Robert Moss's "Five Ways to Break a Dream Drought"

The "Five Ways to Break a Dream Drought" provided by Robert Moss in his wonderful book "Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom" have worked for me and this is saying a lot. 

 

While I am an active dreamer having had some wonderful dreams, these dreams (or rather the remembering of them) is rare.  And I do try very hard to remember them!

Working with the first method Moss gives, I was able to recall two very important dreams earlier this week and am very eager to apply the other principles offered throughout the book. 

The "Five Ways" follow  and they are very effective. I will add however that using another of Moss's suggestions (I believe it was a suggestion given in his audio book  "Dream Gates" which I currently listening to) helped as well. 

The suggestion is simple and it does work.  It is - allow yourself to wake up naturally.  Not always easy but something most of us can do, at least some of the time.

The "Five Ways to Break a Dream Drought" follow, paraphrased and in summary:

1. Set an intention for your dream by writing down your goal for the dreamtime before you go to sleep.  This goal can be experiential, as in "I want to dream travel to Hawaii," or involve a request.  Requests may be specific ("What will happen if I go back to school?") or general, such as "I want to be healed,"  "I want to be open to creativity" or simply "I want to remember what I have dreamed."  Moss advises that this intention have 'juice' which to me means, we need to want it.  He also provides some fascinating suggestions for dream rituals which I fully intend to try!
2. Be ready to receive the dream.  Setting the intention is important, of course, but having the means to record your dream is important to.  This means you must have what Moss calls the most important dream book you will ever read - your own dream journal - at hand as well as a pen (I find that a good pen with a good flow is essential here) or a recorder.  He also suggests that you record something when you wake up and that if you need to visit the bathroom that you take your journal and pen along with you.  Not maybe the nicest place to write but a technique that does work!
3. Be kind to the dream fragments you receive.  This means that even if you wake up (either in the morning or in the middle of the night) with a wisp of a dream memory or, as I have found, even a wisp of an emotion or feeling, stay as still as you can and began to write it down.  For me, Stephen LaBerge's technique of asking "what came before that?" works well.  I am finding that I often wake up thinking I remember nothing or very little and that as I write loads of information comes back.
4. If you don't immediately remember a dream don't give up!  Allow yourself to relax in bed or try assuming the posture you were in when you were asleep.  Don't (I have found) allow yourself to start thinking about your to-do list or running through the concerns of the day!  If you don't remember a dream, Moss advises, write something down anyway.  This should be whatever is in your awareness, including emotion and physical sensations.  This my trigger a memory at this time or later or simply help us subconsciously later on in our day.
5. Remember that you can have dream experience even when you are awake. This advice as I understand it is about synchronicistic events which are signs very like dream symbols that we may encounter later in our ordinary waking reality.   To my mind, these events provide very meaningful advice from spirit.  An early example for me was once when I was driving my boys somewhere years and years ago.  They were acting up and I wasn't happy and I was telling them so in no uncertain terms.  Pulling up behind a car at a light I saw a bumper sticker.  "Mean People Suck" it said.  I took the hint.

I am really so excited about "Active Dreaming" and "Dream Gates" and Moss's methods in general.