Dream Interpretation And Learning Your Own Symbolism

In this episode of The Mystic's Manual Podcast, host Marie Blythe guides you through the world of dream interpretation. She discusses why generic dream dictionaries aren't always effective and encourages listeners to discover their own personal symbolism. Tune in to learn how to connect with your inner wisdom and better understand the messages your subconscious sends you through your dreams.

Transcript

Hello,

Frequency Leaders.

I'm Marie Blythe,

And welcome to the Mystics Manual,

Where we explore the how-to of energy alchemy,

Metaphysics,

Intuition,

And all things mystical and magical through the lens of heart-centered living and spiritually aligned consciousness growth.

I don't know about you all,

But when I was a kid,

I had a dream dictionary that was like several hundred pages long.

It was alphabetical order,

And it had all these different symbols in it and then different interpretations for what those things could mean if you dreamed about it.

I had this thing,

And I was so excited about it because I was going to learn to interpret dreams.

I had picked this thing up at like a half-price bookstore because that was the only place you could get metaphysical books back in the day,

At least for me anyway.

And I was so excited about this book.

And then anytime I would have a dream,

I would go and pick out the different symbols or objects or if there was a mountain or a river or something like that,

And I'd look it up in the little dream dictionary.

And it would always make zero sense to me.

It would make no sense in the context of what was happening in the dream,

In the context of what was happening in my life,

And it really just didn't work for me.

I kind of stopped trying,

And I gave up on dream interpretation probably by the time I was like 14.

But even though I kind of gave up on it,

I still knew that our dreams were important,

And I knew that there was symbolism there that could be meaningful.

I just didn't understand it.

Fast forward decades later when I had my spiritual awakening and my intuitive awakening,

And I started having more intuitive experiences and understanding my own intuitive symbolism,

How my intuition is wired and how it works for me,

And how my guides communicate with me through my intuition clairvoyantly,

Clairaudiently,

Through synchronicities in my physical reality.

When I learned those things,

How to understand and interpret my intuition,

Then I realized that I could apply those same concepts to my dreams.

And what I also realized was that we all have a very unique intuitive language and symbolism language based on our own wiring,

Like our own brain wiring,

Based on our culture,

Our ancestral traditions,

Based on our language.

So many different things inform how we interpret our own symbolism.

So I truly believe based on my own personal experience that there's not one set of symbols that work across the board for everyone for dreams.

I feel that we each have our own unique language for dreams and our intuition that we have to learn to interpret for ourselves.

So in this episode,

I wanted to share with you some of the tips,

Techniques,

And methods that I have developed for myself over the years for how to interpret dreams and dreamtime experiences that I have found very helpful in healing for me.

And maybe you might find these helpful for you as well.

So I want to preface this by saying that we can have many different experiences while we're sleeping,

Some of which are not actually what we define of as dreams.

And so some of those fall into a completely different category from what I'm talking about,

Meaning astral travel,

Astral projection,

Direct communication with our guides and higher self.

There's all kinds of different dreamtime experiences that we can have that aren't qualified as dreams or I don't label them as dreams.

And those are great as well.

And those also have meaning,

But I'm specifically talking about dreams where we have kind of a story play out that we probably wake up and think,

Ooh,

That was interesting.

What,

What did that mean?

Or what was that all about?

And we tend to remember the ones that are important to us.

You know what I'm talking about.

Okay.

So the first thing that I find helpful is to assess whether the dream that we've had is meant to be healing or informational.

Because our dreams often fall into one of these two categories or both sometimes.

So if you've had a dream and you're wanting to figure out the meaning of it or why you had this dream,

What it's all about,

You can start by asking yourself,

Your intuition,

Journaling about it.

If you're used to communicating with your guides and higher self or doing pendulum work,

Dowsing,

Divination,

Things like that,

You can ask,

Was this dream informational or was it a healing dream or both?

And try to discern that first.

Once you have that figured out,

Then you can start with figuring out the importance of the dream or what you're meant to do with the dream,

If anything.

Let's start with healing dreams.

So when we have old stuff,

Old wounds,

Old traumas,

Old repressed emotions,

In order to heal these and fully release them,

Especially if they're old and really repressed,

We often have to have a triggering experience when it's time for us to heal things that is in a similar theme or a similar bandwidth or brings up similar emotions for us so that we can bring that repressed emotional energy to the surface,

To release,

To heal and then release.

And this actually happens a lot in our physical life.

So we often have physical experiences that may be challenging,

May be difficult,

May be triggering,

That are on purpose,

That are meant to bring up old trauma energy,

Old repressed emotions,

That we need to identify or recognize in order to heal and release them.

So our outer world is a reflection of what we're holding in our inner world.

Sometimes there are experiences in our past where it's not really in our highest good to have a physical experience that triggers that repressed emotion or trauma,

Either because it will be re-traumatizing for us or because we've healed enough that we don't really have people or experiences in our life that can trigger that same lower emotional frequency.

So what our higher self and guides will often do then is create a dream or a dream experience that is meant to activate these lower emotions and maybe a trauma or a wound from your past that's ready to heal.

And this can be from recent past or it can be from way back.

One of the ways that I've learned that my guides kind of help me pinpoint the timeframe for this or what parts of me are holding these energies that are trying to heal is context.

So there will be people in my dream from a certain time in my life that will help me pinpoint the era of my life from which a certain theme or energy is coming up to heal.

So if there's people that I went to high school with,

Even if I wasn't friends with them or didn't know them very well,

If they're in my dream,

That tells me,

Oh,

This is probably from that time in my life.

Or if there are people from my early 20s,

That tells me,

Oh,

That's when that's the time in my life when this happened.

Or if there's a certain location maybe that maybe you used to go to when you were in elementary school for vacation,

Maybe that's the time in your life that it's bringing up.

So sometimes it's these context clues that will help you determine the timeframe of your life that a wound was created that's trying to come up to heal.

So that's the first thing to make note of.

So look at that in your dream to see if you can pinpoint a timeframe in your life.

The next thing to pay attention to is the emotion that's coming up for you during the dream,

Especially if you're sensitive.

Because empaths,

Intuitives,

People that are sensitive in their feeling sense often are very good at interpreting the finer frequencies of emotional energy.

So we may have a dream and we might feel a lot of intense emotion or a combination of emotion,

And it can be really helpful to sit with that emotion and then think about,

Okay,

When have I felt like this at other times in my life?

Or what past circumstances does this feeling state that I had in my dream remind me of?

And that can give you clues about the trauma or the wounds or repressed emotions that are coming up to heal for you,

Or a time in your life where these things might have happened that are coming up too early.

So those are the first two really important clues to look at that aren't even really getting into mystical symbolism of a tree or a butterfly or whatever.

Those things are important too.

However,

We all have our own interpretation of what those things mean.

And sometimes those objects or animals or nature symbols or whatever can have varied meanings depending on the context of the dream.

So it's difficult to say,

Oh,

You had a snake in your dream,

So this means X,

Y,

Or Z.

For some of us,

It might mean that the snake represents rebirth.

For others,

It might represent a specific trauma that we've had or a specific person that reminds us of a snake.

For others,

It could represent a part of ourselves that's coming up.

It could be different for you depending on what's coming up in that dream.

So in one dream,

A snake might be one thing,

And in another dream,

It might mean something else.

So this is where it gets really difficult to pinpoint what symbolism is,

And that's where it's really important to tune into your intuition.

So a trick that I've learned with this is if you can't figure out what the symbolism is of something in your dream and what it's trying to bring up for you to heal or even understand maybe,

Is you can kind of go back into the dream or go into a meditative state,

Go into your third eye,

Into your inner vision,

And bring an image up of the symbol in your dream.

And that could be an animal,

An object,

A person,

A location.

It could be anything that was in your dream that felt or seemed important or significant.

So you'll bring that in front of you and then directly ask that symbol,

What do you represent?

And see what you hear or see.

This seems far-fetched,

But it works almost every time.

And often it will be something that you maybe aren't expecting it to be.

Maybe there's an animal in the dream and you're like,

Oh,

What does this represent?

And you call it in front of you and maybe you think it's representing some person in your life,

And you ask it,

What do you represent?

And it might say,

Oh,

I represent your grief.

And you're like,

Wait,

What?

I thought you were this person that's been giving me trouble at work or whatever.

So it's important to learn how to navigate those symbols in your dream for yourself so that you can learn your own symbolic language and work with your dreams in the way that's right for you,

Rather than having to take someone else's word for it.

So that's a trick you can use,

Is to go in the inner vision and ask it what it represents.

And you can do this for multiple symbols in the dream.

Write it down and see if a story or a message or something related to healing comes up for you once you start to assess this.

What else can we do in dreams?

So if a dream is meant to be for healing and is meant to help us release something or transform something,

Once we've kind of gathered the basics of information,

Maybe a time in our life that this is bringing up,

An emotion this is bringing up,

Maybe looking at a theme or pattern that's reminding us of,

Looking at some of the symbols.

If we have a dream that we don't really like the way that it played out,

And sometimes we'll have these dreams where if it's a younger part of us that has different programming or a different understanding than what we have now in our life,

We might wake up from the dream and be like,

Ooh,

I wouldn't have done it that way now.

Or why couldn't I do this thing that I know is the right thing to do or what I should be doing in this dream?

And often it's because the dream was from the perspective of a wounded part of yourself that needs healing.

And it's through the lens of that wounded part,

Not through the lens of your conscious now self.

So what you can then do is go back into that dream and almost take like a screenshot of it in your mind of a significant point in it,

Or imagine it as like a stack of photos or a film reel or something like that.

And envision taking that dream that might have been challenging for you and throwing that into a fire.

So imagine throwing it into maybe a violet flame or whatever feels right to you.

And intend when you do this to release the emotional energy,

Trauma energy,

Limiting beliefs and different programming from this dream that was coming up to the surface to heal.

So allow that to kind of burn away.

You're burning the dream and all the emotions that came up during it.

And then go back into the dream and rewrite the story or play out a new story that's how your self would behave or act from a conscious loving lens.

And this is also a conscious loving boundary lens.

So maybe it means that you speak up for yourself in the dream,

Or maybe it means that you take a different action that maybe you wouldn't have taken when you were 11 or 6 or whatever.

Maybe it means you get yourself out of a challenging situation.

Rewrite the story and ask your higher self and guides to come in to help you with this,

To rewrite it in the most aligned way for you.

And then you can ask to release any remaining energies that are not in alignment with your new rewritten story and anchor in new templates that reflect your highest truth or your most balanced aligned self.

So that's one way that we can work with our dreams to heal that I find to be really effective.

It's super empowering because you're not relying on somebody else to interpret your dreams for you,

And you're not feeling super helpless at whatever dreams you're having.

So you can actually work with the energies of your dreams consciously to release things,

To release fear,

Trauma,

Grief,

Old energies,

Whatever it might be.

Now,

Sometimes we'll have dreams that are purely informational in nature,

And these come about when our guides and higher self are wanting us to know something.

And our dream time is the easiest place for them to get that message across in a way that we can remember and understand it.

And often these are dream time experiences that are vivid and feel important.

They feel like,

Ooh,

I need to remember this.

This feels like important information.

So if we have these types of dream experiences,

Then we feel like we need to figure out what the message is or what the information is.

And often,

Again,

It will be presented in a way that's symbolic and that is symbolism in the way that you can interpret and understand it based on your own symbology paradigm or your way of understanding it culturally or how your own intuition works or whatever that might be.

One of the ways that my higher self likes to communicate with me is to give me little puzzles to solve because she knows that I like that.

So I'll have dreams sometimes where I'm working with the planets,

Like astrologically,

And I'll see different planets come together or different symbolism around different planets.

And this will give me clues about certain alignments,

Like planetary alignments that might be coming up for me in the future that are important for me to keep an eye on.

And usually I'll have this dream with some planets and certain things coming together and I'll be able to figure out which planets it is and which things are aligning.

And lo and behold,

I'll pull up an astrology chart and figure out that in six months down the road,

This conjunction is happening or this opposition is happening or something like that.

And that tells me that's a significant time for me to look out for.

And then I'll start to journal or channel and find out more information that I might need to know about that timeframe and try to pick the symbols apart using the same method that I just explained of asking the symbol,

What do you represent or what are you trying to tell me or what is important about this message and see what information comes through for me.

And if you're someone that gets fearful dreams that you maybe are afraid are premonitions or are dreams about something bad that maybe is going to happen in the future,

What I would tell you about that is that often our guides will not give us information in a way that causes fear for us.

So if you're having fear come up in your dream,

I would actually be more inclined to look at the healing techniques that I've mentioned rather than is this telling me something bad's going to happen in my future?

Often,

Sometimes bad things that happen are actually very symbolic of something else that's going on in our inner world rather than something that's going to happen in our outer world.

I'm not saying this is a hundred percent of the time,

But often it can be something that's happening within us.

So that can be helpful to look at if you're not sure,

Or if you're afraid it might be something bad happening,

You can tune into that.

The other thing I would say if you have premonition dreams,

One thing that my guides have told me,

And this is something I mentioned in the last episode,

Is that I am rarely or never given premonitions for things that I'm meant to experience.

So if they're giving me something that feels negative to me that I don't want to experience and I've been told about it in advance,

My guides have told me it's often so that I can raise my frequency and jump out of that timeline and experience a different reality.

So I pretty much have never had a scary premonition come true.

Now,

I have had other premonitions about when someone's going to pass or maybe somebody is going to have a baby or something like that that did come true,

But the information was never presented to me in a scary way.

It was always very symbolic,

Very neutral,

And it was never presented in a way that was meant to induce fear if it was going to happen.

So that's an important thing to know is your higher self and your guides are never intentionally trying to create fear about your future.

And if fear is coming up,

It's generally because you're supposed to jump out of that or heal something or clear something from within yourself,

Or it's symbolic of something going on in your inner world.

So I hope this has helped give you a few tools to use with your dreams.

These tools are by no means all of the things that you can do to figure your dreams out or interpret them,

But I do think it's super empowering to have some tools to work through your dreams and try to understand them because they can be so important for personal growth,

For our healing process,

For getting intuitive information,

And all kinds of other things.

So I hope that this has helped you.

And if you have made it to the end of this episode and joined me for this,

I want to thank you for being here.

I'm so happy to have you and I'm so happy to be on this path with you.

Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.