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Houses and Buildings are structures that represent the self as you are changing. The attic signifies higher thought or spiritual ideas. It can also suggest the ideas you store and collect or how you must ‘climb upward’ or raise consciousness to sort through what you no longer need. The basement is usually the subconscious or the area underneath, which you keep ‘below the surface.’ Unknown or undiscovered rooms in a house will suggest aspects of you, which are unknown, but are currently being explored. The living room is a social place, where you explore your nature as you meet others, while the bed can be a place of exploring sexuality. The bath room is where you ‘get naked’ and is associated with ‘coming clean,’ or being truthful with yourself. The family room houses the dynamics inherited through family interaction, while the hearth or fireplace often symbolizes your sense of heritage and what you hold sacred. Watching something burn in the fire is the same thing as processing and releasing these tendencies.

Hallways are places of transition, where you meet others in ‘neutral space’ and often appear when you are exploring choices. The front yard or garden is what you are cultivating for ‘public view.’ The back yard is suggestive of more organic aspects, which are not made obvious to others. You will often discover or search for something in the bushes or shadows, as a way of exploring the correctness of your behavior.

Public Buildings often appear as rickety structures that seem to go in bizarre directions, representing how you grow into social circumstances that have not yet been created. They can be places in which you are lost, or searching for something (transformative clues) on a specific floor or level of consciousness: past beliefs below, emerging ideas on the ground floor, and other floors that might be associated with the number it represents.

Doors can mean many things: boundaries and unblocking your potential, while knocking is often sexual. The front door leads you into the world, while the back and side doors allow for an ‘escape’ or for the ‘intrusion’ of characters who will teach you about yourself. If you open a door, you are taking an objective approach into the unknown. When the door is inside of a professional building, it can suggest potential or exploring transitions in your career.

A church can house spiritual beliefs, but can also suggest how irrational ideas based only on faith are holding you back in some way. Sometimes you will be looking for a key in a church that suggests how a self-criticism may be trapping your organic nature as a physical symptom or dis-ease.

A school suggests learning experiences or being measured against others in your abilities. In the same way, a gymnasium is a place of competition in a more physical way. A factory is a place of ‘mass production’ or the attitudes that you ‘assemble’ to fit in. It can also suggest what you are currently ‘making’ out of experience. A hospital is a place of personal crisis; or where you seek ‘critical’ care, as in understanding the incapacitating nature of your critical tapes. Hospitals can also represent ‘new life’ or the place where you are ‘born’ into a new way of being.

Hotels, Airports and temporary or transitional places while traveling suggest experimenting with temporary attitudes as a way of understanding yourself differently. The floor of these structures are also indicative of levels of awareness associated with the transition. You stand on the ground floor of current awareness and travel upward to achieve your ideals, or downward to find those things that are holding you back.

Vehicles and Places of Transportation will suggest the condition in which you are currently moving forward. The type of vehicle, and whether or not you are driving, in control or being driven, will portray your present sense of autonomy, and how reliable it is. Danger and the idea of crashing suggest how you are not in control of where you are going and are therefore, feeling uncertain about your direction. Being stopped by police or traffic lights are indicative of conscious controls such as self-discipline and conscience.

Boats, ships and trains, in which you are a ‘passenger,’ suggest how you are following a proven course that is not self-directed or easily changed. Travel over water is indicative of emotions and how the ‘flow of events’ or ‘current’ leads you forward. Being a passenger on a ship often represents situations that feel beyond your control. The water can be dark, calm or choppy in relation to how you feel about where you are going in life. Fellow passengers can shed light on the transforming elements of your nature.

A bicycle, because it is propelled forward by your actual effort, can suggest vitality and issues related to health. As a child, perhaps you learned to ride by balancing while you moved forward, suggesting balancing motivation with other elements in your life. Bumper cars, go-carts and other jalopies suggest how you are moving forward, sometimes in comical ways.

Airports and train stations are places of transition, and therefore are associated with hopes and ambitions. You can ‘fly’ to your destination through expanded awareness and ambition, or find your compartment or ‘place’ on a train that follows a ‘proven track.’ You can be going up, down or in circles, as a way of pointing you toward inspiration, overcoming repression, or revisiting the past. (See Placement and Perspective in Dream Dictionary.)

Landscape and Scenery can offer messages related to how you see clearly in the day or by light (conscious) or whether you are not facing something in the night or in the dark (unconscious.) In the forest (subconscious,) you often meet a character or guide who can offer clues to your transformative processes. (see Archetypes and Universal Characters in Dream Dictionary.) Trees are stationary and rooted, suggesting the details of your genetic heritage.

You can climb a mountain to gain a wider view, while it can also represent how you can remain a prisoner to your beliefs. The desert returns you to an uncomplicated or barren landscape where you can discover the roots of your sustenance. The sea or seashore is the home or barrier of the unconscious, where you can discover the treasures (fish/sealife) that can be brought forward as clues to your evolutionary journey. Natural disasters, like earthquakes, tornados, floods and tsunamis suggest the transformative power or your emotions rising to the surface to transform what you believed to be static.

Being Naked or Exposed suggests how you are exploring or exposing the deeper or hidden sides of what you hide. As you move toward intimacy, you may have dreams of being undressed in public or relieving yourself in a bathroom without walls as the result of having your natural side exposed. As a child, you may have dreamed 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 real. To ‘get naked’ or ‘relieve yourself’ in public, you are allowing for the movement of other aspects that had not previously found expression. This sense of being vulnerable, suggests how intimacy and exposing yourself is the only way of moving toward authenticity.

Being exposed can also take place in dreams in which you feel trapped. If this brings all that you fear to the surface, then the symbolism is doing exactly what is needed to allow you to understand it. If the dream focuses on a snake, shed your skin and learn to express your natural drives; if burglar appears, then face intimacy openly so that nothing is 'taken from you.' When some part of you is being revealed, stalked or discarded, you ‘get naked,’ confront the truth of ‘what you fail to see,’ and learn to ‘let go of the protective covering' that can no longer serve you. If you are frightened, it is simply a call to overcome your fear of being who you are. If you are ashamed, you may need to overcome whatever sense is keeping you from behaving as a natural creature in a natural world.

Losing Teeth is a common dream that occurs at monumental points in life. Just as you lose your baby teeth as a child, wisdom teeth as an adolescent and perhaps all of your teeth when you grow old, teeth are associated with letting go of old ways of ‘chewing on things.’ The way you approached situations in the past will no longer do. Teeth can also represent credibility. As you smile, you can suddenly look stupid because your teeth are falling out. This demonstrates how losing teeth can be an aspect of the Trickster, (see Archetypes and Universal Characters in Dream Dictionary) or transformative mind, humorously tricking you toward authentic behavior. When you are about to say ‘the same old thing,’ you are left mumbling with a mouth full of teeth, representing ‘the old way’ of chewing or digesting experience. Whatever you were about to say in the dream would definitely not be considered the truth in light of who you are becoming.

Water Dreams are the most common dreams because water represents emotions, and how you feel about the changes that are taking place. To dream of turbulent seas, suggests a sense of crisis associated with your transformation. Usually when you have this type of dream, later you will dream about being on a similar ship in calmer waters. This is a dream cycle that portrays the growth that you have achieved. In all of our ancient stories, water is the mysterious reservoir where the hero is to retrieve a treasure. Similarly, raging water is the difficulty that often initiates you into a process of self-discovery, where the reward is your ability to retrieve a treasure below the surface. Floods can undermine the foundation of your beliefs until you are forced to let go of what you think you need, in the pursuit of simple survival. Water can represent health and wellness since it is also the elixir of life.

Dreams About Flying occur during exhilarating or empowering points in life. While you are dreaming, you may suddenly ‘wake up,’ as consciousness realizes that anything is possible, and so you fly. This is an aspect of the psyche exploring potential and self-imposed limitations. At the same time, dreaming of ‘waking up’ and starting the routine of the day, only to realize that it was a dream, portrays the need for a ‘wake up’ call in breaking your routine.

Police Dreams occur when one aspect of your evolving identity is challenged by the ‘peacekeeper’ or the ‘patrolling’ part of the psyche. Sometimes the message is important: slow down. At other times, the police will come to ‘inspect’ the changes you are making, representing your disciplinary tapes. Associated with the ‘inner critic,’ encountering police is often occurring because you may actually need to step out of the lines to transform.

Please also visit our Dream Dictionary for more information on these common symbols.