Greetings and welcome to Dream Class II - "Keeping A Dream Journal."

We are a communicative society these days. More and more folks are gaining access to the Internet and many of those folks are "bloggers" -- journal writers! Blogging is one of fastest growing activities online, far surprassing chat rooms by today's standards. With a blog you don't get feedback right away so you can maintain your train of thought while writing. Feedback comes later, after publishing, when readers may leave comments on the blog's topic.

So, o.k. ... why all this about blogs?

Because keeping a dream journal is very much like keeping a daily blog. The big difference is that your dream journal isn't published for the world to see (unless you decide to do so), and the comments left in your Dream Journal are left by you during your analysis.

Why have a dream journal?

Dreams are an important pathway of communication between our higher self and our waking self. Keeping a record of these dreams offers us the opportunity to gain profound insight into our psychic self and to grow from our dream experiences. By keeping a journal of our dream travels, we can guage our passages at certain times during our life through our dream experience.

Your dream journal acts as a personalized spiritual thermometer and directly relates to where you are spiritually in waking state.

You may be working out a problem you have been experiencing in waking state and the solution(s) may come through dreams. Writing them down can be the difference between consciously solving a problem and letting nature take its course. Either way, the problem will solve, but if you keep a dream journal, you will be taking a pro-active stance - empowering yourself.

Where Do I Start?

Start out by picking out a book in which you can record your dreams and get a good pen or pencil. A dream journal can be as simple as a spiral notebook, or as elaborate as a binder with specially organized journal pages. No matter which method you choose, it should be something that you can keep close to your bed, on a nightstand, or under your pillow so you can record as soon as you awake before your feet hit the floor.

Your journal should have room for four headings across the page: Date, Content, Symbols and Meaning. A filled in Dream Journal might look something like this:

Keeping a journal in this form gives you the opportunity to record the content of the dream, list the symbols and meanings all on the same page as the dream. You also might want to leave room to write in your own comments as time progresses and you begin to join dream patterns as they emerge.

What Should I Write Down?

Write down as much of a dream as you can recall. You may find that as you begin to unravel a dream (what I like to call "pulling a dream thread"), more and more of the dream experience will surface.

Important points to record::

• colors you see, if they are vivid or dull
  
  
• feelings you have during different sequences - surprise, anger, panic, empathy, joy, etc.
  
  
• people you meet, whether they are someone you knew in the past, or someone you now know, whether they are passed on or still alive
  
  
• facial expressions of the people you meet and feeling you get from them
  
  
• area descriptions and whether they are familiar to your or not
  
  
• dream scene activities - walking down a road, driving in a car, riding in a train, etc.

Sometimes, we may not remember a dream, but may remember a certain 'feeling' upon awakening. By recording these feelings you may see an emerging pattern that you can analyze, as well.

Tips on Remembering Your Dreams

Remembering your dreams may take some work, particularly if you don't remember them now. We all dream; this is fact. However, many, many folks have no recollection of what happens in dreamstate. Here are some ways you can remember more and more of your dreams.

• You need to develop your desire to recall your dreams. Put aside your fears and let the dream experience be.
  
  
• Before you go to sleep, tell yoursefl that you will remember your dreams when you wake up. Repeat to yourself "I will remember my dreams" several times. This puts the thought out there where your unconscious self will pick it up.
  
  
• Place your dream book under your pillow and make the conscious choice to remember. This is positive reinforcement.
  
  
• Set an alarm to go off 4 hours after you retire. When you awake, record whatever you can remember immediately.
  
  
• Before your feet hit the floor, write in your dream journal, even if it is only to record the date and how you felt upon awakening. Not only does this begin a dream recal habit, it also helps with recollection. Once you sever the dream state connection, you may lose the dream thread.
  
  
• Keep a flashlight near your dream journal in case you wake up in the dark with a dream recollection, you will have some light to properly record the dream. .

Using these tips to recall your dreams may help you in a lot of ways. You begin to establish a habit of dream recordation which trains your inner and outer self to be more aware of dream time. And, you begin a process of self-discipline which may grow to cover other areas in your life. Dream recollection is but one facet of self-empowerment, of conquering something you couldn't do, and of overcoming obstacles.

A Word on Symbols and Meanings

Every dream has symbols and each symbol has a meaning. However, a symbol may have different meaning to each dreamer. We will have a class devoted to building your own personal dream symbol dictionary and another class specifically on dream analysis - both topics will be discussed in depth.

Levels of Sleep

Along the pathway to dreamstate there are a number of way stations - levels of consciousness - that we pass through before entering deep sleep, some of which happen so quickly we barely notice.

1. The inward turn away from the physical where we begin to release our worries of the day. At this level we may see scenes flashing before us like billboard signs, like a review of our day, or dream experience to come.

2. Next is a level of passivity in which our channels are open to receive messages. This is the level where we solve many of our problems. We are semi-conscious at this stage and open to suggestion. We may incorporate background noise into our dreamscape as our thoughts follow the sounds.

3. Next is the plateau where we may feel the almost imperceptible sensation of growing large, or of falling. Growing large signifies the expansion of our psychic self, while the sensation of falling is the feeling we get when we suddenly return to consciousness - the phone rings, the cat knocks a book to the floor, or maybe the wind slams a door and we become physically aware of traveling back up through the levels..

4. Next we enter a level of deep sleep and are fully engaged in dreamtime. We are past the dream censor and into the realm of dreamtime where our unconscious and creative self takes over.

It is the fourth sleep stage in which the most profound dreams are experienced, and perhaps the ones which are most difficult to remember. It is at this stage also where the dream censor plys its trade, shading and disguising dream symbols from something you may find distasteful to something more acceptable.

A good example of dream censorship is, let's say, you are dreaming of enjoying rigorous sex with your boss and you are in the dominant position. The dream censor goes to work and when you awake, your recollection of the dream is that you made a lovely dinner for your boss which was greatly appreciated. The symbology is changed from pleasuring your boss with sex, which may be unpalatable to you in waking state, to pleasuring your boss with a delightful meal..

Homework: Here are your homework lessons ~smile~

1. Buy a suitable dream journal. A steno pad, or spiral notebook are easy to maneuver.

2. Make the commitment to write in your dream journal every day upon awakening. Make the commitment and follow through with it.

3. Record your dream threads, entire dreams or just dream feelings upon awakening - don't worry about analyzing them yet, just write down anything you can remember.

4. Send me one of your dreams in an email and we will analyze it together. In your email remember to put the date of the dream, the recorded dream content, any feelings you had during the dream, and possible symbols you recognize. We will work on it together via email.

Dream Class III will be based upon symbols from your own dreams - A participant must complete Dreams II assignments in order to take Dreams III and IV.

Good Luck! And write to me if you have any questions.

Rev. Bee

Your comments are always welcome - just send an email by clicking here

Next --- Dream Class III - Building Your Dream Symbol Dictionary and Dream IV - Dream Analysis

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