To dream of a river is a request to develop a natural flow to whatever spiritual aspect is the subject of the dream. It means this because water represents spirituality and rivers carve their own course to the sea. Spirituality is expression of your soul and in dreams is not connected with religion. The specific aspect is given by other symbols in the dream; however, you may already know what it is. If you are already practicing the aspect in question, it may be that you are blindly following someone else’s instruction when you need to put your unique stamp on it.
A dirty or polluted river is about your blood stream. Most likely something you are eating is causing toxins to get into your blood stream. Look for food symbols in the same dream. Dreams often show the color of the food rather than the food itself. For example, brown could indicate chocolate and white could indicate milk or dairy products. Recall what you have eaten in the last few days and look for something in common each time you have a similar dream.
A river bank is about your heart if the bank is green. This is for two reasons. The first is that banks represent the heart and circulatory system and the second is that the color green is associated with the heart chakra.
More often the river bank is muddy in dreams and this is about your colon. If the river is also polluted the dream is making a direct link between your colon / digestive system and your blood stream. If you are looking at something in the water such as baby crabs it is a warning of cancer of the colon. In these dreams it is more important to determine the trigger food and eliminate it or cut it down in your diet. Dreams of cancer are only serious if you have them consistently night after night.
