Ever wonder how you can interpret some of the most common dreams? Use our dream interpretation tool to decipher the meaning of twelve universal dreams and their opposites.

Each dream is a mixture of our biological instincts, our cultural assumptions and our own personal experience. As we dream, our brains create stories from these ingredients, sometimes to "replay" recent events, and at times voice concerns that our waking minds are not yet ready to face. These stories are occasionally laced with complicated plots, and sometimes populated with elaborate visual or verbal puns that help us unlock their meaning.

The meaning of dreams is something that has puzzled humankind since earliest civilizations, and several systems for categorizing dreams exist today. Psychologist Patricia Garfield, a leading dream researcher and co-founder of the Association for the Study of Dreams, has identified 12 archetypal dreams that appear throughout the world. She describes these in her book, The Universal Dream Key (Cliff Street Books, 2001). Each of the types has a negative variation and a positive variation.

Click on the dream description that best matches your own to learn more about what it might signify and how to unravel the meaning of your dream.

I am being chased	I am being embraced or loved
I am injured, ill or dying	I am being healed, born or reborn
I am having car or vehicular trouble	I am having a pleasurable experience with a vehicle
My house or property is lost or damaged	My house or property is improved
I fail a test or perform poorly	I excel on a test or in a performance
I am falling or drowning	I am flying, swimming or dancing joyfully
I am naked or inappropriately dressed in public	I am well dressed
I have missed a boat or a plane	I am traveling happily
A phone or machine malfunctions	A phone or machine works perfectly
I am in a natural or manmade disaster	I experience natural beauty or miracles
I am lost or trapped	I am discovering new spaces
I am being menaced by a spirit	I am being guided by a spirit