Very interesting article–I’m going to try printing out my dreams and using a binder. I too have illegible handwriting when I first wake up. I have a question for you. Do you always set an intention for your dreams? And what do you do if your intention doesn’t match the dreams that come? One reason I got out of the habit of writing my dreams down was because I got frustrated at the lack of correspondence between my dream intentions and my dreams.
For example, last night I set an intention to meet my dream doctor. A doctor who could tell me what is up with minor physical worries I have. I had interesting dreams, one about finding my wallet in a grocery store, half torn but with all the money/cards intact. But, I definitely did not meet a dream doctor!
So, it leads me to wonder if I should just forget the intentions or if I should assume that there is always a connection between the intention and the dream that comes, no matter how far-fetched. Or perhaps the dream relates to an intention I set some other night? If I have something I want guidance on, should I set the same intention every night until I have a dream that relates to it?
Thanks! I really appreciate this blog and all you do to promote a dreaming culture.

Suzanne – No, I don’t set an intention for dreaming every night, and when I do, it;s often general, like “Show me what I need to see” or simply the intention to waje rested and refreshed. Yes: i will always play the game of seeking to relate a dream to an intention, even if the link is hard to find. For example, if I had expressed the intention to meet a “dream doctor”, I would consider the possibility that the dream itself is the doctor (and/or the doctor’s report). The content of this dream would make me think about how my health may be related to (1) diet and (2) the state of my credit and identity, on both the literal and the soul levels. Synchronistically, I have just written another blog piece on the symbolism of wallets and pures – look for that to appear here in a couple of days.

I have found the practice of journaling my dreams has significantly impacted the way in which I write about waking reality. As I write a night dream as a story (as Robert prescribes in his “Lightning Dreamwork Process”), it calls on me to take my waking writer’s mind back into the world of the dream on a quest to capture the imagery, the emotion, the sequence…. the very texture of the dream experience. In writing a dream narrative, I strive to honor fully the depth of the experience of my dream – owning it and making it real with words.I have gained much as a DREAMER via this process because that which is honored and owned multiplies and expands, blooming in the nurturing, thriving with attention.
In reading this article on writing, I realize that I have also gained much as a WRITER via this process. I approach the act of journaling my daily events as if they, too, are a dream – the dream that happens on this side of my consciousness. I explore the events of my waking life with an eye on capturing the imagery, emotion, sequence and texture, telling it as a story, seeking to comprehend symbolism and synchronicity, just as I would a dream. Of course by the time I can write the story, the dream or life experience are already passed (or past). However, in both instances, I take myself back into the scene unfolding and narrate in the present tense – the act of writing present tense requires that I be fully present to the story unfolding. Often, recounting the experience this way is tantamount to “re-entry” and I’m often astounded by the new comprehension or creative stirrings for forward momentum that transpire within and because of the process itself.
Although I’ve been reaping the benefits of doing this for several years now, I don’t think I had clarified and realized the power therein until attempting to explain it here. Powerful stuff, Robert. Thanks so much for focusing the lens.

Robin – Thanks for your vivid and muscular account of how journaling grows and deepens writing practice and our ability to find and tell the stories that are seeking the right tellers. Many writers have found that journaling is the best way to work out those writing muscles, and often an effortless way of producing the elements of a draft. I agree with you about the power of writing in the present tense and staying present to what the dreaming universe is giving us. Thanks so much for your post.

Wow! Cool, thanks that helps a lot. I can see that my frustration with dreams not appearing in the way I expect them to has lead to my not appreciating and playing with the dreams that do appear. I will look forward to the post on wallets! And very interesting post as well Robin. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more journaling.
About synchronicity, before finding this blog I had been thinking about how it was time in my life to spend some time looking inward, having reached a time in life when my outward affairs are in order and don’t require as much attention. This blog and the reminder to explore my dreams has really given me a key.

Suzanne – Good to know this is helping you build your practice. One of the great this about night dreams is they carry a certain kind of objectivity, showing us things from a perspective different from that of the waking ego. So we want to be ready to work and play with whatever comes.

It is my adamantine conviction that if each person on the planet kept a daily/nightly log or journal, we would be countably more sane. //I do use pencil for my original log because I can write in bed at any angle and not have to keep shaking the pen. I get a #5 lead auto pencil, throw way the lead it comes with and put in nice dark 2B lead. Works a treat.
I’ve been doing daily journaling for about 40 years. (Learned after 10 years to always put the *whole* date [06.26.10 sat] before every entry. Before I learned this requirement, I knew what year it was when I wrote the darn entries. 6 years later, who knew?)
What has made me or allowed me to journal 7 days a week is that my Oath to myself is, simply, I will write every day even if I only put the date and “I’m too beat to write more today.” That permission means I don’t have some grueling taskmaster goal to meet in my precious log. I almost never write only that — but I *could.* I find that the Muse cares first about my “keeping faith.” You do get magnificently and intimately rewarded for keeping faith. I write in phrases separated by semicolons when pressed for time.
There is truly nothing you could do for yourself that will be more interesting and vivifying than keeping a journal. (I never let anyone read my log. If there’s something I must share with someone, I always type it out. I feel like that privacy is essential to the truth of what I can write there.)
Whether nightrem or dayrem, it is all a body braille of a holo-language thru which we travel. Forests and streets of holo-runes speaking, whispering as we pass. It’s all got a story to tell.

Wendy – Thanks for keeping faith with the practice of journaling. Yes, it does keep us sane and helps us gets through and if you simply write long enough, you can’t help becoming a writer, whether the world knows that or you choose to let them know. Dating entries is important. I generally note the time period during which a dream took place.

Why do I journal? Becuase I deserve to be heard. I deserve to know my truth – walk my path. Journal is a living spirit – a chasm so deep it holds all that I am, ever was, and will continue to become. Journal is the friend with whom I speak from my heart – no holds bar – the friend to whom I speak the absolute truth. And becuase I can speak my truth, Journal is the doctor who tells me to stop eating peanut butter so as not to get the skin rashes; the counselor who listens and guides me with my action plans; the investment banker to advises where to invest the family money; the travel agent who books reservations on magic carpets to shooting stars and bareback riding on sea turtles bomber diving to the depths of mother ocean. Collectively, the journal spirits are the mason, who with me, pours and cuts the bricks that lay out the path my heart beats to follow.

Tia B – Thanks for this fabulous celebration of the journal. If we have that doctor, counselor, investment banker and travel agent available – who makes house calls and doesn’t charge a cent – we must be crazy if we’re not working with him or her.

I’ve been journalling for years and it’s only since 2009 that I’ve kept a separate dream journal (following Robert’s suggestions to date, title and index entries in a “stackable” notebook). I wrote the word “Dreaming” upside down on my 1st journal. I agree that keeping an active (or interactive) dream journal, nourrishes and enhances creative power. Again following Robert’s advice, I make an entry every day and if I don’t remember or have let my dreams slip away, I simply do a full-page, creative writing exercise where I begin with “Today I feel X, I see (with open or closed eyes) Y, I hear Z”, etc. I let emerge whatever wants to be noticed. (For this reason, I too, keep my journal for myself as a very sacred place).
I recently reviewed my dreams from Sept. 2009 to end June 2010 and was remarkably surprised at what an extraordinary experience it was. It’s one thing to play with your dreams on a daily basis and it’s a completely different experience to overview them! I noticed recurring themes of “food” (endless buffets & exquisive restaurants & of being a waitress, for example). I had many dreams of “excessive water” (leaky pipes, floods, drowning, etc). My 1st dream entry concernes “shadow” (heavily cloaked Darth Vador type characters rising up, one after the other endlessly and as each one rose before me I stabbed them with a weightless sword and watched as they collapsed as if filled with air). My last dream entry of this period concerned an adventure with three Black men that had to steal my purse to get my attention. With these two dreams, and all that flowed between, I was able to see how I have shifted in terms of my relationship to my masculine self and was filled with joy knowing that “ca bouge!”, that these various parts of my multidimensional self are very much alive!
Since I’m relatively new to dream journalling, I don’t yet know where it will take me, but I relly love it and it’s difinitively, an integral part of my daily life.
… And thanks, Tina B, for the last sentence of your post. It’s lovely to read and a keepable image.

I forgot to mention an important point to overviewing dream journal entries. In doing such I was able to assess (and have personal proof of) having dreams that refer to an approaching reality in waking life!
One of my examples is that in mid-June I dreamed that there was snow in my hair. My head was covered in snow flakes, my body was hot and I was wearing my son’s baseball cap. Yesterday, I picked up my son from horse-camp where he spent the week riding (and swimming with!) horses. His head was filled with white head lice! I didn’t initially think of my dream until I poured the liquid shampoo treatment I bought at the pharmacy on his head. My son yelled, “Hey! that’s really cold. Gosh, it feels like ice!”

Irène – It is a wonderful practice to go back and review dreams (and other things) in a sequence unfolding over time, when we’ve been keeping journals long enough to make this worthwhile. While some dreams or synchronicities can be an epiphany, instantaneous and complete, others reveal themselves only within a larger pattern, and require time and tending to deliver their full gifts. It’s good to notice those recurring dream themes and compare them to what may be recurring situations in waking life – and see where we may need to take action, in one world or the other (or both) to break free from an unwanted cycle of repetition.

Irène – Yes, indeed: One of the gifts of journaling is we will amass first-hand evidence of dream precognition, liberating our minds to catch and use more messages about the possible future. Since you were wearing your son’s baseball cap in the “snowflakes” dream, it certainly seems possible that you were dreaming into the situation that manifested yesterday with his head. At the same time, I wouldn’t rule out that a second incident that still belongs to the future may turn out to be an even closer match for the dream. (Hopefully it won’t involve head lice If we are going to get really good as dream trackers, we want to avoid coming to premature closure on such matters, leaving open the possibility that a dream may not have been fulfilled by the first event resembling it that comes along.

I’m 31 years old now, and I’ve been writing since I can remember. Looking through old school papers my Mom had saved I found my first science fiction story from around the third grade called “Space Quest”, and I remember the stories that I wrote as assignments in second grade already had chapters. But I started keeping a diary about my life in the 6th grade, a practice I’ve kept with throughout. I have filing cabinet in the closet in my study/library/writing & music room filled with old notebooks and journals. It’s full now, and the journals I now keep spill onto my bookshelves -themselves already full, double rowed or with stacks in front. I write all this to say that over the years I’ve experimented with a number of ways of keeping my journals organized. This is how they stand now. Perhaps this set up will be helpful to others:
1. I keep a small moleskine or other durable memo pad (unlined if it can be helped) in my pocket, or next to me on my desk at work or when at home, at all times. This also sits on my nightstand for capturing things during the odd hours of night, morning or what have you. This pocket notebook is essential for writing down keywords from dreams, synchronicities as I notice them, intuitive flashes and ideas as I get them. First, I am a dreamer and a writer, but at this time I’m still working the proverbial day job at the local library (a great place for my ongoing researches in any case). The work for an essay, article, or story doesn’t stop when I put the pen down (it usually just joins the other one already in my pocket anyway) and as I get back to earning the green reality tickets we’ve all agreed upon to trade with by consensus (and perhaps stifled imagination) I continue to compose the story, essay, review, poem, etc. in my mind -especially, if I’ve just come back from my hour lunch break, which is really an hour break so I can write. The pocket notebook allows me to write some notes down, that I can get back to later, and I can sketch them in on the fly without annoying my co-workers too much. Anyway, they should be keeping a journal as well.
2. I used to keep separate books for my waking thoughts and my night dreams. These were black hard bound blank page notebooks. As I take my journal with me everywhere I go, along with a book or two I’m reading, this set up became too cumbersome. As I started working with my dreams on a regular basis, it became apparent, that I was often writing about my waking thoughts, day time events, synchronicities, what I was reading, etc. and my dreams, all in context with each other, so the separation began to feel artificial. I now no longer worry about it. What I did do, though, and this I got from Robert, was start keeping my stuff in a binder. I can’t stand to write on lined paper, so I take from blank paper from the office and punch holes in it. Keeping things in a binder allows you to go back and add in some thoughts at a later time about a dream or event -especially useful, as pointed out in Robert’s “Dreaming True” book- when you’ve had a precognitive dream, or various types of “life rhymes” experiences.
3. Although I do not separate my dreams from my waking experiences in the journal any longer, I do have a few sections in my binder. A) Dreams, Waking Events, Ideas, Thoughts, etc. I index these by title/subject/theme at the beginning of each month. B) I already mentioned that I am a writer. If I don’t write I get really depressed and feel like I am not only letting myself down, but feel negligent in for not doing what I know is part of my purpose in the world during this incarnation. I write poetry, stories, articles. To stay organized I keep current drafts, and print outs of finished pieces in a second section of my binder. c) Although I will often write about things I am reading and listening to in the fist section of my journal -as what I read is often based on research leads and cues from dreams and coincidence, I also try to write at least a page or two of thoughts/notes/feelings about books and articles I’ve just finished reading, more if it is particularly important to my own path. Photocopies of relevant material, printouts from blogs, magazine articles and other stuff, along with my marginalia may also go in here. As a huge music fan with my own radio show I also write music reviews for the independent music website Brainwashed.com. Printouts of the reviews of the albums I’ve listened to and written about also go in this section, because oftentimes the music I listen to is just as important to me as what I’ve been reading.
4. Lastly, I have a travel binder. This is the one I put in the bag that goes with me. (Interestingly enough I bought the bag at a yard sale from a lady who is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams -before I knew she was a member.) When it starts getting to full, I take a month or two’s worth of dreams, drafts, and reading/music thoughts out and put those in separate large binders. So far I fill up about one large binder full of dream stuff per year. The drafts, printed copies of finished pieces, and reading notes fill up separate binders.
I know this comment is blog post length in and of itself, so I need to wrap this up. In any case I’ve got some copy to fill. You’re on your own when it comes to storing all those diaries you’ll be filling up.

Imperssive!
DeepThoughtful
stuff.

Thanks, Jonathan. I hope this means you’ll be spending some more time with your journal