Dream Journal

 

How do I remember and note my dreams?

We plan on remembering the dreams before we are going to sleep.

  • We let the past dream images and all the feelings we had, flow into our memory if we wake up at night. It is important that we do not change our body position because otherwise we may forget everything. After we repeated the dream in thought we might do a short summary of the dream in three to four keywords. After that we go back to sleep.

  • We put aside a note book so that we can note everything that we discovered in our dream. First we just note some keywords preferably with our eyes closed. The more awake we are the more we forget. Later we can write down everything in detail.

  • We note every dream so we can train our observation and memory skills. Shallowness causes memory lapses and everything becomes vague and uninteresting.

  • We also note seemingly insignificant dreams or dream passages. Often we realize the meaning of an event retrospectively or in a wider context.

  • We give every dream a title so we can find our way through our dream dairy.

  • We can discuss and interpret our dreams with like-minded friends. Together it gets more interesting and we have more ideas.

Where can I find material to expand my knowledge about symbols?

  • Own dreams

  • Dreams of friends

  • Fairy tales

  • Myths

How do I gain knowledge about symbols?

The best thing we can do is create a ring binder that is split up in different symbol categories or alphabetical. We add dreams to the pages that express the symbol clearly. Often it will be some sort of symbol variant. With the help of that we learn to interpret our dreams in finer nuances and improve our interpretation skill.

Another recommendation: We can put many pictures for instance from magazines into the dream dairy. This stimulates our imagination while thinking about the symbols. The unconscious thinks in pictures and we should support that.

Many symbols are personal symbols and can only be understood by observation and thinking. We do not find any examples in literature or in my own experience. Even though personal symbols form the main part of the language of the unconscious they stay unmentioned here.

Should all dreams be symbolical interpreted?

There are dreams that give us valuable insights, emotions and wisdoms that we should directly spiritualize. If we would symbolical interpret these events we would lose the direct impression. Such dreams are:

  • Loving Encounters. In these dreams often a strong depth of feeling occurs which goes hand in hand with a never known strength of love and inner opening. We should gratefully accept this gift. We also should try to revive these feelings through remembering to help ourselves growing internally. Wherever this gift may came from, it would be false to destroy it with analysis. It is better to let this encounter be what it is and carry what was given to us in our hearts.

  • Life dreams. In these dreams we discover another persons fate. It might be an important stage of life or a large part of a complete life in its most important sections. Such dreams often teach us an unknown way of seeing things and encounters. They show us pain of farewell and loss. Often we discover new points of view which might be of social or cultural nature. We can learn from that for our own lives. Without these dreams we may never had discovered such feels due to lack of situation. In fact we got the gift of another persons life experience. An additional life experience with which we can grow in terms of understanding and maturity.

 

© Alfred Ballabene (Vienna) translated by Seth