Breaking illusions: What is dream journal?
Breaking illusions: What is dream journal?
Beginning
I know, how I felt, when I started with lucid dreaming. Full with energy, prepared to have my first induced lucid journey. And really. that excitement brought me some of my first few interesting adventures. I kept track of them with help of a little notebook. That notebook in my case was full of dreams. Everytime I opened it I felt the strange power coming from my first dream experiences. I journaled a lot of dreams back then. It was cool, but then it came....
First failtures
As dream content depends on how you feel, how was your day like, how motivated you are, the time eventually comes, when your successes start to fade away. Many people call this dry-spell.
This was exactly the time, when I didnt like to write my dreams down. They seemed so empty, without me actually present in them, or so sad, I didnt wanted to remember them, to be present in them.
Time for some action
Rapid drop in recall called for compensation. I didnt want to stop with lucid dreaming, becouse it is so beautiful in its core. So i started to plan when I will wake up at night, at which hour. I even created some special kind of notation which i used every evening. But as the failture rate was increasing, I found out that with each unsuccessfull evening plan, my motivation was dropping. And that was the time, when i stopped journaling at all. Now I know why that all happened. I didnt understand what dream journaling is all about.
How did I understood?
Just as you, I am rediscovering the basics every day. And journaling is essential part of basics in lot of skills. Simply with rush of motivation I bought another notebook. But this time, it was not becouse I wanted to write down my dreams. It was simply becouse I wanted to write down the information about lucid dreams from various sites. To make the information available for further study. As i started performing some of the techniques. The same notebook started to be {and still is} used as result book for some of my experiments. Naturally. I started to be aware at night and I started to remember some of my dreams. So I wrote them down at the same place. And then I understood it: This is my dream journal :D.
What is dream journal?
Before writing anything else, let me pinpoint one thing: For most of people more than half of dream content feels negative. Often your dreams are playgrounds where you are trying to solve your problems, so their content is not always sweet as sugar. Sometimes you will even be hating your dreams. In light of this: Dream journal is not only a place, where you write your dreams down, but also a place, where you write your:
- plans
- attempts, success and failtures.
- feelings
- excerpts from books, media, even some internet links.
- present knowledge
- thoughts
As you will soon find out, dream journaling stays much longer in your focus, when it remains neutral and constructive at the same time. It should encompass not only positive sides of your dream journey, but also document your unsuccess, your good and bad mood, how you managed to improve your mood, what inspired you, even what made you cry.
We-oneironauts are operating on a field of dreams, which are accurately describing our own personality. If we dont document what comes as it comes, there is not need to document at all. With one-sided documentation we are only lying to ourselves. And as with every lye. We are doomed to unsuccess.
Now it seems, that journaling may take a lot of time. It doesnt have to be the case. Even writing down, that you didnt remember your dreams today at all, and some possible reason why that happened, or some plan what you will do with it, can be named a success. Success is persistence. Success is staying connected with dream journey.
Conclusion
How do you feel about journaling right now? Do you feel the responsibility against yourself? Arent you cheating a little with your lucid dreaming right now? Please be serious and remember that:
"Dream journal is not only about documenting dreams. Dream journal is about YOUR DREAM JOURNEY.
"
Illusion broken?
