Dream analysis is an adventure into the human psyche. In this, the second article in her column In Your Dreams, Samm J Bogner explains that dream interpretation can happen on multiple levels…
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep…”
~William Shakespeare
Dreams, like language, can be translated on several different levels. THe first level, the literal level, requires no understanding of 
analysis at all. It is the simple narrative of what happened in the dream. For example, one dreamer relates that she was in a huge, elaborately decorated ballroom. There were dancers wearing masks. Some of the people were from her high school class. She says that when she saw them, she snubbed them and went the other way. There is nothing complex about this story on the literal level.
Let us look a little closer to this dream, however, on the symbolic level. Now we must take into consideration why she snubbed her classmates. Her feelings are clear because she snubbed them. THere was something about them she didn’t like. Perhaps it was because they were wearing masks; they weren’t being honest with her, or in her words, “they were being fake.” In this case, then we have a dream which tells us that the dreamer finds insincerity to be unacceptable.
If we evaluate the surroundings in the dream, the elaborate ballroom, we find that the dreamer was very impressed with the lavish surroundings. She recalled elegant draperies and a beautiful crystal chandelier specifically. Since, in the dream, this was her own home, it indicated her strivings for success, both career-wise and socially. It is also an indication that she would be willing to work hard to achieve that level of success.
We can go a little farther and address the metaphorical meaning of this dream. Does it have spiritual significance? Actually, it does, because any time there is concern about the behavior of others, one must look into the mirror at one’s own attitudes. The concern of the dreamer about the others being fake, suggests that she has some awareness that as she strives for success and opulence in her surroundings, that she must guard against shallowness and conceit in herself.
These are the key things to look at with regard to various levels of meaning when interpreting a dream.
About this author:
Samm J Bogner is a Spiritual minister, has a BA in psychology and is a professional psychic. She enjoys word-mongering, writing poetry and inspirational messages.
