Is There A Point To Writing All My Dreams Down?

[3FLryan]

So I have pretty good dream recall. I can remember about 2-3 dreams a night. Usually, one of these dreams is a huge, intricate dream that would probably take an hour to write down. My question is, what's the point of writing it down if I can remember it when I wake up, think it through backwards to front, remembering everything (well, almost everything, you know), and being able to recall it throughout the day? Granted, I can't remember it well at all the next day, so that would be a plus to writing it down. I've had 4-5 LDs this month, and it's my first month being active at Dream Views and really trying to remember my dreams and become lucid. My goal is to attain perfect lucidity and control (be able to do whatever, whenever). Yeah, I know that's pretty ambitious, and will take a WHILE, but hey, it gives me something to shoot for. So am I hurting myself by not taking the time to write everything down?

[Koji]

As you have already indicated, it is excellent for memory. It might not come in handy the first day, but the next day or the day after that it might help. There are other reasons to write dreams down though. It can help you recognize dream signs that reoccur, or common themes that take place within your dream. As a result, this can help you attain lucidity more often. Writing it down can also help improve vividness, though, from how you speak of your recall, it sounds like you got that down for the mst part. I think there is more stress on dream journals than there should be. I think it is helpful to practice, but not quite as important as people stress. I also think it depends on the person. For me, I know it has helped at least a little. Before I started this journey I remembered small fragments of dreams that would fade over time. Not to say I couldn't remember it better if I wanted to, but I certainly didn't try. Now, like you, I remember about 3 dreams each night on average. It has definitely helped me on dream signs too.

[Howie]

I think Koji makes some great points. It is believed that writing something down a word or a persons name helps us to remember it. It is though it makes an imprint in our brains. That is one reason to writing down your dreams. Another and more important, because our dream content is stored in a short term memory area of the brain, the content of a dream is very quickly lost. Especially the smaller detail. If we write them down by doing so, by the physical conscious act, again bring this to the forefront of our thoughts. In return doing the same thing as the prementioned. As we have logged many of our dreams, the contents within can be your own dreams interpreted. It can give you a good source to paralleing your dreams, finding dream signs and sometimes just enjoying looking through your past dreams that have been long forgotten. If you are using it as a tool for better recall and your dream recall is very good then for all intent purpose it is not necessary. You may find that some of the smaller details do get lost though. You may wish to try a voice recorder. It is less tedious. There eare some draw backs to that I think though.

[Vex Kitten]

Journalling may help your dreams become even more vivid or help you recall more. When I started my journal here I was recording 1 or 2 vivid dreams/night. Now I can recall up to 8 dreams on a good night. It's a pain in the ass to get used to but once you establish a routine of recording dreams it becomes second nature. Of course, if you have a photographic memory I suppose you don't need to DJ. It's also kind of amusing to go back and look over dreams I had a year ago and compare them to dreams I'm having now. Some dreams I'd completely forgotten and they would most likely have been lost forever if I hadn't recorded them. I have over 700 dreams logged in my current journal.. there's no way in heaven or the other place I'd be able to recall all of those simply from memory. But to each, his/her own. You may not need a record of your dreams to achieve your LD goal. Whatever you're doing now seems to be working for you so I say stick with it. Good luck with LDing.

[3FLryan]

Thanks. I think I might try the voice recorder and see how that works for me. I'm not sure I like the idea though, it might be easier, but I think if I'm going to record my dreams I'd rather have them written down. I agree that it helps a lot remembering the smaller details, but it just seems like it takes me FOREVER to write the smaller details down. But, I also forget those small details easily, so that's one major drawback of not writing anything down. For instance, I can recall all of the major plot points and a enough details from a dream I had last night to be able to say I remember what happened, what I was thinking and how I felt, but a lot of the vividness and finer points are definitely already lost. I wish I could remember that stuff without painstakingly writing it all down, but I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and do it. I sometimes wish dreams were saved in movie form so you could go back and watch them later. Maybe someday...