“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.”— Marcel Proust
Thinking Differently
Dreams involve a different way of thinking. We don’t get far by applying conscious thinking, which is linear, causal, and rational, to the holistic presentation that dreams employ.
Because dreams are so different, it serves little purpose for us to remember them, but we can benefit from them if we think differently. First, dreams don’t have a goal, they are a process. And second, this process does not have meaning, it’s an exploration of meaning. Dreams are abstract arrangements of associations looking for meaningful combinations.
Despite our not remembering dreams as messages or parables, they are still serving their purpose, which is to solidify our memories and attitudes. We forget the dreams, but not their result. And by forgetting them we are less confused.
Dreams As Art
Dreams are a series of stories without a plot. Like visual art, they conjure associations without making statements. These associations are the foundations that support your attitudes and decisions. Revisiting them is like walking through a museum containing the work of strangely familiar artists.
What we remember is a series of scenes from a phantasmagorical journey. We have to reassemble the journey from these vignettes without explanation. In a psychological sense this journey is more real than waking life because all of its locations are meaningful. There are no irrelevant details in our dreams.
The key to making greater use of dreams lies in finding more associations in them. Imagine that the people who planned this trip were smarter than you are. I don’t mean they’re more analytical. In fact, they’re less analytical. They don’t need explanations, they are more sensitive.
All of what appears in your dreams—all the places, people, and details—are fabricated. The point of dreams is not to craft a story line, but to explore the conclusions of all the storylines suggested by life at the moment.
A dream well remembered consists of a collection of abstract scenes. Every night you make up dozens of these. You would be hard pressed to come up with one or two in your conscious, waking state, but it is by creating and reflecting on these stories that your subconscious mind “thinks.”
Remembering Dreams
You have one to two hours of vivid dreams each night, as well as several more hours of less visual dreams. You will remember dreams when you wake up when or before they are finished.
The vivid dreams occur at the end of a normal night of sleep. The less vivid dreams usually occur during the beginning and middle of the night, but not always. The less vivid dreams provide less recognizable material.
Nightmares and repetitive dreams are of a different sort. They are issues that your subconscious mind has not resolved. In those cases, you are being called to be more engaged.
Normal dreams, the kind you typically won’t remember, can be recalled by adopting an altered perspective, having the intention, getting sufficient sleep, and using some memory techniques. I’m now finishing writing a book on how to use dreams for guidance and clarity.
A book I previously published, called Becoming Lucid, is about different awake and asleep states and lucid dreaming. Simply recalling your dreams involves some of these skills, but it’s easier and it’s not as disruptive to the dream.
Intention
One step in remembering dreams is to want to. It’s that simple. As you’re falling asleep, remind yourself of this. You may also think of what you would like to dream about, but it’s unlikely that you will. Still, thinking about what’s important to you is a step in the right direction.
I would suggest you think about pleasant things. You don’t need to remind yourself of unpleasant things, as they will appear as necessary regardless of your intentions. Most likely, your dreams will be the combination of what’s meaningful to you plus what recent events have set you thinking about. Not the events, but your thoughts about them. Appropriate topics will seem to click into place in your conscious mind.
You will awake at the tail end of your morning dreams when you get enough sleep. Many people don’t. I have a different book, The Path to Sleep, that addresses insomnia. Sufficient sleep is essential for health and it makes dreamwork much easier.
Notes
Another step in remembering dreams is taking notes. A few notes, jotted down legibly during the night, can bring back large portions of a dream, and ruminating on these parts often brings back others. You must make some notes because without some starting point the whole fabric of the dream dissolves.
To take notes, have a light by your bed that’s positioned behind you and easy to reach, and a notebook and pen by your bedside. It’s enough to clearly state the start of each scene as that’s sufficient to remember the rest. But dream scenes don’t develop logically, so it’s easy to drop an episode.
If you’re waking up during the night, resist the temptation to go into detail as that will make it harder to fall back to sleep. If you’re waking up at the end of the night, move only a little upon waking and give yourself 15 minutes to recall your dreams.
Moving, planning, or thinking about the coming day are like a hurricane to the fallen leaves of dreams. Once you get up, physically or mentally, the memories of your dreams are blown away.
A Dream’s Meaning
There is none, but there is perception. Perception is a form of awareness and this is not meaning, as meaning is an intellectual creation. Dreams may reflect something you perceive but are not consciously aware of. Dreams provide indications, which is different from meanings.
This is recognition, not interpretation. Dismiss anything you’ve heard about dream interpretation as these are thoughts after the fact. The dream has no more meaning than a voyage through memories and associations, but these may include things you are not aware of.
A dream may reflect an illness or imbalance in your system. This could be a fear or a sensation. If it’s a sensation, then it might seem premonitory though it is actually a presentation of sensations in the present.
Dreaming you have an illness may be a true perception of what exists but you are presently unaware of. In contrast, dreaming of mechanical failure of a car or airplane on an upcoming trip is a presentation of your current attitude. In this case, the attitude is real and present while the premonition is unreal and misunderstood.
The meaning you may look for and find is not in the dream, but in what the dream means to you now. You can find more meaning in your dream’s associations if you remember more of the details and are less analytical in trying to put them together.
A dream is a jigsaw puzzle of pieces that don’t make one picture and don’t fit together. Each scene recalls its own associations, and there will be different associations between different scenes.
There are missing associations, the scenes that don’t connect or don’t make sense. These are elements that lead to new attitudes or ideas, they may be confusing, or they may be beyond your current ability to understand. Most likely, what’s missing combines all of these. We could say the same of most opportunities.
Collaboration
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