Blue_Opossum

Morning of April 16, 2018. Monday.



(When water induction subsides and my non-lucid dream self is left wandering in liminal space, subliminally attempting to gather threads of my conscious self identity in the waking transition.)

My dream starts out on a public beach, yet at no point am I aware of the ocean. Apparently, Zsuzsanna and our children as they appear now are present, but I am eventually most aware of our youngest son being nearby.

I come to understand that many children had lost their toys in the long stretch of beach sand. Here and there, I dig and I find mostly Lego; a lot of small bricks and a large one at times. I know that our youngest son will want some of them. There are also other parts found from older Lego kits, including plastic Lego figures. The sensation of digging with my hands is very realistic and vivid.

(When my non-lucid dream self is still wandering about in liminal space and reaches an autosymbolic form relating to neural gating and the subliminal enigma of being between sleeping and waking.)

I eventually reach a small square area on the beach that looks like some sort of ambiguous utility structure. It is somewhat like a small transformer station. Inside, on the ground, though there are a couple very small concrete partial floor sections, there are a few Lego platforms that have simple maze features and look as if they were designed to make a miniature maze by putting the platforms together as well as add separate smaller features over the connected platforms. These other pieces are mostly flat, but with sparse raised patterns (though raised less that a quarter of an inch) that imply part of a simple maze. I consider that our youngest son might enjoy them and I take them to put aside as well. I have a large plastic bag to put all the pieces in.

(When atypical neural gating closes off more of my conscious self identity after being at this structure, the maze implying the potential return to dreamless sleep in this case, as I have not yet begun waking ascension.)

Without paying any attention to the change of setting, I am soon digging in the wooden floor, though which is still somewhat like digging in beach sand, of the hall of the second storey of the King Street boarding house (where I have not lived since 1990), rendered as having a searchable essence as in a number of other recent dreams. At this point, even though my current conscious self identity was mostly extant at the beginning of my dream, I am now slipping back into a reversed timeline, where I do not realize I am in the “wrong” setting - and my current conscious self’s memory is now far less viable. Instead of Lego, which is autosymbolism for gathering and constructing my thoughts and identity, and to remember I have a young son, I lose that focus entirely and am now finding stones of an interesting appearance.

Leonard S comes up to see me, though remains at the opposite end of the hall. He seems cheerful and is going to get some additional stones from downstairs. Meanwhile, the King Street landlady comes up to see what is going on and seems somewhat annoyed. She remains standing at the opposite end of the hall from me as well.

(When my dream again subliminally focuses on the waking goal, and fails to initiate conscious self identity.)

Eventually, I find a large magnetic object near a fictional window on my end of the hall. (In real life, there was not a window in this location, my dream falsely implying the end of that area of the house, but the door to Leonard’s room as well as a smaller hall perpendicularly leading to the right and the left open to a staircase to the downstairs area.) It is not a stone but some sort of unusual ovular (though irregular) magnetic object with at least three large flat magnets arranged around its surface. They are somewhat like oversized refrigerator magnets. Each magnet features a scene from “101 Dalmatians” from 1961. One magnet features dalmatians, including Pongo and Perdita, the others, the human cartoon characters Roger and Anita.

A similar object is nearby. I consider that the objects are meant to be placed together. However, when I touch them together all the flat magnets fall off from each. I start talking about this event to an unfamiliar cheerful male who is now suddenly sitting in the window. I try it again, after placing the magnets back on, but they fall off again. I am trying to understand if this is “right” or not, but the unlikely scene and erroneous magnetism does not trigger lucid awareness.

The personified preconscious atypically takes on the essence of reinduction (as with the personified unconscious but of which is most often female) and sits in a low-set window rather than standing by or within a doorway, its usual habitat. The magnets did not continue to stick when the two objects were joined, being autosymbolic of the failure of the conscious self to fully initiate (the window otherwise implying the potential exit point for this dream).

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To summarize dream specifics: Water (no longer present in this atypical dream sequence) subsiding from liminal space as the very common (since early childhood) tidal analogy of waking autosymbolism. Seeking to gather current waking life identity. Small transformer station as autosymbolism for RAS (Reticular Activating System). My dream self finds curiosity in the maze-like neural gating potential of the dream state and becomes distracted. Trading one liminal space for another (beach to hall). Personification of neural gating at dream’s outcome, which very atypically represents reinduction rather than waking.

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Morning of January 4, 1969. Saturday.



This childhood dream journal entry has been revised on Friday 20 October 2017 to complete and clarify revelatory dynamics to more coherently define the meaning. This dream occurred about 3:30 in the morning. Sunrise was not until about 7:20 a.m. I had attempted to watch the 1942 black-and-white movie “Cat People” (which started around one a.m. on this Saturday morning), though our television was black-and-white anyway, but I slept through most of it, though I did not go to my bed until about 3:15 in the morning.

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In my dream, as I am walking out from the front of our Cubitis carport (after deliberately “stepping into” the stabilized hypnagogic “portal” rendered as the unlit carport area), seemingly only about three-thirty to four o'clock in the morning, and walking in a northwesterly direction towards our neighbor’s orange grove, I maintain my lucidity.

Even though I am lucid, I feel somewhat vulnerable when I find myself walking into the opening of a fictional feature. It is a hallway in which the walls are seemingly made of fog, yet with a suggestion of at least partial solidity. This eerie hallway starts from between the middle area of the driveway and the neighbor’s orange grove, and runs from east to west towards Highway Seventeen (and is perpendicular to it). I do not perceive the potential length of this hallway or clearly discern a door or doorway on the opposite side, which makes me hesitant in continuing.

From here, I see various domestic cats (at least fifteen) in various positions throughout the hallway ahead. Some cats are sitting or standing on tables (one near a vase on a table) and some are sitting or standing on the implied hallway’s floor. One cat jumps down from a table (or simple platform) on the left side in this scene and walks toward me though never gets very close or attacks. An unknown male narrator’s voice (seeming to come from above and to my left and as if from a loudspeaker with slightly fuzzy audio) only says “cats” in a very informal way and without emotion. I feel that he may not be speaking to me as it may be a voice that was recorded years ago. There is also the vague idea that I may not be fully in the setting but looking at a realistic three-dimensional movie scene either superimposed or bilocated into the front yard area. Despite my lucidity, I feel somewhat wary, uncertain, and passive to what I am seeing even though there is no discernible threat. Soon, with deliberate intent (lucid choice), I fade from my dream with a soft awakening. (The liminal space transition is also softer than usual.)

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Following is an extensive and highly revelatory explanation of the most likely factors and personal history responsible for this dream along with their related meanings. I have recorded this dream as of the doorway waking symbolism type.

It was obvious to me at the time (despite being only eight years old), that my dream was trying to fill in missing details from “Cat People” even though that was not my original dream entry intent (which was to visit my younger neighbor and friend, Brenda, who lived north of me). However, my dream was completely unrelated to the movie’s plot as my distorted memory implied that the movie was about an older woman with a fear of domestic cats.

The otherwise ambiguous hallway setting is modeled after two common real-life locations and progressions, one, walking through the hallway in my Cubitis home, and two, walking down our Cubitis driveway (as the fictional hallway was rendered as just north of it and parallel to it) to wait for the school bus on week day mornings. The possibly implied exit of the fictional foggy hallway would be at the east wayside of Highway Seventeen and it should also be mentioned that while waiting for the bus on week days in this time period, there was sometimes dense fog. Fog was far more common as a dream feature during the time periods there was fog in the mornings in real life, although fog also seems to be a factor of the dream state itself, possibly influenced by dream scenes in movies that include fog (to represent that it is a dream), though is also a natural association with dreaming.

There is also an association with Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog”; the line “The fog comes on little cat feet” (which was silently integrated into my dream near the last moments). The poem was first published in 1916 and my mother was born in 1916. This seems to be the association with the “old woman” (my mother) with a supposed fear of domestic cats (again, not what 1942’s “Cat People” was about). However, neither my mother nor I had any trepidation relating to cats. In fact, my mother had a pet gray tabby named Dewey at this time. The mild trepidation in my dream was more about my lucidity being intruded upon by the absentminded association with the movie that I had not even seen much of, based on my earlier wondering about it (but not consciously intending for it to be carried into the dream state as it was).

There is one more relevant commonly recurring factor I should include here. The doorway waking symbolism and other types that sometimes include the liminal space cat symbolism (in addition to the term “putting the cat out for the night” as subliminally relating to shifts in unconsciousness and waking symbolism itself) curiously was validated to have come from having seen the ending credits of “The Flintstones” (an animated television series) so many times. A domesticated saber-toothed cat is seen throwing Fred out of his house (after Fred firstly put the cat out) during the end credits, resulting in Fred pounding on his front door and yelling “Wilma!”, waking the whole neighborhood. This also established not only the relevant waking symbolism but additionally established this symbolism as a more influential dream state end marker in many examples throughout my fifty years of dream journaling. There are additional reasons for liminal space cat symbolism, one being an influence from the 1962 animated movie “Gay Purr-ee”, another with my childhood association of a cat sitting on a fence as existing between dreaming and waking (that is, a fence as the liminal space divider between dreaming and waking). Additionally, I think of cats as being more active at night or while people are sleeping and dreaming, thus a natural symbol of the dream state itself.

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