E1B's dream journal

[Korpo]

Indeed! But that brings up a question I haven't thought of before. In the dream we never did the skit, I never put the Super Glue on my hands, I only THOUGHT of these things. So, is thinking about something still dreaming. It seems after the encounter with the committee teachers I have no more images, only thinking about it.

You might have lost connection with the experience there. It got replaced by trying to shape the experience according to what you wanted. The imagery was your translation of the energy you were in touch with. Losing touch with the energy you lost the imagery.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

I totally agree, Oliver. I lost the dream but I kept on mulling it over, fashioning it to a desirable conclusion, even if it was pretty silly.

But I wonder when great thinkers wake in the midnight hours with a solution to a vexing problem - Edison, Einstein etc - if that is not the sort of dreaming they were doing? It's just I've never read anything about this 'other' type of dream - a thinking dream not within a dreamscape of images and personages.

Have you?

[Korpo]

Well, I'm not sure when the great ideas happen, but why shouldn't there be images?
I think it was the structure of the gold molecule that was discovered within a visual dream.

I often woke from the thinking state while still asleep. Most often it seems to help remember the experience I just had, but the state itself is decidedly less than the experience that just happened, and also I noticed that I could not return to the experience from that state.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

[My dream life has been so barren of late it's as if I've forgotten who (whoops, 'how') to ride a bicycle so I've brought something out of my journal just to say I'm still hear (whoops, 'here').]

~~~~~

Finally a dream with some recall. I woke as has been my irritating habit the past two weeks about 2 a.m.. I had noted the time I went to bed (8:30 p.m.) and calculated that 5 1/2 hours is not a good night's sleep, especially if you're trying to do dream work, but still the feeling there's no more sleep to be had couldn’t be shaken and I tossed and turned until three.

Finally I got up, poured a glass of orange juice and went to the couch to finish a book I’ve mentioned here, LaBerge’s Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. The book had ceased to be fun or informative but I pushed on, estimating the pages remaining too often. It was a bit of a struggle, the thought occurring to me that the author was merely padding the book for length, and I fought the temptation to abandon it and start something new. Still, I persisted to the last page and put it down.

At four o’clock I decided I really should give sleeping another try and went back to bed.

I want to comment on the regularity of the sleep cycles I’ve been experiencing because there seems to be something perhaps physiological about the intervals of sleep and no-sleep. An unconscious timer at work. When I report that I’ve been waking up at 2 a.m. actually checking the clock it may have been 1:55 or 1:50, maybe 2:05, but it was never, say, 1:57 - always on a factor of 5 minutes and I doubt the interval of sleep, that is, the time I went to bed had much of any bearing on that ~ 2 a.m. wake-up signal. If I went to bed at nine or ten I’d wake up at 2 a.m. all the same, as was the case night before last when I watched a movie until some later hour.

But even more curious was the precision of the one-hour intervals after the 2 o’clock waking. I didn’t keep a record for nights other than last night so the only hard data I can present bears on last night’s experience, but I noticed this regularity on previous nights and it was this recognition that prompted me to take careful notice of the clock this morning.

To be precise, I woke at 1:55 a.m.; I tossed and turned until precisely 2:55 a.m.; I read and then decided to go back to bed at precisely 3:55 a.m.. There was no purposeful intent on my part to these one-hour intervals, I simply looked at the clock as I changed from one regimen to the next. I can’t really speculate on a known or unknown mechanism behind these timely precisions, but I’ll hope to keep better records in the future for further clues.

So, I went back to bed at ~ 4 a.m. and to my pleasant surprise I started slipping into dreamland, which for me is a feeling like sinking into a warm and deep feather bed. Then I was presented with a beautiful hypnagogic of a small tin tree in colorful and exquisite detail - its hundreds of little leaves individually painted in intense color, as if it was constructed of light. Unlike many hypnagogic images I had time to study it, hold it in my concentration. I knew what was going on, that soon I would slip away into a dream.

As pleased as I was to be dreaming again after so many uncomfortable nights... But first a brief interjection if you don’t mind: LaBerge encourages dream enthusiasts to plan on longer sleeping hours and at least implies that R.E.M. (dream) sleep may not be as restorative as slow-wave (delta) sleep. The argument being that one is as busy in the dream condition as the waking condition (and indeed, fMRI’s show that the brain is as lit-up with activity during dreaming as in the waking state) so it might follow that dreaming is not restorative to the sleeper - might actually amount to work. Whether I’m at odds with the author or not I can state simply that being deprived, as I have, of the morning hours of R.E.M. sleep for the past two weeks I have been perpetually tired and last night, with its dreams, is the first good night’s sleep I’ve enjoyed in quite a while.

Again, as pleased as I was to be dreaming again after so many uncomfortable nights, lucidity or even prolonged recall escaped me and I have little to report - spotty recollection - of the dream that ensued. I can say that it lasted quite a while and centered around me moving into a ‘new’ house, a truck full of furniture and an army of helpers (extended family) intent on getting me situated in my new place. This, of course, is a direct reflection of my RL move to a new home just two weeks ago.

It took me a good dream-while to get a grasp of the situation, and I recall clearly informing a character, and pointedly so, that I had not arranged for a mover yet. My intention was this was not a day for work, but for feast and family; that this great assembly of aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, in-laws, old, young, children and infants was for the purpose of helping me celebrate my new digs. Then, on quizzing another character, I learn that someone else has ordered a moving van - that this gathering is for the purpose of getting my stuff into the new house.

I am incensed by this revelation. I walk down a flight of stairs and discover boards had been nailed across the access in order to prevent their use as if they are too old and perhaps unsafe. I kick the boards away and stop someone carrying something. I ask him if they have been having meetings to decide things without my presence? I am told they have not, but I don’t believe it.

I return to the floor at the top of the stairs. The house is filling up with strange and unfamiliar furniture and intriguing little objects and I decide the previous owners have left this stuff behind - much to my glad dismay. I come on a lacquered ebony table thing that reminds me of a Yamaha concert grand piano, but it’s just a weird table of sorts.

I return to the stairs and discover they have, again, been boarded up! and again I kick the boards away and grab a person who’s face I can recall and ultimately ends the dream. He is a smallish man with a buzz cut and wearing glasses - looks very much like he could be family. I put to him the urgent question, ‘have they been having meetings without me’? He insists they haven’t but I am getting increasingly upset.

I retreat with an attractive female into a closet where we sit on the empty shelf together and talk. She is a soothing presence. After a while we attempt to alter our seating arrangement but it isn’t possible in such a small space and our bodies make contact with a feeling of shared intimacy. I see that there is nothing but thin air for her to rest on, so, giving up on that we decide to join the communal festivities.

It’s a catered affair.

~~Next day~~

[I wasn't able to finish this dream yesterday. I hadn't thought when I started that I had much to report; that not much had been remembered. But we see, apparently, the act of writing it drew forth much more than I had anticipated. On waking this morning I quickly dismissed any memories of the night’s dreams, trying to keep the current and unfinished one in my mind.

This was not difficult to do because almost always on waking up I feel an irresistible ennui about the dream(s) I only just woke up from. I’ve wondered if there isn’t an evolutionarily selected mechanism for forgetting dreams - like a rush of some neurotransmitter that strikes the hippocampus, wiping it clean? A reset button. We might imagine a survival advantage of some sort to that.]

It’s a catered affair, that is, no notice of food preparation but many people eating in makeshift places. My female acquaintance and I approach a table to get some food and I look at her hands. I pick up her left hand by the wrist and seeing that there are rings on every finger I remark, “Oh, well.”

I think I might be starting to wake up at this point, because I can't connect clearly just what happened next. I'm throwing something into the little sheds, over a counter, through a window where families are eating. It is about the size and shape of my zippered binder where I keep my important papers dealing with metaphysical research. I loft it into one of these little cafes and look in to see that I have nearly struck a young child with it. I think, "whoa, that is not cool". Neither did the parents think so.

But I persist twice more, I think, with this possibly harmful action and finally think to myself, "I'm not going to have any friends left if I keep this up." It is getting crowded, probably because of my agitation, and I see the man who had previously denied any covert meetings had occurred concerning my move and my stuff, and I ask him again the same question. I immediately sense that he is going to deny it again and infuriated, I lunge at him with a raised fist. In an effort to get away he falls back between some tables and chairs.

I see the fear and surprise in his face and wake up.

[Korpo]

Hello, E1B.

Finally a dream with some recall. I woke as has been my irritating habit the past two weeks about 2 a.m.. I had noted the time I went to bed (8:30 p.m.) and calculated that 5 1/2 hours is not a good night's sleep, especially if you're trying to do dream work, but still the feeling there's no more sleep to be had couldn’t be shaken and I tossed and turned until three.

When you want to recall more experiences this can affect your sleep pattern. It happened to me. I will go to sleep normally, wake between 2 - 4am. If I recall something I actually get up and record it at my computer. The best way to avoid tossing and turning seems to get up, take a leak, and possibly quench any thirst, and then go back to bed. This helps releasing whatever was processed in the earlier sleep phase from the system.

Sometimes my time for a full night's rest goes down to 5 hours, and sometimes it's up to 9 hours. The sleep need has its own rhythm and there's no rule how much sleep you really need. If you're fully rested and force yourself to sleep you will most likely toss and turn and wake up feeling worse.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

Hi, Oliver

Yes, I agree. Just get on up, the tossing and turning is no benefit. But, as you noticed, having then abandoned the effort I did much what you suggest and was then graced with a decent dream.

Would you care to comment any further? Always appreciated.

[Korpo]

Hello, E1B.

I often am rewarded with a meaningful dream then, too.

In the dream you resist a change for the new. In physical reality the associated shift has found a representation - you have a new apartment. In the larger reality you however struggle with the shift that might be the root cause for it to manifest.

During the dream you stick to the notion of control. You try to control when, you want to be informed, you even remove a barrier to go down. The celebration might have been part of the departure for something new in nonphysical reality, a new self to get used to, but you resist both the celebration that your soul family wants to stage by rushing off and the actual move representing the shift in consciousness.

All people you question assure you you are informed. To them you are one being, but you seemed to lack conscious access to the aspect where the decisions were made for this shift. You could interpret this as lack of lucidity.

Cheers,
Oliver

[eyeoneblack]

YES!!! *pumping fist* That's what I was looking for, something I hadn't thought of - losing lucidity, which has been my woeful complaint of late.

Thanks, Sir Oliver

[Beekeeper]

EB1, it might be worth your while to try a complete magnesium supplement. One combined with B6 can help with relaxation and dream recall.

A thing to look out for is if the toss-and-turn seems to coincide with a morning that arrives too soon. If that happens, you're just as likely to be dreaming that you're in your bed unable to sleep.

[eyeoneblack]

Thanks Beek! The magnesium supplement will be given a try - got nothin' to lose.

A thing to look out for is if the toss-and-turn seems to coincide with a morning that arrives too soon. If that happens, you're just as likely to be dreaming that you're in your bed unable to sleep.

I have wondered that because I often feel that I have slept even tho I was 'tossing and turning', i.e. it was just a restless sleep. So that's why, maybe too often, I don't just get up, give it up, read and try again.