little trouble incubating dreams.
      All the dreamers found that on nights when they were
overly tired, ill, intoxicated or for some other reason
unable to concentrate on the incubation phrase, they
usually awoke with no dream recall and occasionally
with an apparently unrelated dream. However, it
became clear that strict adherence to the incubation
procedure I have described is not necessary for some
dreamers. Some experienced incubators found that they
could reduce the procedure to a couple of minutes of
concentration on an incubation phrase before going to
sleep. When this quick method failed, they would
conclude that they had overestimated their sense of
clarity regarding the incubation issue. They would then
begin again, using the journal work, and they usually
succeeded. However, these incubators did feel that their
experience was richest when they took the time to go
through each step.
      Besides good recall, a courageous desire for self-
knowledge, and the willingness to keep an adequate
dream journal, there were two basic factors that favored
successful incubation. One was the ability to summarize
the incubation issue into an incubation phrase that
clearly expressed the heart's question in the matter. The
second factor was the ability to focus intently on the
incubation phrase. Illness, intoxication and extreme
fatigue hamper both phrase-focusing and dream recall. A
thorough "incubation discussion" in the dream journal is
a dependable way to arrive at a good incubation phrase,
as it unclutters the mind sufficiently to allow it to focus
clearly on the phrase. The omission of the incubation
discussion in written form foiled the incubation attempts
of all but a few experienced incubators. Once the basic
requirements of recall and recording had been met, the
ability to hold the incubation phrase in mind made the
crucial difference between a hit or a miss.
      Now let's get on to the specifics of instruction for this
experiment in incubation I'm proposing to you. You are,
of course, free to try it or not, or even simply to use it as
a helpful guide in developing your own approach to

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