There’s a common misconception out there that it’s impossible to read anything in dreams. Actually, most people who record and share their dreams have reported having reading dreams in which they read signs, newspapers and other sources of text in a dream. The difference between reading in real life and in a dream is that the text you see in a dream is not words on paper: it is a product of your subconscious and can change in ways that real text cannot. Because dream text is so changeable and fluid, reading dreams offer a built-in reality check that you can use to realize you are dreaming. If the words change or don’t make sense while you’re looking at them or upon a second reading, you’ll know you’re dreaming.
Text in dreams can appear as gibberish, be upside down or seem to be written in a foreign language, even when it seemed to be intelligible the first time you read it. Sometimes, only the first line of a dream document will make sense; look down, and the page will be filled with gibberish. Other times, you can be reading a document which seems to make perfect sense, only to have the text transform before your eyes. This happened to me once, and it resulted in one of my first lucid dreams: I was reading a Word document on a computer screen, the first draft of some kind of fantasy narrative. As I read, the letters morphed into a foreign language that resembled Italian. I jumped back from the screen and realized in that moment that I was dreaming.
Sometimes you might remember a reading dream where you only remember the gist of what you read; you may have no clear memory of the exact words. This can sometimes happen with dialogue between characters in your dreams as well. It’s possible that in these examples, our brains create a meaning which we understand in a pre-verbal, intuitive way. We can only summarize the meaning upon waking. Likewise, if people do remember actual bits of text from their dreams, these tend to be short: road signs, advertisements, newspaper headlines, etc. Encountering long texts like books or articles is rare. It seems that the parts of the brain active during REM sleep just can’t create verbally very well; the linguistic part of the brain remains asleep while we dream. This makes really reading in dreams quite difficult. Some lucid dreamers have even deliberately conjured up a newspaper or other text to read after they became lucid, and reported that the words still do not make sense.
However, the flipside to the weirdness of dream text is that the brain can also become quite linguistically creative in dreams. Puns and wordplays have been a feature of dreams ever since humans started recording them: there are recorded dreams in ancient Greek, Latin and Egyptian that feature wordplays and puns. Dream puns and wordplays can show us how our brains use language to encode and reveal meaning even when we are in REM sleep.
Dreams can encode hidden meanings in either verbal or visual puns. To an extent, the brain uses the same linguistic framework when we’re asleep as when we’re awake, so dream wordplay falls into a few recognizable categories:
-Homonyms: words that are spelled the same but have different meanings.
-Idioms: colloquial/slang words not easily translated into another language.
-Anagrams: words that form a new meaning when their letters are rearranged.
-Syllabification: forming new words by dividing the original word(s) into syllables.
For instance, if you have a dream about flying, you can use these categories to guess at any underlying meaning behind the action and visuals of the dream. Were you in a plane or on a different “plane” of consciousness? Did you become aloft in “a loft” ? When you returned to the ground did you “land on your feet”? The three terms in quotation marks are examples of a homonym, syllabification, and an idiom respectively. Word plays can show up as dialogue or written text, or may be submerged in the setting, action or objects of a dream.
Names can also be a rich source of hidden meanings in dreams. Especially if you dream about someone whom you don’t know in real life, pay close attention to what their name might mean to your subconscious: in a therapy session, one woman reported her dream about a character named Frank, although she didn’t know anyone named Frank in her waking life. Based on her life context, the therapist suggested her dream might be hinting that she needed to be more “frank” and assertive in her work life. Place names can also have underlying meanings. If your dream is set in a specific state or town, it might hint that you are in a certain state of being: a dream of being in Seattle might mean you want to “settle”; a dream of “Rome” might mean you have a subconscious urge to travel, etc.
In dreams, there is no distinction between images and the dream language used to describe them. You will likely find that in the process of recording your dream, you will discover puns, word plays and visual metaphors arising from the combination of elements in your dream and how you interacted with them. Dreams also create new objects that don’t exist in the real world (which researcher Mark J. Blechner has called “interobjects”). Visual metaphors and creations in dreams add up to a visual conceptual play that goes beyond wordplay and linguistic meaning. In dreams, we confront the limits of our verbal language: in Blechner’s words, “they are meaningful without being communicable”. However, by recording and reporting our dreams to others, we can use language to discover and expand some of the meanings that dreams encode in verbal and visual metaphors.
I dreamed about a person, no one I was familiar with but the name was JOYCE COYNE DOYLE. The OY repetition, all words ending in E. ???
I had this wired dream where I started drawing this picture, it was like a sunset in the middle of the woods and then in between the woods right on top of the sunset I drew a bird with its wings spread apart staring at back at me. I remember how I was so confused and didn’t know why I drew that picture, but then later on when I checked out the top there was a writing that said ‘your old self’. It was clear and I could actually read it, and it wasn’t gibberish like you said, I don’t know I’m so confused and have no idea about what it means. It’d be nice if you could atleast tell me what it means
Hi, I had a dream where it was quite hazy and unclear, white words flashed and I soon made them out to be Can You See Me? It was then the dream became strongly negative and violent, and I had to force myself awake by repeating my name, my mothers and that only I could control myself because it was as if I was being held down. I’m very concerned. What happened?
If dreams are transcendent, there are no limits. Many times in dreams there exist limited written interactions, like recognizing a name, or brand; equating this to how a toddler “reads” seems appropriate, however, with practice those first and tentative attempts may grow as quickly as any other skills involving language comprehension. Practice makes perfect.
Although words or the act of reading may provide one type of ‘reality check’ – simply not knowing you are dreaming shows how inept one may be at the art.
If one looks at dreams as landscapes, those ‘pretend’ landscapes will be as rich as their reality counterparts. Yet like children making their first foray into this great, wide world, at first it is seen through small windows. This tunnel vision expands as one becomes able to process the different stimuli, and seek additional ones. Keep trying and you will see that not only can you read, but write, and edit, and even interact with others in the dream using this medium. Enjoy!
I got a dream where my soulmate/twinflame giving me a card and its written as ‘ENDING’.. after that I held him close n kissed him but there was hesitation while I held him close to me n kissing. the dream was as if it was real. I was able to feel the heat between us and sensed the touch..What does it mean? please any one help me
I can not find anything about reading a foreign language that someone did not understand in a dream. My partner recently dreamt he was trying to communicate with someone who was speaking a language he didn’t understand. He was being shown a paper to read. He couldn’t understand what the man was showing him so he started to copy down some text in his dream. When he woke up he remembered three words he wrote down. It looked like jibberish and I asked if he spelled them like that in his dream. I typed them into the search engine and each word was in lithuanian. We had no idea what lithuanian was or that is was even a language. My partner has issues with spelling in english so the fact that he spelled these words in proper lithuanian spelling, and they were translated was amazing to us. Does anyone know how can we begin to research what this means?
hi, i dreampt last night that i was taken to spirit and tol i would become pregnant with a girl child and i would be a good mother not to worry. I told them i didnt believe them and that i knew i was dreaming. They told me they knew i’d say that and thats why they had wrote it down as it is impossible to read text whilst asleep. i read what they’d wrote in english off a screen. the text did not scramble or dissapear???? They prohibited me from reading anything further as it was not allowed for me to know any further in life than necessary. Any ideas how i was able to read text without problems. Have i had a true brush with spirit or is science flawed and it is possible to read whilst dreaming regardless of what side of the brain lies dormant whilst they other is sleeping??? gemma x x
Dear Gemma,
I have also had the experience of being able to read clearly in my dreams – usually, in dreams that held a great deal of spiritual meaning to me. Are you considering or open to becoming pregnant? If so, perhaps this is a good sign for the future. 🙂
Wow! Did you have a baby girl? I had a dream after I prayed to God about two people. In my dream that same night, I read the name of one of the people; then that person came around the corner and asked me if I was ready to go. We joked with each other and then I woke up. I knew it was a dream when I saw him walking ahead of me, but he looked back at me and smiled, that was the weird part.