Covers...
For many years now I have collaged the covers of my dream journals:
Kathy often paints hers:
What Other Dream Records Do I Keep?...
In addition to my regular dream-and-waking journal (kept in one volume and frequently illustrated by small quick sketches as in the page at the top of this column), I also keep a separate "title journal."
Many years ago, I adopted the practice of giving my dreams evocative, experiential (rather than interpretive) titles. For example: "Fleeing from the Burning Castle" is a more useful title than "Anger at My Family of Origin."
Doing it this way extends the "shelf life" of the dream by allowing me to remember the dream in some detail simply by re-reading the title, and helps me keep better track of the growing volume of dream material that I am still gathering on a daily basis. I can begin to see the forest as a whole, while also seeing each individual tree as I come across it. I also developed the habit of numbering my dreams when I record them to facilitate easier retrieval and succinct reference. I am now, (as of this writing), up to 17,095 recorded dreams.
Format for Title Journal...
The format I use for my title journal is to record my numbered, chronologically ordered dreams on the right-hand page:
And on the left hand page I put accounts of salient moments and events in my waking life. This makes it possible to recall immediately the dream and the waking life circumstances around the time of the dream. There are fewer words to wade through than in my regular dream/waking life journal.
Déjà vu, Precognition, and the Ambiguity of Time...
Over the decades, I have learned many things from my occasional, (at least once yearly), reviews of these title-&-waking-event journals. For example, this research has convinced me that when I experience déjà vu in waking life, it is invariably a partial memory of an earlier, at some level precognitive dream. I have the sense that "I've been here before..." because usually I have dreamed a version of this waking life event. Conversations with other dreamers have also persuaded me that this is almost certainly the case with the déjà vu experiences of others as well.
I have also noticed that time - and particularly the waking and dreaming passage of time - is nowhere near as cut-and-dried and simple as it appears to be in waking life. Cause and effect, and linearity are in many senses just "habits of waking mind."
Albert Einstein came to a very similar conclusion toward the end of his life. In a letter of condolence to the widow of a recently deceased friend and colleague he wrote:
"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."
In closing let me observe that one interesting implication of all these realizations is that there is serious reason to suppose that consistent focused attention on dreams, and how our ability to remember them develops with practice, may be the best preparation for death available to us...but that's another article....
Please keep on sending in your questions. I'm enjoying thinking about them and responding in this forum.
