Different Dream Journal Perspective

Most dream journal conversations that I have read revolve around the idea of keeping a journal to encourage our mind to remember that we are interested in our dreams. They give us links back to our dream journeys long after they would have faded from our waking minds. And they present the possibility of deriving dream signs to help us with our lucid challenge.

What I have come to realize, I think, is that the dream journal has a much more fundamental effect on our unconscious, if given the opportunity to function more fully.

It is an accepted truth, I believe, that if you journal, you develop a better memory of your dreams when you wake. Given that, when I tell myself to remember my dreams as an evening mantra, I also remind myself to note them down. This has helped me motivate myself in the wee dark hours to actually sit up and make the notes, to not just wake enough to realize I was dreaming and then fall back asleep.

The unconscious seems to have little trouble reminding us that we want to journal, that we want to remember our dreams. If we are more specific in our pre-sleep preparation (re MILD or other) in regard to journaling plus the need to wake up slowly to make notes, it could provide easier access to our critical awareness at an opportune time.

I know the concept of waking up slowly isn't a new idea. It's the incorporation of remembering to journal that is the difference for me. The reason I push the dream journal idea as the impetus for this approach is that it seems our unconscious mind already likes the idea of the dream journal and is happy to accommodate our interest. In other words, we are traveling down a path already cleared of many obstacles rather than having to start the path from scratch, so to speak.

Perhaps others have already gone down this path and have some interesting results. If that's the case, I'm just reinvigorating an idea. Either way, enjoy your dreams.

Interesting idea. It was quite a while ago that I got into recording or noting dreams upon each awakening where I remembered a dream, so I don't remember exactly how things were for me in terms of recall when I started. However, it's come to the point where it's second nature to me now. I have no trouble waking up several times during sleep right after REM cycles (just automatically, no alarms or conscious effort needed), feeling like noting the dreams, and remembering to do so. I usually have no issues with being too sleepy/drowsy, or anything like that, yet I usually can get back to sleep reasonably quickly once I'm done. It seems to have somehow been a natural side-effect of simply practicing this sort of journaling/recall technique.