Last week in the comments, I suggested that reading this blog might be a good first step in establishing dream recall. The reason why is because we’re talking about dreams.
Dreams are like the person sitting next to you on the bus-journey through life. If you ignore them, and look straight ahead, you won’t even know what they look like.
If you don’t open a conversation, they will keep quiet, and you’ll never know what they might have had to say.
Simply talking about dreams means we’re turning round to look, we’re opening the conversation, we’re seeing what they look like and giving them a chance to speak.
Talking doesn’t only raise awareness for people who have little regular recall. It also helps more experienced dreamers to notice more about their dreams.
For example, through conversations on this blog, I’ve realised I don’t have many dreams about flying and I’ve never had a single dream I can remember about school. I know what’s there in my dreams, but in conversation with other dreamers, I can see what isn’t.
The important thing is not to try and interpret. You can’t see what your dream is if you throw a load of ideas and theories over it. Be a good listener. If you talk all the time, your dream can’t get a word in edgeways.
So if you have a dream, tell someone – your friend, partner, parent, child. Tell it here, if it relates to one of the topics that come up. Tell it in exactly the same way you would talk about any experience you have had in waking life, as simply something that happened.
Most people go through their whole life ignoring this person sitting next to them on the bus and that’s a shame, because this person is probably the most interesting person they could ever meet.
There’s more about dream sharing on my Tips page.
The pic of my dream diary in this article has now been included in Susan Hiller’s beautiful book, The dream and the word (p16)
Jenny Alexander's blog: Writing in the House of Dreams 
Great post, Jenny, and so true! I had a fascinating dream last night that was almost like a story in its own right… going to write it down now!
So did I! I was on a show like Come Dine with Me, with a spooky couple whose house was Bates-Motel-meets-sixties-makeover…
I am finally starting to remember a few dreams, thanks to your posts. I’ve talked to my children about it too. At first they said they didn’t remember their dreams, but since I’ve asked them about it, they’ve both reported a couple of dreams back to me. I hope I’m encouraging their creativity too.
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Hooray! That’s wonderful to hear. I’m sure you are encouraging their creativity, as well as gaining fascinating insights into each other’s inner world. More important than ever, with one’s children’s dreams, to resist the temptation to try and interpret.
Now this is odd, I was about to start this comment ‘I had a fascinating dream last night’, then saw that Emma Pass had started hers like that!… anyway, I really did have a fascinating dream last night about a house, but what is bizarre is that all my dreams for the past week have been in black and white. I am really conscious of this. Normally, they are full of colour. It’s kind of like looking at a part of my life through a different lens. Have no idea what it means, but as your post says… does it really matter? Lovely post Jenny – very thought provoking!
How interesting, Abi. Do they feel old-fashioned, or different in any other qualitative way? Someone on one of my courses seemed to dream quite often in sepia tones, but with one very brightly coloured item, like a sort of signature. I don’t recall ever having black-and-white dreams myself – I want one now!
In a way they do have a sort of aged quality about them, like black and white photos, but not in their content. The house last night was very modern. Other times they are busy with people, but all in black and white and tones of grey. They’re quite lovely and very different to my normal dreams. Quite bizarre!
How very strange – I suppose as someone who’s old enough to remember black and white TV, I was right back to the sixties when I tried to picture your dreamscapes this week, but modern settings in black-and-white feel even stranger somehow. I had a series of ‘wallpaper dreams’ a few months back, which were all in repeating patterns of snapshots from the scene – I really enjoyed those!
Gosh, they sound fab Jenny. I love odd dreams. They are like little adventures. You are so right that we should be enjoying them in their own right.
I think the dreams themselves become more magical, as if they’re freed up from reflections-of-the-dayworld because we aren’t expecting that, or intending/imposing it upon them 🙂
I have been writing my recollection of dreams down for years, I am often amazed that on the occasions when I do share their content with my son or boyfriend they have often had dreams with the same subject, and if they are far away there is overlapping content, that has led me to believe we are communicating with others when we dream at times. When numbers and certain colors or animals come up vividly, I often look up their symbolic meaning which sheds light, at least to me. I do care to interpret them, especially in hindsight years later when i reread them again…
Hi Tracey – that’s absolutely my experience too, that when you talk about dreams with people close to you, you can often find they overlap. I had one a few months ago in which my daughter suddenly appeared, said hello and went off again. I mentioned it to her the next day and she said, ‘In my dream, I visited you!’ As for interpreting, I definitely think you can find lots of meaning in dreams, especially reading back over your diaries at a later date – and many of mine turn out to be predictive – but I don’t think it’s a good way of engaging with them in the first instance – I think it’s best to first get to know the territory, and then you can see when and where interpretation is appropriate.
Good way to put it. Angie
Thank-you, Angie 🙂
This is such a lovely blog! I find it fascinating that families have overlapping dreams. Can’t say I’ve ever experienced that – though I have had the experience of ‘breaking the dream’ – that is, of meeting in waking life something I dreamed of the night before, often when there was no way of knowing that I would. (In fact, my very down-to-earth brother has this experience so often that he accepts a degree of ‘petty precognition’ as fact. That is, he doesn’t foresee anything on a grand scale, but does dream that, say, he sees a horse-rider wearing a lilac jacket in a Birmingham street – and then does.)
B/W dreams vs colour – I once threw aside a scientific book on sleep-research because it said, categorically, ‘everyone dreams in black and white.’ I don’t think I have ever had a b/w dream and, until reading that book, didn’t realise that many people did. I used to wonder why dreams were often shown as b/w in films.
Dream Recall – I’m trying, Jenny! Have now got notebook and pen beside bed, but it hasn’t helped. I either seem not to sleep at all these days, or to sleep so heavily that I remember nothing. As I used to have such vivid, though sometimes terrifying dreams, I find this disappointing, as if I’m missing out. I’ve tried asking myself to dream, tried writing down dream requests and drawing things I’d llke to dream about – but so far, it hasn’t worked. Still, I’ll keep visiting this blog and I’ll keep trying.
Thank you Susan – that’s made my day! And you raise several interesting points. One is about precognition – now that is a seriously interesting phenomenon! It completely undermines our ideas about how life works; it shouldn’t be possible, yet in specific dreams it can be undeniable.
Like your brother, I’m a deeply down-to-earth kind of person, so one thing I love about the path of dreams is that it’s practical and experiential – I’d have chucked that book aside too!
Be patient with the dream recalling. I can’t help feeling, since you’ve mentioned it before, that your previous experience of terrifying nightmares might be creating a block, so I’ll schedule a post about how to tackle nightmares soon. That’s something I think – judging by the books you write – that you’ll be keen to get your teeth into!
Love the analogy of dreaming is like a bus ride through life. This comment isn’t about dreaming, but about a literal bus ride from London to Cornwall. I was disappointed when an elderly gentleman sat beside me and obviously wanted to talk. I tried blocking him by burying myself in my book, wishing not to be lumbered with boring conversation for 5 or 6 hours! In the end I had to give up reading though because I felt a headache coming on. He grabbed the opportunity and engaged me in conversation – what an interesting man! He’d done loads of travelling in his life – and had just returned from staying in a remote village in Turkey after spending a week on a yacht. In his time he’d travelled to the source of the Ganges and other far flung places. His regret was that at 80 years of age he had to hire porters now to accompany him and carry his tent and rucksack. What at first promised to be a boring bus ride back home, quickly became a fabulous journey for me with this man who was so fascinating!
What a great story, Pat! I had a similar experience sitting next to a young woman on the train to Plymouth. There was nothing immediately interesting about her, for me, but when she started to tell her story it was fascinating. I’m been writing a guest blog today about how ordinary-seeming dreams can be doorways to spiritual experience, which in terms of my analogy seems appropriate – at first glance, an old man, a young woman, nothing to immediately engage our attention, but transforming into a memorable encounter.