what's important about journaling

I used to think keeping a journal was just about being able to review it and then analyze the dreams. Somebody pointed out though that more importantly writing it all down trains you to remember details so that when you do have a LD you remember it better and thereby reap the benefits in knowledge and abilities. I’m realizing it’s good to record even the smallest things. Probably it helps you to stay lucid.

Both of those thoughts sound valid and useful to me. Writing down dreams has greatly helped me, both with recall, and with learning to recognise my own dream signs. :cool:

This is definitely a point I’ve brought up with people I’ve helped get involved with lucid dreaming. Recording the last thing you remember before waking up - even if it’s not a dream - is going to train that habit of remembering better, just like keeping a journal / diary for waking life. Keeping a dream journal is part of the basics, but the basics aren’t things you need to try growing out of - only things that help more as your skill improves. At least that’s how things seem to work in my case, my dream journal is easily the most important lucid dreaming tool I have. If I slack on my journal everything else suffers.

I have found it to be most important for attaining clarity while lucid. If you don’t keep a good journal, your lucid dreams will feel distant. Even though you wake up knowing it is a lucid dream, you will not feel as if you were in good control.

Another thing I’d like to add, that many people seem to forget or not care about, is that non-lucid dreams can be fantastic as well, so remembering them is a good thing! If you really want to get into it, I recommend adding ridiculous amounts of detail. Pretend you’re writing for someone that can’t get in your head to see the memory of the dream. Instead of typing “I walk to the house and turn left”, add more and more, like “I go to the tall white house, there’s cracked paint on the wall, the blue wooden door is ajar and there’s a dog sitting on the porch. I turn left stepping onto the sidewalk.” When you just write “the house”, in your head the whole image may come back, the details may seem secondary, but add those too. With a little time you’ll start remembering more and more details and your dreams will become more realistic. After that, if you keep improving, you might even start getting dreams that are so vivid and detailed that you naturally get lucid for no apparent reason!

I became lucid the other night because of how vivid everything looked as I was going about solving a momentary problem.

MATTIAS wrote :

Do you think when adding details, it is important to distinguish details you actually saw VS. Details you might make up upon waking? For example, last night in my dream, I dreamt of a hotel room. When I woke, I was not sure there was a vanity by the door, but I still wrote it in my DJ.

I agree~ even non-lucid dreams or just vivid dreams are very important and should also be noted down and not forgotten^^ I read in a book from my favorite author (Charlie Morley) that he describes the dreams as messages from the subconcious and by remembering the dream and writing them down to analyze, we are willing to receive the “letter” (this message from the subconcious) and next time we might even get more letters or messages with deeper meaning since the subconcious knows now that we read the messages it tries to give us^^

I never tried this, but apperantly you can mark your dream signs in order to find them easier in your next lucid dream (e.g. if you often dream of being at the ocean…the next time you find yourself at the ocean you might realize that you are actually in a dream^^)