Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. How many of these do you sense in your dreams? The more practised you become at recalling your dreams, the more you’ll notice a whole range of senses, but one thing that most people agree on is sight. Dreams are highly visual. You don’t fall asleep to listen to a story. You don’t go into the dream state to smell your way through the night. You settle down to a visual feast.
When you interpret a dream, think like a painter. Ask how a painter might communicate without sound, touch, smell, and taste.
One method dreams employ is to express issues and feelings in your life as visual clichés.
For example, if you’ve had a couple of days where you’ve been ‘chasing your tail’, going round in circles, getting nowhere, your dream might present an animal chasing its tail.
Or if you’re experiencing a difficulty communicating with someone, your dream might show a cat with a human tongue hanging from its jaws if you’re familiar with the cliché, ‘The cat’s got my tongue’.
Or perhaps your dream has you in a car being ‘driven round the bend by someone’, or maybe your dream shows you revengefully setting an angry dog onto someone and then that dog ‘comes back to bite you’ indicating karma, that you get back what you put out.
Some of the weirdest dream symbols are visual clichés. Keep your eyes open for them. They give you a great belly laugh, and you’ll pinch yourself at what a clever-clogs you are to come up with these instant messengers in your dreams.
[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]
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