The other morning I woke up with a vivid dream still singing in my head.
I dreamed I'd been on a cruise ship with my 3-year-old niece someone I have had little or no contact with since she was born. My niece and I were having a great time, and she clutched a stuffed, brown bear close to her chest as she sang, Little Tommy Stuffing Bear, plays with girls and boys. Little Tommy Stuffing Bear
I still can't remember the last line to her little rhyme, but the first part continues to stick in my head. The dream came to me while at a three-day out-of-town leadership seminar where everyone was a practical stranger.
So what did my teddy bear dream mean?
According to The Everything Dreams Mini Book, slumber thoughts of ships relates to a voyage through the unconscious or a journey involving emotions. Calm waters mean life is good.
I couldn't find out exactly what a stuffed bear means, but that doesn't matter because the dream left me with a good, innocent feeling. And that was good enough for me.
Interpreting our own dreams isn't all that difficult. During dreamtime, our mind is working through life situations that we've encountered. Sorting through all that the world pitches at us can be daunting at times. But it's something we all must do in order to find balance.
Believe it or not, even if you don't remember your dreams, you're still dreaming every night.
According to dream expert Ernest Hartmann, it is believed that dreams are related to deep wishes and fears.
Several theories have been developed on exactly what a dream is.
Physician Sigmund Freud said dreams are fulfillments of wishes, usually in disguised form. On the other hand, Robert W. McCarley and J. Allan Hobson said there is no need for psychological explanations of dreams because it is a biological process wherein the brain's cortex is bombarded with the random images and story plots that make up dreams.
But most psychiatrists and psychologists continue to believe dreams have meaning to the dreamer.
Learning the language of your own dreams can help you to understand yourself better.
Interpreting dreams goes back to Biblical times, when prophets predicted famines and God gave messages to mere men.
Most likely, your dreams center around the absence of a loved one, an upcoming school final or an embarrassing moment. Or they are happy ones where you're singing on a cruise ship with Little Tommy Stuffing Bear.
Some Web sites that might help in your search for more information on dreams are:
http://www.geocities.com/loliemargaret/ where Lolie says:
we all have dreams, whether we remember them or not. When a person is deprived of sleep, they begin to hallucinate...or...dream while awake. So, that pretty much tells us that dreams are an integral part of our lives.
The Web site has a list of dream symbols and what they mean and encourages keeping a dream journal.
http://www.qcislands.net/vision/ where you'll find The Dream Hat and multiple dream symbol explanations. Cat says:
The Dream Hat endeavors to bring you the most illuminating and revealing look at how they work and what they mean. Ideally, we will learn to understand our own dream language and be more able to use this life-long resource to our best advantage in this world.
http://www.dreamnetwork.net/ where their purpose is:
It is our purpose to demystify dreamwork so as to make the meaning of our dreams more readily available to each of us, believing every dream we remember desires to be understood; recurring dreams or nightmares implore (or beg) our attention.
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