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One of the oldest questions when it comes to the topic of dreams is: do they mean anything? If so, how do you know which ones do, which ones don’t, and what they mean?

People have been making quite a bit of money for a long time writing books about dream interpretation and offering it as a service. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible for any outside source to interpret your dreams. I feel that what they mean, if anything, would be quite personal. Someone who doesn’t know you very deeply would have a difficult, if not impossible time figuring out the significance of what happens in your head.

I really put no faith at all in dream interpretation books. They are written based on what the author thinks certain things mean. Now, they may have put a great deal of research into what they write, but it’s still based on their perceptions and colored by their own lives and experiences. What one person says something means in a dream cannot be what it absolutely means for everyone. It’s simply not possible for things to have only one representation or type of significance to all people. We’re too different for that to even be a possibility.

I think when people read dream interpretation books or have other people interpret their dreams, they’re running the risk of making that person’s ideas and feelings their own. I have been asked to tell people what I think their dreams mean, and I’ll do it, but I also make sure to tell them that it’s my own perception, and could mean something completely different to their subconscious. Most books and dream interpreters don’t tell you that. They encourage you to believe that their reading is absolute and infallible.

Some people say dreams don’t really mean anything, and that it’s just your subconscious sorting things out. I think it’s somewhere in the middle of meaningful and meaningless. Some dreams just can’t be made sense of in the light of day, and don’t need to be. Some really matter. I think that if they really matter, your conscious mind will latch onto them and help you work through what they mean. Otherwise, it’s just your brain doing what it does when you give it time to play with and sort through all the data it has.

Briana Blair

Briana Blair is an author and artisan. She has published more then 30 books and thousands of articles across multiple sites. After practicing Paganism and witchcraft for 25 years, she's now on a journey as an atheist and skeptic. She's eclectic, unpredictable, and always evolving. Facebook - Twitter