The Dream Journal: Stage 00.doc The first thing any dreamer needs at stage 00.doc is a dream journal.
Dreams come in four types: “looping nonsense,” 100% chatter, dreams with some action, and what we call “transparent dreams.” You can debate this classification, add or subtract entries if you want, but the bottom line is: four types, that’s it. Lucid dreams aren’t dreams in this sense. The first two types are quite useful… but only at stages 07-09.doc. For beginners, though, action-oriented dreams (type three) are the best.
Interestingly, type-one dreams tend to happen when your nervous system is overloaded — usually all night, covering all five or six REM cycles. Type-two dreams show up in the second through fourth REM cycles. The action-packed dreams we need happen in the 1st, 5th, and 6th REM cycles. So, the best dream to recall is usually the last one.
How do you remember dreams (and do it daily)? You’ll want to tune into the phase right before waking up. Wake up slowly, with the intent to remember the dream. This part is delicate and personal; each person finds their own way to make it work.
You wake up, remember, and jot it down in your journal. Hangovers, a partner in bed, life calling? Ignore all that. The first steps take real willpower. You have to record your dreams every day. There are three main hurdles to get over. The first: making yourself keep a journal. How do you do it? You have a dream. You remember it. Sketch a rough map of the setting in your journal (be as detailed as possible — it’ll come in handy later). Next to it, give a short description of the dream’s context. Then write down your associations with the dream, thoughts, anything else. Lastly, number the page.
Gather around 20-30 pages like this. Then you wait for the dreams to start merging. (In reality, we’re all dreaming in a small patch of space. So, sooner or later, individual dreams start overlapping.) If you’re impatient, start placing dream numbers on a blank sheet of paper. Just trust your intuition.
My tip: arrange your dream map as a mirror image — south at the top, north at the bottom, west on the right, and east on the left. The dream world and the waking world are mirror projections of each other. The focal point? You.
Key Markers: The map is limited by so-called boundary areas. The southern edge is almost always tied to childhood — a river, sea, mountains, an ocean, a chain of hills. This boundary doesn’t move as dreams progress. The northern boundary moves gradually. In the east, most people have a “blind spot.” You’ll find a few eastern elements, but there’s a lot of uncharted territory there. The western sector is stable, typically ending with a river, beyond which you see mountains.
I’ve been to many countries, and I’ve lived in almost every part of Russia except the Far North and Far East, yet on my dream map, there’s only one city. It has bits and pieces from many different cities — basically, it’s the template of “city.” On the southern half of the map, there’s a massive structure that many people perceive either as a multi-story station/terminal/airport or as a mountain/Olympus/stairway to heaven, etc. This structure appears on many maps, sometimes shifting southward, sometimes toward the center. At the map’s center is your childhood home. In the northeast sector, you’ll find zones of disasters, areas with different spiritual schools, nightmare zones, and so on. In this area, you’ll encounter other dreamers and a few “scouts.”
In the northwest corner, there’s a strange phenomenon you’ll only fully see at the moment of death. It’s like a “hole” where the western and northern rivers drain. We’ll get into that later. The map has some very stable and unchanging areas, but there are also zones of transformation, where everything shifts. Transformation zones are entryways to the lower worlds. Roughly in the middle of the map, and slightly to the west, is a giant pit, which is the template of “industry.” When you visit this place, you’ll understand. “Paradise” is in the southeast corner. It’s a beautiful place, but I was struck by how small and… well… rural it is.
The dream world is full of traps for your attention — mazes, a prison (giant computer), your childhood home, and so on. These places hold parts of ourselves, fragments of our consciousness locked in individual storage units. This topic of traps deserves its own discussion, especially after you visit the “sanctuary” and retrieve a good portion of your “luminosity.”
The map has railways. Think of them as bonuses. Each railway represents a cool way of shifting the assemblage point. I could go on about this forever. Start your map, and I’ll help you from there.