HOW'S YOUR DREAM RECALL?

It depends on how you rated the dream recall factors presented on the previous page. If you haven't rated them yet, you might want to do so before reading what follows.

Whether what we achieve in life is more the result of circumstances or of our own intentions, it is often more fruitful to look to our intentions. When striving for a goal, if we give too much attention to those potential sources of success and failure that lie beyond our control, we may lapse into an attitude of helplessness. With regard to trying to remember dreams, both circumstances beyond our control and our own applied intentions do affect our success. Although we can try to modify the influence of circumstances, it is probably more essential that we make sure that an intention to remember dreams is actually operative in our efforts.

If you have difficulty remembering your dreams, it may be helpful to examine whether you give sufficient allowance to the importance of your intentions. Perhaps you are placing too much emphasis on circumstances. To find out, compute your "Intentionality" and "Circumstantiality" scores from your ratings given on the previous page. To compute your Intentionality score, add up your ratings to factors 4,8,9,12,15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 26. To compute your Circumstantiality score, add up your ratings to factors 1,2,3,5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 24, and 25. Which score is higher, Intentionality or Circumstantiality? Which factors did you rate as having a vital influence (a rating of "4") on your dream recall? Are these factors Intentional or Circumstantial?

Results from the A.R.E. Dream Research Project (see Sundance, I (1), 27-45) indicated that a higher Intentionality score was statistically associated with greater expressed satisfaction with dream recall, with a greater sense of control over dream recall, and with more experience in recalling dreams. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, and your Intentionality score isn't at least 10 points higher than your Circumstantiality score, then you might try giving more attention to the necessity of concretizing your intentions into action. Review the Intentional factors from the checklist and try practicing each one as if you knew for a fact that each one had a vital influence on your dream recall.