Have Vivid DREAMS

You'll spend roughly 33% of your life asleep. It seems egregious then, to not take advantage of the mental activity that we all know takes place during your nightly slumber. I don't want to hop into the bottomless pit of the philosophical and scientific ideas of why we dream, or the science behind REM sleep, etc. - I just want to share with you my method of having deep dreams and remembering those dreams.

When I was in my teens I developed habits and methods that I found to be conducive to having vivid dreams. These realizations were both natural and serendipitous for me, and as I grow older I notice a specific rift between myself and those close to me: I always have intense dreams on my mind and they, for the most part, do not. I believe that we can all benefit from our dreams (and nightmares even). Here's my two cents on dreaming:

Remembering your dreams doesn't require much more than a little practice. The most important thing you can do to remember dream recall is journaling. Keep a pad and paper on your nightstand and any time you wake up from a dream write it down. You don't do this necessarily for the purpose of reading it later, but because writing it down leaves an impression in your mind and can make you more aware of your dreams while they're happening. The next and last tips regarding dream recall go hand-in-hand: get a good night's sleep and use an alarm clock. Go to bed early and use an alarm clock set to go off after whatever amount of time you feel adequate to awake rested. I love to set an alarm early and spend an hour or so in a dream-state - you probably know the feeling when you look at the clock and you know you still have an hour or so before you need to "get up"... that is prime time for lucid dreaming.

Speaking of lucid dreaming, I guess that's what I mean by "vivid dreams". The first key to lucid dreaming is something that you can practice any time during the day: Reality checks... by that I mean, whenever you get the chance ask yourself "am I dreaming? Is life a dream? This must be a dream.." and affirmations along those lines. It might seem hokey, but the point is that if you practice doing that on a daily basis, you will end up doing the same thing while you're dreaming, and as we all know dreams can be VERY bizarre. Realizing you are dreaming can result in complete and total control over your dreams.

I used to like to burn incense while I fell asleep - now that I have children, my wife and I use pillow/sheet spray that smells like lavender or eucalyptus and I really feel like that those scents aid dreaming. Using all the methods I've mentioned, almost every night I slip from a dream into a lucid dream or full-blown out-of-body experience every night or early morning, and you can learn a lot from those experiences.

a reply to: cosmikDebris

Thanks for your advice. I'll try to do what you suggested.

The last vivid dream I had, my mom tied me down to my bed with ropes because I was having a fit. It was scarypoo, and I get really spooked when it happens.