I am an avid dream follower. Every night before lights out I program myself to remember my dreams and that has worked fairly well for a long time. I don't remember the entirety of what I have been dreaming about but usually I will get some final image or scene, full of emotion and tendrils of understanding, that makes no sense whatsoever when I initially wake up but over time (not a lot) I can allow some meaning, significance, theme, and/or essence to present itself out of what I 'saw' just before waking. Dream interpretation is tricky so use all the tools. Allow is the key word. However you get there (to comprehension) doesn’t matter so long as you get there.
A lot of dream stuff is symbolic, as if it is in code, so my technique is I have to sort of ‘triangulate’ feelings, physical sensations, associations with various characters in the dream (be they presently alive or long ago dead, as well as any odd behaviors they were exhibiting), in addition to any other bits of information in order to hopefully ‘get the message’. This is great fun and of course highly insightful. Remembering dreams can also, if you track them over time, start to reveal patterns. Recurring dreams and recurring themes arise on numerous evenings to show that you're still working on an issue and that you are making progress towards resolution. Non-progress is also possible, but who wants that? The impetus is to grow, to expand, and to deepen. Positive energy heads in that direction. It would be extremely hard for me, like it probably is for most people, to override built-up momentum and go the other way.
Lately my dreams have been many. I sense my dreams have been very active ones, that is, filled with bustle and people, like being in a crowded room or engaged somehow in a busy town, but I can't remember anything about what I was so involved in seconds ago 'cuz I forget them soon as I wake up. Try as I might, I cannot grasp the tiniest thread and pull on it that leads me into some sort of memory about what I was dreaming about. Usually, this is not the case, for by staying quiet and focusing I remember much, much more but lately, nothing. Zipola. Yeah, this is frustrating but I have experienced periods of non-remembering before. Whatever it is that I'm dreaming about is something I'm not supposed to know yet or it doesn't concern me. Perhaps I’m helping others.
The feeling then is that I'm living two lives, one in the waking state and a very different one in the sleeping, states so different that I am unable to recognize one while being at the same time cognizant of the other, know what I mean? They're that far apart.
So. Ride it out is all I can do before I'm ‘dream journaling’ again- and that's another thing I want to talk about. Writing down dreams takes forever and is hard to do, because you have to be conscious enough to write but not so awake that you are forgetting your dream. The just-wakened state is a nebulous, fragile, delicate, and very precious one. If your dream (or dreams, as many of them are linked) is a highly involved one the time it takes to write things down might have you forgetting pertinent details. Better to simply have a voice recorder near your bed that is easy to find and activate. First thing you do upon gaining consciousness is turn the thing on then mumble away into it. This is difficult to do, certainly, if you're in a shared sleeping situation because you will sound and look silly doing this but hopefully if you have a partner who understands that this is important to you they can overlook it, maybe by falling back asleep (or even mumbling into their voice recorder). Either way, just mumble away quietly.
Dreamcatcher deployed.
Nazym Jumadilova- Unsplash.com
Then, upon regaining full consciousness, say at least two hours or so, replay what you have recorded and be amazed at what you were oh so casually talking about then, astounded even, for what you said you would most likely never say in the fully conscious state. Unadulterated, your dream has been captured in its purest form. Further analyze, contemplate, or ‘process’ then ('cuz you've done so already, I'm sure) at will until you’ve exhausted the evening’s dream subject and feel done. Dream understanding takes time. Through a contemplative approach you just might start seeing patterns in your dream and connect the dots, bringing comprehension to what seemed unrelated before. If you cannot gain comprehension, let the dream go and see what happens. I’ve many, many times understood what my dream(s) of the prior evening were about late in the day during flashes of insight. Sometimes you just have to let events unfold.
I'm going to earnestly do voice recording myself for I have recently read some dream journaling I did a few years back where I was writing all my dreams down and it brought it back to me how much doing that served me (as well as entertained me), for the spirit realm is extraordinarily clever and can be quite funny, operating as it does completely out of time and any earth-bound associative rules.
I know we all have a lot to do and doing this is just one more thing. Capturing dreams only takes a minute or two though. That’s not a lot. All you gotta do is push the button on the recorder. The real ‘work’ is listening to what you’ve said later and then thinking about it. My experience has been that doing so has been worthwhile in every aspect of my life and I wouldn’t let these nightly picture shows escape unnoticed back into the ethers for anything.