Dream Dictionary

 If you are pounding a nail, it can represent ‘hitting the nail on the head’ or the need to focus. See Hammer under Weapons and Utensils.  If it is a fingernail, it can signify attitudes that grow and require grooming over time. See Anatomy and Body Parts.

Being naked or exposed suggests how you may be exposing the deeper or hidden sides of yourself. As you move toward intimacy, you may have dreams of being undressed in public or relieving yourself in bathrooms without walls as the result of having your nakedness exposed. As a child, you may have dreamt of going to school in your underwear when what you most wanted was to abide by the golden rule. In proportion to the rules you impose on yourself, you will find that dreams lead you toward the freedom to be yourself. To ‘get naked’ or relieve yourself of your outer covering, you are allowing for the movement of other aspects of the psyche that had not previously found expression. This sense of being vulnerable, suggests how intimacy and exposing yourself is the only way of empowering authenticity. 

Being exposed can also take place in dreams in which you feel trapped or frightened. Since the dream is bringing all that you fear to the surface, the symbolism should be given careful consideration so that you can transform the energy of fear into authentic empowerment. If the dream focuses on a snake, you might shed your skin and learn to express your natural drives; if it is an intruder, then you might try facing intimacy without feeling like others are intruding. When some part of you is being revealed, stalked and discarded or killed, you ‘get naked,’ confront the truth of what you fail to understand about yourself and learn to ‘let what is unnecessary go.’

Dreams usually reveal the exact opposite of what you believe to be true about yourself. When you are frightened, it is a call to overcome your fear of being natural. If you feel ashamed, you may need to overcome shame to exist as a natural creature in a natural world. See Clothing and Makeup.

The focus on your name in a dream is a message to re-explore your roots. Your name is the ‘identity’ that you have had your entire life. If you are trying to be someone that you are not, the name can bring that message home. Hearing a bizarre name in a dream happens when you are adopting new ways of interacting and experiencing life. This name is a ‘label’ for the emerging side of you that has yet to be processed and integrated.

If you are entering a space that you would describe as being narrow, it can represent how you have paved a way unwittingly that is not allowing you to express your full capabilities. Seeing a symbol that is narrow can reflect being ‘narrow minded’ in your outlook or feeling hemmed in by circumstances.

See Aborigine.

Natural Disasters, like earthquakes and volcanoes portray the transformative power or your emotions rising to the surface in the face of all that you believed to be static. The Earth can give way in landslides, which can destroy the structures you build. These structures represent the self and how it is evolving to meet the changes in your environment.  Disasters associated with the wind, like tornadoes and hurricanes portray the movement of consciousness, and suggests how the hidden continues to stir within you. To dream of a tornado, signifies urges and emotions that have the potential to overwhelm you, and in a sense you are picked up and placed into another context. You are released from your controlling and protective tendencies, which can only keep you re-creating the past.

See also Landscape and Scenery.

See Placement and Perspective.

See Anatomy and Body Parts.

See Amulet and Necklace.

The needle is a classic symbol for piercing the skin or outer covering that shields your feelings and emotions. It draws blood at the same time that it causes pain. Both ideas are associated with feelings. Threading a sewing needle is a symbol of creating a new identity. See Drugs, Blood and also, Seamstress and Tailor. 

The bird’s nest is often hidden in the branches of a tree, bringing forward both, the idea of your roots and the protective place that shields your spiritual nature. An insect’s nest or hive is suggestive of the things that bother you, even while you cannot let them go. See Tree and Birds.

The newspaper is a symbol of having something ‘put out there’ for public display. Seeing something very personal in the news can symbolize how you feel uncomfortable sharing intimate details about yourself with others. Seeing it ‘advertised’ for public view, is often the first step in owning up to what you would rather not face. Whatever ‘has been published’ needs to find its way into waking consciousness. See Advertisement.

See Placement and Perspective.

Going into a ‘dark place’ to socialize with others, the nightclub can sometimes symbolize a lack of awareness of your motivations in social situations. This is especially true if it is a setting where you are being chased or pursued. See Alcohol, Night and Attack or Being Chased.
 

When you have a nightmare, you often wake up with your heart racing and in a state of panic. Not wanting to go back to sleep, the memory of the dream appears all too real. Reflecting actual trauma or unresolved crisis, nightmares are a WAKE UP call to explore active integration. You might seek therapy to overcome a real life crisis or to explore what part of you is giving rise to this unusual sense of fear. Sometimes you may refuse to acknowledge that ‘you are on the wrong path,’ and often nightmares will recur until the situation is resolved. It can be as simple as ‘leaving something behind’ while you hurry to your destination or as frightening as actually experiencing death or dismemberment. More than any other dream, the nightmare will disturb you so profoundly, that rather than run, you are forced to confront something. This is its simple goal: overcome your fear by seeing how ‘unreasonable’ it is. Once this fearful aspect that you are not facing is integrated, the nightmare will not recur.

See Numbers.

Like Red writing under Colors, when you are calling 911, you may be experiencing a  sense of crisis and are ‘calling’ on the higher aspects of yourself to solve the problem. See Doctor and Hospital under Houses and Buildings.

A dream that is focused on the direction of north can symbolize finding your bearings as in ‘true north’ on a compass. Since it is associated with a cooler climate, it can also symbolize ‘cooling off’ or getting control of your anger or other emotions.

The nose can be associated with a need to get at the bottom of something you are not facing. As the sensory organ most prominent on the face, the nose can symbolize your character and your need for acknowledgment. If the nose is bleeding, you may not realize how important passion is to your sense of success. See Blood and Anatomy and Body Parts.

Not always obvious in a dream, numbers can appear in subtle ways. They can have universal meanings from sayings: threes a crowd; seventh heaven; or the ninth degree. They can also have personal meaning based on your past or actual experience.

Zero and eight often suggest wholeness and infinity because both appear endless. Like the circle or mandala, zero can be a composition of the self. One suggests aloneness or self-sufficiency; Two depicts partnerships, choices and integration; Three can be difficulty that requires integration, in the sense of a triangle situation, which demands resolution. It can also suggest getting the ‘third degree’ or ‘threes a crowd;’ Four can symbolize luck as in four leaf clovers, a symbol of the earth and elements; stability, as in ‘four on the floor’ or crouching prior to moving forward. Five can represent fertility, abundance and like the digits of the hands and feet, issues related to taking, giving, holding and balance.

Six can be a way of getting the idea of ‘sex’ out in the open or it can have mysterious or spiritual/psychic associations as in the case of extra sensory perception. Seven is associated with religion and stages or cycles in life as in seventh heaven. As mentioned, eight can represent infinity, eternity or wholeness, but it is also a symbol of evolution. Words that are Homonyms (like eight/ate or six/sex) are the psyche’s clever tools for slipping ideas past consciousness. In light of this, eight must also be considered in relation to Food and nourishment. Nine is usually associated with a turning point or apex; being at the end of our rope as in ‘nine lives’ or 911. It can signify excess or perfection since it is associated with ‘being dressed to the nines.’

Ten can signify ambition because of its association with completion and arrival. It is a sense of having it all and integrating family and work in productive ways. You can dream of something related to the eleventh hour or it can be the non-integrated idea of one and one; Twelve, as in months, becomes completion or the beginning of a new cycle; Thirteen is odd, unnatural or unlucky and must also be considered in terms of integrating one (self)  and three (eliminating or choosing.)

Numbers can be associated with personal experience, age or they can also be reduced to units. Fourteen, as one and four suggests how your idea of independence (one), is currently challenged by issues of balance (four.) Twenty-five becomes two and five, and can signify how partnership (two) leads to fertility or issues about giving and taking (five.) Forty-six would be a message about stability (four) as you approach sex or increased ‘senses,’ or sensuality (six.)

For a woman, the nun can represent a sense of protecting or covering sexuality in light of spiritual beliefs. She can embody a sense of what you hold to be sacred. For a man, the nun can represent an underdeveloped sensitive nature. 

See Hospital under Houses and Buildings.

The nut is a type of food that is encased in a protective shell. Since food represents nourishment, dreaming of a nut can symbolize how you are unable to find nourishment because of your protective tendencies. The nut is also associated with feeling that some side of you is ‘nutty.’