Spirit Bear Dreaming

Definitely! One of the reasons I started regularly recording dreams was because of an experience that showed me how practical and useful dreams are.

Years ago my partner and I decided we'd had enough with renting and decided to find a house to buy. We figured we could afford a modest house in the small, low-profile neighborhood we then lived in.

A realtor showed us house after house, probably 40 in total, but none of them fit us. He ran out of houses that fit our criteria, and showed us one final house that was above our price range. We humored him and were very amused by the house, but rejected it immediately.

A few days later I dreamt that we were living in that house, that not only were we very happy there, but we had a family and loved living there with the huge garden and great view. The dream suggested that it was a great fit that we had overlooked.

So, based on that dream we went back to take a closer look. We realized the house was actually a great house and that we had been fooled by the old-fashioned decor and rooms full of too much old furniture. We eventually bought it for just a bit above our range. We raised a family and have spent decades growing ourselves into more complete people there. I loved what that dream did for us!

My rational mind didn't see the house as acceptable at all and had already moved on to making a new plan. But my dream source had a different idea and brought that dream to alert me that I was passing up a life-changing opportunity. That ended up being a major life change and the dream came true, literally, as we had no plans to raise a family and I suspect that this dream put it in mind.

I've made many significant life changes and opened up many areas in my life via dreaming since then. I know hundreds of dreamers who have done the same. The approach to dreaming that I follow is all about utilizing what comes from dreams in waking life in order to make positive changes in every aspect of life. So, yes, this is possible, and the foundation to doing this kind of work is keeping a journal. In fact, the best way to prove this is so, is to keep a dream journal. It might take a long while for it to pay off, but all the dreamers I know swear by their journals.

A journal first provides a history of your experiences and is available for reference. If you recall a few dreams a week, after a year you will have hundreds of dreams, and after a decade, thousands. Trying to recall that many dreams, looking for a specific detail, or trying to look at recurring patterns is out for reach for most of us. So, you need to record what you can, as soon as you can, and develop it into a habit in order to gain any benefit, otherwise you may lose a lot of material.

I believe that all the modern people's dreamwork movement is based on journaling and dream sharing. This is another important aspect of journaling, you can have a coherent dream report to share with others, and a convenient place to record new information about the dream, for example, once you've shared it and gotten useful feedback from other dreamers.

There are many things that you can do with a dream journal, but I'll just mention that not only can you look for recurring patterns that were not clear on waking, but you can use your own dreams for creative purposes. I know tons of poets and storytellers who use their dreams for source material, for guidance, and for monitoring the state of their creative self.

It is much harder to do great work with dreams if you let them trickle away. Journaling is inexpensive and an easy habit to keep up once you start doing it consistently. When I first learned journaling it was through the advice from books by Jeremy Taylor, Patricia Garfield, and Robert Moss. Some web searching will show you their online writings and links to their books. I'll eventually post some specific recommendations for their books and media, and I am sure there are many other sources for how to do dream journaling.

Best of luck!

~~fran

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