DreamTracking is the process of journaling your dreams and tracking your images for the purpose of connecting to the Sacred within and around you. It is that inner place illuminated by the ever present flicker of light that is at the core of each and every living being. You may experience it when you are outside in nature, see it in a smile, hear it in a birds beautiful song, smell it in the intoxicating scent of a blooming flower or feel it in the softness of an animals fur. These spontaneous moments of clarity remind you to stand still, breathe and connect to the timeless part of who you are. In this depth of being, is the place we meet, where we are all connected.
In dreams, this connection is ever present as you are invited each and every night into relationship with the mysterious. As you pay attention to your dreams, you develop a heightened sense of the world around you. The more you track your dreams, the deeper your relationship to life becomes. The practice of writing down your dreams summons your inner knowing to communicate, giving expression to the sometimes ignored voices within. They may be whispers from your own Soul trying to break through, or whispers from the soul of the natural world around you. In dreams, all living things have voices.
You don’t have to know what it all means, all the various components of your dreams, as interpretation is not the goal. Instead, what is asked for is merely giving them a place for expression and experiencing the felt sense of the dream. Every dream is a story, and by writing them down, they become the chapters of your own journey. By journaling your dreams alone, you are already engaged in DreamTracking, and on the road to understanding how your dreams communicate.
Below are some points that will assist you in journaling your dreams and starting a DreamTracking practice:
Keep Your Notebook, Pen and Flashlight Within Reach
The tools for DreamTracking are an open dream journal, pen and flashlight. Keep them next to your bed as it shows your conscious and unconscious mind that you are serious about wanting to remember your dreams. When you wake during the night, write down whatever you remember. Resist the temptation to wait until morning because the dream will likely dissipate like morning fog over a lake.
Day Notes
To start understanding your own personal imagery, write a few notes about your day prior to going to sleep. A few sentences is enough. Date the notes and make sure you add in any emotions or strong reactions to anything that happened. Look for similarities in feelings or experiences that are presented in your dreams as they correlate to your day. This will provide you with clues as you review your dream entries later.
Write Your Dreams in Present Tense
There is a tendency to journal your dreams in the past tense, for example, “I dreamed that I was climbing a steep and rocky mountain.” That keeps the dreams out of the here and now. Practice writing your dreams in the present tense, “I am climbing a steep and rocky mountain”, as it brings their relevance into the current moment. You will feel a visceral shift in your body as you write your dream in present tense which can sometimes provide an immediate “aha” moment of insight.
Details are Significant
Sometimes, all you will remember is a color, a person, an animal, an object, an action or a feeling. Regardless of what it is, write as much detail as possible about what you experienced. This practice helps build your attention to detail as well as better dream recall. It also assists you in making connections between dream images and your waking life situations. If you have time, write about any associations you have to specific dream images. Do not edit what your write. Let it free flow, keeping the logical part of brain out of the way. (Note: When waking from a dream, I first make a quick list of all the main events, peoples, messages, numbers, etc. using a word or two. I then go back and write the dream in detail. This keeps me from forgetting important parts of the dream.)
Explore Your Emotions
Dream emotions are essential in the DreamTracking process. This includes emotions you feel inside the dream, as well as emotions experienced upon waking from the dream. Get in the habit of writing them down. Sometimes, your dream emotions will correlate to something you wrote in your day notes. Other times, they may be giving you clues that you are feeling different than you think. Emotions in dreams are truth-tellers, showing you how you are genuinely experiencing something. They can also validate your true passions and values by showing you what really matters to you and where you want to place your energy.
Title Your Dream
Since dreams can be long and confusing compilations of seemingly unrelated scenarios, characters and predicaments, create a title summarizing the dream. It’s like a reduction process that boils down the dream into a concentrated idea. This may give you a better understanding of the dream as well as the ability to locate a specific dream when going back through your journals.
Honor the Dream
Imagine dreams as special gifts given specifically to you from your Soul. As you re-read your dream, notice if there is anything within the dream that feels like it is calling for attention. Is there an action you can take on behalf of the dream as a way of honoring the dream? For example, it may as simple as keeping a picture of a dream image nearby. Maybe you feel moved to check in with a friend. Perhaps you feel inspired to draw, paint or dance a dream image. It can be absolutely anything. If you dream of trash, you might decide to clean up a park in your neighborhood. If you dream of whales, you may feel motivated to send a few dollars to Greenpeace. The idea is to take something from the dreaming world and honor it with a positive action it in the waking physical world.
Consider Making Dreams Part of Your Spiritual Practice
By journaling your dreams, you invite dreams to provide limitless insight into your own life as well as the life of the world. DreamTracking provides a portal to your own higher knowing and to information from Spirit. In this way, dreams are similar to yoga, meditation, and other disciplines, they provide a pathway to the soul by your dedication to the process. Dreams come to us on behalf of healing and wholeness, individually, collectively and globally. Journaling your dreams will keep you reminded that we are all connected, here in service to life itself.
Over the years, my DreamTracking has been my morning ritual. Upon waking, I get up, pour myself some coffee, and journal my dreams. I sit in the dark using only a small flashlight to write by. Then, I allow the dreams to sit with me like companions in that in-between space of sleeping and waking. Beginning my day with soul as the main focus creates an entirely different experience in my daily life. Before the minutia of day-to-day tasks take over. In those moments, I reconnect to who I am, focus on what I care most about, and trust my higher knowing to guide me through my day.
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Dear People Interested in Dreams!!!
I am so happy to be in touch with Bambi these days. She has some interesting knowledge that she shares at special times about dreams. I like dreams too. I want to tell you that even a little dream-work has had some great effects in my dreaming life. I have also been able to remember there are times when you sleep that you just enjoy the sound of your breathing under the sun and stars in your sleeping space.The following is a piece of writing that I’ve been working on for several years. It shows the way dreams and real life can intertwine with healing.
Short Story – Climate Change and Beneficial Patterns in Nature Dreams
By Melanie Knapp – If you would like to make a comment or request a full copy of this Novella please contact Melanie at melaknappsnowflake@yahoo.ca, please serious inquiries or helpful comments only.
Short Story – Climate Change and Beneficial Patterns in Nature Dreams
Patterns in nature are interesting. Ray would often day-dream of the nice spirals or the triangles or the groups of three that are often seen in plants or shells or rocks. When nature starts to make some sense there is more organization to it than we would have thought. Paulette finds this interesting especially when thinking of clothing and all the patterns on clothes. Actually, in nature there are more patterns than there are on clothes and once they become aware of that they see more and more.
It wasn’t surprising to Ray that there were patterns in the weather. Each day it often rained in the morning and cleared by eleven. Often at noon there was full sunshine at this time of day when the sun is directly over head. Towards the afternoon animals wander around looking for supper like squirrels and chipmunks. The odd time you could see a raccoon or skunk.
In the summer there was often a chill in the evening and a little sprinkle of rain. With the sky clearing for a nice sunset with just a few clouds. How would these patterns change as the earth became more affected by the change in climate. Sometimes Ray realized he relied on the patterns in nature to give him a sense of stability and even safety at times.
Ray didn’t want to see nature become so different that it made him feel disoriented. He didn’t want climate change to be such a big problem. Sometimes in his dreams, Ray felt the dizziness of the changing rhythms and patterns in nature. Actually now that he thought they probably already were changing and for him to find ways to change them back to the regular patterns was what he wanted to do.
Factual historical experience that each area he was looking at endured would help the climate because the earth dreams too and the earth could normalize better with some ideas about what normal is. He was glad he was studying the climate.
Pauli enjoyed the weather she felt that the poetry of the weather needed some time to adjust to the progress different soulfulness was making. She felt that perhaps the weather needed some feminine wisdom connected to some masculine guiding.
Sadly, some patterns cannot be normalized. Maybe when the patterns couldn’t be normalized Ray and Pauli could help with some solutions to help other species adapt to the changing patterns. Ray and Pauli were in love. It was a whimsical windy willowy love with warm breezes tenderly blowing the scent of fresh mint on their cheeks as they found each other’s lips.
Marcella was a neighbor of Ray and Pauli’s Some of Marcella’s patterns couldn’t be normalized. She had chronic fatigue syndrome but one thing in nature that Marcella loved more than anything else was water. It could be still, or running or coming from the sky, but if it was water, it made her happy. A pond, the rain clouds, a plant freshly watered. It felt so cool and refreshing; energizing and revitalizing.
She sometimes had amazing dreams about water like when she was floating in the waves on an air mattress and then she’d get out just a little too far and then she’d wake up a little startled. Another time she dreamt she was standing under the eaves-trough with rain water giving her a light shower on a hot summer’s day. When she woke up she was surprised it was only a dream. It had felt real. She found that as she lied there her tiredness made her feel unable to move very well or think very well or hope very well.
Maybe if Ray and Paulette could find ways to stabilize the weather patterns in their area then Marcella could find ways to normalize and not feel chronically tired. Maybe hope was in the weather or the water or the whimsical windy willowy love.
By Melanie Knapp