Swesent's Dream Journal

[Swesent]

August 15:th - "Estate Guardian"

I'm in this huge home, like an estate, but furnished and decorated to look more like an ordinary cozy home. The rooms are huge but due to the furniture layout, they don't feel extensively spacious. Joining me are one of my cousins, my brother and two small babies, only about a year old and maybe six months or so between the two of them.

It's getting dark outside and we are all there to take care of the estate during a weekend. I get the feeling that it's Friday night. This dream felt like a really long one, unfortunately I can only recall bits and pieces of it. I know that we're all in the kitchen at one point, gathered around a dinner table. We have most likely been dining but I've only got a couple of visual snapshots from that.

Next we are in a living-room. I remember arguing with my brother about the seatings. There were no less than three couches around the living-room table, but he had to sit in the same one I was lying in, blocking my view of the TV with his legs. Together with me were the two babies. I remember one part where I heavily focused on trying to keep both of them from crying. It felt exactly as if I were balancing on a fence or something. One tiny misstep and failure would reign! One weird thing was that I had an alternating feeling - sometimes I felt that those children were my own, but still like strangers to me. At other points it felt like they were my cousin's.

After spending some time in the living-room the scene changes to a room dedicated to various pet animals. There was this huge aquarium with tiny toads and fish swimming around. Me and my cousin had a little talk back and forth about who was going to clean the toads(?!?) Moments after that I was watching two dogs eating out of a dog bowl. My cousin walks up to them, points at them and says "Look here." Suddenly I could see the two babies sitting between the dogs, also eating from the dog bowl. My only thought to seeing that was "Oh good, he managed to get the babies to eat as well.".

After that we moved on to some big bedroom - decorated to look like a child's bedroom. I think we were all going to sleep for the night but that scene also escapes me. All I have are a couple of snapshots in my head. I recall nothing to put any motion to it.


- Thoughts and Stuff -
I can feel much input from reality in this dream. The fact that one of my cousins have recently given birth to two children (not the same cousin as in the dream though!). The toads were the actual pet toads that we have. The dog bowl looked exactly like one that we had when I was much younger and lived with my parents. And it's the second time, in a row I may add, that I've been on some guarding duty. Yesternight it was a store, this night, an estate. Don't know why I need to guard much. Anyway, it was a cozy and friendly atmosphere throughout the dream. I just wish I could remember more of it!

@Summerlander: Thank you for even more interesting information! I have no problem at all understanding the idea of looking at objects in dreams both for what they really are as well as their symbolism. If I may ask - is there any book in particular you feel could be great to start out with in order to learn about interpreting dreams?

[Summerlander]

Keep recording dreams.  Write down your notes in your journal as soon as you wake up.  Sometimes closing your eyes can help you to remember more details.  More memories may come throughout the day.  Write the notes in the present tense so that it reinforces the notion that you are reliving the dreams or still there (the past tense may convey to your subconscious that it is gone and this can make you forget things).  The more you remember the more your dream recall improves and this is also a recipe for lucid dreams because, the more you remember, the more dream patterns you will identify.  By the way, here's a few good books on dreaming:

Dreams & Reality by several people and published by Sunrise Books.  My mum got this on from Portugal but it is English.
Dreams & Dreaming which is a comprehensive guide to understanding your dreams by Lisa Tenzin-Dolma.  This is probably better than the first one for what you want.  This one contains Jungian interpretations but you may also want to look into Freud for other perspectives.
The Complete Dream Book by Gillian Holloway.  Pretty powerful.  This can inspire you to study psychology.  This is a vast subject, of course.  Look into the symbolism that people share, the different types of people, what things convey to them, what kind of life they've led, the puns, the art they like etc. etc. - it will always be easier to interpret your own dreams but you may also be able to give others an accurate reading.

ps.  Watch The Mentalist.  It's very educational believe it or not. 

[Swesent]

I've had a couple of nights now without much dream recall at all. This night I dreamt something about a computer game - don't know if I was playing it or if I was inside it - my memory is extremely hazy. I can't help wondering if I'm losing my recall again or what's going on. Maybe it's because I have slept all through the night these past couple of nights. Previously I have been waking up around 3:30 - 4:00 am and managed to write down a dream or two.

When I go to sleep I keep repeating to myself, silently in my head: "I will recall my dreams tonight!" I repeat this over and over again - but, for some reason, my subconscious doesn't listen. I don't know what it's doing - but it has to be something more fun than listening to my mantra or caring squat about my nightly adventures!

Maybe it would make a bigger impact if I were to use my girlfriend as a pawn in my masterful plan? If I were to tell her, right before she falls asleep: "Ask me what I've dreamt in the morning. I will remember it, and I will tell you!" This way I'll be whacking my subconscious over the head with a commitment and a promise! It can't ignore that, can it?!

...Dreams & Dreaming which is a comprehensive guide to understanding your dreams by Lisa Tenzin-Dolma.  This is probably better than the first one for what you want.  This one contains Jungian interpretations but you may also want to look into Freud for other perspectives...
...ps.  Watch The Mentalist.  It's very educational believe it or not. 

Thank you very much for your book advice Summerlander! Always helpful to know what to look for!
And with the dream recalling - that's exactly what I do. I have a notebook on my nightstand where I jot down what I can remember as soon as I wake up. Sometimes it is really fascinating how dreams can just pop back into memory when triggered by some single event during the day. But if I try too hard to recall what I've dreamt, I easily slip back to previous dreams instead - thus finding it somewhat difficult to tear new dream memories apart from older ones.

Of course I watch "The Mentalist" - that's one of my, and my g/f's, favorite TV-shows! I find it very inspiring!

[Swesent]

August 20:th 2011 - "Multiples #1"

"Speed-run" I'm standing next to a sofa in an unknown living-room. In the sofa is, again, one of my cousins (although at a younger age) and two more unknown children. On the opposite side there is an armchair and the cousin's dad is sitting in it. He is watching TV. It's a home recorded movie (filmed by a handheld camera) featuring a woman I have never seen before. She's got black long hair. She's wearing a blue dress with a white dotted pattern and a white "line" around its top. She's sitting in the grass outside and looks generally happy. I get the feeling that she is maybe a late girlfriend or wife to my cousin's dad.

There's also an old NES video game system sitting in front of the TV. I look at it and then I ask my cousin if he would like to do a speed-run through any game he owns. I wanted to film it with my new smartphone and upload it on YouTube. I believe he declined and my recall fades.


"Game Footage" I'm at a much younger age. I'm inside some kids' dormitory. Lots of children lying in their beds sleeping everywhere. I find myself next to an unknown child playing a game on a handheld gaming device. He is at the last stage of the game. I can't see any clear views of it at all, I just know he is about to complete the game. So I grab the same new smartphone of mine from my pocket and I begin recording as he plays through the final stage. For some reason I know that I am recording in 1020p (the highest available resolution). I was going to upload this on YouTube as well. Shortly thereafter the dream fades.


"A Beach Day" I'm standing in the backseat of a cabriolet (roof down of course). It is a lovely day with clear blue sky, big bright sun, warm beach-friendly weather. Not a single wind besides the faint breeze from slowly cruising down the last piece of road ending at some unknown beach resort. The car is filled with people (women most of them I think), as well as all around the road. People coming and leaving. Lots of cars stand parked along the sides of the road. Everyone is in a cheerful mood (imagine had you seen this setting in a Donald Duck magazine - that would be about spot on). I remember that we drove past someone standing by the roadside, passing very close to him. Something happened - maybe someone in the car said something. I just know that something affected this man - I don't even remember the result of it though. Then my memory goes blank.


Dream 4: I'm inside an office at my parents' work - although the building looks nothing like it. My younger brother walks into this huge room next to the office. I could see him through a small window in the wall. He walks in not wearing any shirt and he looked extremely muscular - the result from regularly going to the gym. He meets a friend of his inside this room and they greet each other. There is also another friend there, someone both of us know. He comes walking up to the office where I'm sitting but he barely made it over there before my memory ends.


"Witch Slayer" I am face to face with a witch. She looks almost zombie-like, she has long nails on her fingers and is quite dangerous and deadly. I am some kind of witch-slayer who has to deal with this monstrosity. We are inside my old house getting ready to fight each other. There had been other fights there as well, other witch-hunters/-slayers who had been killing off several other witches whose bodies now lay scattered around the floor in several rooms.

Me and the witch converse a little - I can't remember about what exactly. It may have been some warnings before our ensuing fight, it may have been me asking questions trying to gather intelligence - I don't know. I remember us starting to fight and I dealt some definite finishing blow/attack to her that would have been enough to kill off any regular witch. But this one survived it somehow thus confirming that she is some sort of "boss witch" left for me to deal with as I am the champion among the witch-slayers. It felt good to know - I found the whole thing a rather cool experience. I can't remember how the fight ended though.


- Personal Thoughts and Stuff -
I don't know whether or not this was pure coincidence or if remembering ~five dreams in one night has something to do with me utilizing this new stone/crystal of mine. The other week I ordered a large double terminated amethyst which is supposed to have lots of effect upon dreams and lucidity among many other things. It arrived yesterday and I placed it underneath my pillow (as advised). I slept all through the night(!) and managed to recall events from five different dreams in one go. Not very much from any of them, but still. The few prior nights I haven't recalled much at all (as you can see in this dream journal of mine).

- What's with the purple? -
As most people probably do, I regularly recognize lots of objects, places and people in my dreams from the waking world. I thought it would be - I don't know, helpful/interesting/fun? to mark those. Maybe I'll be able to discern some pattern or something. Anyway, I'm going to do it for now and I may add a short notification about it in my first post as well.

[Swesent]

Well, this is not a dream.
I have had quite a few dreams these past couple of nights...
But since they aren't jotted down in this thread - it makes this another failpost instead!

The thing is that I do wake up at random times throughout the night. Not because I am uncomfortable or due to any unwell feelings (me being a Type-1 diabetic). It feels like I wake up just to bridge the gap between one series of dreams and the next. The problem is that I must always be too lazy or non-caring to write anything down! It is apparently a lot easier to just turn around and go back to sleep. Maybe I'm just not completely 100% "there" when I have those quick awakenings. Maybe it's partially my subconscious deciding;

"I can't be *rsed to have you writing stuff down right now. You just turn around and go back to sleep instead! ... That's it! Go on... Schoossh!".

It feels like I will need to force myself to write things down instead. Potentially by placing a 4am alarm a couple of steps away from the bed. Maybe then I'll wake up enough to make the right decision. It just feels like such a waste you know. Because I have dreamt at least five - six different dreams during the weekend - but they are all lost to me now. I need to make a change and it has to start tonight!

[Swesent]

August 23:rd 2011 - "From Castle by Ship"

I am in a large castle. My g/f is with me and there is also an older maid there working - except from us the castle is completely empty. I get the feeling that it was my g/f who made us go there for some reason. We have been staying at this castle for a couple of nights, maybe over a weekend.

It was time for us to leave and go back home. We are all on the first floor of the castle and I walk down this huge hallway to an equally huge doorway at the end of it. Beyond the opened doorway is another big room where the maid is working. She's dusting or maybe hanging up wet clothes and sheets to dry. She is an older woman with gray-white hair, wearing one of those classic black and white maid outfits. I ask her where my g/f is and she replies that she's probably in our room.

I thank her for the info and I turn around and proceed back through the hallway. Again, it's huge - about 30 feet wide and four times as high. The hallway is walled by big dark blue-gray bricks. On the floor is a red exclusive carpet with golden borders, slightly narrower than the hallway. On the wall hangs larger than life-size paintings featuring royal people, perhaps the castle's former owners. Along the walls are also these armor stands and above each room there are big tree signs with some indistinguishable text written on them. Beside every door also hangs different middle-age weapons. A couple of old muskets at one room, swords of different kinds at another.

At one room off to the side I also notice a set of large knives. I react to seeing those knives since they are the very ones I myself own. However, I don't think any more about it. I keep walking down the hallway to the room we have stayed in. Inside is my g/f gathering up the last of our luggage. I just keep walking though. I kind of note what she's doing from the corner of my view and decide that she's almost done and I don't need to help. I'm longing to get out of there, to get back home again.

Next I know I'm outside the castle. It's rather dark, in the middle of the night. All the surroundings are as dark blue-grayish as the castle - everything goes in the same tone. Maybe I can see a tiny spot of yellow candlelight flickering in the distance. I'm walking down a narrow stone path leading from the castle to a shipping port further down below. There are quite a few large ships anchored in the port and my g/f and I are about to leave on one of them. The ship that we're taking is owned by none other than "Jack Sparrow". I meet him some ways down the stone path and I follow him down to the ship.

The ship looks tiny when I approach it, like I'm seeing it from a great height. I take a step from the pier over to the ship. The ship looks so small that I almost can't fit my feet on its deck. The ship feels extremely unstable as well. But as soon as I put my foot down on the ship's deck everything blasts up to correct and natural size. Kind of like a glitch in a game from some bad Internet connection. The visuals didn't update until I boarded the ship.

I then transition to the last scene I can recall from this dream. I'm walking along the top of the castle walls. It is in the middle of the day, sunny and the castle's former dark blue has changed to light gray. Far up ahead I see some enormous creature standing on, or next to, one of the castle walls. I am pretty certain that it is a dragon. After that my recall fades.


"Deadly Backyard Game"

I'm in a vast backyard to a big house. Me and three children are sitting around one of those games where figures randomly pops up and you have to beat them down with something. This game is quite large and circular so we're sitting far away from each other. The three children aren't older than a year perhaps and my perspective is completely off - making the children appear even bigger than the house. I just sit there and watch as the children are swinging for the up-popping figures. The scene then changes.

Suddenly I'm standing at a start position somewhere in the backyard of the house. Placed in a very long course around the house, in the ground, are explosive devices. Each of the devices has a visible green laser tripwire attached to it. They work in such a way that when you block the laser it turns red and a counter on the affected device starts to count down. If the counter reaches zero before all of the bombs have been tripped, they all reset. If I manage to trip every device before one of them reaches zero, they will all detonate.

This was some kind of exercise assignment that I got. It felt like I was playing through the tutorial to some realistic war-oriented First Person Shooter game. This instructional voice told me; "Sometimes, when there isn't enough time to disarm the explosives, the best way is to trigger them all and let them detonate." That was my cue to start running.

So I start running around this armed course. It is very easy to spot the bombs due to their green laser tripwire. As I deliberately trip the bombs, I can hear a loud signal and the laser changes from green to red. The run goes fairly well until I get to the front of the house. In front of the house is a large muddy part. It must recently have been raining because the muddy section is a mix between very slippery (no traction) and very sticky - like some semi quicksand effect, sinking me down into the mud with every step. When I finally get past that part, it's already too late. The first devices have reached zero on their counter and reset.

I try the challenge a few more times but with no different result. At one of my trial runs I meet someone at the muddy part, going the opposite direction. I end up thinking that this challenge would be a breeze if it hadn't been raining and also that I would need some help through the muddy part. Suddenly I see a very long tandem bicycle, at least eight seats long with people dressed as mimes riding it. I figure they were there to help me in some way. Then my memory ends.

[Swesent]

August 24:th 2011 - "Lethal Marketing"

I find myself as a crew member working at some kind of big circus. It's not a real circus though per se, it's more of a magics show with a few acts involving the help from a couple of tigers - everything presented in a circus-type arena. It's closer to midnight and we are having a show but the audience is fewer in number than we would have hoped. Entrance fees barely enough to make the evening go around.

The show is held inside an extremely large tent. The seatings are placed in several rising rows in a circular fashion and they are close to bright blue - creating a surrounding ocean wave to the unfocused eye. In the center of the tent is where all the magic happens. The ground there is covered by a white tarp with a big blue star and smaller red dots painted on it. All very circus-like.

I'm watching as an act involving two tigers is being performed, allowing myself to be distracted for a minute before going back to my work task. I can't really tell what the act was about - I was just captivated by the large and powerful looking tigers. Honestly I couldn't care less about what magic act the person being with those tigers performed.

After a while I pick up what I'm supposed to do. I walk somewhere backstage to some smaller cages, carrying an armful of lose cables. Right after that there is a jump in scenes. The interesting thing with this change of scenes is that I know a bit what's been going on in between. The night's show has ended and the show's owners have had a meeting discussing the poor profits, the lacking popularity and audience - and they have basically come to the conclusion that they need to hire more performers.

When the new scene begins I'm still the same maintenance worker but this time it's something of an Idol audition setting. The jury consists of three people who are unknown to me. One woman, one man and a young kid in the middle. They have just seen one of the tryouts and the jury proceeds by calling the name of the next group of performers in line. They call their name but no-one shows up. They wait for a minute, making "waiting signs" with their fingers, hands, arms and postures. After a while they call the group's name again and when they still don't show up they start to trash-talk them a little.

Finally the little kid has had enough and just about shouts to the other two jury members to forget about that group and call the next in line instead (a decision I was surprised hadn't come from the other two a lot earlier - considering they were two grownups and all). Finally they heed the child's wishes and calls for the next in line. In comes this very cheerful and friendly older guy. One of those persons who you feel you can befriend in seconds - a person you would love to have as your grandpa type of people. He was wearing dark jeans, a shirt resembling "Freddy Crueger's" and a stylish hat to match.

He asked the child to come forward from behind the jury table. The kid did as he asked and the man toyed around with him briefly. Then the man started to stare into the kids eyes, upholding an extreme level of eye contact with him whilst talking about the power of the gaze and related stuff. By then I figured that the old man was some kind of hypnotist or something along those lines. After yet another while he broke eye contact with the child and walked up to a big cage standing close by. Inside the cage was one of the tigers - again, a huge animal - it's head reaching the height of a standing adult man's chin. Its legs and were all muscle and about as thick as the trunk of a smaller tree. Truly an impressive and awe-inspiring animal indeed!

The man began to stare into the tiger's eyes now just as intense as with the boy. I witness this very close by and then the scene changes. The only thing I can remember is me having a bird's eye-view over the entrance driveway to some big estate. The front gate is very tall and massive and lined with a few large torches, reminding a bit of the entrance gate to Jurassic Park. It is again nighttime. There is a big commotion inside the estate's perimeters. Someone behind the entrance gate had been brutally attacked and killed by a tiger. I get some brief image from the actual attack, but it is like looking at a faded photograph - I can't really say anything about it. Then we have the final change of scenes.

Now I'm sitting inside a fast-food restaurant, together with a couple of other employees and the show owners, waiting for our orders to get ready. Again, nighttime. It is very calm and cozy inside. Our long table half surrounded by a high, padded, red comfortable bench seating and several chairs on the opposite side. There is a ceiling mounted TV inside and as I glance over to it, it is showing a breaking news broadcast. They are showing and talking about the gruesome murder that had taken place at the estate earlier that night. Of course they knew someone was responsible for letting the tiger lose in there.

After the broadcast ends, a woman - one of the part-owners of the circus show - openly, and completely relaxed, confesses to being the one who let the tiger out. She explains that it was her intention to have the tiger kill someone in order to generate more interest and awareness for the show - since it builds around those tigers. Leaning on the saying that "There is no such thing as bad publicity." I understand what she means and I must admit that I was a bit impressed by her plan - but somewhere within me, I did feel that this wasn't an entirely great way to go about it.

[Swesent]

I thought I could get away with it. Foolish thought!

Well, it's been dry, bad and completely lacking (dream-wise) over this past week! I don't know - feels as if I've lost the mojo or something. I begun recalling dreams more and more often. Many nights I could remember several dreams. I thought this was some kind of a habit thing - i.e. once the successful dream recalls started rolling in, the wheel would power itself. I stopped with the repeated "I will recall my dreams!"-mantra. I stopped with the affirmations and I even dropped my focused intent on remembering my dreams. I let it all go - I thought it would roll by itself.

I guess that was a wrong move to do! Maybe I set it all free too soon. Maybe the habit hadn't inhabited my subconscious yet (yeah, all phun intended). So, when I went to bed last night I repeated to myself again that I shall recall my dreams for the night. I hoped that it would be like riding a bike. It wasn't long ago since my subconscious was drilled to remember my nightly adventures, I hoped it would remember how to do it. How to do it properly even.

This morning I woke up with a short flash of our kitchen counters being cleaned. When or why I don't know. I also remember asking someone about his/her favorite type of candy - again for reasons unknown. That was all that I got. Maybe I deserved that for slacking off. I have come to the conclusion that the process of remembering dreams is probably some ways different from programming a muscle memory. Or maybe I just didn't give it enough time. Either way, I'm going back to my focused intention, my mantras and the other little tricks in order to get this going again.

It's rather obvious really - why should my subconscious provide me with a boon that I don't actively wish for?