Have you ever noticed that your dreams sometimes follow what you were doing right before you went to bed?  Sometimes I watch action packed films and wake up in the morning with a cool story to tell about all the bad guys I out-maneuvered that night.  Or sometimes I’ll get into playing video games with my 7-year-old a for a few hours and then dream that I was the main character in the game going on all sorts of quests and defeating level bosses.  Sometimes I read about some of the evil in the world and my dreams can get quite dark and nightmarish. On the other hand, when I take some time to meditate and read uplifting material before bed, I often see very kind people and we have very pleasant interactions.

I would love to hear your experiences with this.  Please leave a comment below!

Hm, as I re-read what I just wrote and ponder over all the other material on this website, I am getting a notion that I really ought to direct my daily attention with more purposeful intention.  I mean, uplifting thoughts not only make my day more pleasant, but also my nights!  Who doesn’t want that?  It’s in my grasp if I can just manage to make constant decisions to pick up positive, uplifting reading material instead of the scary and depressing stuff that is so much more readily available in this day and age. 

Did someone say “thought-experiment”?

REGARDING CORRELATING SYMBOLISM WITH PHYSICAL WORLD EVENTS  ...  I have often throughout the years noticed things in my dreams which seemed to have a significance other than the normal face value. For example a common object might be much larger than in everyday life, or it might be colored differently from normal, or placed in some very unusual location, or juxtaposed with something it would otherwise never be found with. Or I might find myself in some circumstances but the clothing I was wearing was completely the wrong kind for the occasion, or might be from some other period of history. Another very common experience is that there might be someone present in a dream who is playing the role of some family member or friend, and has all the familiarity feelings mannerisms and actions of that person but when looking at him or her he or she is clearly not that person. Reflecting on these circumstances or related events after awakening there would often become apparent some meaning other than that given by the appearances. Having kept dream journals for years these would often be noted and then I would simply watch what develops in my life to see if something comes to pass that shows a correlation between the dream and the rest of my life. Often something would later happen that would become quite clear. For instance, once I saw in a dream a large building with multiple rows of windows of about three stories' height on a building but the odd thing was the building was in the middle of a local bay. And the building was smoking and on fire. A house floating in the middle of the water; very out of place and strange for sure. But a few days after that there was a fire at the ferry terminal. In the dream it was no building but was the large broad side of a ferry with the rows of windows of the multiple decks. This turned out to be a case of seeing something that reflected impending events in the physical world. There have been numerous other observations and recollections that afterwards correlated with events that took place from anywhere within a day or so to a few years after. Fortunately I made notes of these and was able to develop over time a sense of the way these things were observed in the subtle world. In most cases there was nothing personal or any direct connection to me or my life but it was fortunate they were noted and could be correlated afterwards. I recommend for those who are sincerely working at developing a greater awareness of our lives in the subtle world that a journal or notebook be kept. Over time the quality of types of events and the quality of the way things are observed and occur becomes apparent and the relation between them and other parts of life can become more discernable.

The other day a neighbor called me to ask me if I had heard the loud bang at around 4 am and all the dogs barking.  She wanted to make sure it had really happened and wasn’t just a dream.  She said that her husband felt the same way -that he wasn’t completely sure if it was a dream or if it had “really” happened.  Her teenage kids did not hear it.  I told that neither my wife nor I had heard anything that night.  “Hmm,” she said.  “Strange.”

It took me back to an experience I had back in college.  I distinctly remember being woken up at around 5 am by an enormous explosion.  I jumped out of bed thinking, “what in the world was that?!”  I later asked my friends if they had heard that large explosion.  They laughed and sarcastically said, “sure dude… we totally heard it.” 

Such a strange experience.  Has anybody else ever experienced something like that?  What do you think it could be?

So I’m thinking to myself, “Self, I know that when I meditate regularly, my ability to remember my dreams gets better, and when I don’t meditate this ability tends to go away. How can I find a way to back this up with science?”

So then my self had a great idea, and I went looking for proof on the Interwebz. Lo and Behold, I found an article over at Science Daily that supports this notion by saying that, “During meditation, theta waves were most abundant in the frontal and middle parts of the brain.” You can check it out here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100319210631.htm

When I read that, some of the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I recently wrote a couple of reviews of scientific studies that asked questions about how we can predict when people can remember their dreams, and increased theta activity in the frontal cortex was a predictive factor in both studies. My reviews are here and here. 

So there you have it, folks. If you want to remember your dreams and have a more active, rewarding experience when you’re in the subtle world, meditate regularly. Training the mind to be in a state where frontal theta activity is increased is a scientifically proven way to get there. No drugs, no crystals, no magic...just good old meditation. 

IT'S INTERESTING HOW IN NEARLY ALL CASES OF DREAM RECALL we describe the circumstances we found ourselves in by talking about what we saw. Although there may be remembered other sensations we had experienced – such as hearing music, tasting food, smelling some fragrance, etc. – one would be hard pressed to find records of people describing their dreams from only tactile or taste or smell or auditory memories. Likewise the distinctness of these memories is a result of some recalled experience having been either vivid or having been experienced in a state of some clarity of mind.

     We are certainly challenged on a daily basis in so many circumstances where sensory overload can easily lead to a mind being tugged at in several directions at once. If we add to that some particular problem we’re concentrating on and trying to solve or some new thing we’re trying to create either of which can be interrupted by our surroundings then it becomes easy for the mind to become fragmented and distracted. It would certainly make sense that entering the subtle world with an agitated or easily distracted mind could easily result in an agitated or distracted (disjointed, fragmented) experience.

      Conversely if we are able to cultivate a clear mind that can either be called into activity at will or silenced and held at bay at will then it makes sense any self-generated fragmentation of the dream experience might be significantly reduced.

     That kind of mental agility could certainly be practiced on a regular basis through efforts to think systematically and methodically on some thing – then to stop the mind and hold it clear for a short amount of time – then to again purposefully exercise the mind … and repeat this cycle many times. Over time this could become habit. Since so much of what we do in the subtle realm is habitual then it’s possible such mental habits would also carry over there. And that would have a direct impact on the clarity of our experiences and therefore our recall afterwards.