Blue_Opossum

Afternoon of February 1, 2018. Thursday.



It begins like this. A person gets undressed for bed. Perhaps he or she sits or lies in bed for a time, while undressed, before going to sleep. Perhaps they watch television or talk on the telephone while undressed in bed in their preparation to go to sleep. They might think about recent social encounters as they sit or lie in bed, while preparing for sleep, while undressed. Later, they might have a dream of being undressed, perhaps in public, and then after waking, wonder “what it could mean”. Still, it is neither my place nor purpose to make light of society’s unfathomable buffoonery and shortsightedness in my public dream journal.

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This entry focuses mainly on first-level dream state indicators. In this case, beds, bed sheets, and pillows are the focus as a reference entry to link (viable dream journal websites only, as on other sites it will just remain as a singular post).

Because dream state indicators of this nature occur in over twenty percent of my dreams, which I consider as quite natural and obvious, I have created this no-brainer reference entry for people who might otherwise puzzle over what this or that means in my dream journal. Still, there are specific threads of meaning depending on when and how a dream state indicator is rendered, especially if it is separate from other elements. (For example, although I often fly with a bed sheet as a “cloak” or “cape”, a bed as a flight symbol is uncommon.)

A bed could easily serve as either induction symbolism or waking transition symbolism. I do not consider it as pure autosymbolism since I relate autosymbolism as non-literal factors within the dream state (even though liminal space symbolism is analogically literal to real-life liminal space settings). For example, a bed in a parking lot (as I have actually dreamt a few times) would be a dream state indicator rendered into liminal space autosymbolism, even though this is a form of composite redundancy, where both factors, bed and parking lot, are indicative of being between dreaming and waking.

When I was very young, I used to see dream state indicators as a minimal form of RAS mediation (even serving to subliminally ground me to my real environment) to remind my dream self that my physical body is unconscious. In a way, that is still true, though I tend to see it more as a biological factor that carries over into the dream state, as impressions of one’s real environment often carry over into the dream state, especially the tactile nature of pillows and bed sheets. Even so, it could also just be a residual subliminal memory of having fallen asleep (assuming a deeper state of unconsciousness where environmental factors are not as influential).

I have often used a bed sheet or blanket to cover my body (when otherwise nude) in both lucid and non-lucid flying dreams (and certainly not because of modesty, as who cares about modesty in the dream state, but because of the realism of certain environmental factors in dreams, such as twigs and roof features). This validates that my dream self is aware of the status of my physical body, at least to a degree. Of course, in lucid dreams I do this on purpose, though in non-lucid dreams, it is a carryover factor, unrelated to waking life since the carryover is by habit of dream state awareness, not waking life focus. (One would assume this as obvious, but as I have learned, especially since 2013, empty-headedness, especially when it comes to understanding the dream state, is a dominant factor in many people.)

Pillows are in contrast to bed sheets as a dream state indicator in some dreams due to their association with vivid hypnagogia in childhood dreams. I saw pillows, mainly only those of one pale color, as a sort of hypnagogic “television” (even before I ever watched much television in reality.) By shifting my dream self’s gaze from pillow imagery to my dream’s much larger environment, I could vivify my dream and in contrast, by pulling the dream content in my dream’s larger environment “back” into my dream’s pillow, an implied threat becoming smaller and two-dimensional, restricted to the surface of my pillowcase, it became far less of an implied threat. This may be why I have rarely ever had significant nightmares other than singular examples when biologically premonitory.

Beds in unusual locations are as so, because a dream state indicator is typically unrelated to the rest of a dream’s content other than in the redundant example given above; bed in parking lot; though a bed in a lake is induction symbolism (as water is autosymbolism for entry into the dream state, and as a result, even a glass of water splashed in the face can vivify a dream).

There are times when dream state indicators of this kind are prescient, for example, in foreshadowing an illness. This includes cloaked figures (though not always) as a bed sheet or blanket association. There were two recent dreams about two of our sons, both related to them being in bed and somewhat tired, and both prior to a serious (though short-term) illness. One of these dreams included a cloaked figure of our youngest son’s height. However, such dreams also have a specific mood, which I hope to learn to hone in on to a more viable extent. Additionally, actually being tired in a dream (not necessarily being in bed) is an entirely different concept than just being in bed or seeing a bed incidentally, and usually indicates actual physical tiredness (at least for me).

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Optimized 1 minute 30 second read.

Saturday morning, 5 August 2017.

Walking in Northside La Crosse (features Silas Weir Mitchell)

Dream # 18,492-02.





There are a few repeating scenes where I walk west in daylight down a sidewalk on Sill Street, on the south side of it, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I had turned right at Loomis Street and am near the intersection at Wood Street.

I am nude except for a blanket hanging down, wrapped around my shoulders. I feel no embarrassment or sense of displacement.

At times, I see the actor Silas Weir Mitchell walking on the opposite side of the street, about a quarter of a block behind me. He appears to be happy, but we do not meet. I get the impression he knows I am only out for a walk to pick up something to take back to the Loomis Street house (even though my dream self does not focus on what it might be).

I consider checking the contents of a green dipsy dumpster in the parking lot of a Country Kitchen restaurant (not a real-world setting). I wonder if it might contain something valuable someone had discarded. Instead of going near it, I circle it from a distance and return to where I was.

Because I am "walking with intent," I sense there are many other people in the area even though I do not see them. Silas does not appear in this location.

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Causality details:

The names Silas and Sill underlie a typical dream state hodgepodge, both beginning with "Sil." I do not corrupt this detail by pretending it has "meaning," only television influence.

Celebrities occur in my dreams as personified protoconsciousness primarily because dreaming encompasses a similar state of sensory deprivation as watching television in waking life, with minimal attentiveness to my real-world physicality, cognizance, and immediate environment.

Ultimately, that is also why "walking with intent" sometimes brings about the sense of having an invisible audience, associating the dream state with being in a television broadcast or movie.

Minimal "slope navigation" occurs in the parking lot scene caused by my vestibular-motor response to REM sleep. A parking lot corresponds with a lucid thread signifying a stage of liminality between dreaming and waking, similar to what it represents in real life.

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Morning of January 17, 1970. Saturday.



This is another dream from age nine that I additionally wrote about (compared to typical basic documentation) several times when much younger and even made a homemade “comic book” version about. I tended to have more lucid dreams (mostly late at night) during the winter when I lived in Florida, as I had a smaller heater in my room that was quite noisy and caused me to remain in various half-sleeps at times. It rattled continuously when it was on, with a nice bright orange fiery glow. Sometimes a miniature fireball in the form of an insect, spider, or a bit of dust would go flying out. I always felt very comfortable at the sound and glow, though, regardless of the unusual metallic rattling and vibrating noises on and off throughout the night. I heard they do not make these heaters anymore due to the fire danger. The walls of my room were solid rough “prickly-textured” concrete, though (with a big long mostly diagonal crack on the south wall, floor to ceiling, which was painted part cyan, part dark brown, as if someone had ran out of paint), kind of a sharp contrast to the thin and light plastic curtains I had for a time, which blew all the way up to the ceiling at the slightest breeze during the summer months in a noisy, crunchy cascade.

This childhood dream was recurring a few times, later versions were slightly more movie-like and this was one of those times when I even “rolled the credits” upon waking as well as starting my dream by showing the titles and opening credits.

This one mainly involved shrinking and becoming only about an inch high. The first versions I had recorded in my journals as “World under a Blanket”. My later title was “Quilt Utopia” just to be fancy, I suppose. The later “Quilt Utopia” versions were more interesting, as the different crazy quilt patterns became part of the actual dream, such as “roads” or convoluted “sidewalks”.

The main idea was that when I shrank, I was still under the blanket yet somehow in a different world, complete with buildings and roads and a “blanket sky” way above. However, as my dream progressed, the “sky” would get lower and lower until it was more like I was in a cave. The warlike characters that came after me turned out to be small toy soldiers that were from a box at the foot of my bed. Later versions usually had a more positive theme, yet with castles, kings and queens, and at one point, a very large but eerie lake with distant swamp-like aspects, where you could see the horizon where the blanket sky domed down over the “edge of the world”.

There was also an “Alice in Wonderland” theme in one version, where I said something near the end like “I’m not afraid of you, you are only toy soldiers…” and being almost my full size with a very small king and queen looking on under the “blanket sky” that was slowly getting lower. The later crazy quilt version had unusual faces in the “sky” that stayed with me in a hypnopompic event.

There is one point where I am poked with a bayonet, which turns out to be a bed spring, poking through the mattress when I am awake, so there are two main versions - one in which the “world under a blanket” is a dream, and another where I actually go into a sort of other dimension with portions connected to the real world (such as the “blanket sky”).

There was another much later “version” of this dream as a young adult, but it involved the entire Earth in a giant “pillow case” or “slipcover” (I think the real-life caption was “Earth’s Slipcover” in the magazine I later had). This was later also related to seeing an idea in a humor magazine in real life (such as the many “Mad”, “Cracked”, and “Sick” magazines published at the time) related to fictional horror movies, except the later dream was not really nightmarish overall. The humor magazine drawing showed the world covered by a giant pillowcase or slipcover, I think; a somewhat rehashing of my childhood dream, but not quite precognitive, even though the odds at the time of someone else coming up with a “world under a blanket” idea would be fairly unusual to the individual’s own path (especially prior to the Internet).