Usually, people consider whether or not they recall their dreams to be a static fact- either they have rich memorable dreams or don’t remember them at all. This can be frustrating to those who are curious about the dreamworld because when you can’t recall your dreams during waking hours, the door to the dreamworld feels effectively hidden from you. While one person regails with stories of intrigue and absurdity encountered on the pillow, another wakes up with a blank mind every morning. What was going on all night?
Dreams can be a powerful tool for self-knowledge, spiritual expansion, healing and even astral travel. But they can’t do much if you can’t recall them.
The average person dreams for about 2 hours nightly, across graduated REM sleep sessions. During this time, a shift in brain activity allows our bodies to sleep while our minds problem solve, process memories, and access creative dimensions… But the average person also states that they don’t really remember their dreams in the morning. Why is this?
While our waking life feels completely different from our dreams, our dreaming life is not separate at all. What we experience in dreams is also considered by our mind to be memories experienced by self the same way as anything else, but without validating the experiences as important, the memories are rapidly removed from our short term memory due to being seen as irrelevant and inconsequential.
Literally, they are seen as not-in-sequence with the rest of your life.
Fortunately, the mind is a very moldable thing, and dreamwork is far from an exception! Certain practices can trigger dream retention meaning your nighttime voyages can be retained by you for insight & exploration. One practice in particular can completely change this and give you a portal into the dreamworld.
Dream Recall is a discipline of using mental practices and journaling exercises to reinforce to the mind that dreams are relevant info, which triggers the brain to retain dreams as memories instead of forgetting them upon waking. This way, dreams can be recalled for interpretation, and you can train conscious awareness during dreamstates which can even assist in lucid dreaming.
Want to learn?
If you would like to use your dreams for self-knowldege and spiritual exploration, this exercise can be a great start.
To get details on how to practice along with dream realm safety, techniques to get into more vivid dream states, and information about herbs that can assist in this astral work, join my Patreon for a Dreamwork Focal beginning Aug 13.
