STUDY > WHISPERS IN THE NIGHT
Why Should You Record Your Dreams?
I have recently been asked why I would recommend that people record their dreams, what benefit is there in this? Well, let me try to explain …
Sometimes we waken up from a dream and it has been so vivid that we can be convinced we will never, ever forget what we have just ‘seen’. So we turn over and go back to sleep. But when we waken up later, it is almost as though the dream that was written in disappearing ink … it’s gone, and nothing we can do will seemingly bring it back.
In Western cultures, we have been trained unwittingly in the Greek way of thinking which places high importance on logic and science. This worldview has little place for dreams. How often were you told as a child:
“Don’t worry it was only a dream”?
There is a part of your brain that is called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) Basically it acts like a filter for you memory, it works out what is important information that you need to remember and what you can forget. So, if you are being told that it was ‘just a dream’ often enough then you RAS will learn that dreams are not important and so dreams can be forgotten. By recording your dreams you are starting to ‘re-pprogramme’ your RAS to recognise that dreams are important and need to be remembered. The more you record your dreams and then go back to work on the to try to understand any messages that they may contain, the more your RAS will start to remember and the ‘disappearing ink’ will stop disappearing quite so quickly.
However, in the technological age that we now find ourselves, there are various options that are available to stop the ink from disappearing! Most mobile phones will have the facility to record your voice but please try to speak claerly otherwise all you will have to play back is lots of indecipherable mumbling. Alternatively your phone or tablet device can be used to quickly type up the main points of the dream that you remember.
The benefits of doing this is that what you come back to look at the dream in the future, be that in the morning or at some other point, then there will be words, points or sounds that will prompt your mind to remember the dream more clearly. At this point it is quite common for more of the dream to be remembered. Some people like to draw out their dream, while others will write it out more like a short story and others will mind map it.
It’s not important which method you use, what is important is that you use a way that works for you. Try lots of things, drawing in coloured pencils, not writing in straight lines, showing the size something was in the dream by the size you write it on the paper (ie Big ), record it on your phone…… have fun with it – don’t make it a religious exercise otherwise you may well miss the spiritual message that the dream contains. Always go back to the Giver of Dreams and ask for understanding of what the dream was about but the more you are able to record, the more you will start to get a deeper understanding of how the Giver of Dreams communicates through dreams.
Sweet Dreams