Dreams are highly symbolic. Seldom do they suggest anything overt. Rather, they illustrate patterns of thinking.

I suggest that you examine your dream material for things that help you understand the nature of your own thinking process. Since all dream material is ultimately about you, what are your dreams saying about you? Are they telling you that you are a confident person? Or are they saying something else? What could you change about your self that would make you happier and more confident?

Insight into your self (regardless of the source of that insight) can greatly empower your ability to change for the positive.

I once read someplace that those dream journals are not accurate, this is why.

Imagine you dream of a spider, some dream journal you pick up says OWWWWW Spiders bad, you are going to have bad luck! That is if you don't like spiders though, lets say you do, now spiders good, you will have good luck! So it is highly dependent on what you feel about things. Any dream journal is how someone else feels about things.

Lets say Alster Crowly made a Dream Journal, and Mother Tressa made a Dream Journal, do you think all the dream symbols and interpretation would be identical? For each of them, their own dream journals would be very accurate to themselves, but if they decided to trade dream journals I somehow don't think that would work well or be a good idea.

Just found this question... dreams and their interpretation are my forte. And I agree with what is said above that the interpretation may differ for individuals as each symbol has many layers and what applies to us at our level might not be valid for someone else.

However - there are clues to help in interpreting dreams. Let us take 'coffins' for example - if one dreams of a coffin and wakes up happy (if not puzzled and slightly nervous) then one can be pretty well assured that the coffin symbol is relating to new adventures, as a direct result of laying something in the past to rest. So dreaming of coffins can be really good news.

Snakes are interesting, because most folk dreaming of snakes think of the devil, not knowing that the Wise people of yore, and today, were/are symbolised by the Snake. Nargals. Then we have the Ureaus..

http://www.crystalinks.com/uraeus.html

So you see nothing is clear cut - but you will find that when you remember your dreams, and sense that they are something special, they will be connected to something going on in your life/mind at the moment...

I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 10 years. When I decided to quick smoking, I had dreams that were so realistic that I thought I had actually smoked the cigarette. It left me wondering when I awaken whether I did or was it just a dream. It turned out to be a dream, but during my waking moments, I had no craving for a cigarette. These dreams re-occured for 3 months and then stopped. I had also stopped smoking and never went back. I wish I could put this into a program for people who want to stop smoking.

Dream interpretation has been around long, long before Freud and Jung and has always had devotees and nay sayers. The type of dream interpretation that relies on a common set of culturally defined symbols and signs is flaky at best. The process of dreaming is malleable that if you learn about how Freud interpreted symbols you would start to have dreams that seemed to back of his theories. Focus on Jung for a while and you will begin to see more meaningful connections between archetypes. Devote yourself to a glossary-style dream dictionary and you will be priming yourself to have dreams in that language.

There is Hebrew proverb about a man coming to a rabbi for an interpretation of a dream he had the night before. The rabbi didn't know what exactly to make of the dream, so he traveled through the city and brought the dream to 21 other rabbis and interpreters. Each gave a different interpretation, and some time later, upon reflection, the rabbi realized each of the 21 was correct.

So sure, reading books and talking to analysts or even just your friends can shed a little meaning on dreams. But ultimately it is up to you to determine what your associations of dream experiences are and what they mean to you. Reading up on what a symbol might mean according to various traditions and contexts can jump start your understanding for sure, but in the end is like any other experience you will have; you must derive your own meaning.

It's valid when your dream has a strongly emotional component...

If your dream has a strongly emotional component, the meaning is simply that you have some UNRESOLVED emotional conflicts.

Then, your concerted efforts at putting those unresolved emotional issues in some real and current context (recent real-life-experience), can become a very useful and rewarding exercise in creative problem-solving.

Well, my answer might seem a bit crude but I think you'll get it.

IMO dream time is like going to the bathroom for the mind. We take in so much information and process so much but we can not use all of it. Like food, we take in the nutrients that are beneficial and discard the waste.

We need to de-frag our brain.

Inward quest is the fiber for my mind :)

Michael