Realities of the Dreaming Mind: The Practice of Dream Yoga (ISBN 193201800X)

extremely practical, with great balance of philosophical insight:
As far as dream interpretation is concerned, I'd be surprised if a better book available than this. The authour recognizes that symbols will carry different meanings for different people. In dream dictionary books available on the market, the meanings of symbols can be contradictory if you check a few different books... so which one should you trust? If you have nearly drowned at some point in my life, water may carry a different meaning than "purity" or "life". If you have been attacked by a dog, a dog may not represent "companionship" or "loyalty". The authour guides readers through a very intensive process to help remember their dreams and create a personal dream dictionary. The intensive process involves working with various symbols from your own dreams, and interpreting these symbols according to the context of the whole dream and events in your life. The process requires a lot of dedication, but is very fun and fulfilling, and the more effort you devote to dreaming... the more dreams you will have. By creating your own personal dream dictionary, you can see how symbols in your dreams change over time, allowing you to chart changes in your psychological and spiritual growth. The value of this book does not stop with dream interpretation. The authour has an amazing understanding of the human mind, and she has created an extremely practical book with A LOT of very thorough exercises to help you look into how your mind works, very very very deeply. Following these exercises is bound to provide anybody with self-knowledge and awareness. The book would be particularly useful for people interested in psychology or yoga (the authour has written a few amazing books on yoga, I would also recommend her book "Kundalini Yoga", which is involves an in-depth training of bodily awareness... it would make an excellent companion to this book, which is an aid for psychological awareness). The authour loads the book with profound information about psychology, spirituality, and dreaming. The book demonstrates a skillful balance of theory and practical suggestions, and the meanings in it unfold with every reading. This is a book to work with and refer to for many years... if you really just want to skim through it, it would make an interesting casual read, but the real value of this book is its practical use. My only problem with the book is a problem with dream interpretation itself... Through dream interpretation I have gained practical insight into my life, and have made helpful changes based on these insights. My problem with dream interpretation, and particularly with the authours idea of it, is very simple. The authour bases her perspective on the idea that our dreams are spiritual messages from a higher part of our being, an inner guide. On many levels, I accept this idea, but I have problems with dogmatically accepting this type of idea. Assuming dreams do not contain an inherent message from our inner spiritual guide, then what are we interpreting? The process of interpreting dreams reveals interesting insight into our mind, but how much meaning can we attribute to the interpretations we come up with? If we interpret a horoscope, or the I Ching, or anything else, it may be extremely arbitrary and subjective. This is not really a problem, unless you completely expect that the knowledge you are unraveling is from an objective "higher source". Regardless of whether or not dreams are messages from an inner guide, interpretation will reveal something about your own mind and has proven to be very fruitful for me in a practical way that has influenced positive changes in my life.

inner-guide dreaming:
I have long noticed that my dreams seem to provide guidance more intellegent and innovative than anything my waking mind could come up with. This book not only endorses the idea of taking dream-guidance seriously, teaches how to honor dreams (at least, some dreams) as the voice of the divine inside. Radha discusses how to distinguish 'spiritual' dreams from other kinds of dreams. She presents practical ways to remember dreams and to use what you remember. Dream-symbols are unique to the dreamer, and this book offers ways to learn to read your own language of symbols. Radha also shares some of her own dreams, and explains how they guided her. This is the best dream book for the serious seeker that I have ever seen.