Not all dreams are symbolic.  From my journals so to speak:

Later on, i became really interested in dreams and dream
interpretations, having always been a pretty vivid dreamer. I got to
the point, where i thought ALL my dreams were purely symbolic, and
tried to interpret them through symbolism.

Then i had an interesting experience which showed me to not be so
symbolically based all the time.

I had a dream where my little brother and i were at a pond or lake
fishing (haven't had too many dreams with my little brother in
them). At some point, on this nice clear sunny day, a water snake
comes out of the water and starts to move towards my brother and i,
and wouldn't leave us alone. It was a black watersnake and seemed
kind of menacing.

I woke up, thinking crap, some bad stuff is going to happen to my
little brother, he's going to go through some really rough times, be
really tested, etc. Completely thinking it was symbolic.

Well, its important to note that my brother and i hadn't hung out in
a long while when i had that dream. I had moved to another place,
and he hadn't visited me at that place yet, even though i had been
there for awhile. While living there, i hadn't been to any lakes or
ponds in my town.

A couple or few weeks later after that rather vivid dream, my little
brother calls me up and asks me if he can stay at my place over the
weekend. I say sure, no problem, and he asks if he can bring his
fishing poles so that we can go fishing together at some point, and
i say sure (i used to love to fish before i became a vegetarian, in
fact lived 3 years by the ocean and went fishing almost every day,
or at least down to the rocks to just spend time near the ocean).

We found a good sized pond in my town, which i had never been to
before, and it was a nice clear sunny day. While we were fishing, i
noticed a black watersnake out in the water. As it was swimming by,
it started to swim closer to land, and it came up onto land, and
started right towards my brother and i. I've never had that ever
happen to me before in my life up until that point.

Not only did it come right towards us, but it wouldn't leave us
alone even when we shoosed it away with our fishing poles. It was
determined to get near us, and tried a few times before finally
giving up and partly because we got a little more agressive with it.

It was almost point for point, the same as that dream i had a couple
weeks before! I re-remembered the dream when the snake came at us,
and i was like ok, this is a little strange, and i guess i totally
misinterpreted that dream! So, in my personal experience, even real
dreams not caused by body imbalances, are not always purely symbolic
or representational in nature. Over the years, i've had quite a few
precog dreams though never quite as literal and point for point as
this one was.

  My fiance as also had some rather literal precog dreams which were verified later on.