Writing for Pleasure

To write a Dream Journal may seem to be a bit “over the top” for most people. However, if not taken seriously they may miss a potentially very important tool – there is a lot of creative power in your dreams.

The best thing with dreams is that everybody dreams. Though not every body realise the benefits they can reap if they pay attention to their dreams and what they can gain from them.

The importance of dreams

I was introduced to the importance of dreams at a very early age. My grandmother once told me (when I refused to sleep with the motivation that I wasn’t tired) that “while your body need rest only, your brain needs you to sleep”.

Of course questioned her about that, and it was then she told me that it was during my sleep that my brain communicated with my subconscious – and that it did through dreams. She stressed that dreams was very important and that I should pay attention to what my dreams told me – it would often be in the forms of symbols and images. She also stressed that it would be up to me to try to understand what my subconscious tried to tell me.

She also taught me about the importance of trying to give my subconscious information about my problems…and that I could only do in the form of images. I should try to visualise suitable images in my brain just before going to sleep.

She was the first one to tell me “sleep on it” when I admitted to having some problems I couldn’t solve.

She often told me that when my subconscious understood my problem it could access something she called “the collective consciousness” and from there it could gather the information I needed.

Note! I never knew my grandmother to be an avid reader. Her views therefore astonished me even more when I read something about Edgar Cayce – his views were strikingly similar to hers, yet I am sure that my grandmother never had heard of him nor read anything written by him. However, she was considered a clairvoyant, and that may have something to do with it.

Subconscious at work

The technique my grandmother taught me was something I had good use for during my studies. When I concentrated on a problem as I went to sleep, I often had the pleasant result of waking up in the middle of the night with the problem solved. The only thing I had to do was to get up and write down the information as quickly as possible before the dream images were forgotten.

According to my grandmother, this was my subconscious at work and the result was that my dreams worked their magic in communicating the result to my conscious mind. Whatever it was, it often helped me and thus made me a believer.

Dreaming as a creative tool

It is not only my grandmother who has taught me about the importance of dreaming, I have read a fair amount of books and articles about the subject as well. Many views were fairly esoteric stating that dreams should be interpreted and could be used to foretell the future, etc. That I couldn’t believe in and I have never even tried to interpret my dreams in that way.

However, I became more interested when I read that dreaming could be viewed as a creative process underlying the consciousness. This is very much in line with what my grandmother tried to teach me – that dreams was something used by the subconsciousness to communicate with my consciousness.

She somehow had achieved a vision of using dreams as a tool to help an individual towards greater self-awareness and to help dealing with daily life. As my own experiences started to show, dreams became a valuable creative tool – not least in my writing.

Why work with dreams?

As my own experiences have shown, my dreams have served me well as a way to communicate the creative inspiration that comes from my subconsciousness. Dreams seem to use a rather universal language of images and symbolism.

After I started to make the efforts to remember and record my dreams, I often came in “possession” of rather startling creative ideas. As a young man, I often had rather detailed erotic dreams – and they were often very vivid. Those dreams always made me write down the details, and I often found that I had a complete story ready to be written down.

That is, the details I remembered expanded dramatically when I started to write, and I often completed the first draft of a story already when writing down the material in my dream journal.

It was not only erotic stories that came to me while dreaming. It also happened that I dreamt about stories that I was working on, and I often got ideas that I could use in my work.

I often found it a bit surreal the way my imagination worked when I used my dreams as a source of inspiration. It happened that it was not only what I dreamt that I could use. Sometimes it happened that I – by “accident” came across material that turned out to be very useful indeed. It could be a phone call, an overheard piece of conversation, an article in a newspaper, etc.

I guess it had something to do with my subconsciousness making me more aware and thus making it easier for me to identify sources of potential usefulness for my stories.

Influencing dreams

As my grandmother told me, you can influence your subconsciousness by trying to communicate via images before you go to sleep. The resulting dream would be the subconsciousness way of communicating the information needed.

I still follow her recommendations, and before I go to sleep, I make sure that I have something that I can use to scribble down my notes. This as it is important to record your dream as soon as possible as the dreams seem to “evaporate” rather fast if not recorded right away. I therefore make an effort to do it as soon as I wake up – even if it happens in the middle of the night.

It is not much that you need when first jotting down information about your dream. However, those first notes are invaluable, as they will serve to help recalling the dream in more detail when later writing about it in the journal.

With that material available, it is “safe” to go to sleep. However, if you want to dream about something special, or if you want your subconsciousness to help you with a problem, it is necessary to “meditate” for a while.

A rather simple way is to concentrate on your breathing and thus be able to stop the clutter of words in your brain. When that is achieved, try to visualise your problem or a part of your writing that you are working on.

It is not easy at first, but with practise, it will be. There are, however, no guarantees that you will dream about the things you have visualised. It often appears to me as my subconsciousness is a lot smarter than my consciousness, and I sometimes dream about things that are more important than the things I tried to visualise. If that happens, be grateful. Your subconsciousness is really trying its best to help you.

I have also noted that it seem to be easier to dream the dreams you want to dream if you write up your dreams and try to use the information your subconsciousness is giving you. It is as if your subconsciousness appreciate that you do “listen” and thus it finds it more rewarding to help you. If you don’t bother about your dreams, they will most likely never be as vivid as they could be – and thus you may have a hard time remembering them. The result will often be that such people claim that they “never” dream.

They do, but they have missed the opportunity to learn from their dreaming. I hope this text shall encourage at least some to try out the communication with their subconsciousness and thus benefit from the creative powers of dreams.