Tracking Dreams

I recall dreams from time to time. It's not really all that often, probably once or twice a month according to my dream diary. The diary logs any dream that is significant, so of course there are a number of dreams I've had that are recalled but quickly forgotten for whatever reason. This night, I write about tracking dreams.

Dreams often have nonsensical premises, and one wonders where the dreams came from. For me, I interrogate my mind using the dream itself to gain some insight. If I dreamed about something that I was crossing the bridge at night with only a flashlight on, I'd run a search with concepts like flashlight and darkness. The first memories that surface are often the most salient ones that are most closely related to the dream itself. In this case, it was when I was guiding my folks down a dark passageway because they didn't see as well in the dark as I did.

The next step is to interrogate that memory for the emotions associated with it. It turns out that works as well, which makes a rather nice match to what the dream was about. After filtering for these memory associated aspects of the dream, it becomes possible to root out the other dream aspects that did not come from the memory. That is the essence of the dream.