Blue_Opossum

2 minutes 30 seconds to read.

Saturday morning, 16 November 1974. (Reviewed Sunday morning, 28 August 2022.)

"Hot Stuff's Day Out"

Dream # 2,889-01.



My dream begins in an unrealistic version of my Cubitis bedroom. There is no west wall, so the room is open to the outside. The house sits atop a hill that overlooks a forest in an unknown region in daylight under a blue sky.

I walk to where the floor ends. Instead of my feet slipping forward with me falling backward (as occurs in the first post-hypnagogic dream of every sleep cycle), REM atonia results in vivid vestibular-motor phasing with the blissful sensation of somersaulting down the hillside over the tall grass. The event has the essence of slow motion.

After I stop somersaulting upon reaching the foot of the hill, my dream self’s imaginary body temporarily modeling my sleeping position at this point, auditory phasing initiates as one of the only “narrators” I have experienced in the dream state. (Otherwise, such a transition is typical, as vivid phasing responses often occur with linearity. For example, hallucinatory vestibular-motor phasing triggers hallucinatory auditory phasing here.)

The unseen narrator, speaking in a loud unfamiliar voice with a British, Australian, or New Zealand accent coming from an unknown overhead source, does not express awareness of my presence. He seems to be engaged in a formal voice-over for a PBS documentary. I look up and see a statue several feet away that resembles an Easter Island statue, except it is only about eight feet high. The narrator talks about “African gods.” (Yes, I know Easter Island and Africa are in different regions of the world, but dreams often render falsehoods to prevent confusing dream content with real-world aspects.)

In my dream’s final scene, I watch three unfamiliar male explorers (probably in their forties) ascend the hillside. They are wearing beige safari outfits. I am on a cliff without the implication of having climbed up (no slope navigation, otherwise regular in my dreams). I enter a cave with the men, though they seem unaware of my presence. (One of the men vaguely reminds me of Abel from DC’s “House of Secrets.”)

An adult version of Hot Stuff the Little Devil (a Harvey comic book character) walks out from a deeper part of the cave to greet the men. The men appear terrified, remaining motionless, but I find the situation hilarious. The amusing “devil” wears a diaper (as in the comic book). There seems to be no threat, only a curious comedic essence. (A demon or devil would not otherwise appear in a lucid dream or most dream states with any level of self-awareness because of conscious bias, that is because I know they do not exist.)

My vestibular-motor phasing response resulting from REM atonia has occurred throughout every sleep cycle since childhood. Managing this physiological event or integrating spontaneously into the phasing effect is unrelated to the misconception of “astral projection,” a term that a legitimate lucid dreamer would never use.

Statues are a fundamental response to my intuitive, metacognitive, or lucid recognition of REM atonia that occurs throughout all dreams in healthy people. This attribute was one of the first natural and self-evident properties I recognized about “lucid dreaming” (or any mode of dreaming) at age 4, long before I heard the term. (On a side note, someone who “interprets” dreams in contrast to recognizing causality could not be a lucid dreamer despite any claims they might otherwise make.)


In addition to statues being an intuitive or lucid response to REM atonia, caves also regularly appear. However, it is often in induction rather than an outcome (as in this instance). Caves are how I intuitively (or lucidly in hypnagogia or post-hypnagogia) perceive my entry into a deeper sleep.

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