Externalizing

Often, in trying to understand our own dreams, we will look at the dream content and connect it to events in the day(s) previous to the dream. Indeed dreams often draw from the events of the day or days before the dream, and people and parts of events will sometimes appear in the dream. Then one is tempted to say "I know what this dream is about!" and recount those daytime events. 

However, this doesn't get to what is occurring internally for the dreamer, and that is the important part. Externalizing a dream by only relating it to events from waking life (hinted at in the dream) can be a way to trivialize the dreams importance, and resist looking inside (your heart, feelings, thoughts, for wishes or conflicts...) which is where real self-discovery begins. 


So why do dreams bring in events or images from our daily life? It may be that what occurs during the day, brings up in our minds conflicts or inner issues. The event isn't the important thing then, but the response to it inside ourselves. Getting at the inner issue is the important goal, and can be quite a bit more significant than that bit of outer life that triggered it.