Recalling Dreams

It is a real good idea to keep a notebook and small flashlight beside your bed, because many dreams can vanish from memory in seconds unless you hold them in your mind while reaching for the pen and paper and writing them down immediately... or at least scribbling down a few notes to jog your memory for writing them down later in more detail. For most people however, the biggest obstacle is simply being willing to wake up enough to write, with the faith that you will be able to get back to sleep and not lay awake. Giving suggestions to yourself before you go to sleep and believing that it is possible to do it are the most important factors. For a veteran dreamer like me, going back to sleep is both pleasurable and immediate 99% of the time. The 1% when I cannot go right back to sleep comes when I have had an incredible dream that I want to think on more and often I strain my brain to recall every possible detail. This effort often gives incredible rewards, even if I am groggy for a time in the morning!

Learning to remember dreams is much like learning to remember most anything that is not automatic for you, it takes repetition. The main thing is to keep at it, write down anything you can recall, give it your best effort at the time, and keep asserting that you WANT to remember them. Soon you will find that you begin to remember far more than you thought you would. Yet some folks will still have much problem. For this I would give the following explanation.

Memory is the utilization of the art of association. When pleasant things are to be recalled, the act of recalling the memory becomes a pleasant association; but when unpleasant things are recalled, the recollection becomes an unpleasant association. The first thing that will be recalled for the person who has an unpleasant association will be the unpleasant memory. To get past this point, you must begin to face those things in life which are difficult, which the dream is referring to. There is no way around this point that I know of, if you want to recall your dreams, you have to be willing to face and understand yourself.

Those who are willing to undertake this sort of challenge will likely find that subsequent dreams recalled are not nearly so threatening or frightening, and the recall of dreams becomes much easier. This is why I wrote in the interpretations section that interpreting dreams involves the study of one�s own life and motivations because our dreams are the reflection of our inner most desires and motivations.

Therefore in order to understand your dreams it becomes necessary to study and understand your own life. Certainly some dreams can be understood on surface or superficial levels, but dreams have many levels from which understanding can be derived, and understanding more than superficial things requires an honest assessment of onesself. To this I will encourage everyone, because I believe it is the most important thing that can be undertaken in a life: to understand yourself and your relationship to others and to God.