Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
—Part 2/7 Without a written record, dreams are quickly forgotten, often as soon as an hour of waking up. There is no good way to remember your dreams without a written dream journal, preferably on paper. With paper, you can draw. You can write notes in the margins. It’s far more flexible. Understanding the dream…
Part 1/7 “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Donald Rumsfeld When former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said…
Dream journaling should never be a grind. It should be part of a routine. Once you know how to do it, once you develop the habit, dream journaling is the easiest and most convenient form of meditation with all the results. Yet all habits have a beginning and an end. Maybe, for some reason, the…
In Charles Dickens’s The Christmas Carol, the old, miserly protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge confronts his nightmares and emerges a better man. Dickens describes him as greedy, ill-tempered, and grasping. Scrooge, at least, is good in that he becomes a better person by the end of the story. Dream journalers sometimes have nightmares so unsettling they don’t…
What were you doing in the dream? Fighting, I don’t know. I don’t remember it well. Maybe there’s a puzzling line or two a character spoke in the dream. “Hopa, hopa!” What does that even mean? What makes a faded dream? A memory is formed in your brain by linking it to other memories. For…
The time it takes to understand a dream can be much longer than it takes to have it. It’s one key point when it comes to dream interpretation. Unbound by physical constraints, unlike other information transmitted through your five primary senses, dreams are more than pictures: they’re communications affecting all the senses. You’re making a…
Not every dream is symbolic of something, though many are. People tend to ignore dreams without symbols unless they’re an instance of deja vu where one has the feeling they’ve been somewhere or done something before. Dream journalers tend to talk about dreams with symbols more often. They’re more interesting because we learn from those dreams. They…
Meditation has become a big business as part of the increased attention paid to the idea of wellness. Venture capitalists are investing millions in it. When they put so much money into it, they hope to make a lot back. Meditation has been studied to treat high blood pressure, stress, pain, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis,…
There’s the old saying, “The devil is in the details.” When it comes to dream interpretation and dream journaling, however, the saying should be, “The angel is in the details.” The value of dreams is magnified by the richness of the details you can remember. People who ascribe little worth to dreams often don’t remember…
Weaknesses in plans, single points of failure, can become evident in dreams. Have your heart set on going to a particular college? Maybe you want to apply to more than one anyway, just so you don’t miss a year of school if you’re not accepted at your main college. Settling in a romantic relationship for…
Keeping a dream journal may make you feel vulnerable. You have to keep the journal by your bedside. It has to be easy to write them down to have the best chance to catch them with a pen and paper. Unfortunately, the journal is there for anyone who goes into your bedroom to read unless…
The phone rung. The dogs barked. A gunshot went off. Whatever happened, you woke with a start. You’ve suddenly sat straight up in bed. Your sleep has been interrupted. The thoughts running through your mind melt away quickly. You now have forgotten most of your dream or were stopped dreaming in the middle of the…
Christmas is over but the Nativity story doesn’t end. On December 28 western Christianity celebrates a time when the Jesus’s family was saved by his stepfather. This incident came to be known as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. This incident as well as some other incidents in the life of Jesus’s stepfather, St. Joseph,…