Dream Recall Can Improve Your Life

For thousands of years, during the time of Mesopotamia and the ancient Sumerians, dreams were a powerful source of divination. They were so important that even Kings would pay close attention and heed their symbolic messages. The earliest recorded dream is from the Sumerian King Dumuzi of Uruk sometime around 2500 BC. His dream was as follows: “An eagle seizes a lamb from the sheepfold. A falcon catches a sparrow on the reed fence, a cup lies on its side, Dumuzi lives no more. The sheepfold is given to the winds.” King Dumuzi was concerned over the dream he had so he had it recorded in cuneiform on stone tablets. It was his sister who was skilled in interpreting dreams that advised him to remain hidden before some bad prophesies came to pass.

If even King’s seriously regarded their dreams thousands of years ago, why is it that in modern times society hardly gives it any consideration? Scientists and researchers usually write off dreams as one of these three things.

1. Randomness:  During sleep, dreams are merely a by-product of biological processes that occur. While we sleep our frontal lobe is trying to organize the random firing of neurons into a storyline.
2. Dress Rehearsal: Dreams are a created safe space for upcoming stressful events. Ever have those dreams where you’re running late for an exam or to present a project and the worst-case scenario happens, but lo and behold it was all just a dream? This is just one way our subconscious helps us cope and regulate our emotions for upcoming events. Pretty nifty right?
3. Computer Brains: Lastly, some believe our brains are like computers and dreams are just a way for us to organize all the information collected throughout the day and store memories. It’s like how you would defrag your computer to make it run better. After a good night of dreaming, we wake up more refreshed and ready for a new day.

However, there is so much more to dreams than what’s mentioned above. Some people have prophetic dreams that have yet to happen, and then years later come to pass. Others dream of deceased loved ones visiting them. Some claim their dreams to be so intense and vivid that they swear it was real. We as a species wouldn’t have progressed the way we had in our evolution if not for our dreams. Believe it or not but dreams have been responsible for some scientific breakthroughs, works of art, and inspiration for music and novels. We wouldn’t have the song “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney if he hadn’t dreamt of the tune. The periodic table wouldn’t be as we know it today if the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev didn’t dream of it. Even Nikola Tesla had dreams, lucid dreams, which inspired many of his inventions. Yet dreams today remain much of a mystery to us as it has to our ancestor’s thousands of years ago.

If you’re one of those people who lament that they never dream, you are actually quite mistaken. You do dream! You just don’t remember them. Practicing dream recall can help you in remembering your nighttime adventures. Whereas it’s important to get good quality sleep every night to maintain cognitive function and emotional health, recalling and revisiting our dreams are linked to increased memory and emotional processing. People who are able to recall their dreams are better at regulating their emotions. They feel more at peace and experience more happiness in their lives. Why is that you wonder?

Our dreams are born from deep within our psyche. If there is something bothering you in waking life, it’ll show up in your dreams trying to solve it. If there’s something you’re striving for but are constantly hitting roadblocks, our dreams will show us what is actually holding us back. It’s not that simple of course. Dreams are heavily laden in symbolism and can appear completely random making it difficult to make any sense of it. And dreams are choppy and wispy like memories. They’re right there, yet you cannot remember the full essence of it no matter how hard you try. Sometimes it’ll come to you out of nowhere, triggered by an external event that brought it full force in your mind. Sometimes you’ll forget it completely as time goes on.

The simplest way to practice dream recall is to have a notebook and pen or pencil beside your bed. The moment you wake up in the morning trying to write down whatever it is that you remember. The longer it takes the more details you’ll lose, even if it’s just a few keywords. Writing down keywords can help strengthen your dream recall for when you revisit it, later on, to try and complete the whole picture. It may look like total gibberish, but sit back and think deeply about how you’ve been doing in the last few days or weeks.

In some shape or form, your dream reflects how you really feel in your waking life and your subconscious is trying to give you answers. The answers may be ambiguous, but when you finally make sense of it you’ll be surprised with how much clarity and direction it brings you. It’s a long-term commitment, but one worthwhile. And there’s no reason for you to tackle it on your own. Dream interpretation at Noetic Mystic is our specialty and are more than happy to help you explore and understand the hidden worlds within you.