DRAWING MY DREAMS

In this dream I'm sitting in a bar with James Joyce and two bored angels. I told him I had to read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in school, and that I knew June 16th is the day Ulysses took place but I have never read it. Already he is looking around to find someone else to talk to. I'm just another pest who thinks they can come up to someone they don't know and start jabbering away. I see that I'm losing him. So then I drop the bomb. "Hey man," I said, "I've tried to read Finnegan's Wake but let's face it, it's utter crap". With that he turns to me and says "What do you expect? Don't you see my fingers?" I look at his left hand and sure enough, his fingers are melting and rolling down the bar to the floor! I rush to try and somehow scoop up the liquid fingers to save them but I wake up.

Ok...According to scientific research everyone dreams.  But you have to take steps to remember your dreams because they are ephemeral.  Even an intense dream that seems "real" when you wake up at 4:00am can be lost by 6:00am when you get out of bed.  For me the key to remembering my dreams is to keep a small pad of paper and pencil on the nightstand on my side of our bed.  When I wake up from a dream and am still foggy headed I just lean over and jot down single words about the dream.  Then later when I get up and start my day I take this sheet of paper and start writing in my special dream journal everything I remember using the sheet of paper to jog my memory.  You would be astonished by how much comes back to you using this method.  It pours out.  Then if it is a particularly vivid dream, has a special quality or imagery begging to be rendered I try to draw a scene which shows it clearly.  If time permits I draw it right away.  Often I get up early and get at it, but if not I at least have the bedside paper to refresh my memory. Like anything else you have to commit to this practice and develop the habit.

If this is all new for you I recommend you check the library or bookstore for books on dream work.  I started with:
 The Dream Sourcebook by Phyllis Koch-Sheras, Phd. & Amy Lemley 
also very good is:
The Complete Dram Book by Gillian Holloway, Phd

As I got into it I studied Lucid Dreams by Keith Harary,Phd and Pamela Weintraub.  Studying this helps one have more control and active participation in your dream state.

This field of study led me to the realization that dream practice held great potential for my spiritual journey.I reached a point where I tended not to focus on the meaning of my dreams but on the mysterious processes that  underlie the whole of our existence, not only our dreaming life. These days I am slowly working through the book The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. 

As I make progress I will report more in future blog post.  Feel free to comment or ask questions.