k, i can see the benifit of getting to know your dreams and stuff like that.
But i read some things and they always say: You have to keep a dream journal because how can you otherwise remember it when you are lucid…
Now i don’t think thats needed. When you truly are lucid, you are not likely to forget it, right? I mean thats like saying that something you know you realy did 10 minutes ago you would now have forgotten about.
I did not realy search for previous topics about it, but what are your thoughts about this?
A dream diary is needed, sorry. It improves your general recall of dreams so you can find out whether you’re getting close and what you’ve been doing. It helps you find out your dreamsigns.
Also, to get “fully lucid” you need practice at being partly lucid, and if you’re only partly lucid you need dream recall to remember it .
It’s a good idea to keep a DD because one tends to forget details from dreams and LD’s pretty quickly especially if it’s a long dream. It’s also a good idea to write down a little from a dream if you wake up during the night, otherwise you might forget an entire dream. It also seems to improve dream recall if you keep writing down your dreams. I remeber about twice as many dreams now compared to the first month of writing a DD. Before i found out about LD’s i could remember about 1 dream/week.
I dont say that a DD isn’t usefull, i just dont agree whit the point that i read a few times now.
“Before you can have a lucid dream, you’ll have to remember your dreams. How else would you know you had a lucid dream when you wake up?”
I dont think when you trully have a lucid dream that you are likely to forget that “when you wake up”. Because thats it. You dont wake up, your body wakes up. No?
Recall of NDs is important. On my team at sealife, one member was frequently forgetting his LD dreams on waking since he was suffering from low recall for his normal dreams.
I have forgotten parts of an LD but most likely you won’t forget an entire LD. But if you keep on sleeping after you’ve had an LD you are likely to atleast forget some of it. To me sleep seems to erase dreams, so if you have a dream and then sleeps for 3 hours you are likely to forget alot of it. Atleast that’s my experience so far.
I haven’t kept a dream diary for quite a while just because I’ve gotten lazy I guess. Maybe I should start again . I still make a conscious effort to recall my dreams upon awakening. Lucid dreams are so cool that I usually don’t have any trouble remembering them. I wonder if it would greatly increase my chances of having lucid dreams if I started to keep a dream diary again.
Well all the LD’s I have had in my life (about 7) have not been through help of my DD, in fact I dont even have a specific DD really. I just have a few pieces of paper near my bed and whenever I dream something I write it in the morning, or whenever I wake up, (usually)
so that is proof that its not needed, your right, but yes it does help,
its like one way to help you improve your dream recall and LD-activity, just like RC’s, and methods like WILD, WBTB, MILD etc.
DD is useful, because you can find your dreamsigns and analyze dreams. However it’s not needed, the thing you need is dream recall. Dream diary hels you practising it, but if you have motivation, you can practise recalling dreams without writing them down.
I’ve never bothered with a dream diary because i remember all by dreams just fine lucid or otherwise. The only time i write in my DD is when i feel that a dream is important or pre-cog or if i really liked the dream and wanted to keep a writen record of it.
Personally when i first decided to write a dream diary (long before i knew of LDs) i used to write them down daily and i found that i would recall LESS dreams per night but the memory of the ones i did remember were vivid in my mind longer than the rest. - This is the reason i chose to only record the ones i really liked/felt important.
obviously i could wake up after each to record them but in full time employment and previously education waking up at all hours just wasn’t conceivable at the time - as i need to sleep so many hours or i don’t function well.
So for me personally keeping a DD is not neccessary, but for someone who has poor recall it is deffinately advised as a means to help improve recall.
You have to remember that you have too types of memory short term and long term - all memories dream or otherwise start off in the short term memory, now how long they remain vivid memories is dependant on the person and how good their memory is. People with poor short term memory will remember less on waking regardless of whether it was ND or LD. After a time these memories pass onto the long term for “storage” however dream memories often do not go to the long term memory - particularly if you have poor dream recall on waking. So helping your STM is always a good idea as this can help you reach lucidity.
– Now one for the experts, how come my LD recall is more vivid during low level LDs rather than High Level LDs?
The reasons why most dreamers use a DD are already mentioned, but it’s also pretty handy to write your LDs down so you can reread them later. I often do this and my DD notes help me to relive the exciting LDs. One must have an incredibly good memory to remember many past LDs. Unless you don’t see the point of doing that
Coincidence
Perhaps there exists a certain consciousness balance connected to LDs: the more conscious you are during a LD, the less your consciousness upon awakening will be able to recall the LD (and vice versa). Another way to put it: the more dream consciousness/memory, the less waking consciousness/memory upon awakening. This isn’t absolute, but in general this could be the tendency.
Before reading about LD and Dream Diaries, I thought I remembered all my dreams, and that if I didn’t remember a dream, that meant I didn’t dream that night. WRONG! I just realized last night how fast I forgot what I dreamt about. When I first woke up, I thought I didn’t even have a dream, I had to think hard to try and remember, and I got bits and pieces. So I think a dream diary and practicing dream recall is very important in becoming lucid.
if your recall is already good then you should go with what you feel is good-i find that when i arent writting dreams down i have worse recall in total of lucid and non lucid dreams, it is also great help when you have plenty of dreams and want to refur to 1 you have had a long time ago- i find i can only just remember snipits of dreams after months have passed (apart from the really good ones that i never forget) and its always good going back over the diary to boost my memory of the dreams.
also does help in dreamsigns as was mentioned.
The last days I have found out how easy it’s to forget dreams. One day I could remember 3 dreams when I woke up. But when I was about to write them down 10 minutes later I only remembered 1 . And I have also begun to remember dreams from almost every REM-period during the night, but I completely forget them unless I write something down during the night.
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. And I have also begun to remember dreams from almost every REM-period during the night, but I completely forget them unless I write something down during the night.