One of the earliest habits to adopt on the occult path, keeping a dream diary, is just as substantial as your daily practices. Crucial for both Psychoanalysis and the Great Work, this provides invaluable insights to work with. While that deserves a separate post, this one focuses on something different. That’s explaining a “very basic” yet extremelly efficient method for remembering and taping dreams. Combining several things, the same never failed me in doing the latter. Due to this, I use it daily… And perhaps you’ll begin too after trying it out. For maximum utility, the post has two sections. The first covers some lifestyle adjustments to make; the second — the actual method to employ. So, having that said, let’s continue with the first.

The first thing needed for remembering dreams is having them as vividly as possible, every single night. Obviously, this requires optimizing your sleep, ensuring you get enough good quality. Starting with developing a proper sleep schedule, the latter proceeds with tracking your sleep, enabling airplane mode on your phone, exercising daily, and combining a nutritious diet with extended fasting. Whereas more about the last couple can be found in the content sharing 4 and 5 year-experiences with fasting, here I’ll only say this…

IMHO… Combining daily resistance training and eating OMAD around bed-time while alternating between a zero-carb (meats and eggs) and higher-in-safe-starches paleo diets is second to none for getting crazy vivid dreams. The same seldom skipped on giving me those, even before I began messing with the Western Mysteries. Plus, it allows achieving something critical most people have lifetime struggles with. That being falling asleep and waking up at desired hours without using sleep meds.

The second adjustment is optimizing your bedroom and whole sleeping environment. For this, I strongly suggest investing in external rollers, enabling maximum darkness. Also indispensable for extended meditations and stuff of that nature, those eliminate outdoor lights entering the room. If that’s not an option, then use a sleep mask. Reasonably priced decent ones can be found on Amazon.

You also want to avoid blue light at least three hours before going to bed. That means using blue light blocking glasses and having F.lux on all of your screens. As widely known, exposing yourself to blue light before bed messes up your circadian rhythm. Hence it prevents you from falling asleep. Lower temperatures promote deep and restorative sleep. This makes cracking a window open a pretty good idea.

Here also comes taking care of any possibly-occurring noises or sounds. Being suddenly awakened not only ruins sleep quality but also tends to erase dreams. Meaning that ear taps are nothing short of essential. Nevertheless, the external shutters’ efficacy in outdoor noise reduction.

Applying all of those exponentially improves sleep hygiene and quality. Due to this, I suggest actually doing it. No… Not only for your spiritual development but for your overall health. Just in case you haven’t done that already, the same period would also be perfect for building your daily routine of practicing rituals and meditations. Besides increasing their vividness, those make the dreams more structured and memorable. The more you advance with your studies and practices, the more natural memorizing becomes. Also, the clearer visions, perspectives, and messages your dreams start containing.

Needless to say, this is because the workings expand consciousness by loosening the barriers between conscious and subconscious minds. Eventually, you may even begin recognising connections between certain rite combinations or lack thereof and your ability to fall asleep and dream. This reminds me of something quite peculiar. Namely, that you may also realize that specific spiritual literature/authors affect your “dreams” much more profoundly than others, or vice versa. And this brings us to the actual ways of taping your dreams.

There are two ways commonly recommended for capturing dreams. The first and (more old school) is keeping a notebook (which is your dream journal) and a pen right next to your bed. You grab those after opening your eyes and write down as much as possible. To prevent forgetting the dream, you can also ball a small piece of paper on the ground and tell yourself: “I will remember my dream” right before dozing off — as found in Modern Magick.

The second option I learned from Dr. David Shoemaker’s Living Thelema Podcast. It boils down to utilizing a tape recorder or dictaphone, basically recording yourself. This method has two huge advantages. The first is the ease of use, the second — capturing your voice’s actual emotions.

To build your diary, both of those have to be transferred to word processor files and archived as an easily readable source — one you can review and interpret in the years to come. Then, you’ll search for repeating patterns of events, places, feelings, people, etc. So, let me tell you about the method I use.

Although supposedly уоu can also film yourself, I didn’t find any of this sustainable. When waking up, all I think about is hydrating, fixing my bed, and then checking my sleep quality to know how much I can push my body on the given day. It’s a routine that serves me an excellent job. Just like doing the previously mentioned and waking up at around 3 am. For this, I came up with something slightly different. Its first part is using my phone’s notes application to write several “keywords” for each dream. Yes, you’ll also start having multiple if applying everything mentioned.

Based on the dreams’ number, I group the words as 1, 2, 3, etc. I also make sure to do this (if it happens) to only wake up for going to the toilet or hydrating. When I do, it is right after opening my eyes. This means immediately pulling the phone out of the sheet pocket… And then… entering the words.

Once done with that, I either go back to bed and sleep more and then perhaps repeat or copy and paste the grouped keywords into an email I send to myself. Then (without urgency) I grab plenty of water, make up my bed, often do a giant set of v-crunches, and then open my laptop. After transferring the grouped keywords into a word processor, I begin elaborating on each, being maximally detailed. So, let me explain…

Assume you dreamt of hanging out with a homie, grabbing some americanos while suddenly being called by your mom. In that case, your dreams’ keywords would be your homie’s and the coffee place’s names, the area you were in, your mom, and phone call.

Essentially, those words/names must be directly related to or associated with two things. (1) The dream’s most crucial aspects and participants. And (2) other stuff making a substantial impression upon your mind. Whether or not a particular feeling/emotion towards an object, place, person, or event in your dream makes sense right off the bat doesn’t matter…

The important is doing your best in expressing it, considering it as a priceless piece of information — one to help you on your journey of “getting to know thyself better.” Actually, you should do an entry even if not remembering anything. In that case, merely note that. And… don’t beat yourself up!

Eventually, you may find that this approach and the actual writing can stimulate your mind to bring details that aren’t necessarily as clear or as vivid right upon waking. Or at least, they certainly can, as long as also having all else implemented.

Besides the keywords and the dream, you also fill in the day and the entry’s hour. After completing all your entries for a month, you save the text file with an appropriate name. The same you put into a folder with all others of that year.

Despite that, it definitely isn’t the only way of dream journaling, this approach is quite suitable for people with well-established morning routines. And I firmly believe it will serve you well. So, give it a try and…

Thank You For Your Time!