Lately I'm striving for a dreamlike reality. That probably makes you think I'm trying to avoid reality by spacing out into a daydream. But just the opposite is true.
About twenty-five years ago I became very interested in dreaming. My diary morphed into a dream journal as I recorded dream after dream, first thing in the morning. I would even read about dreaming1. And when I discovered lucid dreaming, I started to have lucid dreams.
If you've never had a lucid dream, let me describe it for you this way. An ordinary dream might be like watching a movie on a small laptop computer with the sound turned very low. Your body is somewhat numb from too much inactivity. A lucid dream is like experiencing a movie in a theater with surround sound that you can feel, and seats that move so that it actually feels like you're flying. You become aware that you're dreaming, and then every aspect of the dream becomes extremely vivid. In some cases, you can actually change the dream, control it.
My recent love affair with the books of Lynn Andrews2 brought back fond memories of my old lucid dream experiences3. I'm longing to have those lucid dreams again. But then it occurred to me that it would be nearly as nice to experience lucid reality. Normally I spend my entire day just functioning, without paying any attention to my activity. So now I'm trying to pretend that I'm in a dream.
Just before you become lucid in a dream, you question reality. Sometimes an incongruous situation might make you think, "Wait, why am I playing basketball with a pineapple that has an animated talking clown face carved into its side? Is this a dream?" And then it becomes apparent.
Right now I appear to be typing a blog post about lucid dreaming and lucid living. That seems reasonable, I guess. I have my headphones on -- I'm listening to a Pandora station ("I Caught Myself," by Paramore). But I'm inspecting my room when I pause to gather my thoughts, acutely aware of my surroundings, looking for something that doesn't belong. Would it be possible to pierce the facade of this reality and reveal the true existence behind it?
I know now that certain foods promote brain fog -- mostly wheat. But even large, hi-carb gluten-free meals can sedate me. Would fasting help me to become lucid in this reality?
The crisp autumn conditions we have now in Northeast USA are perfect for this exercise -- each colorful leaf vies for attention against a perfect blue sky. An exercise in mindfulness. Or is Autumn just the sort of incongruity one needs to prove that we're in a dream?
1 Especially "Creative Dreaming," by Patricia Garfield and "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming," by Stephen Laberge.
2 Namely The Woman of Wyrrd: The Arousal of the Inner Fire and Shakkai: Women of the Sacred Garden
3 I do wonder why Lynn is not able to become lucid in her dreams of past and future lives. Maybe she doesn't dream about her situations; maybe she inhabits her past or future selves.
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2 comments:
Square Peg, I have the enviable (?) trait of not being able to recollect anything that I dream of, except when it is something disturbing that wakes me up and even what disturbed me is not a dream or a nightmare that I can recollect!
I worked with a Korean man who preferred not remembering dreams. I think they're neat!
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