The Importance of Dreaming at Night
How to remember your dreams and improve your life
I write down all my dreams. Every morning.
It’s the first thing I do. I don’t check my phone first. Or wait until after I brush my teeth. I keep a journal under my pillow and a pen by my bedside, and I scribble out whatever I can remember in the neatest handwriting I can manage in the dark, my eyes still half-shut with sleep.
I write down all my dreams. And you should too. Because…
1) Dreaming (and writing down your dreams) is an incredibly useful tool to learn about yourself.
2) Dreaming can positively influence your decisions and your perspective in the “real world.”
How to remember your dreams
It takes a while to build a relationship with your dreams — some people tell me how they never remember dreams. They go to sleep, disappear, and wake up again. That’s okay. The process starts small. The first step is to keep a journal and a pen by your bed, in a very easily accessible place.
If you can wake up and remember something, anything — one image, one person, even just one color — write it down as soon as you wake up, before it slips away. Even if it’s something silly, which you may feel has zero significance whatsoever — something like, “I remember I was eating french toast.” (my dream last night, actually.) Do not wait to do this. If you are that type of person who has to check your phone as soon as you wake up, this will immediately take your attention away from your dream and you will forget it. Even if you think to yourself, “I’ll remember this,” I promise you, you won’t!
If you have trouble writing things down, you can always download a free voice recorder app on your phone, and simply record yourself talking about your dreams. However, I would urge you to write them down if you can — by inking your memories onto a page of your journal, you are giving your dreams a physical form — you are concreting them more into your life. Your dreams will know not only occupy more of your mental space, but more of actual, real, physical space.
Writing down your dreams can train your mind to treat dreams like real memories, because they are — don’t disregard them. Even after you have written them down, think about them and meditate on them.
If you really struggle to remember anything after you have woken up — I would encourage you to think about a dream that you do remember, even if this dream happened many, many years ago. Everybody can remember at least one dream in their life — if you haven’t already, write this dream down. Read what you have written. Think about that dream — maybe try to figure out what context of your life during which this dream occurred, and maybe why you think you had that dream. Like I said, the more you train your mind to treat your dreams like real memories — because they are — the more you will remember your dreams in the future.
Dreams = real memories?
Let’s first ask ourselves something incredibly corny: what is “reality?”
In short, our realities are comprised from our brains interpreting external stimuli, what you can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste…
One of the first things you will learn in a Cognitive Psychology 101 class is that when we “see,” we’re not really “seeing” anything…our eyes receive patterns of light. Our brains interpret those patterns. Sometimes our brains don’t even do a very good job of figuring out things like distance and movement…whenever you see an optical illusion, it’s basically your brain trying really flipping hard (and failing) to interpret something correctly. But keep in mind — everything you perceive through your senses must be filtered and processed by your brain first before you can really experience it. Because of this, your brain is forever a barrier between you and the “real world.”
But what if I told you that I see, hear, touch, smell, and taste reality in my dreams? I wake up and I remember these experiences. But they aren’t coming from external stimuli, that my brain in turn interprets. These experiences are coming straight from the source, straight from within me…nothing for my brain to misinterpret. I wake up and they feel like pure, genuine memories, memories of things I have seen and felt, distinct voices I have heard, specific words I have said, people I have spent time with.
People might argue: Well, you don’t share these memories with anyone — and even if you dream of someone, they will not have the same experience or memory of your meeting. The memories you form, you share with no one. This is also a truth — but I would argue that this is the exact reason you should hold your dreams to the same significance of “real” experiences — it is a world of your fabrication and nobody else’s. It is a perfect peek into your uninhibited subconscious. This is why dreams are incredibly useful tools to learn about yourself.
Learning about yourself through dreams
Once you start writing down your dreams, you will be able to go back and read them…once you read them, the most incredible thing will happen: you will pick out some patterns. Reoccurring people, places, images, objects, colors, foods, sensations — you will notice that sometimes a symbol will recoccur with slight variations. Take note of these! Highlight similarities and differences. If something makes no sense to you, make a note — if you understand the exact reason why you’re dreaming something, write it down. As I said before, you should not only be writing your dreams down — you should be considering them, reflecting on them, and meditating on them.
The truth is — we don’t know why we dream, although there are many theories. So you may never have a definitive answer to why you are dreaming the things you are dreaming. While you may never fully decipher your dreams, you will be able to identify patterns that can help you make educated guesses. Here I have made a list of reoccurring symbols in my dreams.
Positive reoccurring symbols:
· Large beautiful mansions with hundreds of rooms, sprawling floor plans, stunning staircases, and sparkling chandeliers. These are usually very adventurous dreams that involve lots of movement and exploration.
· Photographers taking pictures of me — probably satisfying some very ego-driven need for positive attention. I usually have these dreams when I feel like I’m not getting enough attention in one area of my life, and I usually wake up feeling like this need has been fulfilled in some way.
· Babies — I dream about having children a lot. Sometimes I actually give birth. The dream is spent loving, cuddling, feeding, and generally nurturing a baby (usually a boy.) There may be lots of other things happening in the dream — sometimes I’ll even travel from one dream to an entirely different dream — but the baby will stay with me. This is a particularly interesting dream because I have no plans of having children any time soon, but these dreams almost always leave me with a feeling of peace and love.
· Wild parties — self-explanatory. I notice I have more dreams of incredible nights out, complete with real feelings of intoxication, when I am feeling like my life is dull and ordinary. I share these wild parties with people I am missing (having lived abroad now for almost a year.)
· Dancing/running/performing — all hobbies that I enjoy in “real life,” but usually in my dreams I can pull off moves that I usually can’t. In dreams, I can run fast for long distances without ever getting tired. I usually wake up with a feeling of pride in myself and joy in my accomplishments.
Negative reoccurring symbols:
· Being eaten/chased by a wild animal, such as a lion or a crocodile. Usually this dream starts with me trying to escape the situation unnoticed by the animal, but then it is able to sense my fear and chases me. I usually wake up just as the animal is about to eat me. I’ve yet to conclude what this is a symbol of, but fear is definitely a huge element.
· Screaming but making no sound. Another variation of this is trying to hit somebody but always missing/not having any impact. This sort of thing usually happens when I feel threatened by something else in the dream, maybe somebody taunting me or laughing at me, or I feel like my life is in danger somehow…in the end, I feel utterly helpless to whatever is bothering me.
· Apocalypse — whether it’s a flood, earthquake, war, zombie epidemic, or some unseen unknown but nevertheless deadly force. Usually these dreams are violent and scary enough to even be traumatic, with the rare exception that I end up having fun in an adventure-like atmosphere. The times I end up turning the situation around and having fun are usually when I become lucid and gain some control over what is happening…for instance, if I realize that I am dreaming, I have no qualms running around and shooting zombies for fun.
· The worst of the worst: murder, rape, torture, mutilation. Being buried alive, starved to death, limbs hacked off…experiencing these things in the first person, or watching it happen to family/friends/masses of people.
Take note: When you divulge deeper into dreams, you run the natural risk of sometimes having nightmares…however, I still consider these dreams valuable experiences, and I find their effects on my mental/emotional/physical well-being worth it regardless.
Why do people have these dreams about death and torture? Sometimes it’s post-traumatic. I believe that death, torture, mutilation, etc, are real things that some people experience everyday, and that all people share the possibility and probability of experiencing everyday. It can make people feel better to ignore the possibility, and to comfort oneself by saying that you will never have to experience pain on that level — however, I believe that our minds realize the truth; that we are never really safe. Even if we have never experienced these things first hand, our minds visualize and experience these things in the form of a dream as a way to mentally prepare ourselves in case something were to ever happen.
Dreaming can positively influence your decisions and your perspective in the “real world.”
In addition to helping me learn how to lucid dream (which I will elaborate on in another piece) my experiences in my dreams have motivated me to take certain actions. They’ve given me ideas on how to handle problems at work. They’ve encouraged me to reach out to certain people, sometimes someone I haven’t seen in a long time — but when that someone pops up in my dream, and it feels like we have actually spent time together — in a way, we have. I wake up with a good feeling in my heart. One time I dreamt about an acquaintance — and took the risk of seeming strange and told them about it. The conversation about my dream actually led us to becoming friends. And so whatever happens in the “dreamworld” will indirectly or directly affect and shape my actions in the “real world.”
When my friend Steve died, my Baltimore community and I were thrust headfirst into a black hole of confusion and despair. The dreams I had of Steve were some of my most powerful instances of healing.
One of these dreams happened shortly before going to Burning Man, which Steve had always longed to go to. I still have one of his journals where he had doodled costume ideas for everyone in our performance troupe.
In my dream, Steve was driving an art car around the desert late at night. I was sitting in the passenger seat, like I always was (I didn’t have a car when I lived in Baltimore, so Steve would always selflessly drive me everywhere). Oftentimes, when Steve used to drive me places, we would be in the car together for hours roadtripping to festivals and gigs. It felt like it did then: laughing and talking, windows open, just me and him and the open desert. It was as if he had never died, and everything was just as it had been.
But that feeling did not last — after several hours of carrying on, a realization hit me — memories from the “real world” started to sink in. But I didn’t understand how they could be true.
I turned to Steve. He looked so alive, so “real” — the crook of his elbow hanging out the window, cigarette in hand, eyes on the road, permanent smirk on his face —
“Steve,” I said, in astonishment. “It’s so crazy. I thought — we thought — that you died. I thought you were dead.”
He laughed and he looked at me, and he said what he would’ve said in that situation:
“But that’s absurd. I’m right here.”
When I woke up, I woke up with the most comforting and soothing feeling. I felt as though, in reality, I really had just spent a couple of incredible hours with a man I missed with all my heart. And it really challenged me to think about what really a person is in the first place — of course, a person is a flesh and blood physical entity — someone you can call and hear their voice, or see across the street, or hold in your arms and feel on your skin. But what happens to a personhood, after a person dies, and you can no longer physically experience them? I would challenge to rethink a person as also a collection of your memories, experiences, and dreams with them.
And finally, the images I’ve seen in dreams have been my greatest inspirations for stories. As I dream more, I am able to capture more detail, visualize more, and access outer stretches of my imagination. I wake up with compelling plot lines and new character ideas still in my head that I’ll later integrate into short stories or thought pieces.
Happy dreaming
Like everybody else in the world, I like to sleep — but I use sleep more than just a way to refresh physically. I use dreaming as a safe haven, a permanent happy place, a vacation that doesn’t cost anything. I believe that once you begin to view dreaming in this way, you will be able to tap into some hidden strengths and discover more about yourself.
