Keeping a Dream Journal 

You will hear over and over again that you should keep a dream journal.  You should!  Even if you only occasionally remember your dreams a journal will help you over time.  All dreams are important on some level. If you are dreaming about your day, re-hashing relationship, or other events - you are doing so for a reason. Dreams often deliver keys to healing, body, mind and spirit if we only understand.

• In general when you use a journal, you will find that you recall your dreams more frequently.

• Keeping a dream journal offers you a way to discover details in your life you may not pay attention to while awake. We are sometimes more honest with ourselves while asleep than while awake, and the details of our dreams can bring us into deeper and more honest self awareness.  Dreams express complex experiences that surpass rational thought. Dreams engage our rational mind and our deeper, subconscious mind - bringing us to state where past, present and future can merge.

• When you go back through your journal, you are able to discover patterns and cycles that would be lost if not recorded.  Incidents of precognition, deja vu and other synchronicities are documented, so you increase the potential to recognize them as they occur.  It is likely that everyone has precognitive dreams.  Since so few journal and keep track of the cycles, or bother to work the symbols - most are unaware they do.  Those that do recall them are likely to only remember the dramatic, startling ones that 'stand out.'  Some cases of deja vu may actually be from dreaming it first.

---

 

Dream Journal Mechanics

1)  Get the right book or software.  The best paper alternative I know of is a small three ring binder from one of the organizer companies and put in blank paper.  If you’re going to use computer software make sure you put your laptop by the bed in hibernate mode.  If this isn’t possible always record your dream first on paper. 

1.      Daytimer – www.daytimer.com – Good source of binders in a variety of sizes and prices.

2.      Franklin Covey – www.franklincovey.com Alternate source of binders and paper

3.      Dream temple software  - www.akashasoftware.com  Decent software for recording dreams.  Includes a customizable dream dictionary

 

2) Keep a book light clipped to your journal so you can record dreams in the middle of the night without waking up your SO. 

3)  Scheduled time.  In an ideal circumstance you would write in your journal each morning while your dream memories are fresh.  However, that is not always possible.  So, schedule a time (each day if possible) for it.  Do not wait to long or you may have difficulty making sense of your 'first thing in the morning' notes.

4)  Date each entry.  Write down the date and time you wake up each morning along with your dream.  It will be an excellent tool for tracking cycles, and for confirming certain aspects of dreaming (cycles, shared, precognitive) dreams later.

5)  Title each dream!  Don't agonize this step - just write down something that summarizes the dream.  This too can help in a variety of ways.  It can help bring out the dream message, the focus.  It can also assist you in building and index so that you can easily trace back to dream events.

 6)  Note reoccurring locations and themes.  Note seeming 'shadow' events that happen externally - newspaper clippings, news reports and so on.