Everyone Can Improve

As promised, I will showcase an example of my past week's successes, failures, and assumed meanings behind my dreams.  For those of you who have read my blogs since the very beginning, I hope keeping a dream journal really helped in the past week.  If you are just joining in, I mentioned last week to my readers how helpful keeping a record of your dream memories can be when it comes to analyzing their meaning in real life.  Now, finally, down to my example week.

This week was a tough one for me, especially when it came to dreams.  Out of the past seven sleeps, I can only recall three dreams.  In addition, only one of those dreams was a lucid dream. For my first dream, I recorded a voice memo on my iPhone during the wee hours of Sunday morning.  The first thing I said into the microphone was "I did not lucid dream last night."  Frustrating. Regardless, the majority of my recollections from the nighttime wandering dealt with school.  I struggled to find a classroom to take an exam in, I found it impossible to navigate my bike to class, and I received two assignments back as zero percents.  Obviously, this dream needs little analysis.  I was stressed about school during Sunday morning. Why would this be?  Simple: I had a chemistry test on Monday.

After my Chemistry exam was over, I did not remember my dream until Tuesday night's slumber.  My record of the dream is scribbled on an index card next to my bed; however, I do not need the card to remember the dream because it was a lucid dream.  I credit my increased sleep time for encouraging the lucid dream to occur (getting more rest generally makes lucid dreaming come more easily for me).

During the Tuesday night dream, I was sitting atop a small hill during dusk when I noticed that every single tree in the small forest around me was of the same species.  I was so preoccupied by this fact that I suddenly realized that this could not be reality.  Directly after my discovery, I did a fact check. I recalled that my body was asleep in my dorm room and that the next day was Wednesday.  I entered into the forest and wondered what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I reached no conclusion about what to accomplish with my time in the dream, as no issues were pressing at the time. Instead, I gave in and decided to enjoy my dream.  For the remainder of the dream (which was not very long) I played with my dog in the woods, flew a jet airplane, and watched the sky.

Finally, on Wednesday night, I recorded a dream that was hard to follow and especially confusing to decode.  While I slept, I imagined that I needed to cross a river for some reason, but that I lacked the ability to swim.  I panicked and tried to build a small raft but it fell apart as soon as I entered the waters.  While in the water, I became extremely cold and it reminded me of winter.  The only other part of the dream I can remember is not being able to turn on a lamp on a desk in a room that resembled my dorm room.

While I have yet to decrypt my dream from Wednesday night, this week has shown me that I too can still improve my quality and quantity of lucid dreaming and dream recall.  In addition, many of you may raise the classic question of how can I prove that lucid dreams exist? Next week, I will explore this theoretical question and attempt to persuade non-lucid dreamers that anyone is possible of achieving this goal.

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