jPay Message #388

I read a book about lucid dreaming and how to do it (also known as oneironautics….there’s a word-of-the-day) when I first came down, but never made much headway in the practice. Tbh, too much work and discipline. But as i was destined to run out of things to do and be bored,I was also bound to return to it at some time. The essential step to learning how to lucid dream is to know when you’re dreaming so you can become self-aware. You can only do that by becoming familiar with your dreams. The writer had a few recommendations for this process; chiefly, keeping a dream journal.

That was the only practice I did keep from the book, but only if my dreams were particularly vivid. Lately, however, Ive started recording my dreams on a daily basis, making it one of the first things I do so the details are still fresh in my mind.

Keeping a daily dream journal is like therapy on steroids. You learn of the contents of your subconscious. You become intimately acquainted with your “shadow”. The meaning of your dreams quickly adopt an obvious symbolism that doesnt require a Freud to interpret. Your personality can more easily integrate your waking and sleeping selves, the “you” that narrates your day and the hidden desires and motivations that lurk beneath that mask.

Plus, once you write down and narrate them, your dreams come alive with you during the daytime.