Chapter 7

Understanding Your Dreams

What happens to our dreams and our lives when we honour our dreams and raise them to a place of importance? How does keeping a dream journal affect your dreams and your life? Does making a decision based on a dream alter the quality of advice in future dreams? Do we get more in touch with understanding our dreams through taking them seriously? How did the survey dreamers’ lives or dreams change as a result of examining their dreams closely for this research?

Check your answers for Section J on the questionnaire with Ms Survey Dreamer’s responses (in ‘Importance Given to Dreams’ in Chapter 2) and with the rest of the survey participants (Understanding Their Dreams in Appendix A).

Joining the Survey

Most people (73.8%) found that filling out the first questionnaire alone taught them something about themselves or their dreams or opened them up in some way. This learning had intensified for many by the time they received their End of Survey Questionnaire.

Keeping a Journal

Just over a quarter (28.7%) of the people on the survey had recorded their dreams in a dream journal during the preceding two years.

Of the people who also returned an End of Survey Questionnaire (51.9%), most (66%) had kept a journal since filling out the original questionnaire up to six months previously. I looked at how people’s understanding of their dreams had changed over this period, and how this related to keeping a dream journal.

The biggest increase in understanding their dreams was shown by those who started to keep a journal after filling out the original questionnaire. This suggests that keeping a record of your dreams probably helps you to understand them better. People who gave up writing down their dreams after joining the survey showed the smallest increase in levels of further understanding.

At the same time though, people who had never kept a journal at any stage did believe their dream understanding had advanced during the survey period, indicating that while journalling may be a great tool, other methods are also effective. In the absence of focussing on a journal, these dreamers probably gave more attention to unravelling their dreams in different ways.

A journal can also help you to improve your recall of dreams. The greatest improvement in dream recall was reported by people who started to keep a journal for the first time after joining the survey.

The survey showed that there was a tendency among journal keepers to notice more psychic dreams. They also tended to be more aware of having lucid dreams, but were less interested in changing the course of their lucid dreams than the non-journallers. Perhaps people who like to record dreams find observation of their dreams more appealing than altering their content. The record keepers also tended to take more guidance from their dreams than the average person on the survey.

Understanding Dreams

At the start of the survey, 24.4% of respondents said they understood most of their dreams, followed by 22.8% with comprehension of only a few dreams, and a further 19.5% with understanding of ‘several’ dreams. There was a drop in numbers between understanding ‘several’ and ‘most’, almost as if there is a point at which we cross a barrier and leap from a muddled comprehension to a more definite clarity. The theory reflects the way we acquire fluency when learning a foreign language. We seem to spend a couple of years at school struggling through basic French or Japanese grammar, only to wake up one morning able to speak whole sentences. Something seems to suddenly click.

At the end of the survey, 40.6% (of those who returned their End of Survey Questionnaires) had experienced an increase in understanding their dreams, 31.8% reported no change, while 27.6% estimated their understanding below the level reported on their original questionnaire. Those who experienced an increase in understanding tended to report a high degree of comprehension akin to a sudden insight into the language of dreams. Most of the people in this group (59.4%) shot into the ‘I understand most or all of my dreams’ category. Those who recorded a decrease in comprehension of their dreams rated this drop more conservatively. They seemed to experience shifts down the scale of understanding rather than leaps up the ladder.

Perhaps tuning into our long-forgotten dream language is like learning a foreign tongue. Suddenly there is a breakthrough, a sudden insight or quantum leap into dream fluency.

Dream Guidance and Decision Making

More than half (61.9%) of our dreamers have taken guidance from a dream and almost as many (50.6%) have carried out a decision based on a dream. Over a quarter (28.7%) have gone as far as to make a major lifestyle change because of a dream.

(After writing this book in 1993, I went on to look at what makes a dream ‘life-changing’. The result, 45 life-changing dream stories, became my 1995 book, ‘Dream It: Do It’, published by HarperCollins Australia.)

All the dream recall in the world is nothing more than entertainment if you do not consider the guidance dreams bring. It is best to act in small ways on your dreams at first, to test the water and watch the results. Once you begin to take action you will find that future dreams serve either to confirm your actions and advise on your next step, or to back track and point out the error of your judgement in interpreting the original dream. As you become more practised in interpretation (after reading Part Two of this book), you will gain confidence in taking action. Tales are told, in later chapters, of the dreams, decisions, actions and consequences that some survey people have experienced.

Honouring the Dream

Bow down to your dreams and respect them. The survey results clearly illustrate the importance of being dream conscious, so let’s get practical.

Practical Steps Towards Dream Enlightenment

To keep a journal, start by investing in a good quality notebook and perhaps adding a personal touch such as a fabric cover, photo or drawing. If you buy a cheap exercise book and chuck it under the bed, you probably won’t get around to writing anything down. Creating a journal worthy of the importance your dreams deserve, not to mention your investment of time into the project, will bring the rewards you seek. At first you may have little to record, so start by writing the date and the feeling you woke up with. Your waking emotion is often a hangover from your dream, so writing down ‘I feel sad’ or ‘I feel anticipation’ or whatever, is a start. Over a few weeks these emotions will trigger recall of tiny bits of dreams which will eventually pour out onto your blank pages.

You will probably find it enlightening to record, in brief form, the ups and downs of your waking life too. The best method is to write your dreams on the right hand page, each dated and given a title. (Give each dream your ‘gut reaction’ title, since you’ll find this choice helpful in interpreting the dream later!)

Keep the left hand page for noting daily events or thoughts, also dated. In later months, look back over the journal and compare what was happening in your waking life with the events and feelings in your dreams. You will begin to see connections between the two which you didn’t notice at the time. Caught in stressful situations or times of transition or change, we are usually far too close to the trees to see the woods. Hindsight gives 20/20 vision with its more detached view.

The way we write and describe our dreams, the words and turns of phrases we use, also provide inroads into unravelling our dreams. You will find practical help in Chapter 13, Magical Cliches, Puns and Words, but try not to jump ahead just yet. Start a journal now, so that you will have material to work on when you reach that section of the book.