I don't understand how a dream journal works.

How exactly does a dream journal work. Well, people say that it will help me in remembering my dreams better. OK I understand that. But then they say that it helps you to find common things in your dreams and when you spot these common things when you're dreaming...you will realize that your dreaming.

Now I've only had a dream journal for five days but there are no common dreams...only strange thing I've had was a reoccurring dream of a dream that I had many years ago.

So should I just wait until I have more entries in my dream journal before I look for common themes?

Welcome to dreamviews. :3

If you remember more dreams, then you'll find patterns, dream signs, things that show up more often than others. Such as certain people, places, times or situations. When you are in these situations, train yourself to do a reality check, so that when you're actually dreaming, you'll wake yourself up and thus, lucid dream. DILD in a nutshell.

Good luck!

Welcome to Dreamviews.

As no-name said. Journals help a lot. After you have a good week or two weeks of dreams, then sit down with it and try to find out your dream signs.

After that whenever you find yourself in that situation then do a RC.

Good Luck

In LaBerge's book, "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming", he categorizes dream signs into four categories, I believe. Those are the dreamsigns you should be looking for. I'm not sure, but I think the different categories are:

Form
Context
Inner Awareness
Action

You'll have to read Laberge's book in order to understand what those mean. It's really quite simple, but does require some work to find them sometimes. My most common dreamsigns are in Form or Context.

First off, welcome to DV, silentaxis! :)

As far as searching for dream signs (DSs) from your journal, it does help to have a variety of dreams to look through. Keep in mind, though, that some people don't have straight-forward, concrete DSs that they can practice with. Some dreamers have a recurring dream character or are constantly in a certain location or are always getting lost in their dreams. When they're awake, they can train themselves to look for those signs and then question whether or not they're dreaming when they encounter them.

Other people, such as myself, don't have those signs. The only patterns I've seemed to find in my dream are the presence of groups of people (I'm almost never alone) and large, open spaces (either outside or in rooms with high ceilings and lots of space in general). It's difficult to find times to perform reality checks as if I RC'd whenever I was with a group of people, I'd be RCing all day. Now, it's not a bad idea to get into the habit of checking whether or not you're dreaming, but it takes time and dedication. If you have any questions about it, let me know.

Keeping a DJ will definitely help increase the number of dreams you recall. It's also enjoyable to read back at the dreams you've had and run them through your head again. I've had some that make perfect sense at the time but when I write them down I see just how ridiculous they sound. It's quite fun! :D