You can choose how your dreams unfold. At the same time, your subconscious mind has a part to play. When you craft your dreams, you plant the seeds. Your attention and focus are like sunlight. Your imagination and creativity are like water. Your subconscious mind is the soil. You can be sure that your seeds will sprout, but the exact outcome may surprise you.
What sort of outcomes can you expect when using a Reverse Dream Journal? Dr. Lindeman, creator of the Reverse Dream Journal, shares a few personal accounts below. Would you like to share your experiences? Please visit [link coming soon] to tell your story.
Personal Accounts from the Journal Creator
Carrying a Magic Wand
After dwelling for a few days on the core theme, Magic Wand, I continued to have ordinary dreams involving stressors in my life, but something unusual happened. In the midst of these dreams, it would suddenly occur to me that I could pull out my magic wand and transform anything around me. This realization occurred naturally, without effort or premeditation.
For example, I dreamed that someone drove me to a dilapidated structure and left me there. I entered what appeared to be an old apartment. The paint was turning brown and peeling off the walls. The carpets were torn up. Chunks of each wall were entirely missing. Out of the blue, without realizing that I was dreaming (i.e., becoming lucid), I remembered my magic wand. I pulled it out, waved it around the room, and caused the apartment to transform. The walls became clean and whole. The carpets were like new. Everything was good. My dream soon ended. Whatever stressors brought them to life no longer had power.
This sudden appearance of a crafted dream in the midst of an ordinary dream happened many more times. It was as if I’d developed a new dream skill or added to my dreaming toolkit.
Another unexpected benefit of developing my dreams around the Magic Wand theme was a shift in how I experienced stressful elements of my ordinary dreams. When difficult thoughts or memories intrude into dreams like rude house guests, you can show them to the door. When you hold your magic wand, however, you may find these rude guests are far less threatening. You can begin to feel these unpleasant elements as simply the movement of your own mind. In those moments, instead of making them disappear, you might choose to unmask them, revealing who they really are—a hidden part of you in need of loving attention.
Childhood Memories
During treatment for cancer, feeling somewhat isolated, I chose the dream theme of friendship and began crafting dreams in which new friends might appear. I imagined what it would be like to experience that feeling of true friendship, the lighthearted joy of getting to know someone with whom you feel a sense of kinship and belonging. Although I was an adult in my crafted dream, my actual dreams returned me to childhood. I was twelve years old again, and I’d invited new friends to my house for a sleepover. I sat with two girls sharing life stories. I don’t recall what stories we shared, but our smiles were vivid, and that feeling of friendship was so strongly stirred, it stayed with me for many days.
Light in the Darkness
After dedicating an hour or so to the theme of light in the darkness, I dreamed that I was standing beside a large body of water. In dreams throughout my life, large bodies of water have often symbolized emotions, especially fear and grief. The theme of light in the darkness is designed to support those dreams in which we face and process sadness, grief, anxiety, or fear. So, for me then, the appearance of water in my dreams after contemplating this theme made complete sense.
In my dream, the water began to shapeshift in response to some conscious force. High waves formed like rolling hills and held their shape. If you’ve seen a thick substance (like water and cornstarch) form shapes in response to sound waves, it was something like that. The result was a display of exquisite control over the water while still honoring its bulk and power.
An announcement was made. The “government” was causing the water to change shape, and this was an ability it had always had. For me, the “government” represents that part of my mind with choice and will over other parts of myself, what psychologists call “executive functioning.” In other words, I was witnessing an ability I had to modify the emotions in my body which might otherwise engulf me. This ability was always there, so the dream implied, but it had been hidden.
After this display, an alien spacecraft landed on Earth. (I personally enjoy themes involving other planets and space travel.) This craft was itself a source of brilliant light. I was as astonished as you can imagine I would be had it happened in waking life. A creature exited the craft, and its body was made of multicolored light. The light of the ship and its occupant seemed to embody love and kindness. As I approached, feelings of love were overpowering.
I and many others forming a large crowd around the ship were so stunned by the beauty of this creature that it dimmed itself and transformed into a material human. As it did so, it showed me an image of the United States and Russia holding hands in peace, two major governments on planet Earth, and communicated the idea that it showed up as a result of that peace.
What did this mean? With the idea of “governments” representing aspects of my own will, including my choices in life, I interpreted this to mean peace within myself, between different aspects of my own mind and heart. That meant then that my own inner peacemaking was an invitation for this transforming light (of love and kindness) to appear.
This was not exactly the dream I had imagined, but it fulfilled my crafted dream in spirit and left me with a clarity of hope and personal insight which had been somewhat vague and unconscious before that dream.
A Humorous Mood
After crafting a dream around the theme of laughter, I prepared to rehearse the dream just before drifting to sleep. I was so sleepy that all I managed to do was recreate that feeling of finding something funny. I did this by recalling what it felt like to be in a humorous mood. I quickly fell asleep. Many hours later, I dreamed that I was listening to a song with a good friend. We tried to sing along, but we got the lyrics wrong. I don’t even remember what words we sang, but I woke myself up laughing.