Beekeeper's Adventures in Consciousness

**Beekeeper** · 30th July 2011, 10:03 PM

It looks like there was a point to the recent hospital dreams because that's where I ended up yesterday. I started the day feeling fine, right up to taking Bella for a walk and watching a whale. It was then that my vision started going funny.

Then we were taking H to his game (he'd returned sick from the skills camp but felt he could play some of it - they rely on him a lot). We dropped him off for warm-ups and went to the produce markets. My eyes wouldn't focus right and the auric disturbances had increased. I asked G if we could see if the doctors were open so I could get some Zomig.

They were open but they said I'd have to wait, so G sent F (our eldest) to sit with me for a while and went off to watch H. I sat with my eyes closed listening for my name.

Long story shorter, G replaced F and began what turned out to be something of a vigil. I was given a bag and was copiously sick. Then I asked for the bathroom, where I was sick some more. The doctor was saying things about my heart and dehydration and neurology and I was too out of it to care. My head hurts so much when I'm having a migraine that I'm always privately sure I'm having a stroke. It didn't help that the first time I had one, 14 years ago while I was expecting my youngest, this was the doctor's diagnosis! The paramedic was partiicularly kind, being a migraine sufferer herself and kept crooning soft words of comfort.

The docor called an abulance that took two hours to come. G was upset and kept saying he'd take me but the doctor wouldn't let him. They took me to the hospital, the ambulance men were really kind and I was sick again. There were a lot of questions from hospital staff whom I answered often without opening my eyes. There was torch light in my eyes, warm blankets (I was so cold), hospital noise, needles and an IV. I was there until 9pm. Poor G spent the entire time by my bed. At one stage our friend Phil who works there as a radiographer had a coffe with him.

My doctor was an Asian lady, Chinese I think. Towards the end, she sat beside me and spoke gently, ascertaining certain things. She told me about a woman she'd recently seen who'd had symptoms like mine who'd had an enormous brain tumour. She explained they'd been weighing up a lumbar puncture and a cat scan for me and said if my symptoms continued I'd have to return for these . She wanted to know if I'd had any falls (I'd tripped that morning walking down a ramp with washing because our back deck isn't built yet but hadn't hit my head) or memory lapses. G told her that in the last two weeks I'd kept forgetting things mid-sentence but I explained this often resulted from me from having too much too to do.

Later she spoke to me again and her energy felt like that of the Chinese vendor from the previous night's dream. G was somewhere else, apparently, because I'd asked him if he'd heard the conversation. She began telling me how she admired teachers and that she wouldn't be where she was without a particular teacher. I told her that I admired doctors and also that I liked being a teacher, that I'd met some exceptional people that way. Then she looked a few moments in my eyes and said, "I like your face, you're really pretty." It seems odd now, but it didn't then. I liked her face too and when women in our 40s say things like that to each other, we know it means something different to when you say it to a 20 something.

It was like the Chinese DC calling me "A really nice lady."

P.s. This has taken ages to type because my eyes are still acting weird.

**Kali's Child** · 31st July 2011, 03:39 PM

Oh jeez.... How are you feeling now?

I'm gonna go light a stick of incense and ask for your return to full health, It's all I know to do.

**Korpo** · 31st July 2011, 09:04 PM

Hello, Beek.

I hope it's something minor. When I get dehydrated in the sun, bad stuff happens for me.

Get well soon!
Oliver

**Beekeeper** · 31st July 2011, 09:33 PM

It was a migraine, guys. They were a bit anxious in case it was a stroke - but it wasn't.

1^st August, 2011.
Monday.

The hypnogogic imagery post migraine has been incredible. It’s as though REM sleep has been switched on indefinitely. I spent Saturday with a need to sleep frequently and with little energy for anything else. No sooner would my head hit the pillow and the dream would begin. All kinds of people popped in and I had frequent false awakenings too. It was very peculiar!

When I hit the pillow last night, I decided that if it was still occurring I’d play with it a little.

Closed eyes: Knitting needles with a mottled mauve wool against a black background. The needles are moving and the thread is blowing slightly. I open my eyes and they’re still perfectly obvious against the black of the room.

I want to see if I can use intention to make the knitting grow. It works but the image dims slightly.

I’m looking down on a man in the shower. I can really see his hands as he washes himself with soap.

I’m looking over the rim of a coffee cup. The cup is rotating slowly and is largely shadowed except for an area of light on the rim that I follow with my eye.

I have a bird’s eye view of a hatch into some type of submarine. It’s painted a rust colour, which seems wrong to me. Now I rise up and I can see that it’s moving forward and it’s exceedingly long. There’s a long black spike at the front with small black balls in clusters along it. It looks like something out of a sci-fi. Doesn’t seem a logical design.

Bits and pieces of dreams
“Bees”
I’m taken up by a swarm of bees. I remember the noise and being lifted and surrounded and feeling it was cartoonish. There was no pain and it was hard to remember it even happened.

“Flowers”
There’s a pregnant woman who needs a lift to work. We apparently work together and she expects a lift on the back of a motorcycle. I tell her I’ll find a car instead.

I know she would like to gather some flowers for a vase when she returns from work. I decide to do this. I go outside and watch a duck in clothing waddle past me. I stop and watch it for a while. I wonder if I should talk to it. I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, what I’m supposed to do but I know it’s something I’m supposed to react to in a particular way.

I’m in the house (one I find dark and a bit run down) preparing the flowers. The stems are too short and the flowers keep dipping under the water and getting wet. I get them right and then the water turns to mud.

There are others in the room, neighbours. I turn to a water cooler to get clean water for the flowers but I feel that I shouldn’t use the drinking water like that. I see a tap but it has some contraption on it that I don’t know how to loosen. I lose my temper and ask a girl that looks like Miley Syrus how you use this tap. She fixes it for me and I complete the task.

Now there are a group of us walking home. My niece has a mobile phone and it rings. She holds it upside down and too far from her face. I show her how to use it properly. She tells me it’s Dad with a message from Jane that my course is resuming tomorrow.

I feel anxious now. This is a postgraduate course I began in the dream world but never finished. It catches up with me every so often and it makes me anxious because I have to travel to Sydney Uni to do it and continue working in Wollongong. I don’t know how I’ll cope.

**Korpo** · 1st August 2011, 09:18 AM

I go outside and watch a duck in clothing waddle past me. I stop and watch it for a while. I wonder if I should talk to it. I don’t know what this is supposed to mean, what I’m supposed to do but I know it’s something I’m supposed to react to in a particular way.

Probably a platypus in disguise.

**Beekeeper** · 1st August 2011, 09:53 AM

Oh, Oliver, that cracked me up!

You know someone at work suggested that the ongoing hypnogogics was probably a sign that one of the shots of painkiller they gave me at the hospital was an opiate and took a day to leave my system. Now, that's a real possibility! (Of course, my colleagues started referring to me as "the junky" after that

)

**Korpo** · 1st August 2011, 10:22 AM

Coming to think of it, I once read a lengthy article that tried to prove NDEs didn't exist by discussing a landmark case and how the NDE must have been a side effect of the narcotic used. Never mind all the other NDEs that didn't happen in the 70s without that medication and not during surgery. Skoff-tics.

Having said that, I'm just glad you're okay again.

**Beekeeper** · 3rd August 2011, 04:23 AM

3^rd August, 2011.
Wednesday

I’m pretty certain the order of these dreams is hopelessly wrong. I don’t recall it as simultaneous, as I have with other many dreams recently, but I just don’t remember the order.

"Pup"
G and I are playing with a new puppy we’ve bought ourselves, a furry German shepherd. G is particularly attached. There’s no real plot, just playing with the puppy. It’s an extremely tactile dream and I really feel the animal’s soft furriness. We are located outside and the pup races between us and a ute, where it jumps up onto the tray. I'm loving this pup but I'm not used to the family pet showing a preference for G.

We’re heading back to the house. I think it’s getting dark and I’m getting tired. There are some flying lounge cushions under my feet and I try to distribute my weight across them so I can lie down and go to sleep. It's a bit of a balancing act but I make it back to the door that way.

I awaken in a rambling house where a breeze blows. Immediately I go to work ironing and folding clothes (I did this before bed, a backlog from the weekend). I soon realise it’s night time and I still have time to sleep but I decide to go on with my work anyway so I can get ahead in my tasks.

Helen L is awake doing the same thing, except she runs around frantically, complaining she has no time and she can’t stop. I’m critical of this, as I am IRL, because she makes herself literally ill and never takes a moment to enjoy herself. I cannot understand why Helen’s life should be so difficult: she was unable to have children and she lives frugally, yet she works from morning to bed and she feels ever exploited and unappreciated.

I see an orange beach towel folded neatly on an armchair. I can’t place it. I don’t remember buying it for anyone but I think about whose birthday is next (Ashley, my niece’s) and decide I must have bought it for her and forgotten.

A slip of paper the size of a cheque appears flies towards my face. It clearly has the words, “Bad check,” typed all over it (spelt the American way).

Now I’m with two children- a little girl, whom I see, and a smaller boy, who is just an idea. I treat them as my own, though they’re much smaller than my sons. They’ve woken too and morning is approaching. One has heard a noise and we’re investigating, holding hands and walking together. We walk out through some double doors of our house and find ourselves in a stylish shopping arcade. This stops me in my tracks for a moment. I wonder how I could have forgotten this was attached to our house. I'm pleased it's there, thinking it very pretty and handy.

Remote Viewing: On Monday, as I was driving to work, I briefly saw my car and the traffic aerially. I didn’t “leave my body” ; I just “saw” the view superimposed over my vision as I do sometimes when I’m driving home and I “see” a parcel on my doorstep. I couldn’t figure any reason for it; it didn't act as warning.
Then, on Tuesday as I was entering my house after walking the dog, in a hurry because I was running an additional early class for my seniors, I wondered what the time was. In response, a vision of a digital clock superimposed itself and I read the time: 7.52. I was rushing but there was no way I was going to dismiss this without checking accuracy, so I ducked in to my garage, opened my car door and looked at the clock: 7.52.

P.s. Got an ugly, massive bruise on my arm from where they took blood the other day!

**Korpo** · 3rd August 2011, 04:21 PM

Hello, Beek.

Helen L is awake doing the same thing, except she runs around frantically, complaining she has no time and she can’t stop. I’m critical of this, as I am IRL, because she makes herself literally ill and never takes a moment to enjoy herself. I cannot understand why Helen’s life should be so difficult: she was unable to have children and she lives frugally, yet she works from morning to bed and she feels ever exploited and unappreciated.

Here her and your condition are put into contrast to show you something about the nature of the mental elemental. The key to seeing this is the mental elemental portrayed is her running around frantically - her mind is racing.

You say she's working all the time - now wonder she feels exploited, but that puts the responsibility entirely elsewhere, diminishing the role her own choices play. By no work and no other nourishing activities she overstimulates the mental elemental, leading to it being constantly agitated. She can't stop because her mind keeps going to the program she puts it in. The next task, the next task, the next task...

As her mind gets no rest her capacity for anything is diminished. There's no relaxation, which is felt as "having no time." Which rather means "having no time to enjoy life." The overstimulation of the mental pushes out all capability to enjoy life. Enjoying life needs space. The more space you have within, the less activities are truly experienced as chores. Space gets diminished when needs go unsatisfied.

In contrast you can actually get ahead of your work because you don't have your mental elemental in such a condition. By having fulfilled your needs (including for sleep) you find the space to do the extra. Which leads to the paradox that those actually taking time to fulfill their needs may also outperform those that know only work. Even if not, they certainly enjoy life more, and have not much reason to complain, plenty of lifeforce and are in comparison better warded against illness.

Cheers,
Oliver

**Beekeeper** · 3rd August 2011, 09:58 PM

Yes, Oliver, I can identify with Helen but I had unpleasant experiences that sent me in a different direction and I refuse to lose the life/work balance. I hope Helen will change because I really like her but these things are often inculturation.

4^th August, 2011.
Thursday.

“In the nick of time.”
I’m driving too fast through suburban streets when my brake fails. I try to pull into the gutter but there are numerous people scattered along and I’d kill someone. I’m heading towards a double storey red brick house and I know my car will cause substantial damage if I don’t do something so I take my foot off the accelerator and the car stops.

“RP’s Babies”
I seem to be sharing a house with Roseanne P. She is very pregnant but she also already has at least two other children. I am with one of those, a particularly unappealing little baby with a wrinkly face and a tendency to biting. I scold her and make her behave herself. That said, I’ve been mindlessly aggressive towards Roseanne, blocking the door as she was coming through and thumping her belly. I can’t understand why I would have done such a thing, especially to an expectant mother, and Roseanne is complaining vociferously. I realise that that endangered her baby and now I put a hand on her tummy to feel that everything is all right.

Roseanne is folding a cotton kiddy sheet, one I used to have for my kids, a hand-me-down that comes with a set of associations. She is showing her a stain on it from where a visiting child threw up on it. I think it wrong that she’s teaching such young children to talk behind people’s backs. This reminds me of how vain and superficial she is and I look again at the baby’s face, surprised to see that she’s not at all attractive, despite her parents’ good looks. I wonder how that genetic mix came about;
Note: IRL, Roseanne was, for me at least, an unusually vain person (as was the person who handed down the baby sheet). Blond and blue eyed, she used to boast that she had chosen her husband for his superior good looks and intelligence and that she felt intelligent, beautiful people had a duty to have more children. She ended up having 5 or 6. She was one of those people who always gave me the impression that her friendship was based on her ideas of your social acceptability and not much else. I always took her lightly because she was considerably younger than me.

“Flight with the Boys”
I’m flying down a road where, beneath me, are people in bathers and I’m struggling against the wind. I’m entering the gates of a school with the others. I meet a woman whom, for some reason, I think is a golfer (?) and she’s telling me she doesn’t fly much anymore herself. She’s tall and has a hard, thin body and bobbed, curly light brown hair. I tell her I really like flying but I’m having trouble remaining steady in the wind. She flies up beside me and that stabilises me now. She suggests we go get a coffee and we fly further into the school.

Now I’m flying down corridors, over the heads of high school students most of who react as though it’s perfectly normal and ignore me. Some, however, join me. It takes the first few a few moments to remember how to do it but I keep reminding them they’ve done it before and eventually they’re all up. While I fly with them I briefly consider some aerial acrobatics but decide against it because I’m not feeling confident. We fly joyfully to the other edges of the school and then one of the boys says, “I don’t want to go any further.” The others agree and I’m happy to respect their desires to remain within the school boundaries. I look out over at the modern brick buildings that border the school and wonder what the complex is, deciding that it’s a retirement village.

Now the boys are on benches around a table. Brock W, a highly intelligent boy I teach IRL, is experimenting with fire. He has found someone’s discarded pay receipt and he’s trying to skeletonise it to see if he can leave the writing in tact. He sets it on fire but it soon appears it will continue to burn and possibly burn down the table so I go to his side of the table and blow it out. It takes a couple of breaths and then another boy (a lovely boy that from the chess club I accompanied to a competition yesterday) pours water over what’s left. We all look close to see if Brock has been successful and I see a name, something foreign and hard to pronounce.

Now we’re on the return flight. I’m playing with the experience, running on air.