Summerlogue Dreamtime!

For your summer assignment, you will be keeping a dream journal. Doing so will help you to improve dream
recall, recognize dream signs, and train your brain to become familiar with your dream world. You may
also begin noticing fascinating patterns about your personality, get unexpected ideas for creative projects, or
even experience lucid dreaming (full present awareness that you are dreaming while remaining asleep). Here
are some things to keep in mind:

1. Use a nice notebook and pen with which it is a pleasure to write. Find a notebook or journal
specifically for recording your dreams. Don’t use it to write anything unrelated. Make it as easy as possible
for your sleepy morning-self by placing your notebook next to your bed. (Don’t use a phone or tablet as sleeping
with these nearby may have negative effects on your physical health and overstimulate your mind first thing in the morning.)

2. Set an intention to remember your dreams. It is important that you harness a deliberate will to
remember your dreams and interiorize this intention every night before falling asleep. You will see your
memory improving and soon you will have much better dream recall. Repeat the following aloud each night.

“Hi Mind, it’s me. I need you to help me. I’m ready to remember my dreams and understand the messages of my subconscious.
Please, don’t rationalize or do your job tonight so that I can remember my dreams tomorrow. I will know I’m dreaming and I will
remember them when I wake up. Thank you for helping me”

3. Do it every day. The more you tell your brain that your dreams are important, the more you will remember
them, and the more information you will be able to receive every night.

4. Do it first thing after you wake up. As soon as waking-life worries and commitments enter our morning
thoughts, the memory of our dreams is as good as gone. Therefore, do it straight after you wake up. If you
have trouble, try not moving your body for the first 2 or 3 minutes, as this will help you keep the memory
more vivid.

5. Don’t try to write everything down. Only pay attention to the most important details: what were the
strongest emotions you felt in your dream (anger? fear? pure ecstasy? arousal?); any major life changing
conclusions? Any useful or inspiring information? Soon you will be able to discern what pieces of information
matter to you, so allow yourself space to explore.

6. Write in the present tense. This will help you to remember even more details by putting you ”back” into
the story of the dream.

7. For better results, wake up 3 hours early and go back to sleep. The last hours of our sleep have the
longest REM cycles, which is the period of sleep during which we dream. So if you set your alarm for 2-3
hours before you usually wake up and write down your dreams, you will likely hit an REM period right in
the middle, which will make it much easier to remember your dreams.
 Include as much of the following as possible in each entry:

– The location of the dream – What was around you, is it an unknown place or a familiar one?

– Your emotions and feelings – What were you feeling, did it change throughout the dream (for example,
did it change being in certain places)?

– The people/characters/figures – Who were you with? Was it the people you are normally hanging out
with? Was there behavior strange or relatively normal? Were you yourself?

– The weather/atmosphere/colors – Was it sunny, foggy, dark? Did it change when you were in certain
places or with specific people?

– What were you doing – activities, events, objectives, etc.

– The dream symbols – Things that reoccur in your dreams, stand out as important, or those which may
help you to trigger lucidity.

– The feelings that the dream made you feel; how do you feel NOW about this dream?

+WRITE A TITLE TO EACH DREAM

+DRAW PICTURES

Some nights’ dreams and specific details may be more difficult to recall than others. At the very least, just do
your best to stay consistent in writing something every day. Do so and you will soon unlock preternatural
powers buried deep beneath the bedrock of your unconscious mind and be met with bespoke unification
with the mystical beauty that is your truest and ineffable, infinite self.

Sweet dreams!