Dream imagery is the scenes, figures, sensations and events experienced in dreams.
A room may feel familiar without resembling any room you know. Someone absent can be vividly present. The feeling may stay with you long after the plot has become difficult to explain.
Before asking what it means, what was it like?
Was the doorway inviting or threatening? Were you hurrying, waiting, hiding? What changed when another figure appeared?
Those details can be more useful than reaching immediately for a universal dictionary of symbols. A house doesn’t mean the same thing to every person, in every dream, on every night.
I AWAKE’s imaginal experiences are guided waking practices, not dreams. Both can involve images that invite curiosity, but their conditions differ.
Dreamwork explores ways of reflecting on a dream. Association asks what a particular detail brings to mind for you, without making the first connection the final answer.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on imagination examines different forms of imaginative experience. It provides context for distinguishing a dream from a deliberate waking visualisation.