Should I start keeping a dream journal?

[UberScout]

As I'm somewhat of a self-proclaimed "expert" on dreaming, especially lucid dreams, I plan for sleeping and dreams to be one of the themes of my game, Child of Crystal (working title Starseed Legacy); Starseeds like myself rely on lucid visions for things like support from our spirit guides.

But there are some things I find difficult to do with some of my dreams:

1. I can't always remember them fully. I can remember images I saw in them and some things I did, but not the full length.

2. I know that the colors seen in lucid dreams are generally brighter and more vivid, but other times my dreams take on an approach I like to refer to as "Oni-Akuma-jin" or the english term for it being "Serious and more like a demon would make it". Not exactly nightmares, but dreams like the one I had during my previous dental surgery.

Which brings me to the main topic: taking control. Should I start writing this stuff down? Should I try to draw renditions of these using my graphics tablet? And I should also point out that there's sometimes a black, shadowy figure with glowing white eyes and a bright white mouth that seems to follow me around and tinker with the environment in different ways. It's about my height and tries to use my voice sometimes, talking "for" me to different characters.

This may have been from playing too much Super Smash Bros., but I also encounter floating white gloves that poke people. Some of them try to flick people's noses. I don't know about this one.

Typical, but I see different-colored Kirbies running around just kinda being themselves. I can sometimes remember how it feels to touch one of them, it kinda feels like very small coats of kitten fur over rubbery skin, and some of them like being petted, especially the blue ones.

It might be just me, though.

 

[JDShredds]

As a reader of Jung and someone who has a dream journal, I definitely recommend it. Just write what you do remember, and try to emphasize the effect it had on your thought process/feelings at the time. Your own context is the most important part. Just giving a factual account (as if dreams are factual) is only half of the picture.

Whether to make something artistic out of your dreams, that's up to you. if you want to interpret them, a description is enough. but if you want to EXPRESS them, that's another thing.

Actually on that note, I wrote the lyrics to one of my songs based on a very vivid, archetypal, dark and violent dream I had. Now you make me want to do something visually with it. It involved me summoning a giant lizard to impale a man with its tongue. lol

 

[BrokenBoy]

Yeah sure why not?

 

[SusanLR]

A small hand held recorder is the best because you won't be so fully awakened as to find it hard to
return to sleep. Otherwise writing is good.
My dreams are mostly all lucid and just like real life.
I don't have nightmares or odd things that are not like real life lurking around.
I've written songs I wrote or sung in dreams.
Lucid dreaming or astral projection (for those who experience it) is so cool.
My dreamlife is half of my life.

 

[Fino]

I have a reoccurring nightmare in which I search high and low, running through various places I've been, searching and searching and then I finally find this man, and when I find him, I slowly back away, moaning in terror, and as I wake up I can hear myself moaning in real-life as well, and I've had people wake me up because I was moaning.

Which I describe because you're an expert on dreams! Tell me why it's happened for over a decade!

 

[china autie]

Written or recorded dream journals are a good tool to remembering dreams.

I think your game sounds really cool.

 

[SusanLR]

@Fino only you can decide what this symbolizes to you.
Just reading it, my interpretation might be you are looking for something you want, but, somehow
you've not found it yet.
Perhaps the man is the man in the mirror.

 

[JDShredds]

On the note of handheld recorders like Susan mentioned: my iPhone is usually silenced and charging nearbye, and I've used it for that same purpose (I downloaded an audio recording app). Doubles as a device to capture song ideas that hit me in the middle of the night.

Funny sidenote: listening back to those later usually sounds like a frog croaking awkwardly.

 

[Fino]

@Fino only you can decide what this symbolizes to you.
Just reading it, my interpretation might be you are looking for something you want, but, somehow
you've not found it yet.
Perhaps the man is the man in the mirror.

I took an extra moment to understand the last sentence because Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," started playing in my head, but when I realized what it said, I was like, "OH QUACK, that's scary"

 

[UberScout]

I think your game sounds really cool.

Thanks! I have no idea how to start working on it though, Maddog doesn't like for new things to be installed onto the computer, we only have this one and even though it is a BEAST of a gaming machine, I still was told to treat it with care. As he put it,

"If anything happens to this computer....I will tie you to the top of a tree."

He's uh...he runs a tight ship.

 

[John M]

That sounds like an interesting idea you have for a game UberScout. I don't know that I consider myself an expert on lucid dreaming per se but I would describe myself as experienced. I also liked to experiment a great deal when I was younger. There are a few things I've learned which may inform your efforts. Some of them are very simple but it took me a while to understand them. The following pertain to lucid dreaming...

1. You don't occupy space. There are lots of implications for this really. For example, you can simply walk through barriers, furniture, people, whatever. However, that doesn't mean you can just go anywhere you want. Think of a dream as a specific set of circumstances and an environment your unconscious mind has prepared. The conscious mind can affect this environment and to a limited degree create things but can't move beyond the confines of it. Either you'll hit an invisible barrier, loop around in a circle or wake up. To move to an area not in a current dream would entail waking up and having a new dream. I'd be curious to know if this is due to memory limitations of the portions of the brain associated with dreaming.
   
   
2. The conscious and unconscious mind develop intellectually/emotionally at different speeds. Simply put, the unconscious mind has more processing power and a vastly better memory than the conscious mind. It's development occurs more rapidly. I'm forty-nine years old, I estimate the intellectual/emotional intelligence of my conscious mind are roughly equivalent to that of my unconscious when I was fifteen. As the unconscious mind has more processing power, I suspect it perceives that time moves more slowly. At least this would explain some of my experiences. In a dream however, both are moving about the same speed so it's a chance for communication to occur.
   
   
3. The unconscious mind doesn't have access to the portion of the brain that parses speech. It's vocabulary is the entirety of memory. This includes words but it can't actually build them like the conscious mind can. Meaning may also be assigned differently when words are 'replayed'.