Thread: Good Dream Recall - A Natural Talent, or My Approach to Dream Recall?

For some reason I have good dream recall naturally without the need for dream journals, although I'm not sure why as my daily short term memory is terrible (perhaps a cognitive compensation?). I can remember some dreams that I had decades ago vivid and clear just like it was yesterday. Sometimes I think it's down to my own approach to dreams, because for some people they're places to have fun, while for me I see them as a world to be experienced, explored and understood, just like waking reality. Dreams are a science to me with physics that I think about on a daily basis as opposed to thinking about techniques like reality checks and dream journals, however I do have more vivid dreams than I do lucid dreams, not a bad thing for me personally as it's the nature of the vivid dreams that I enjoy most. I have had some lucid dreams where I've been able to shape and manipulate the environment which was fun, although I learn less from those experiences than I do from vivid dreams and tend to not remember them as well.

For me spending the day practicing things like reality checks are what you want to do if you want to entice lucid dreams, where as spending the day thinking about the differences between waking and sleeping reality are what you want to do if you want to improve dream recall. If you spend the day doing reality checks you're going to ask questions like "am I dreaming or am I not dreaming" which does help activate awareness but that's all it does; where as if you spend the day comparing dreams to reality you'll ask questions like "what is the difference between this world and the other world," and while you're less likely to entice a lucid dream you're more likely to remember those differences as it's the comparative science you're concentrating on, not distracting your mind with the fun of being lucid.

Something I think is important to remember is that the dream world is just like the waking world, how you spend your time there is what progresses your development. If you spend all day playing video games you're not going to be out in the real world gaining experience and remembering those experiences, like wise with playing around with lucid dreams. If you're constantly trying to become lucid then you are distracting your self, not thinking about what is important. For me I spend a lot of the day simply thinking about stuff and questioning things, be it life, science, philosophy or dreams, and that habit translates into my dream states. So while I'm dreaming I'm constantly questioning the dream, making mental notes about the world I'm in and what that world is or might be about, as opposed to doing reality checks to try and become lucid and play games with the dream I'm in. So while someone being lucid might think "I want to fly," for me being vivid I think about the actual content of the dream its self. I'm not trying to distract my self playing games, I'm trying to observe, understand and figure out what is actually going on around me, and I think it's this that possibly gives me the talent of having good dream recall without the need for a journal, as it's in my nature to spend the day thinking about things as opposed to actually doing things.

On the contrary, I keep a life journal, not a dream journal. Every time I'm thinking about stuff, every idea I have gets kept and written down, this is my daily habit. So I think while I'm dreaming I'm doing the same thing, my dream journal takes place within the actual dream its self, not during the morning as I'm waking up.