There are a number of ways to give attention to our dreams. First, maintaining a dream diary is essential. Having a special book for recording and preserving our dreams is a powerfully symbolic gesture of respect for them. A dream journal has the double advantage of sparing our memory the impossible task of storing all our dreams and at the same time providing us with a space in which to develop, by writing out, our realizations of the meanings in the dreams. As your dream book grows, it becomes more and more of a reference work.
We may further wish to honour our dreams by giving them artistic expression. It is often a good idea when we record our dreams also to include illustrations and diagrams in the diary. Certain dreams or dream images may stimulate the production of a satisfying painting. But even doodles made in the dream journal while musing upon the dream may yield surprising results. It is also possible to create poetry and stories of fantasy from our dreams. Besides providing works of aesthetic value, creative writing from dreams can also promote a greater awareness of the significance of the dreams,
Another important way of giving attention to our dreams is simply to think about them during the day. As we ponder what we dreamed during the night, we will often find it stimulates further dream memories and sometimes new ideas emerge. Thinking about dreams is often a good way to test and develop our memory for them, for we will find it easier to recollect (without the aid of a dream diary) the dreams we recalled that morning and on previous mornings, even dreams of the most loosely connected sort.
By keeping our dreams in mind, we invite our daytime experiences to remind us of our dream images. It’s no accident when we are reminded of a dream. We gradually discover the natural associative context of our dreams and we find that our past dreams provide us with frequent metaphors for our ongoing experiences. These spontaneous, meaningful coincidences often lead us along a natural path of dream realization.
Another aspect of giving attention to dreams is the practice of occasionally talking over, or simply telling, our dreams with friends. Discussing our dreams helps us to overcome any shyness we may have about them and it also serves to give them an added importance. The opposite can also be true: a dream kept purposefully a secret develops a special value all its own. Yet if we dream of a friend, discussing that dream with the person gives us an opportunity to add a further dimension to our friendship. Although it might be true that we dream mostly of ourselves and that the friend in our dream represents some aspect of ourselves, discussing the dream with the other person may nevertheless yield some surprises.
The care we take to retrieve and reflect upon our dreams pays us rich rewards. Yet the creative potential in our dream life will develop in reality only to the extent that we take our dreams seriously enough to act upon them. As we gain appreciation for our dreams, they will cease merely to entertain us. They will begin to provide us with a source of hypotheses about ourselves and our environment. But only when we test these hypotheses y daily experimentation can we expect to exhibit the vitality that our dreams require in order to help us most. Like the difference between having an idea and making it work, living the understanding the dream brings is the crucial test in the art of remembering dreams.
The use of the term “art” might seem overdrawn unless we consider the nature of the creativity process. Creativity is sometimes describes as the ability to combine common elements in novel relationships. It is the ability to suspend for the moment our usual working assumptions so that new thought patterns can form that constitutes the essence of creative functioning. Even though, these new patterns appear vague and remote, entering into an empathic relationship with such potential sources of inspiration until they can clearly manifest is itself a creative act.
Creativity is also the process of bringing to light those invisible, autonomous promptings, the daemons of the dark, which normally hold us in their secret sway. Dreams are the daemons’ playground, and our days are subsequently affected by their nocturnal activity. Remembering our dreams, then, becomes a creative process which offers us the opportunity to participate with increasing consciousness in the drama of life.
Each dream is a creative act. Dreams habitually disregard our everyday logic and typically surprise us with their juxtapositions. It is not only their tendency to dissolve rapidly, but also their alien quality that makes them elude retrieval. Remembering our dreams, honouring them in our lives, then, is a creative art in which we can all become more or less proficient. It is worth the practice. At the very least, it offers us a way to develop our potential for creative functioning and it may offer us more than that.
It has been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Will you take that first step today?
In Light and Love, Francesca