So What Does It All Mean?

Readers often ask me how I go about interpreting my dreams. An interesting technique I’ve come across recently has been developed by Scott Sparrow. While many techniques emphasize dream images, Sparrow’s focuses on the action of the dream, and he suggests we’ll learn a lot by looking at the choices we make as we create our dreams. As part of his method he teaches a technique for paring the dream down to its essential action, which can lead to a quick insight. The paring process is as much about what you leave out as it is about what you put in. Things to leave out: descriptions, images, specific actors. What to put in: what happens in the dream.

For example, here’s the pared down dream action of the dream Criticism Resolved: Someone is working on a project. She is angry when someone criticizes her, yet later realizes accommodating the criticism is trivial. For more information about Scott’s technique, which he calls the Five Star Method, click here.

For information about other ways to interpret your dreams, see these earlier posts:

1. For a way to get started using the techniques in Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work and some helpful websites for beginners, click here. 
2. A simple way to get at the dream’s meaning is to write about the dream right after you’ve recorded it. For more about this technique, which I call a write-around, click here.