Our dreams can be vivid and almost life-like, including our dreams about romance, love and sex. Kelly Sullivan Walden’s The Love, Sex, and Relationship Dream Dictionary: Your Guide to Interpreting 1,000 Common Dreams and Symbols about Your Romantic Life is here to help us figure out what those dreams mean and what we can do about them. According to her newest work, you can answer many questions from dreams, including:
● How will I attract my soul mate?
● Will I ever meet the man or woman of my dreams?
● Once I find the love of my life, how do I keep him or her from leaving?
● Why am I so afraid my partner will cheat on me, leave me, or stop loving me?
● Why am I afraid to make a commitment?
Here are some things to know before you get started decoding your dreams, including a few of the many types of dreams you may be having.
How to Decode Your Dreams:
Think of your dream world as a dragon: mysterious, otherworldly, fiery, sometimes frightening, and powerful. Gaining mastery of your dream world is not about taming this dragon. If you learn to SADDLE your dragon, and eventually learn to ride fearlessly on its back into the nether world of your subconscious, you will get a glimpse of what your dreams are telling you. In your dream journal or on a sheet of paper, write the word SADDLE across the top:
Symbol: What are the major symbols in your dream? Focus on people, places, things, ideas, and actions.
Association: What are your associations with these symbols? Do you like or dislike them? Do they remind you of another person or place?
Dream Dictionary: Find the symbols from your dream in this book. Their descriptions will help you fill in the gaps of your dream interpretation and give you a broader understanding. If you can’t find the symbol from your dream here, remember to look for synonyms, check multiple sections if needed (e.g., sports might be a thing or an action—in this book it is categorized in chapter 5), or try the index for help locating it.
Life Experience: Are the events of your life affecting the content of your dreams? Did you change jobs recently? Are you pregnant? Did someone you love pass away?
Emotions: What are the major feelings and emotions present in your dream? Were you afraid, angry, happy, or calm? Are your feelings changed upon waking?
Once you’ve followed the SADDLE prompt and written your responses, read it all together and take note of any “aha” moments. Ask yourself, “How is this dream helping to improve my relationships, enrich my love life, and deepen my enjoyment of the gift of my sexuality?” Write down your reflections in your journal.
Types of Dreams:
Your dreams, no matter how odd, bizarre, scary, repetitive, mystical, or sexually charged, are always coming to you in service of your health, healing, wellbeing, self-awareness, and growth. However, not all dreams are created equal. In this section I’ll describe the most common types of dreams; understanding them will reveal vital clues about the bizarre and brilliant language of your dreams.
Lucid
A lucid dream occurs when you become aware that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming. These dreams can be invigorating and empowering as they reveal your innate power to change your circumstances and co-create (or at least participate in) the formation of your dreamscape, your love life, and your overall life experience.
Becoming a lucid dreamer brings you closer to being a lucid lover. Awareness is king or queen. The more awake you can be in your dreams, the better your chances of bringing a more lucid and awake version of yourself into your love life.
Some lucky people are naturally talented at lucid dreaming. I unfortunately am not one of them; however, I’ve had several that were life changing. If you are one of the fortunate ones who can lucid dream with little effort, my hat goes off to you. However, most people must work hard to have a lucid dream. If you want something to jump-start your lucid dreaming and more lucid love life, here are a few tips:
● Throughout your day, ask the question, audibly or inaudibly, “Am I dreaming?” As you create the habit of doing this when you’re awake, you may begin to do this as you dream.
● If you discover that you are in fact dreaming, check it by flipping a light switch on or off or by looking at a digital clock or any number sequence. A telltale sign that you are dreaming is when you notice numbers getting jumbled.
● Meditate for twenty minutes a day. Ask your partner to join you; this is a powerful practice to enhance intimacy and raise the level of consciousness in your partnership.
● I recommend that you read (together with your partner) Lucid Dreaming by Robert Waggoner and Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge.
Nightmare
I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve experienced a scary dream or two. Nightmares can run the gamut from being a mildly disturbing dance with your shadow to preying on your worst fears, waking you in a cold sweat with your heart pounding. I often refer to nightmares as “venting dreams,” because I see them on a conveyer belt escorting our anger, sadness, fear, and anxiety out of our body/mind/spirit. By the time we’ve successfully shown a nightmare to the exit, we are wiser, more compassionate, and more resourceful than we were before. The bottom line is knowing how to work with nightmares so they can become blessings rather than things to fear.
Albert Einstein posed the question, “Is this universe friendly?” The eventual answer came to him after decades of research: a resounding yes! We can apply the “universe is friendly” philosophy to our unpleasant dreams, and thus become grateful for them, because even our nightmares come to us in the service of health, healing, growth, and illumination.
Think about it. There is virtually nothing that challenges us more than our personal relationships. Once you find yourself stretching the boundaries of your own comfort zone, your nightmares will kick in to help you reveal and heal all your cherished barriers to love.
Numinous
Have you ever dreamed of flying, floating, communing with an angel, or receiving knowledge from a wise and loving being? Carl Jung defines a numinous dream as an experience that conveys something essential about ourselves that our unconscious wants us to know.
When you have a numinous dream, you may feel spiritually enriched, enlivened, empowered, and renewed. Numinous dreams can also give us a fresh perspective on our love lives, a solution to an issue we’ve been struggling with, or the confidence to feel worthy of the best that life has to offer.
One way to enhance your ability to have more numinous dreams is to:
● Contemplate the best spiritual dream or uplifting real life experience you’ve had, and rekindle your connection to the tone of that memory.
● Meditate on your peak spiritual moment just before bedtime (or as often as possible throughout the day), and your dreams will help you take a deeper dive into your spiritual waters.
● Take the action your numinous dream inspires. If the action isn’t immediately obvious, meditate on the question, “What can I do to honor this dream?”
● Share this dream with your lover. Numinous dreams connect us with sacred knowledge, and when shared it can deepen the bonds of intimacy.
● Tuck yourself into bed with a spiritually uplifting book or story. I recommend The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer or The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. If you can share this practice with your lover, it will do wonders to enhance your spiritual connection.
Processing
Processing dreams are not glamorous or steamy, nor do they take you on flights of fantasy. They tend to be simply a rehash of the day’s events. If you’re overwhelmed because you just met Mr. Right, or if you’re stressed out because you’ve been arguing with Ms. Wrong, your processing dreams help you to find order in the disorder. Processing dreams are more powerful than we give them credit for; they help you solve problems and get your act together so you can continue to improve your love life, even during challenging times.
To get the most out of your processing dreams I suggest the following tips:
● Write in your journal before going to sleep about your issue/desire/challenge du jour, and conclude with this statement (fill in the blanks): “Dreams, thank you in advance for providing me with clarity, insight, and direction regarding my _________ situation with ________.”
● Write down your dreams immediately upon awakening, and consider that whatever remembered dream you dredge up from the night before is an answer to your question or a solution to your challenge.
● Apply the guidance you receive from your dream to your waking reality.
● If you need help interpreting your dream, look up the symbols in this dream dictionary.
● If you don’t want to have processing dreams (if you’ve been inundated with them and are hungering for a more fanciful dream experience), read a fantasy book to take your mind off your issues.
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Have you dreamed of a handsome stranger and felt the pangs of love (or lust)? Do you wake up panicked from being chased by a menacing intruder or from falling from a cliff into darkness? Do you wake up to dreams of sex with an ex, your boss, or a celebrity?
Don’t be ashamed or alarmed! These dreams are normal and highly symbolic. Learn to decode dream symbols through the steamed-up lenses of our relationships, sexuality, and our human imperative to love and be loved. This guide will show you how to interpret everything and everyone in your dreams as an aspect of yourself. After all, the best relationship advice you can receive is being revealed by your own brilliant dreaming mind. To that end, this bedside companion offers:
– Interpretations and definitions for more than 1,000 common symbols, themes, and images from your dreams
– Tools for interpreting dream themes, patterns, and emotions
– Love, sex, and relationship advice to help support you in finding and/or keeping the partner of your dreams
– Definitions organized by dream theme — People and Animals, Time and Place, Physical Objects, Ideas and Whims, and Action and Scenarios
Kelly Sullivan Walden is America’s premiere dream expert and a trusted advisor to leaders, executives, celebrities, and countless other individuals. She will guide you on a journey into your subconscious mind where the answers reside to the questions you seek, so you can make real, transformational changes in your waking life. Will you fall in love or love the one you’re with? Are you willing to release your blocks to love and fall in love with yourself? How do you inspire better dreams? How do you transform a nightmare into soul-healing therapy? You’ll find answers to these questions and many more in this comprehensive dream reference.
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