Increasing Dream Recall with Thankfulness

[Palehorse Redivivus]

Lately I've been trying to focus specifically on increasing my dream recall (and more broadly, recall of any nonphysical-based memories). I'm doing that, but most of my dreams happen in the form of short fragments throughout the night that don't seem to have much to do with each other. I'm shooting for vividness, length and dreams of a more "episodic" nature. Lucidity too, but I figure that will be built on top of the foundation of the others. I've been doing some of the usually suggested recall-aids, especially writing dreams down, but I think I've hit on something else I haven't seen suggested that's having good effects.

Usually I'll remember bits and pieces of things as I wake up, and I often find that I'll spontaneously have more details, or whole frags, pop into awareness throughout the day. It occurred to me that the basis of dream recall is that the dream is 1. recorded in the subconscious mind, and 2. turned over to conscious awareness. I think it's often taken for granted that all dreams are recorded, but based on RB's ideas about memory download, this may not be the case.

So based on those two premises, every time I have *any* recall, I've been thanking my subconscious mind for faithfully recording and then releasing this information to my awareness, and then adding a good-natured prod to shoot for even more detail, vividness and length next time. This seems to be working very well -- framing it in terms of working with this part of myself as a friend, using thankfulness and good-natured self-competitiveness as tools to build on what I've got already.

I'm hoping this will also work to alter the kind of dreams I'm likely to have. I.e. go from "fragmented pulp fiction mostly involving regular people and events" to "long continuous episodes with lots of fun surreal elements" but I haven't necessarily seen any indication of that yet.

For the sake of discussion, because I'm looking to exchange and incorporate more useful ideas -- what specific methods have worked for you, in practice, to increase dream recall (and possibly the nature of the dreams themselves)?

[CFTraveler]

How much do you meditate? I don't mean meditate to relax, but meditate to get to the liminal state?
What helps me with recall (other than the keyword-upon-waking technique) is to meditate until I get a vision or hear stuff, write it down as it happens and 'go in' again. This takes time (I recommend the weekend, one day you don't have a lot of responsibilities for this)-do this repeatedly. Do not expect to make a lot of sense with this at first, but it will make it easier to recognize dreamscapes you've been into before and other such stuff.
I don't mean when you do it, but later when you sleep. You get used to 'invading' your unconscious state and start remembering stuff you do when you're unconscious.

[Palehorse Redivivus]

I try and "meditate" every night unless something prevents it, though that means different things on different nights.

Before more recently, meditate either usually meant relaxing with no particular intent, or doing some sort of internal repatterning, healing, etc. I was never really able to reach anything that I would consider a trance state, but once I found out that neither of those things required it to be effective, trance work took a backseat for a few years in favor of all manner of internal restructuring.

As of about a week or two ago when I discovered that it may now be an option, I started meditating specifically with the intention to go increasingly deep into trance. As of the last two nights or so, I'm able to go pretty deep into physical relaxation (at least relative to what I could do before).

Spontaneous audio and visuals are still very iffy. I've gotten a lot better at creating them with vividness and detail if I try to, and if I do that long enough it may start taking on a life of its own somewhat... "phasing" would probably not be too far removed from this, but I'm gonna have to build up to holding it that long.

Unfortunately if I don't directly create audio or visuals with imagination, they don't happen, at least at any level of intentional trance I'm currently capable of. I do get occasional flash-visuals when I'm just relaxing in bed without intending anything other than chilling out. As for audio, last time I got any spontaneous audio was probably a few years ago, and whatever part of myself handles that function shut down shortly after I'm pretty sure.

I haven't done much with "wake back to bed" and interrupted sleep type methods due to the way sleep goes for me. If I wake up, I may not be able to get back to sleep for another hour, two, three. I think this was tied into only being able to be in the two extreme states, either wide awake and on edge, or dead asleep, which I think I mentioned somewhere. I'm trying to get to where I can move fluidly between a greater spectrum of states, which seems to be progressing more quickly now.

Soooo... I'll definitely be trying things like you suggest, but it may take a while before the audio/visuals start happening on their own.

[CFTraveler]

Just don't do it with the purpose of projecting, but to just 'see what happens'. And it may be helpful (possibly impossible, I know) to have someone else you can talk to when you do this instead of writing it down.
Good luck with that, I know.

[lightningbug]

thanking my subconscious? that's a good idea. I probably need a good one on one with my subconscious

you see I've gotten myself into an interesting predicament I've never in my life been in before! It feels like dream memories are literally snatched from my mind as I wake up. Not that I have trouble remembering, or that my mind is distracted waking up. Not at all.

It's like, one moment I remember something a dream character tells me. I know I'm about to wake up. I consciously repeat what the dream character tells me so I can remember it completely when I wake up. But as I wake up, even though I am still focused on remembering the dream, the memories fade from me. Become distant. Fuzzy. I'm consciously experiencing these memories vanish before my eyes. Like someone taking words out of your mouth.

In the past, remembering was so easy. Which I attribute to faithful dream journaling over the years.

But I'm dream journaling now more than ever!

So I don't know what's up! I guess yelling at my subconscious doesn't help?

[Palehorse Redivivus]

So I don't know what's up! I guess yelling at my subconscious doesn't help?

Lol, funny this thread should pop up again; I've been playing all sorts of fun games with mine today to get it to do what I need. Recently I realized that "forbidden fruit syndrome," as well as my habit where being told I can't do something is one of the quickest ways to get me to accomplish it, is a form of motivation I could probably use on my subby too. I accomplish more, not when its laid out on a silver platter, but when I've got some sort of challenge to work through... so the usual method of "release all resistance and it'll come on its own" doesn't usually work for me.

So today I dispensed with the "unconditional support and positivity" and tried a new approach with my subby. "You mean I've been working on LDing this long and you still are barely remembering dreams? You're right, I guess you just aren't capable of vivid dreams. You probably shouldn't bother dreaming anyway; I mean what if they turn out scaaary? Only a strong subby would be able to handle that sorta thing. Maybe I should get you a guru...**"

I haven't been to sleep since I started basically taunting my own subconscious, though my 3rd eye got really active, and I've had random imagery popping up very easily when I close my eyes, which is unusual for me. The thankfulness worked to a point, but only in fits and starts... and since IRL, lighting a fire under my own arse in the above mentioned way is usually how I start the proverbial engine, and thankfulness is more for keeping something going that's already doing pretty well on its own, I'm hoping this will carry over into dreaming as well.

(**No offense to people who benefit from the guru system. That's kind of an inside joke with myself because the specific aspect I was talking to is fiercely autonomous enough to take that as a threat and give the "OH YEAH?!" response I'm hoping for.)

Whatever works, no?

[Neil Templar]

So today I dispensed with the "unconditional support and positivity" and tried a new approach with my subby. "You mean I've been working on LDing this long and you still are barely remembering dreams? You're right, I guess you just aren't capable of vivid dreams. You probably shouldn't bother dreaming anyway; I mean what if they turn out scaaary? Only a strong subby would be able to handle that sorta thing. Maybe I should get you a guru...**"

i love it PH.

[CFTraveler]

Ha ha ha. Well, the subconscious is like a baby, so why not?

[Palehorse Redivivus]

I must amend.

Friendly challenge: good idea.
Insinuating weakness to a subby who latches onto and runs with whatever you tell it: bad idea.

In short I got a little too carried away with the taunting because my own frustration creeped in, and I actually disempowered myself. I think I actually created a feedback loop where my frustration found its way into subby, reflected back to influence what I was consciously telling him, back 'n forth like this until by today I ended up feeling like hell. By the end of it I think he was like "if my own conscious mind doesn't believe in me then what good am I?" but in any case I was feeling very unable to be effective in any way.

Not exactly the desired outcome, but a good learning experience, and it *did* bear fruit, even if not the fruit I was shooting for. In that, the way I brought myself back up again was to gain a greater sense of my role in context. I apologized for going overboard, reaffirmed various things and that helped some, but what really brought me back up again was to say "the majority of my empowerment comes from my relationships with my allies -- and I wouldn't have such awesome allies if I wasn't similarly awesome in my own right." This taught my fiercely autonomous aspect something in an experiential way -- that while autonomy is valuable, the foundation that allows greater autonomy is still "the tribe" in whatever form it takes; everything has to operate in consideration of context.

So!

I still think there's something to be gained from what I was originally shooting for, and it did seem to be working well until it took a bad turn. The idea was that I've got the "Rebel" archetype as one of my primary ones, and I can gain motivation by giving it something to rebel against. I've even been doing this in ways like saying "yo Rebel! The weather (which has been humid as death lately) doesn't think you should be able to stay functional and productive; what do you think about that? " I actually had an amusing conversation with it the other night after reading more of that ebook I was talking about. "Rebelling against all the usuals; religion, parents, The Man, is boring... we need to find something new. Let's rebel against Newton! Yeah... effing Newton..."

This all likely makes me sound completely insane (and that may not be too far off base o_O). But I've learned that all that's required to kick this part of myself into action is the feeling of oppressiveness -- and that doesn't necessarily have to come from a personalized, sentient source. So, it works as a form of motivation, and gives rise to a talent for finding a way forward in any circumstance, regardless of appearances.

I just need to find a way to channel it in a way that subverts obstacles without subverting my own ability to subvert obstacles, lol...