DreamTiVo: Dream Memory and Dream Juice

A friend emailed me that she had a wild and crazy dream the other night. All she remembers, she said, was that it was a musical, not a familiar one, something brand new, all original songs and lyrics. She found it funny and exciting. Even across cyberspace, I could feel the thrill this dream held for her. She said; “As soon as I woke up I wished I could have DREAM-TIVOED it.” Bingo, I thought; of course you can! Good handle for dream re-entry, DREAMTIVO.

Knowing her love and talent for writing, I replied enthusiastically; “If it's my dream, I'm going to sit down and write as many songs, even just the lyrics, that I can, in honor of my dream. Even if I can't actually remember the dream narrative, the spirit of it is enough to get me going. I'll give the musical a title and craft it's story. Maybe I'll design the staging, etc., too.” A good way to jump start this adventure would be to relax first and re-enter the dream, look around and dream it forward.

Sometimes all that’s needed to re-enter a juicy dream is lingering energy, emotion or images. Often, in my daydreaming state, new details return of the actual dream. It doesn’t matter how much or little of the dream I remember; it’s charged with energy. It's like getting a free pass into my own personal amusement park. Why would my inner creative child ignore this invitation?

Dream “juice” as Robert speaks of this energy, can last for days, weeks and even years. There are dreams that still thrill me; dreams I could re-enter alone or with friends anytime. I can also peruse my journals to find dreams with juice I may have forgotten. I’ve often experienced how time effects a sea change in a dream’s energy. Here's an example I posted in March of 2011, Erotic Dreams.

The possibility I hold out to my friend and to any dreamer is that, no matter how small the memory trail your dream leaves behind, you can slip through that little bitty dream gate and be back in the world of that dream. Robert often says, "a dream is a place". I invite you to think of the dream as a place, a locale you travel to, not a figment of your imagination (or as I prefer to call it, a pigment of your infatuation), but another dimension, a parallel existence, that you can re-enter at will, using imagination to fuel the journey. As with any cross-cultural travel, the more you visit, the more familiar you are with the differences from your normal existence and the more comfortable you are going there.

It all begins with our innate ability to sleep, perchance, to dream.