Blue_Opossum

Afternoon of February 1, 2018. Thursday.



Until I began to develop a greater understanding of dreams at about age twelve (though I had long since viewed “dream dictionaries”, or any books or articles on a dream’s supposed meaning, as asinine), RAS mediation, especially in apex lucidity, was more likely to render an attacking dog as a waking alert factor than a snake. There is a specific reason for this. While a snake is probably the oldest waking trigger (and of which likely serves as such for the dreams of all primates), a dog has an autosymbolic association with an attempt to control the dream state. I began to naturally both lucid dream and attempt dream state manipulation as a toddler and recognized the aggressive dog autosymbolism by around age eight, including in a later dream from 1970 where I shouted “You dogs are always ruining my dreams” when I was in an extremely clear state of apex lucidity. This caused the dog to teleport (ironically at my unintentional command) to trigger waking with the hypnopompic lower back jab event (the dog’s hard nose pressing into the small of my back). This is solely due to the “obedience” factor. It serves as a metaphor for the dream being obedient for the dreamer as would a dog for its owner. The main problem with this is that dreams are of a biological process and full biological control of one’s mind is inherently limited, not only by current biological needs (such as a need to use a toilet) and environmental factors, but by circadian rhythms. It is not the “subconscious” (as in popular myth) that has anything to do with this, but RAS.

It was common for a dog, usually black or rust-colored, often a Labrador, to be rendered as a potential dream state terminator in early childhood. However, over time, as I mastered RAS mediation to a certain point in the 1980s with hundreds of experiments, it is rare for a dog to be an attack factor in my dreams.

None of this has any relevance to waking life. I never held or maintained any fear of dogs and had never experienced negative encounters with dogs in my childhood. In truth, as with most of my focus on dream study for over fifty years, it is my natural connection to the dream state and awareness of its meanings that is the key factor. People do not seem to understand, since oneironautics is a main aspect of my dream experience since earliest memory in both lucid and non-lucid dreams (the latter by lifelong conditioning), that the symbolism relates to the nature of the dream state itself, not waking life, other than when prescient.

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Night of August 25, 1977. Thursday.



This is a description of the most intense fully in-body nightmare I have had in my lifetime (almost as vivid as a typical fully in-body lucid dream though I am not lucid in this one). Even so, possibly the only vivid in-body nightmare that had residual energies on my mood (in “coloring” my day) for more than a day or two as well as very realistic imagery and perspective. It seems to fit in with the idea of “anniversary” dreams. It relates to how my dog disappeared after I was in the hospital for a couple days a year earlier when he apparently ran off looking for me. It preferred my company over anyone else’s. It was a mixed breed but part toy spaniel and showed up at our house as a stray. No one had claimed him.

In my dream, I find myself seeing the small dog sitting on the floor of my room in Cubitis. I am mostly looking west the entire time. I am very surprised and happy to see him, but something seems a bit “off” about the atmosphere or mood of my dream. I call out in an odd eerie sustained voice,“Joooe…”

I pick him up and he seems small and vulnerable but then something completely unexpected happens. He jumps up from my arms and bites into my entire face somehow with a strange growl. I actually feel the intense pain sweep over my face and when I look down again, I can feel that some of his teeth are still in a few different areas of my face. I am still holding him much the same way at that point. He now looks quite savage…or at least as savage as a toy spaniel can appear, and I can see where several of his teeth had come out - and I also have a vague idea that this may eventually cause his death and so I feel additionally sad upon this fleeting thought. My face feels wet and hot. There is an intensity which makes it seem like a real event even after waking. However, it is not that logically rendered because, being such a small dog, he would not have been able to cover my entire face with his open mouth.

This was actually one of the only dreams I had where he appeared after he disappeared in real life. Being an “anniversary” dream, it was unusually intense with regard to emotion and self-reflection. It was likely relative to the suppressed or “hidden” guilt I had concerning his disappearance and not knowing what happened to him (thus his in-dream behavior implies “the worst” if only in my imagination) even though it was not really my fault that I had to spend time in the hospital for a couple days for the operation on my right thumb. He was a “house dog” but this was the first time he just took off (on the second day I was in the hospital) when someone else opened the front door at my family’s house.

This was also one of the only dreams that seemingly took me by complete surprise in its outcome.

Morning of August 19, 1972. Saturday.



I am deep within an amazingly vivid lucid dream state and in my Cubitis home’s backyard. It seems to be late morning. Being in this state and knowing I am dreaming, I decide to go and visit Lisa in the house next door, to the immediate south. However, when I near the southeast corner of my house, on my way to cross diagonally to her front yard, a large orange dog, which looks sort of like a Labrador Retriever, emerges from behind the corner and growls menacingly and starts to pounce upon me, waking me up with a bit of stress and frustration, but not quite a full-on nightmare due to the lucidity it was not “real”. For a few years, on and off, many of my lucid dreams as a boy were “interrupted” by black or rust-colored dogs attacking me and it annoyed me more in the long run than bothering me in other ways. I did not experience any trauma with dogs when younger and I was not afraid of them in reality. It was only later when my brother Earl owned a black Lab named “Gypsy”.

Morning of November 29, 1970. Sunday. (Last checked and clarified on Friday, 12 January 2018.)



In my dream, I had been wandering around in my backyard in Cubitis, seemingly around nine o'clock on a clear morning, becoming more and more lucid. I start to think about taking advantage of this state and enjoying physical interaction with Lisa (who is not present in my dream at any time). I marvel at the clarity of my dream’s environment, finding its realism stunning and wondrous.

I am eventually seated on the ground inside an area within the unfinished part of the large cinder block shed (which my father had built and added to over time), which does not have any roof or walls. I am seated near one of the cinder block columns that is to my right (west). As I am sitting here, facing south (looking in the opposite direction as the main part of the shed) and feeling happy and expectant in my anticipatory musings, I turn slightly to my right to look westerly towards the carport and notice an unfamiliar stray dog walking around and sniffing the ground. I believe it is possibly a black Labrador Retriever. The dog huffs upon noticing me, but does not bark.

I become extraordinarily frustrated. “You dogs are always ruining my dreams,” I bravely shout, with the tone of my frustration dominant and echoing throughout the dream space (though still with my young boy’s voice), expressing my irritation at the presence of a dream state distraction and potential virtual threat and as such, my attention drawn from my previously hopeful lucid intent of feminine contact (even though I spent a lot of time with Lisa in real life).

After a menacing deep growl, the dog teleports from just beyond the east end of our carport (a good distance away), to reappear right behind me. The dog jabs me in the small of my back with his hard nose, triggering the deep tickle spasm in my lower back, which causes me to spontaneously jolt awake. I was annoyed at having such a vivid and well-rendered dream truncated.

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Questions Answered:

What does the aggressive unfamiliar dog in this dream symbolize? The dog is this dream’s RAS (Reticular Activating System) factor. RAS is that which is responsible for regulating wakefulness and sleep-wake transitions. (I had no fear or wariness of dogs in real life and no expectation of such an encounter.) On the one hand, the dog’s assumed lack of obedience symbolizes my dream self’s expectancy of my dream’s non-compliance with my conscious self identity’s desires and potential will. On the other hand, by exclaiming, “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”, I lucidly caused the dog to serve my negative expectation of this dream’s outcome so quickly, that the dog teleported and triggered the waking jolt in my lower back.

Why did you shout “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”? The reason for me negatively addressing the RAS factor was that I was already familiar with the nature of the dream state (and its many different levels) at this time - even as a child (though had not mastered it yet as I mostly have now, though it depends on the level of unconsciousness and the particular stage of the sleep cycle). RAS had already been rendered as dogs in a number of dreams by this time, again, symbolizing my dream state not submitting to my will, analogous to an untrained dog. This sort of aggressive RAS symbolism eventually diminished as I got older and learned more about dreams. (In fact, in a number of recent dreams, a passive German Shepherd had appeared, standing near a a thin vertical pole displaying a pennant at the top, symbolizing my dream’s obedient nature within certain levels of unconsciousness.) Still, RAS does get aggressive and dominating at times (though is often personified rather than being rendered as an animal), as waking is a biological necessity.

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