Blue_Opossum

Morning of April 11, 1971. Sunday.

Dream #: 1,574-02. Reading time: 1 min 50 sec.



My best friend Toby Taylor and I enter a castle, though it becomes a hall of our school in appearance. No one else is around.

A narrative begins, implying each of us has to choose a different door. The inference is that one of us will win a valuable prize, and the other will gain nothing and may die.

Eventually, I pick the door on the left (with the number 1 on it), and Toby chooses the door on the right (that features the number 2).

After I open the door, I immediately find myself sliding down a big pile of gold coins. I feel happy as I look to my right and see Toby also cheerfully sliding down the same hill of gold coins at about the same speed I am. We excitedly grab clusters of them as we are sliding and let them flow between our fingers.

Eventually, from below us, there is a sound like a lion’s roar. I realize we are both sliding toward what may be the open mouth of a dragon. (Even so, the element of fear and surprise is minimal.) I start to wake around this time and consider that instead of a dragon, it may be a furnace or fireplace in a basement or boiler room. I also sense it is perpendicular to the direction we are sliding rather than in our path.

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This dream interprets my status of seeking somatosensory awareness while I sleep - to progress toward either achieving consciousness or greater awareness for vivifying and sustaining my dreaming experience. My instinctual and liminal summoning of coins began in early childhood.

Sliding, usually a vivid sensation, is a typical form of imaginary kinaesthesia (caused by the lack of discernibility of my physical body while sleeping). Sliding (as with other kinaesthetic events such as floating, falling, or flying) has nothing to do with symbolism or wordplay.

Using a door in the dream state is an activity I instinctually or liminally bring about to concurrently vivify or change a dream’s narrative upon stepping through the doorway.

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There is more to the history behind the causation of this dream. It ties in with loose associations with incidental sleep apnea. I include this because I mentally summon and light a candle (a source of fire as is a dragon) when in undefined liminal space. Additionally, there is likely an association with the heater I sometimes had near the center of my bedroom. Its noise would sometimes wake me in the middle of the night.

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After this dream, I read a Harvey comic book (with Casper the Friendly Ghost) that involved characters deciding which of two doors to open and ending up as mindless servants when they touched both doorknobs at the same time.

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