The truth is that we are all epic dreamers – we each dream about 5 dreams every night – even if we remember none of them! Dreaming is a natural process that unfolds instinctually within each one of us, effortlessly. Remembering our dreams however is where the effort comes in. If our dream-memory function (the “bridge” between our dreaming world and our waking world) is not well-maintained then many of our dreams will fall through the cracks as we wake, sinking back into the mists of our unconscious. If we work on improving our dream recall then we can build a reliable bridge between the worlds, allowing the gifts of our dreaming to remain with us as we return from our nightly travels back into the waking world. This bridge works both ways and will allow us to bring more lucidity and awareness with us on our journeys into our dreaming world as well.
Our dream memory works on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis, and unfortunately most of us haven’t been using it much for most of our lives, but thankfully it usually responds fairly quickly to our efforts. The following practices should help those who may be experiencing a ‘dream drought’ to start recalling their dreams within a few weeks.
Setting intention is more than casually wanting something to happen – it is the energetic force behind every creation becoming manifest.
Toko-pa Turner
Preparation & Intention
The first step for successful dream recall is to prepare yourself and your space to be open and ready to receive your dreams. This requires creating some ‘sacred space’ for dreaming in both your home and in your mind. Clear all clutter from your bedroom and create a peaceful and beautiful space for dreaming. Clear stale or negative energy from the room by misting or sprinkling salt water around the edges of the room and visualising a protective dome of golden light encasing the room. As you do so, whisper a protective incantation such as, “Only helping spirits may enter here.”
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Going to bed early and allowing plenty of time for yourself to sleep in and doze in the morning will give your mind all the quality time and energy that it needs to dream and play.
The Dream Journal
Keeping a dream journal – a book just for your dream experiences – is an essential practice for both dream recall and dreamwork. A nice pen that will make writing smooth and enjoyable is a big help. Keep both of these by your bed and set your intention before sleep to remember your dreams and write them down as soon as you wake up.
For enhancing dream recall it is really important to write down every dream you remember in your Dream Journal. Even if you only remember flashes or images, write them down. It can be notoriously difficult to force ourselves to write down our dreams when we wake up sleepily in the morning, but every time we do so we are strengthening our memory bridge between the worlds and sending powerful messages to our dream memory to be vigilant now. If we wake from a dream during the night then jotting down some keywords of symbols and characters is usually sufficient to trigger the larger memory of the dream in the morning.
Your dream journal is your book of Soul.
Robert Moss
As You Wake
In the beginning you might not remember many (or any) of your dreams. This is nothing to worry about – dream memory is a skill like any other, it requires some practice and perseverance. When you wake just remain still as you search your memory for remnants of dream images. Avoid moving or rolling over and keep your eyes closed as you explore the residual images within your mind’s eye.
Even if you can’t remember anything at first it’s important to not give up too quickly. Remain lying still with your eyes closed and spend a good amount of time and effort trying to remember what you dreamt. Think of the dream memory as a muscle, and the harder you try to remember your dreams in the morning the more you work this muscle. As the muscle gets more exercised it grows stronger, and the more vivid your dream memories will become. As you lie in bed trying to remember, ask yourself how you feel. Feelings can lead you back to dreams. Move your eyes around behind your closed eyelids – this activates different sections of your memory bank. Ask yourself questions and allow answers to gently surface in your mind’s eye, such as “Where was I?” “What did I see?” “Who was I with?”
When you do remember a dream image or scene then retrace the dream events backwards and forwards in your mind several times until you have recaptured as many details of the dream as you possibly can. Once you hold the memory clearly in your mind you can open your eyes and begin to move and stretch your body. The next step is to write it down everything you remember in your Dream Journal as soon as possible.
Recording your Dreams
Give your dream a simple title, note the date and (if you wish) the moon phase. Try to capture the authentic experience of the dream as faithfully and honestly as you can as you write it down. Using present tense (for example, “I am floating over an ocean and I see a giant whale” instead of “I was floating over an ocean and I saw a giant whale”) will help to keep the feelings of the dream much more present and alive.
Write your dreams on the left hand pages of your journal and save the right hand pages for your dreamworking.
Dreamworking
Dreamworking with your dreams and dream fragments can begin as soon as you have written them down or, my favourite, over a morning cup of hot chocolate. Dreamworking is potent for enhancing the vividness of our dreams because more than anything else it is our active listening to the messages of our dreams that will encourage them to speak to us. Honouring and engaging deeply with our dreams, delving into the mythic language of our dream symbols and themes, and navigating our waking life by the stars of the dreaming realms are at the heart of the Magic of Dreaming method. For more on Dreamworking please read my article on Dreamwork Techniques.
An Open Mind
As you begin to remember more of your dreams you may find yourself recalling scary dreams or uncomfortable dreams. Some dreams are confronting or may remind us of painful past events that we would rather forget. We might even wake up wishing that we hadn’t remembered the dream we just had. Dreams can be can quite horrible experiences sometimes and this has caused many people to shut down their dream memory and burn their dream bridges because they feel ashamed of their own dreams. Uncomfortable feelings of fear, disgust and shame have caused many of us to conveniently ‘erase’ our dreams on waking throughout our lives.
We need to change this pattern and be gentle and encouraging with our newly awakening astral memories – don’t shoot the messenger! Instead, remember that for every shadow there is also light; dreams are always leading us to greater spiritual evolution. They are always guiding us into the light and forwards on our spiritual path. This necessarily involves bringing up our shadow sides to be revealed, acknowledged, loved, forgiven and healed. Much of our waking lives are actually spent in ego-protection mode and it is this behaviour that exposed by our dreams. Our dreams can be quite ego-destroying because they want us to drop our ego-imposed limitations and get on with living our Soul Purpose.
Repressing, censoring or denying our dream memories is effectively denying the voice of our true selves, and this will severely block our spiritual growth and potential, including our dreaming and astral traveling abilities. We need to focus instead on developing a deep self-esteem that is not ego-dependent. So whatever the dream is be sure to keep an open mind as you write down the details in your journal. Be aware of any resistance you feel to writing the dreams down – is this resistance a result of not wanting to accept something within the dream? These resistances will need to be acknowledged and overcome. Try to approach all of your dreams with the same gentle, loving curiosity. Love and forgiveness are our greatest magic powers so use them liberally as you work with your dreams. Be gentle with your dreams, and gentle with yourself. Dreams are rarely what they appear to be; they have hidden encoded meanings that work on a deep symbolic, mythic level. Remind yourself that your dreams are on your side and have your best interests at heart. They are always focussed on your personal healing and wholeness, and the healing of our collective world. When we honour them and treat them as sacred, they will reveal themselves to us. When we approach our dreams with magic in our hearts, the magic of the dream is able to shine forth.
(If you do have recurring nightmares caused by PTSD then please reach out to a professional therapist who can assist you in working with your dreams. Lucid dreaming is showing amazing results for healing trauma and restoring peace to the lives of many, but for working through deep trauma I recommend professional help and support.)
Beliefs
Some of our main obstacles to easy dream recall lie in our limiting beliefs and attitudes towards our dreams and towards our own potential. If you had a normal Western upbringing like I did, then you were probably told things like, “Forget it, it was just a dream.” And unfortunately programmed by a lot of well-meaning people who also had it done to them when they were growing up. Dreams are incredible mirrors of our own consciousness. Like sacred texts, to the uninitiated they can seem to have little or merely superficial meanings. While to those who know how to crack the codes and awaken the deeper mysteries they can have immense transcendental power and wisdom.
Let’s look at some of the basic assumptions that most of us were raised with :
Dreams are not important and basically just the garbage of the brain
There is no other realm but the physical realm
My consciousness exists inside my brain and the rest of the world is separate from me
Well, no wonder we can have trouble honouring and remembering our dreams!
We need to lucidly reprogram our old belief systems (the collective myths inherited from our parents and our society) to now include the real magic of dreaming as our innate gift. We can do this through affirmations that will help convince our Sun Mind to feel confident about expanding its sphere of awareness to include the dreaming realms and be open to hearing the communications from our dreaming Moon Mind. Our old beliefs will need to be replaced with these new ones. Allow your rational mind to relax and open to these truths to as you read them now. Choose the affirmations that most resonate with truth for you, or make up your own, and repeat them to yourself as often as you can:
Dreams are sacred journeys into the dreaming realms
When I honour my dreams their magic is revealed to me
Dreams contain important messages from my soul
I remember all of my dreams when I wake because dreaming is important to me
I write all my dreams in my dream journal because dreaming is important to me
There are no ‘bad’ dreams
All dreams are healing and worth remembering in detail
My dreams are always aligned with my greatest good
My dreams guide me on my path of my spiritual evolution
My dreams take me deep into the dreaming realm
The dreaming realm is real and I can experience it for myself
I am One with the world around me and not confined to my physical body
I am safe and protected and there is nothing I need to fear
It is perfectly safe for my consciousness to travel beyond my physical body and I can return to it whenever I wish
Journeying
There are some people who due to cannabis medicine or other medical/psychological issues will not be able to develop their dream recall beyond a certain level, if at all. Luckily we don’t actually need to sleep to access the dreaming realms. Our Moon Mind is continually dreaming, however the brightness of our waking Sun Mind usually obscures this process, just as we can’t see the stars in the sky during the day although they are always there. Relaxing our Sun Mind and shifting our focus to our Moon Mind allows us access to this dreaming stream of consciousness that is constantly shaping our reality from the shadows.
A journey is a visionary journey (also known as a shamanic journey) into your inner world that you embark upon while you are awake. This is a kind of ‘waking-lucid-dream’ in which you temporarily disengage your rational mind and allow your dreaming mind, your creative imagination, to guide you on a visual and sensory journey. This kind of waking-lucid-dreaming is often aided by shamanic drumming or binaural beats to help to guide your brainwaves into the dreaming ‘theta’ frequencies.
Journeying is an excellent way to travel into the dreaming realms from a waking state, and will also greatly strengthen our bridge-between-the-worlds, enhancing the quality of our sleep-dream recall as well.
For more on Journeying please read my article on Journeying Techniques.
Plant Allies
Plant allies have been guiding humans into the dreaming realms for thousands of years and these blessed beings remain just as helpful today – if we honour them and invite them to dream with us. The sacred plant Mugwort is a fantastic ally for vivid, memorable dreams and a cup of mugwort tea, a fresh sprig under your pillow or a mist of essential oils around your bed as you set your intentions is powerful magic for remembering your dreams. Plant allies are also powerful protectors on our dream journeys.
Celebration & Gratitude
The forementioned practices of preparation, intention, dream journaling, dreamworking, journeying and befriending plant allies make a powerful combination for all dreamers to use to build and maintain a strong and healthy memory-bridge between the waking and dreaming realms. The final step I will add is one of celebration! Practice rejoicing every time you remember a dream! A little enthusiasm goes a long way to boost our dreaming psyche’s confidence. Congratulate yourself for every dream you remember and thank the spirit of your dream for its presence in your waking world.
The magic and joy of dreaming is a gift to be sung about as we wake every morning. Happy dreaming!
~ Artist Unknown ~