My Dream Journal

I had a very interesting dream in the Summer of 2004, interesting enough that I went and started to read up on dreams. Not the stupid "dream dictionaries", which supposedly give you the translated meanings, but real dream stuff- from Freud and Jung to REM scientists and that sort of thing.

Everyone said the same basic thing- the interpretation is a matter of what clicks for the dreamer, all dreams matter, keep a pen and paper next to your bed and write immediately when you wake up, ever detail, no matter how insignificant seeming, etc.

And thus began my dream journal. I went back through my journals and did my best to remember every dream I had ever had, and I recorded 19 dreams, a page and a half when typed, for my entire first 23 years of life: mid-81 to mid-04. I would record 37 dreams in a single month in September 2004, but eventually I fell out of the habit and don't have a single recorded dream for a 13 month period in there.

Still though, now, 4 years later, I have a dream journal which includes 398 individual recorded dreams, and it is 53 typed, single spaced pages.

I was finishing another book on dreams last night and I was doing some of the exercises, looking back at themes.

I have had very many dreams set within movies or TV shows. As most know, I have had 22 Star Wars dreams, most involving Darth Vader, and if not, then the Emperor. But I also have had 7 dreams set within LOST, 5 within Heroes, 3 Lord of the Rings dreams, and many other things, like Batman Begins, Passion of the Christ, Last of the Mohicans, King Kong, Pan's Labyrinth, Jerry Maguire, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Titanic, Karate Kid, Grey's Anatomy, National Treasure, A river Runs Through It, Sicko, Indiana Jones, even one (really scary) from Scooby Doo when I was 5 or 6. In conversations, it seems to me that some people often connect the screen visuals into their dreams, and dream this way a lot, and other people never do.

I have had about 20 dreams about airplanes- usually involving a recurring dream of taking off through the fog of San Francisco and not being able to get up high because there are telephone poles and the plane has to stay low and circle very fast. I'll have variations on this- St. George, the Moon, Texas, wherever, but the airplane dream is recurring.

Fear seems to be the most common emotion, followed by desire and frustration.

Like almost everyone, oceans/ water/ lakes/ flooding is a very common element in my dreams.

I have had many dreams about throwing a football or baseball, about 25 dreams about football, 10 about baseball, and 8 about basketball, often involving being in a game alongside or as famous players: Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, LeBron James, Deion Sanders, Kevin Mitchell, Ryan Howard, Barry Bonds, Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, etc.

I often dream about famous political or religious leaders, I have had 4 dreams that Jesus was in, 2 with Joseph Smith, 1 with Muhammed, but also many with George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton (she is either an opposing quarterback or a lecturing parent usually), John McCain (usually a football coach), and others with Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, ulius Caesar, Muhammed Ali, Jesse Jackson, David Koresh, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Will Smith, Woody Allen, Al Gore.

Maybe a dozen dreams of brakes not working or other assorted car crash incidents, usually early in the night, and somewhere I was dreaming that day.

Since he has died I have had dreams involving my brother Ben 6 times.

I have had about 15 dreams involving arguments, disputes, or reconciliation with my other siblings.

I have had 5-10 dreams which were very long and detailed and seemed to be archtypical and apocalyptic. For example, the first of these was in 2000, when I was in Sacramento, and I dreamed of an epic war in the sky. There had been a great council in a circle in the clouds, and soldiers were there in various nations uniforms, the red with yellow of China, the blue and white of Israel, India, America, and Britain were there, sparkling uniforms of perfect detail, all standing in the clouds in a council circle around a table, and then they started to pull their guns out of their belt on the side and started to shoot each other, one led to another over and over, and it led to escalations of wars among nations.

There was a time when I had a theme of stars and space for a few months in my dreams, another when I had 5 dreams about fire in a month, another when spiders and snakes infesting the backyard or the house was recurring.

I have had 5 dreams wherein I could fly, which are becoming more common as I learn how to lucid dream (realize you are dreaming while you are dreaming and yet remain asleep and control the dream however you want. It is a learned skill but I am getting it, you can get books on the topic.)

The setting of most of my dreams, where setting is relevant, is San Francisco or New York. I also have a recurring theme of hiking or travelling on a camping trip on some sort of journey across the Western US; involving places like Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Washington State, Seattle, Kansas, Missouri, even Nauvoo. I have had a cluster of dreams about Park City, another cluster about LA, and a bunch involving the Central California Coast; Monterey, Point Lobos, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Santa Barbara, etc. A few set in Sacramento or Lake Tahoe. I have had detailed dreams about the San Francisco Bay: many of being in the water, memorable dreams about the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Mateo bridge, and the Dumbarton Bridge.

Almost all of my dreams are visual in nature, but I have had a few which were primarily audio- about songs like Across the Universe (hearing it while travelling in an Einstein-Rosenburg Bridge Contact style, or standing in a sunny rainbow getting drenched and looking at lions in Africa while Toto's Africa was playing, or a dream narrated by Al Gore about the Earth being flooded).

So I exhort you to start keeping a dream journal today.

'Prejudice is the only true robber." - Victor Hugo