Dreaming Lens: What were you looking for? Where were you searching? Did you know what you were looking for? How long were you looking? Were you alone in your search, or did you have help? How important was the item you were looking for?
Personal Focus: This is a fairly frequent universal dream that represents a primary human experience of discomfort. The feeling of searching for something important and being unable to find it is challenging enough when it happens in life. In the language of symbols, it also taps into a deep fear shared by all people; the elusive search for meaning that all of us have to face from time to time in our lives.
On the face of it, a dream of searching for a lost object has a primary purpose of helping us relieve stress so we can wake up the next day and face our day-to-day lives with more psychic balance. This is the purpose for all recurring dreams of this nature. If you have this dream on a regular basis, it may simply be a convenient way for your unconscious to process the pressures of everyday living. However, if your dream feels as if it requires a deeper investigation, use the Dreaming Lens to guide your interpretation.
What it is that you are searching for should be your first consideration. Your personal associations with the object will reveal what you sense is currently elusive. When in doubt, ask yourself, “What does this thing do, or what is it for?” Keys represent your access to the various compartments of your life. Your wallet connects you to abundance and the ability to meet your needs in the world. A more personal or specific item should be viewed through whatever meaning you assign to it. If there is no specific thing that you are searching for or you do not know what it is that you have lost, the dream may be pointing to a free-floating sense of being inadequately prepared for some situation in your life.
Where you are looking offers the next shade of meaning. Your own home connects to your personal sense of self. Any other environment should be used to guide you; where you feel that something has been lost may be telling you that a certain area of your life has left you feeling incomplete. [1]