Sometimes, when something interesting happens, I’ll jot some little some little two word phrase or other on a scrap of paper, so I can remember to write about it in the blog. This morning when I woke up, my very first thought was that I had written one of those little reminders. Trying to remember where, I realized I had written it down in one of my dreams.
Now, my general experience with dreams has been that the experience of doing things while dreaming is illusory. I didn’t actually read that book, or give that speech, or write that symphony. So, you can well imagine, I was not very hopeful that I’d remember this little note.
But I decided to try anyway. And as I lay there, it came back to me. I had been experiencing a particularly funny dream, and in the middle of the dream I had thought to write down the two words “DREAM SCENE”, precisely so I could later write about the dream in this blog. And I knew, with complete certainty, that those were the words, because that phrase was in fact one of the most vivid parts of the dream.
Which leads to the following question: Did I remember those two words simply because they were short and iconic, or did they constitute a truly operational note to self? And if the latter, is it possible — with proper training, presumably — for us to jot other things down in our dreams, in a way that would let us remember them when we awaken?
It is interesting you wrote “dream scene”, which suggests that *in your dream* you knew that the funny stuff that you wanted to write about was a dream and not real. Whoa!
Form my own experiences I’d say yes, and yes.