January 25th, 2015

One of my New Year's resolutions was to start keeping a dream journal again. It's a lot easier said than done - the last thing I want to do when I wake up is write, and I have to make sure to always have a notebook and pen next to me, because I want even less to have to get out of bed to write. That being said, when it's done consistently, the benefits of having such a journal are significant.

One result is that you begin to remember more of your dreams, and more frequently. A month ago, I was remembering almost nothing of anything that happened during sleep, whereas now, I can always at the bare minimum recall some major images and themes. More and more frequently, I find myself remembering dreams in greater detail, and sometimes even having multiple dreams in one night. This is, to reiterate the fact, after only a month. As a practice maintained, you can expect to remember your dreams in detail almost every night.

While interesting from a purely theoretical perspective, dreams can actually tell us a lot about ourselves, and by recording them, we can determine underlying patterns to our mental and physical health, among other things. To put this in context, allow me to explain first that I've been recording my dreams on and off again since middle school. As such, I have a lot of material to examine. Also, I have what I am finally self-diagnosing as a generalized anxiety disorder, which tends to manifest itself as OCD. Bearing these things in mind, I've realized over the course of several years that I tend to dream about water when my emotions are particularly strong about something, and that if I'm headed into a period of especially bad anxiety I dream about drowning. It gives me a bit of a heads up into my mental state and the chance to head things off at the pass, so to speak.

On the metaphysical end of the spectrum, recording one's dreams offers a lot of possibilities. For instance, it makes an interesting means of divination. There's all sorts of spells about placing a given herb under one's pillow to dream about a future lover or some such, but I generally go one simpler - often, a particularly vivid dream may give an indication of how the following day will go. Just two nights ago, I had a repetitive dream about triumph over obstacles, and then yesterday I aced the audition I had been worried about. Also, dreams may involve astral travel or meeting with deities and other spirits.

This barely touches on all the things one can learn; consider it my pitch to you to start a journal if you don't already. Sweet dreams...

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