Dream on...

I have found myself thinking a lot about dreams lately. Over the last couple years, I have noticed my dreams being easier to recall, they have common situations in a number of different ways (location, people in it, etc.), and more graphic than ever before. The more I think about the dreams I have the more I think there really is more to them than images dancing through my head while I sleep. I believe dreams do have meaning. I don't think dreams are necessarily revelation but I think there is a reason our minds think the things it does.
When I have one of these dreams that I can recall so vividly, I can think of a million things that it could mean. Some of them are the obvious things that it's like "Oh yeah, that makes sense" But even though it seems logical I still think there is more to it.
We had a speaker at one of our FHE's and she is a child psychologist and she uses dreams in her work a lot. She did an example of what she does when talking to them about dreams. For us she had us all write down or draw a dream that we remember. Then she had a volunteer come up and started asking her questions about her dream. The girls dream was a recurring dream she had when she was little that she still remembers. She is lying in bed when a man enters her room and she can't see his face. Through the dream he starts doing some things to her that most people would consider traumatizing, and then her dad comes and saves her. The lady was asking her all these questions like "what was the color of the blanket?", "what color was your nightgown?", "how did you feel when he first entered the room?", "did he say anything, did you say anything?", "Did call for help?', and so on. She emphasized that the important things weren't just about the man entering the room, and what he was doing to her. EVERYTHING MEANT SOMETHING.
I feel like with many of my dreams having so many things in common that there must be a meaning behind some of them. A lot of my dreams involve my dad. Most of them take place in Richfield or at my family members homes, people that have highly influenced my life are often there and people that I have lost contact with. I think dreams are linked to emotion and feeling. I think there is so much depth to dream analysis, that maybe I will never know the true meaning behind my dreams but I have become fascinated with dreams. I want to learn as much as I can about dreams, but its tricky.
I have looked and some books and websites about dreams and many of them seem real hokey. There are a lot of crazy people that think they know the truth behind dreams. I don't even know where to start really in doing this. Maybe I am one of those crazy people and really dreams are just dreams but I don't believe that's true. I know dreams aren't necessarily revelation or fortune telling. I don't think just because you have a dream about a guy that you are going to marry him. But I think there is something to be learned.
I wikipedia-ed Dreams and I found some of the information on there pretty interesting. I think it is interesting that negative feelings are more common in dreams that positive feelings. I know that is true for me. There was quite a bit of information on there that I am going to use in my quest to figure out my dreams.