See WORK.
ACTIVITIES/ACTION Activities or actions within dreams are often concerned with hidden motivations and agendas, and – interpreted within the context of your mood and emotions within the dream – are particularly important. The psychological meaning is that action needs to transfer from dreams to waking life in order for progress to be made. Symbolically the action can give an indication of the dreamer’s spiritual progress.
Typically, activities in dreams are associated with moving forward or making progress in waking life. They reflect how well you are doing in your quest to achieve your ambitions. Do you need to move on? Take another route? Speed up or slow down? That’s why it is particularly helpful to take note of the details in your dream. What was the goal you were running, walking, climbing, or swimming toward? Did you feel exhausted or were you in peak form? Were you competing against anyone? Did you reach your destination or achieve your goal? Did you feel satisfied or disappointed? The answers to these questions will help you assess your progress and identify any obstacles or attitudes that may be holding you back.
ADAM AND EVE
See APPLES, MUD.
ADDER
See NEGATIVE SYMBOLS.
ADDRESS In dreams, your address represents your present lifestyle or status, while another person’s address suggests some kind of contact with that person. Past addresses indicate the person you once were. If you forget or lose your address in your dream, this suggests a loss of connection or understanding. Your dream is reflecting your real-life confusion about who you are, where you are going, and how you connect and communicate with others. If you had a dream in which you were going through your address book and deleting or checking names, your unconscious was probably sorting the people in your life into those with whom you wish to remain in contact and those whom you want to leave behind. Were there any surprise messages from your unconscious about any particular people if you had this dream?
ADMIRAL
See WORK.
ADOLESCENCE/ADOLESCENT Technically the teenage years or adolescence extends from about the age of 12 to 18, or 21 at the latest. As you grow older, you may find that your dreams look back to your teenage years with feelings of wistfulness. You may not want to go through the torments of adolescence again, but you may like to unite your maturity and experience with your youthful energy and enthusiasm. Whereas dreams of childhood tend to be nostalgic, dreams that feature teenagers tend to be about wish-fulfillment. If you are no longer a teenager, a dream in which you become a teenager again and hang out with your friends at a disco suggests that you are coping with life at present and not taking it too seriously. On the other hand, your dreaming mind may be urging you to chill out more. If you revisit your teenage years in your dream, or dream of teenagers, your dreaming mind may be urging you to recover some of your creativity, energy, and sense of freedom. If the young man or woman in the dream was acting in an immature way, as adolescents are prone to do, could your dream be warning you that your present behavior is stupid, immature, and unproductive? If your dream featured images of school, examinations, or college, the implication may be that you need to broaden your mind or take up new challenges. Alternatively, if school was a place of unhappy memories for you, it could be urging you to have a more positive, upbeat approach to life.
Although the following dreams can be experienced at any life stage, they are believed to be among the most common for teenage dreamers. If you dream of burying a dead body, you may be aware that you have killed someone, although you may not remember why or how. Your concern in the dream is to bury the body before someone makes a terrifying discovery and exposes you. Despite the horror of what you have done, the main issue in your dream is not the fact that you have killed someone but your desire to cover your tracks and avoid discovery. This dream is all about your need for acceptance and to rid yourself of things that are undesirable in your life. The person you have murdered represents what you would like to get rid of; that is why there is no remorse in the dream. The panic in the dream indicates your fear that people will recognize your anxiety. The teenage years are all about deciding what is or is not acceptable or desirable in your life so, not surprisingly, this dream is most common at that particular time. The things you want to bury can include parental expectation, childish hobbies, or activities, and so on.
During your teenage years you are very likely to dream of meeting a celebrity and becoming their close friend. This kind of dream focuses on the importance of feeling accepted and admired within your peer group. It is not uncommon for a teenager to dream about the death or funeral of one or both parents. Such dreams are not predictive, being simple reflections of the death of the past and the beginning of a new parent–child relationship.
See also STAGES OF LIFE.
ADOPTED If you dream of being an orphaned, adopted, or fostered child, this usually suggests that your relationships with members of your family in waking life have created some sense of loss and rejection in you. Dreaming of having lost your parents or being rejected by your parents so you become an orphan, adopted, or fostered child may denote that you feel you didn’t get their unconditional love and attention, and that you have to find your own way in the world without their support. Alternatively you may feel as if you are an outsider in the relationship to your family. Perhaps you have been excluded or perhaps you have little in common with them. Do you consider yourself rejected or at odds with the rest of your family? Whatever the reason, your dream may be suggesting to you that you need to create a surrogate family to get the support you need (this may be with your friends or your partner), and they will be able to help you feel loved, secure, and accepted for who you are.
Another explanation of such dreams is that it is time for you to be more independent and self-reliant by moving away from your parents. When life forces you into permanently or temporarily losing your parents, either by death or by other circumstances such as foreign travel, you may experience dreams of being orphaned. The dream might not refer to your relationship with your family at all, but might be telling you that you are feeling abandoned, unloved, rejected, and misunderstood by your partner, friends, or colleagues in waking life. If this is the case, the dream connects to feelings of belonging or not belonging in waking life. If you are looking after an orphan in your dream, you are attempting to heal that part of you that feels unloved.
ADVENTURE Adventure dreams can be a reflection of your waking life, which may have become more adventurous recently, but it could also suggest the need to experiment, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
The Jungian archetype of the hero, starting out on his adventure and battling adversity in order to learn, mature, and grow, dominates the interpretation of adventure-themed dreams. Adventure dreams urge the dreamer to take on new challenges or seek out aspects of themselves or talents that remain hidden in waking life. They point the way toward a new understanding, and the discovery of inner strength and creativity that can empower the dreamer.
ADVERTISEMENT You cannot escape ads in daily life and you may well find that they pop up in your dreams, too. If an ad does feature in your dream, its purpose will be to highlight your aspirations – so pay particular attention to the content of the ad. What or who was it trying to sell? If your dreaming mind lingered over the ad for shoes, a fast car, vacation, or any other object of your desire, your unconscious may simply be reflecting your waking obsession with it. If the dream highlighted cosmetics or clothes, your dreaming mind may be encouraging you to change your image in some way in waking life.
ADVOCATE
See ARCHETYPES.