Dream Journaling 101: How to Decode Your Subconscious Mind
Every morning when I wake up, I crack open my black Moleskine Journal and I record the previous night’s dreams. If I don’t have my Moleskine Journal handy, the notes app on my phone works just fine.
What’s most important is taking the time to jot down my dreams!
This is a practice that I’ve been doing for well over a decade. I started dream journaling in high school when I told my high school boyfriend about a weird dream that I had and he introduced me to an online dream dictionary. We would chat about dream symbols and what they meant! I became fascinated with the subconscious mind and the insights that the dreamworld provides.
My dream journaling practice has increased my self-awareness, deepened my connection to Spirit, and helped me to problem solve!
Often, for example, if I needed to write a paper in college and I felt stuck, I would work out key details about the paper’s thesis and structure in my dreams.
If you’re curious about dream journaling, keep reading.
Dream journaling can help you…
1. Unlock Hidden Wisdom
Dream journaling offers a unique window into your subconscious mind, allowing you to tap into hidden thoughts, emotions, and insights that can be immensely valuable for personal growth and self-discovery.
2. Enhance Creativity
Recording your dreams regularly can spark your imagination and boost creative thinking. Dreams often present scenarios that challenge the boundaries of reality, providing a wellspring of inspiration for artists, writers, and innovators.
3. Improve Problem Solving
Dreams sometimes offer symbolic solutions to real-life problems. By diligently keeping a dream journal, you can decipher recurring patterns, symbols, and themes that might provide fresh perspectives and solutions to challenges you face during waking hours.
So, here’s how to do it…
Keep a Journal near your bed (or wherever you sleep).
As soon as you wake up, jot down everything that you remember. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not ready to write the full dream, write down some quick notes to help you jog your memory.
If you have some extra time, write about what you believe the dream means. Freewrite for a bit and don’t overthink it.
Look up any symbols that stuck out to you. Add those notes to your interpretation of the dream if you feel called to do so.
Highlight any recurring dreams or symbols.
Meditate and/or sit with the Divine to reflect on the significance of the dream.
My approach to interpreting dreams is inspired, in part, by both Caribbean mysticism and Carl Jung’s writings. Many of our elders in the Caribbean and the wider African Diaspora took dreams seriously! The dream would offer warnings of potential danger or the birth of a baby in the family.
Dreams often include both personal and collective symbols! Dreams connect us to what Jung called the "collective unconscious," which represents the shared reservoir of experiences, symbols, and archetypes that all humans inherit. This is distinct from personal symbols, which have unique meanings to an individual.
So, for example, water and fish are often a symbol of fertility in the African Diaspora. They are a part of our collective unconscious because of their association with water spirits that are also fertility spirits. Whereas an individual may associate fish with disease if they got fish poisoning once in their early childhood.
When you decode your dreams you want to pay attention to both what a symbol may mean for you and what it may represent in our collective unconscious.
With time, you’ll deepen your awareness of yourself and the world around you.
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