Dream and Recall the Dream

How to Dream and Recall the Dream

In my previous blog post, History Was Made in Dreams, I wrote  about some dream examples that strongly influenced historical events and important findings in their fields. Since dreams are an important part of my own life, I have made a summary of my personal experience today. Here are my suggestions. This is part 2 of 2 on the subject of dreams.

Eleven Points for Dreamers

  1. Sleep well. When the quality of your sleep is compromised, the quality of your dream is compromised too.
  2. As a mental preparation, you can strongly desire that you want to have a good (or specific) dream and you want to remember the dream clearly until tomorrow morning. Your mental intention is helping you throughout the night.
  3. Always keep your dream note and pen together at your bedside. Record it when you get your meaningful dream. Even a sketch, a simple word in the dark are enough for you to recall next morning.
  4. Jot down ALL dreams you experienced during the night. Take time and try to recall as much as you can. Write down even fragmental scenes in your dream. When you try to write the whole story, you may end up forgetting the second half of your dream. In this case, you need to overview the night’s dream first, then draw a sketch or write down key words for your story before writing down the entire story. Think story line first before full story.
  5. We forget dreams once we are out of our bed. Once there was a physicist who relied on his night dreams and the notes he took during the night for his ideas.. He was later rewarded with Nobel Prize. You can use voice recorder if this is your choice.
  6. In the morning, you are conscious that you are lying in bed with your eyes still closed. Before you open your eyes and get out of the bed, scan through the night’s dream from beginning to the end. In some cases you may have had multiple dreams during the night. Then open your eyes and start writing the dream(s). This exercise is needed simply because this action of scanning your dream with your eyes closed makes it much easier to write the whole story.
  7. The world of dream is, literally, dream world. The scenes are strange and often do not make sense, even though they make perfect sense in the dream world. Due to this nature, you need certain skills to transfer your dream into your notebook with written words and diagrams. Write as honestly as you possibly can. When you exaggerate or worse lie on your story, you are not gaining anything.
  8. It is important to understand that dream world has its own logic and is different from that of worldly logic. If you write your dream with your worldly logic, it becomes a mistranslation even if your intention is good. Key word is unconscious translation. It may be the best to write your dream while in dream state.
  9. Notebook selection is up to you. Use one that is comfortable for you. My experience is that a small notebook is difficult to handle in the dark. And you don’t want to turn your light on as you may lose your dream memory and also you may have a hard time going back to sleep. A piece of paper is easy to lose later so you want to keep your dream (or idea) in a notebook for purpose of easy access to your record of the dream.
  10. Dreams by nature: 1) disappear quickly once you open your eyes and, 2) except for a few, dreams disappear completely once you move your body and go to the washroom. So, it is important for you to write while in bed immediately upon waking up before you forget.
  11. Dreams are known that we dream during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Since REM happens certain times of your sleep, setting alarm during this period may help you remember better (although you may lose quality sleep). Many people complain that they do not dream at all. The fact is that they do dream but simply they do not remember it. Before going to bed at night, set the intention and ask yourself to remember your dream until the next morning. Conscious effort to dream to your unconscious mind may help you to remember dreams.

The Art of Dreaming

The significant nature of our dream is to bring the unconscious world into the conscious world. Dreaming is one of the many ways that our intuition can bring reality into our physical world. The art of dreaming is how to bring it and then how to execute it. Just dreaming a dream without following it, is a dream wasted.