Blue_Opossum

Morning of November 13, 2019. Wednesday.

Dream #: 19,322-02. Reading time (optimized): 2 min 30 sec.



The gradual emergence of my instinctual self from slow-wave sleep into REM sleep carries the subliminal goal to achieve consciousness to get up to use the bathroom. My real-life identity is absent. The urge is not that pressing, so my dream self remains distracted within an imaginary realm, requiring considerable preconscious effort to arouse me from sleep due to warm weather.

I had been swimming underwater in an unknown resort hotel to find a bathroom. During this time, an unfamiliar male is also in the underwater hall, swimming several feet behind me. Soon, a big catfish (though not much bigger than me) appears and eats the other male after bumping into him several times. I manage to get into the underwater bathroom and close the door behind me. I consider it might be better to use a different bathroom as I am uncertain if the toilet works.

My dream self passively integrates with the precursory form of wall mediation (that modulates dream sleep into the waking process). The catfish is still outside the bathroom. It tries to eat me and keeps bumping into the door when I have it halfway open as well as striking my body. After a few minutes of battling the catfish, I swim out into the hall, and the catfish simultaneously swims into the bathroom, signifying escaping illusion to achieve wakefulness. I trap it inside by closing the door.

My emerging proprioception (and vestibular system correlation) atypically decreases in the next scene (again, due to the warm weather), similar to the dynamics of a false awakening, where I typically tell someone about my previous dreaming experience, though it is part of the same dream in this case.

While upstairs, I see several members of the public present in the lobby that is not underwater. I tell a male tourist (who is sitting on a couch) about the incident, as I do not see a hotel employee, though one soon arrives. He is unfamiliar and about thirty. I tell him in detail about the big catfish eating the other man. However, there is some uncertainty if the body would still be whole or if he would be in pieces, as I recall the catfish was not much bigger than me.

I become aware of the existence of my youngest son as a thread of my real identity emerges as I grow closer to wakefulness. My dream’s fictitious backstory now includes my son being at the resort with me, and we both need to find a bathroom. However, I start to lose my sense of self by falling back into passive dream meandering, which results in the preconscious pulling me back into the waking process by creating a post-Naiad simulacrum to increase proprioception again.

I realize, as the room grows darker and with decreasing detail with my dulling senses, I had been holding onto something with my right hand and cannot go any farther (or return to slow-wave sleep). It turns out to be the yellow elastic belt of an unfamiliar girl standing at the bottom of a staircase. (Yellow is the color that correlates with emerging consciousness because of its brightness and association with sunrise.) I walk back several feet as my dream vivifies as I once again grow closer to wakefulness. I look at the coil (vestibular system autosymbolism, specifically the cochlea) that covers the palm of my hand, though this is illogical as it implies her belt had an unrealistic amount of slack near the buckle. I apologize to her, making an unlikely excuse that I thought it was the baluster of the staircase I had been holding yet while continuing to walk. She remains cheerful. The stairs are my instinctual cue to wake (though I often use stairs to vivify a dream).

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Morning of October 1, 1980. Wednesday.



My main dream sequence was somewhat abstract and mostly involved looking around in an unusual store that was a distorted composite, with what was being sold together in the same store as such not making much sense. There are craft items, fishing tackle, and possibly school textbooks on certain shelves, and possibly food. However, the waking transition was very clear as it usually is and can easily be decoded.

I am later fishing while standing on a roofed sidewalk. I am at the front of the store (facing east) but which also mainly looks like the entrance to my middle school in Florida. The parking lot has been replaced by a large body of water which comes up to the level of where the parking lot’s surface would otherwise be. This is where I am fishing.

After a short time, I hook onto something that feels very heavy and large but does not fight that much. Soon however, a huge catfish slowly emerges from the surface of the water, slides on its stomach up onto the sidewalk and swallows an unknown chubby male (of perhaps forty) who had been standing about eight feet to my right. There is a sense of awe but I am also somewhat amused.

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I would rather experience coalescence autosymbolism by watching another (typically unknown and presumed fictional) dream character being swallowed than experience it as my dream self. This is otherwise autosymbolism for the illusory dream state being swallowed up by the conscious self identity and the distorted dream self coalescing back into consciousness. The parking lot is liminal space (autosymbolism for being in a specific level of unconsciousness between dreaming and waking), and water lowering waking symbolism eventually commences here as in many other dreams. An area of land being replaced by becoming the surface of a body of water has happened in a number of my dreams, and other people have reported this as well.

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