Quora has inundated me with requests for dream interpretations. This guide is for the Steemit community.

What is a dream? Our unconscious minds pick up all sensory data throughout the day which only a percentage is captured by the conscious mind. When we sleep, our unconscious mind is still at work. Most data is linked together in random associations. In our sleep, we have periods in which the conscious mind has a vague awareness of these sensory bits of information. Each time frame of realization is a dream.

All information passes through our emotional filters. Therefore, how one interacts with a dream state with other living things varies with each. The first principle comes from body language studies.

1. Sometimes the monkey scratches its nose because it itches. Some people can analyze things to death. Simple 101 is a foundation. One can dream about climbing a tree because the mind picked up on the neighbors’ children doing it. The tree-climbing dream then has no particular meaning other than the random-thought bits of climbing a tree.

2. People have dreams of being attacked by animals or people. Many individuals are afraid of being attacked. The mind is acting out those thoughts and emotions without the interference of the conscious mind. There exists a thin line between dreams and self-hypnosis.

3. The most recent activity and collected data have priority in dreams. Years ago, I was camping out with someone. We had acquired discount lox that day and later ate them and discussed lox. In my dreams, I was backing a car in the driveway reminiscent of my childhood home. It was winter. Instead of backing into a snowbank, it was a mound of lox.

4. Concrete life decisions play a cause and effect with dreams. For example, I have nothing against cars or driving. I enjoy walking significantly more. So dreams with me driving, usually end with me walking. Again, my unconscious mind is selecting data in weighed probabilities.

5. To the degree that one accepts all of his/her senses, visions of flying and other fantasies increase in likelihood. Someone, afraid of flying and of heights, ordinarily won’t have such dreams. As a young boy, flying was my most common dream. When I was in the Army and participated in Airborne training, floating in the air under a parachute was entirely natural to my essence. Intuition is a function proportional to the extent of one’s connection to one’s inner child. The spectrum acceptance of senses is the consistent factor of those whose dreams foretell happenings.

6. With practice, one can train his/her mind to have night visions along with selected pathways. In a manner, practitioners of lucid dreaming plan out their dreams and look to engage to the conscious mind, at least, in part, during the sensation. My suggestion is to skip all the wild fantasies that the typical lucid dreamer likes to engage. Do something for yourself and your hopes and goals.

7. If you want to know what your dreams mean, then play them out in your mind as if you were still sleeping. Most folks don’t want to go there. Then stop wasting the time of people, like me, by inquiring what your dreams mean. You can buy all the dream books that you want, and you still will not have face-to-face with yourself. You will be just another human-tragedy statistic.

There you go; dream interpretation has been demystified.

I would be remiss if a severe warning about electronic screens, even desktop computer monitors is omitted. All these various screens and that of flat-screen TVs utilize blue-violet light. The specialized light can be toxic to the back of the eyes with protracted exposure. Breaking every fifteen minutes from desktops and laptops is vital. Far more significant is to be at a distance when interfacing.

Furthermore, the massive imagery from said devices, especially the portable ones will interfere with optimum brain waves and patterns. In children, it has been demonstrated that constant, up-close engagement with hand-held devices interferes with R.E.M. sleep. Remember that it is during this period that growth and repair of the physical human body take place. Dreams involving the flood of byte and bits processing usually requires distortion and non-conscious reconciliation during dreaming.

[special edit: I attempted to post the source credits for the two pictures but everything went haywire.]