Welcome!

Welcome, glad to have you here!

So how do I begin the first post on a blog that is essentially picking up on an almost lifelong exploration of dreams and their worlds, imagery, and meaning? I suspect there’s no right or wrong way, only an authentic way, so let me pick up anywhere and run with it.

My dreams have always been intense, mesmerising, perplexing, sometimes terrifying, mostly fascinating, but always a strong and central presence in my life, back to my earliest memories. I’d always recounted and re-imagined dream experiences as a child, only to realise in my teens that my increasing repertoire should be recorded in a journal – for me, it was primarily to capture the beauty, mystery, and magic of these worlds I inhabited in my dozing hours; a notepad and descriptive writing seemed the best tools, short of having a dream camera to take with me.

After the first year of journaling, I noticed recurring patterns and themes, and made up my own system for tracking them – what a joy it was to later discover the world of dreamwork with the advent of Altavista’s search engine! (pre-Google, for any latecomers). The subsequent discovery of an online dream study community, people who value and contemplate dreams as much as I do, was a… well, a dream come true (sorry, couldn’t resist! I had to make sure you were still awake) – but anyway, that’s a story for another time. In case I’ve piqued anyone’s interest though, I recommend sailing over to the International Association for the Study of Dreams to open up a whole new world.

So, in the 25 years since then, I’ve remained committed to the practice of dream journaling, as much as life permits. It’s a process that draws me closer to what sometimes feels like the love of my life, in a mystical sense, and which has proven rewarding, endlessly fascinating, beneficial, inspiring, and challenging in all the best ways. More so, I realise that it’s one thing to journal and later reflect on the overall course of one’s inner life with all its conscious thoughts and tangible memories, but entirely another to collect and later review what’s presented by the inner world of one’s subconscious and beyond, this cohesive body of work presented to us in unexpected and often puzzle-like ways. And lastly, I’ve come to discover the effect that time can have on a growing collection of journals – maybe not time itself, but the lenses it sometimes affords us: over the years, one notices threads running through many dreams, symbols, and waking life events. I know I’ll forever be exploring, learning, and piecing together knowledge and ideas, testing the waters of this great Unknown experientially and otherwise. The purpose of this blog is to document this process, and to hopefully invite collaborative exploration, questions, and discussion. In fact, this blog was inspired following my presentation at the IASD’s annual online conference, Psiberdreaming. I’ll soon add it to a page listing resources and helpful references.

 

So what can you (and I) expect from this blog?

More than anything, earnest exploration. I’ll be reviewing, examining, and sharing from my own journals, which are central to this exploration (hey, they’re essentially field notes, right?). I will continue my ongoing exploration of the relationship between design elements (colour, geometry, etc) and dreams, following on from my Psiberdreaming presentation, as well. In my next post, I’ll share that presentation, and possibly jump right into exploring some symbols.

 

Until next time, dream well!