Missing Data

I have been having a great deal of success as far as dreaming and lucid dreaming are going, having excellent action packed dreams many being lucid. In fact, I normally can’t wait to go to sleep to enjoy these, but, it appears that I am having some problems with recall. I can recall 3 dreams many nights, 2 most nights… but there is “missing data”, I only recall fragments. I know what went on during a period of time, but can’t recall the course of the events. For example, two nights ago I had an excellent dream with lucid elements (“Wait a minute, I’ve had this dream before… deh jah voo[sp]” -That was unique…lol) I remember that there were several gun fights with tons of close calls in this closet sized room, but I can’t recall any more than that about that time frame… Is this just a limitation of dream recall, or is this something I can work on?

Tips?

Oh yeah, while i’ve got your attention… Every time I check my watch in my dreams (Reality check) and it triggers the response “heck yeah! I’m dreaming” I am always VERY cautious about doing anything interesting or life threatening as I keep telling myself that I can’t be SURE just because of a watch, that it COULD just be broken. Any tips on this one… It interupted a happening four nights ago that could have been a blast! If interested in it read on…

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I was on a 6th or 7th story balcony looking in the distance at some of my friends on the sidewalk walking away from my location, I wanted very badly to catch up with them, but knew that if I ran at full speed I could never catch them. I looked at my watch (something felt slightly off), and sure enough the usual 88:88. [Checks watch again just for the heck of it] I was like “Alright! I can just jump off and fly to them!” I looked at the opposing side of the balcony, the guard rail had a break in it, about 3 feet wide… I ran toward it at full speed, the wind was quite real, I asure you, I could not tell that it was a dream by that, it was soooo real, and the sounds… I got soo close to the edge before having second thoughs (7 stories down is one HECK of a view/drop) , I grabbed onto the railing just barely able to grab it, I started to fall off… Holding onto the rail with all my strength I pulled myself back onto the balcony. I thought to myself, what if this is real, it is SO darn realistic, it very well could be that my watch was simply broken… I thought about it, and couldn’t bring myself to the edge, the railing now was solid, making me feel safer. Then I slowly faded until I woke up, recalling the entire ordeal nearly in it’s entirery. That was a rush!
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See the problem.

Your dream recall will, of course, improve over time. But I guess there is a limit to how much you can remember of a particularly large dream. If a lot of things happen, then chances are you might get the order of them mixed up. The reason for this is fairly simple. In real life, you can remember the order of things that you did mainly because there are in some way related.

For example, you know you went to the bank before you went to the shops, because you needed to withdrawl some money. You know you went to the shops before you went to your friends place, because you had to buy some things there first. The problem is, dreams usually branch off into all kinds of situations that don’t depend on each other, so your mind dosn’t automatically use this logic to order the events.

As long as you write it all down, and remember as many details as you can, the order isn’t that important.

Thx. I’ve been working on my recall for quite a while, started out stright outta a 2 year line of no dreams what so ever recalled… Guess I still have some distance to go though. Excellent explaination by the way… Order is difficult to recall sometimes, but if the dream is… I guess streaming or lucid, order comes naturally, then its just the details… sigh.