A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming (12 page)

writing them down because I want to remember them!” It may

sound counterintuitive, but this is an extremely common occur-

rence—just by keeping a dream journal, you will naturally begin

to remember longer, more vivid dreams. And all you have to do is

pick up a pen.

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A DREAMING SAINT

Le Marquis Saint-Denys was a French sinologist in the nineteenth century and
one of the most recognized oneironauts. He started recording his dreams at age
thirteen, eventually accumulating more than 1,946 in total. Saint-Denys believed
that anyone could achieve lucidity in their dreams and developed techniques
for inducing them. After six months of practicing his own exercises, he was
achieving lucidity two nights a week. Keeping a dream journal and familiarizing
yourself with your dreams, he believed, was one of his most useful techniques.

How to Keep a Dream Journal

If you don’t already have one, you’ll want to get a nice-looking

journal that you can write your dreams in. It will contain the

workings of your inner world, so show it a little respect. Don’t use

some small pad of paper; you’ll make a mess of it.

If you’re like us, you’ve kept a dream journal on and off

throughout your life, but you’re busy, and when the alarm clock

rings in the morning, writing down your dreams could mean that

you’d be late for work or school. What’s the point of scribbling

down these events? Recording your dreams can seem frivolous and

impractical, but this feeling couldn’t be further from the truth.

Personally, as we became lucid dreamers, we had to embrace

our dream journals with open arms. Our journals allowed us

to remember more dreams, reveal what’s going on in our inner

worlds, and most important, trigger lucid dreams. The value of

keeping a dream journal far exceeds the effort put into keeping

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one. If dreams are messages from our subconscious, then they have

important information to deliver. Ignore these messages and watch

dreams disappear from your life completely. Like a needy lover,

they want your attention, and if you cut them off they’ll respond

with the silent treatment.

The following tips may seem like common sense, but they’re

important nonetheless.

b
Keep It Next to Your Bed 

Keep your journal and a pen close to your bed in the same

consistent spot, so that when the morning comes, you don’t

have to go on a memory-fading treasure hunt.

b
Date and Time

Before going to bed, write down the date and your bedtime.

Not only will you be able to track your sleeping patterns, but

subconsciously you’ll also be preparing your journal for a new

entry in the morning.

b
Write Keywords

Don’t worry about writing a novel, you’re not getting paid for

this. Come morning, you might not want to write down every

detail. Feel free to jot down the important moments as bullet

points and expand upon them later when you’re not a zombie.

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b
Write in the Present Tense

When expanding on your dreams, write in the present tense as

if you’re currently experiencing it. For example:

The polar bear is staring me straight in the eye—

he bends down and hands me a cupcake.

Writing and thinking in the present will put your mind back

into the dream and allow you to recall more detail.

b
Title Your Dreams

After you write your dreams down, go back and give them a

title. Pick something that sums up the essence of the trip such

as “Midnight Snack with Polar Bear” or “The Joyful Parade.”

This practice will help later on when you interpret the dream.

It’ll also help you find old dreams when you’re searching for

them.

b
Notes

Make a note of whether you were lucid or not by putting the

word
LUCID
at the top left corner of your entry. Write down

what triggered your lucidity, how long it lasted, what you did,

and any useful tips you learned that will help with later lucid

adventures.

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I woke up one morning to find I had written a keyword down:

the name of one of my professors from college. Surprised I

dreamed about him, I wondered why he was on my mind, since

I hadn’t spoken to him in over four years. Three days later, I 

get an email from . . . you guessed it, my professor! Taking this

as a direct sign from my dreams to meet with him, I told him

about  the  coincidence  of  him  being  in  my  dreams  just  days 

before. We met for coffee and he gave me some very helpful 

advice—actually on writing this book! If I had been too lazy to 

write his name down in the middle of the night, I would have

forgotten the dream and this experience would not have hap-

pened. —ThOMAS P.

Finding Meaning Behind

Our Dreams

“Adream is an answer to a question we haven’t learned to ask.”

Those words were spoken by Special Agent Dana Scully, the

skeptical FBI agent from the
X-Files,
but the concept isn’t paranormal. Freud, Jung, and the other founders of modern psychology

all insist that dreams mean something. They reveal to us insights

about ourselves and our lives. Whether lucid or not, our dreams

reflect the inner workings of our psyche and can be highly useful

in learning more about ourselves.

By keeping a dream journal you can see things about your-

self that you normally dismiss with your everyday waking mind.

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Health issues can pop up in our dreams long before we see symp-

toms in the waking world. Our relationships sneak into the plot

of our dreams and reveal our true feelings, both good and bad.

Drifting up to the surface are habits we need to look at, patterns

we keep repeating, guidance for everyday problems, and beneficial

changes we need to make in order to improve our lives. A dream

journal records all of this, displaying the buried secrets that our

dreams exhume. Think of your dream journal as the SparkNotes

to your inner world.

Many of us see dreams as puzzles, little riddles to be solved.

We buy dream dictionaries to understand their meaning. Well it’s

time to throw away your dream dictionary; it’ll do more good in

the local landfill. The fact is, the dream belongs to the dreamer.

Dreams are very personal, intimate things. An apple to us is not

an apple to you. An apple to us five years ago is different from our

present-day association with an apple. We believe that you and you