attitudes, facial features or expressions, body language, words, weather conditions, timeframes, settings, surroundings - everything! Look at each bit of it.

Use the information above to help you see where different parts of the dream are connected to others - remember, you can have several things going on at once in a dream - and make sure that you again use your gut instincts to help guide you with this as well because clues are placed with you to help sort it out so trust them.

This seems like a lot of work doesn't it? Well, it is, but it is well worth the effort and this is truly the only way you'll learn to become an expert at analysing your own dreams. The effort will be a short one, because the harder you work at this to begin with, the faster you'll learn it and you'll quickly interpret a lot more easily with less effort.

Reconstruct it to find the new story

Once you've got it sorted out, you will begin to see a pattern emerge. When you've worked out what all the bits and pieces mean, then put them back together in an order that creates a story for you. You will see while you're doing that, that the whole thing really does become quite clear for you.

So it's like taking a bunch of cards with a message written in another language on them, interpreting them into your language and then putting them back together again so that you can read the message.

Expect some bits to not make sense. If this is the case, then look again at it and see what other possible meanings it could have.

It is important that you don't over-analyse too. Most often with dream analysis, the obvious meaning is the correct meaning and you only need to pull apart the different events in the dream and look at the colours, actions, mannerisms etc. of those so be careful to take it event by event or meaningful item by item, not by colour, action, behaviour etc. or you may confuse yourself. Below I've given you a very basic example of a possible dream and its analysis. It's off the top of my head, so it's not too in depth.

Interpretation Example...

The Dream: In your dream, you are out walking in the street and the neighbours around you all say hello as you pass by. Suddenly after passing one neighbour, he walks up to another neighbour and they both look at you carefully. Because you're looking back at them, you trip on a rock on the road in front of you and nearly fall, but save yourself just as a third neighbour who is like a sister hugs you hello, then waves goodbye to you as you continue to walk down the street. She proceeds to walk over to your house and break into your letterbox.

Analysis - this is how it could be analysed:

Location - Walking in the street - To begin with, you're walking in the street so you're not at home indicating that this is a situation most likely to be outside of your personal life or yourself. The fact that it is close to your home though (outside it, in the street) means that the situation could be close in proximity or time to you. These two pieces of information suggest that it could be social or work related.

The street is outside of your home, so it's on familiar ground. This is referring to some place that you're comfortable with or very familiar with. This is a location that you know, so bearing in mind that it's likely to be related to work or your social life, it could be telling you that the situation is occurring at your workplace or a place that you visit regularly and are comfortable in such as a friend's house or a club you go to every week.

Neighbours - The fact that you have neighbours around you suggests that either the issue is to do with something that is around you all of the time or it is to do with familiar faces that are around you often (considering that neighbours are a fairly permanent fixture). It could also mean that you are surrounded by supportive and familiar faces so it could be a message of support.

They're waiting until after you walk by to look at you carefully, so it could be that the dream is telling you that there could be others who are aware of the issue and are watching what is going on. It also tends to remove the idea of support.

Tripping over the rock - indicates that you're not seeing something that is in front of you with this situation. Yes, it really can be as simple as that. The dream will be a mixture of simple, symbolic and literal messages.

Friendly Neighbour - The friendly neighbour could return the idea of support to your analysis and the fact that this neighbour is like a friend suggests that someone you trust is involved and it's likely to be someone who displays their friendship towards you (when comparing her behaviour to that of the other neighbours). For me, the fact that this woman walks over to your letterbox and breaks into it as you walk away, shows that somebody may be betraying you. I say this because the letterbox is where your personal mail is plus the fact that the mail is private. She's not attacking you directly or she would have been likely to break into the house. This suggests that someone is causing some form of trouble around you and it's affecting you personally as theft of your mail would.

She does this without your knowledge because you are walking away and unaware so it's likely that the betrayal is going on behind your back rather than an issue that is glaringly obvious that you are avoiding.

My analysis of this dream would be to tell you to be aware of a situation around you that involves work or some other obligation or responsibility. There may be a trusted person around you who is betraying you and that you've noticed it, but it hasn't registered with you consciously.

You may begin to recall the situations that are the puzzle pieces the brain has put together or if you don't know who it is, you at least know to be more aware of what's happening around you so that you don't blindly walk into trouble. Of course this is a made up example and a very simple one.

Other things that can impact your dreams

Your state of physical, mental or emotional health can have an impact on your dreams and what they are about. Those who are ill will be more likely to have dreams that are unpleasant than if they were healthy. As the situation they are dealing with eases, so will the unpleasant dreams. This is not always the cause of an unpleasant dream but it's important to note because it can help you understand whether analysis is needed or recognition of your emotional, physical or mental state.

Often what at first seems like a dream with a negative or unpleasant message can in fact turn out to be very positive. Practice and time will help you learn to determine the difference. As many are aware, a death could mean a new beginning - out with the old, in with the new or it could mean you're getting ready to end something (not necessarily your life, by the way).

Good luck with your dream analysis.