Blue_Opossum

2 minutes and 30 seconds to read.

Wednesday morning, 1 March 2023.

Dream #: 20,526-03.

The illusory dynamics of this dreaming experience first involve the typical arm (and hand) mobility theme and somatosensory responses to REM atonia, but after “walking with intent” (and vivifying my dream exponentially), the somatosensory factor transitions from directed to received (over my entire right side) and becomes incredibly vivid, with loud auditory phasing.

My dream’s first segment is a typical shopping narrative in an unknown location. After getting several items in a grocery store, I go to what I think will be a bigger grocery store, though it turns out to be smaller. I push the shopping cart from the first store, go outside, turn to the right, and enter the small store. During this time, I touch the various Australian bills, mainly the fifty-dollar notes, to multiply them in my wallet, realizing I can do this continually, having no limit to what I can spend.

A man is sitting near the narrow entrance inside the building, though the perpendicular corner, where people exit, is open. I tell him he can look at my receipt (from the previous store) as I hold it, but he waves me and my shopping cart through. The aisle begins here but turns right at 90 degrees and turns right again with one checkout at the third counter (opposite the corner near the exit). In other words, the shopping area is only one rectangular path, with the entrance and exit at the same corner.

One man walks close to my shopping cart but goes in the opposite direction. The area is too narrow to allow for much browsing.

I do not see much to buy. I pick up a few fruits resembling mangos, but they have strange small donut shapes over their surface. The spots are reminiscent of white hole guard labels for notebook paper. Even so, I keep one that looks fresh.

I pick up two pairs of unusual red fruits shaped like irregular Greek amphoras. (They are probably meant to look like hearts with partial aortas.) I select a few other items.

At the checkout, I hand the male cashier a twenty-dollar bill. Some coins fall (more typical of my second post-hypnagogic dream content each sleep cycle), but he picks them up for me.

Once outside again in daylight, I am unsure how I will get home. I consider getting a bus, but I decide to push the shopping cart home, though I am unsure where I am and which direction home is. Eventually, I “walk with intent” as my dream becomes more vivid, realizing there is a light rain (somatosensory response to variations in REM atonia).

To my left are surreal storm clouds, one forming a black tornado with irregular curves. I am unconcerned. Ahead, at a T-intersection, is a tall building of at least five floors. Above the building are at least three animated sketches of heraldic dragons. They are unrealistic in that they look like neither living creatures nor clouds. Even so, curls of black smoke form some of the moving drawings.

As I walk closer, my dream becomes more and more vivid, with incredible surreal beauty. The “cartoon” dragons continue to breathe fire and lightning onto the top of the building, seemingly with a sentient attempt to destroy it. I do not feel endangered.

A loud roaring noise, similar to the last part of the alien light probe scene from “Star Trek: The Motion Pictures,” occurs as I walk by the building. I consider that the heraldic dragon “storm clouds” will remain over the building until I leave the area.

As I deliberately walk by the building, though in the middle of the street, rubble and dust from its eaves (because of a dragon’s blast of fire and lightning) bounce along the street, hitting me lightly along my right side, head to foot. The sensation is incredibly realistic. I find it fascinating (and vaguely amusing) as I slowly walk until my dream ends.

Saturday morning, 18 December 1971. Age 10.

Dream #: 1,825-01.

1 minute and 50 seconds to read.

Requires reading and understanding: MAPPED DREAM “Run from the Brontosaurus” in the first part of this report.

This dream is one of many from childhood that I still cherish, regardless of its usual predictable causality factors. I still view this dream as hilarious on one level.

While hand mobility and somatosensory response (often with summoning and handling coins) have occurred regularly in dreams since childhood, foot mobility with a somatosensory response in the bottoms of my feet is uncommon, though I also use my hands in this case - and it is still predictably tied to leg mobility as most outcomes in this mode.

The curious event here involves falling and breaking a window by landing on it from a reasonable height but remaining in the dream state. Although horizontal, it ties to using a door as a dream’s deliberate exit point. While my intent to exit is ongoing, it triggers an offset somatosensory dream segment instead. I had, however, deliberately jumped from a bridge to leave the dream state, expecting, if remaining in the dream, to land in the water, as with similar instances. That is what I find hilarious.

“Doubling” is a viable term for this dream sequence because I am still in the dream state for an additional vivid segment, and it combines two dream-exiting methods I have often used.

What caused this particular shifting response (rather than waking me up)? My guess is because of the lack of myoclonus in this case. (Even so, there have been more recent dreams where I remained in the dream state after feeling “the drop.”) Myoclonus most often wakes me from the dream’s physical illusions (particularly leg myoclonus at the beginning of every sleep cycle). It shifted into a somatosensory response (glass in the bottoms of my feet) but still did not wake me. A typical hand-based somatosensory response as a catalyst is an animal nibbling my fingers.

Again, the lightning (an increasing synaptic energy analogy) striking the dinosaur and bringing it to life (waking it up) was also a transition representing precursory wakefulness, though, at that point, my dream also shifted into another segment (though with my deliberate intent in the first instance - because in childhood, I learned to hold myself in the dream state even when there is an imaginary threat and now have gotten much better at it - see “Heraldic Dragon Storm” from 2023 for example).

The unrealistic stop-motion effect (movie influence) has occurred in many other dreams. These days, “bad CGI” also occasionally “corrupts” dream narratives. Animated content superimposed over otherwise realistic scenes has also often occurred since childhood.

Saturday morning, 18 December 1971. Age 10.

Dream #: 1,825-01.

2 minutes and 30 seconds to read.

Scene 1:

I intuitively respond to the dream state by “leaving my bed” (imagined) before dawn and “walking with intent” through the Cubitis house’s dark carport - toward our backyard rabbit shed (a recurrent beginning for this mode of dreaming).

A brontosaurus in suspended animation is present. I cannot pass it. Its head and neck lie across the short concrete path that extends into our backyard from the east end of our carport, stopping at our shed’s entrance. I illogically conclude my father dug it up while working on the real-world addition to the building.

Lightning strikes the dinosaur’s head, and it comes to life as I watch its head rise above me.

Scene 1 Influence and Causality:

This part of the narrative came from the 1960 movie “Dinosaurus.” However, in that movie, the brontosaurus was friendly. My dream integrates the essence of the dinosaur from the 1959 redundantly titled movie “The Giant Behemoth” and borrows from it more than “Dinosaurus” from this point.

Lightning striking the dinosaur’s head to “wake it up” (as in the movie) is cast here because of an increase in my intuitive response to dreaming, that is, gaining more metacognition while still in the dream state. Therefore, the dinosaur is this dream’s sleep simulacrum. Sleep simulacra have featured regularly in my dreams since childhood. I habitually seek out and wake up sleep simulacra by habit to vivify and sustain the dream state. I stay in the dream state (by choice) and “run” from the dinosaur without real-world emotion. This event exemplifies my lifelong trait of anticipating wakefulness while dreaming, yet it results in virtually infinite unique and satisfying narratives.

Scene 2:

Even though I am on foot, I soon reach the El Jobean bridge in Port Charlotte, though it takes over 40 minutes by car in real-world time. It incorrectly looks more like London Bridge when I look back while walking south. The time now seems like late afternoon. I get impressions of “toy” cars the size of real-world cars, though I do not focus on them. I find the bridge imagery fascinating. The dinosaur, which moves slowly in the distance, may not reach me as the bridge might collapse. It may not even be aware of me. It moves with an unrealistic stop-motion effect, as in the movie.

Scene 3:

When reaching about two-thirds of the length of the bridge under a blue sky, I decide I will jump from it because I reason it may collapse anyway to bring an end to my dream. (Illusory bodily awareness and sense of weight are too realistic for flying in this instance.) Even so, I am still vaguely unjustifiably wary of what will happen if the animal reaches me before I wake.

I sit on the railing and cheerfully jump, expecting I will merely wake up - though I do not. Instead, I enter a more vivid offset dream.

I feel an impression of landing on my feet, but there is a loud staccato sound of breaking glass. There is a brief cool “pain” in my feet. I am now in the southwest area of my real-world school’s playground (in the early morning), standing on a four-paned window I broke by landing on it.

I sit down and cheerfully pull flat triangular pieces of glass from the bottom of my feet. There are about five pieces in each. There is no blood, and I am unconcerned.

Outcome Causality:

My deliberate jump to leave the dream state caused a quick transition of responses from my vestibular cortex with imaginary movement (and the regularly occurring leg mobility theme every sleep cycle), a predictable auditory event of the sound of breaking glass (that has continually happened throughout my life, and which otherwise breaks the illusion of dreaming in contrast to here), and my somatosensory response (which often follows my vestibular-motor response).

Morning of February 9, 1971. Tuesday.

Dream #: 1,513-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min.



I am at West Elementary School in Arcadia and walking to the building from the playground. I see lightning inside the main school building in the western area when looking north. Although it is a sunny morning, it is dark and stormy inside the classroom, though I do not see any of my schoolmates or teachers, only what appears to be a crude version of Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory.

Later, I am sitting in a taxi in the back seat on the left-hand side. The driver turns around and reveals himself to be Frankenstein’s monster. His name is Frank N. Stein, which I read on a card above the steering wheel, to its left. Nothing frightening happens. It seems more like a puzzling comedic event. The narrative is ambiguous, as even though I am getting a taxi home, the school day has not started yet.

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Now I ask for reasonable intelligence to understand how to decode this dream. Frankenstein’s monster awakened by way of electricity that could also be analogous to neuronal energy. It represents my own waking process and nothing more. The ambiguity of the narrative also correlates with the realization that I am not starting the school day because I am asleep.

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My dream’s influence was probably from Shock Armstrong, the late-night television horror host of “Shock Theatre” from Channel 13 in Tampa, Florida (from 1964-1968). (There was a similar scenario I saw in a humor magazine later in my life; a gag about the ID not looking like the driver).

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Afternoon of May 24, 2020. Sunday.

Reading time (optimized): 4 min.



Fire, lightning, electricity, wiring, circuits, lasers, candles, lightbulbs, flashlights, headlights, sunbeams, and the sun are fundamental characteristic features of the cortical arousal of the waking process and represent the increase of neuronal energy and the emergence of consciousness for anyone who legitimately understands the dream state.

Although the same transitions occur every sleep cycle, they stabilize with uniqueness in vivid liminal sleep-wake management. Here, I will include the modulatory factor in the upper case, a description of the relevant dream content, and the ultradian implication (with virtual or literal melatonin or serotonin mediation). My goal is to find correlations I had not previously noticed (to develop more clarity of mind, though, as there are more than 20,000 examples of this form of dream state management, it is not feasible to include more variables at this time. I may study them in pairs of variables at a later date, though I have found all major statistical curves and causal factors for most dream content over 50 years.)

Before I describe the many unique and intriguing versions of this process, I will begin with including my lifelong activity of pulling myself out of undefined liminal space (that has no imagery and seems integrated with enigmatic space) by summoning an unseen candle, perceiving my emerging consciousness as a candle flame. When this happens as a result of sleep apnea (though which is rare), and no vestibular-cerebral handshake (viable body-mind agreement), it is the only type of dreaming experience where I feel genuine fear. Variations of it are rare. One variation occurred in December of 1969. In addition to sustaining my consciousness as the essence of a candle flame, I also absentmindedly summoned an unseen dragon that roared and breathed fire. (Undefined liminal space never contains imagery. Also, the duality as a result of being between dreaming space and waking space is far less in this state. That is likely what causes a sense of dread.)

19690519. FIRE. Toby and I rescue Brenda from her burning house, though it is erroneously on the school grounds. Dark, before dawn. (Includes audio near the waking point: “You boys are wonderful!”)

19710209. LIGHTNING. Frankenstein’s monster is the driver of a taxi I get into (though I do not notice until I am sitting in it in the back seat, left side). I see lightning flashing only inside the school in the early morning on a clear day. There is a sense of amusement rather than a threat. As a school is associated with learning, the lightning represents potential wakefulness and is analogous to the monster rising from his bed. The taxi is analogous with my physical body, of which I do not yet have control, as I am asleep in reality. Otherwise, summoning vehicles as I often do, is more about increasing my imaginary physicality to enhance and sustain the dream state.

19710516. LIGHTNING and FIRE. A bolt of lightning comes down and strikes a church belfry in the distance, setting it afire, while I am on the otherwise empty school grounds with my mother. Dark, before dawn. (Includes audio: I say, "It’s not my fault” to my mother.) It is essentially a visual and visually exaggerated version of the candle-lighting process.

19740127. SPARKS and FIRE. I am at my middle school with my GI Joe jeep, though it is erroneously a remote control toy (confused with my remote control orange Volkswagon). Low lighting in the cafeteria. At first, I seem to be operating it, but the narrative changes. Sparks and fire begin near the gas pedal when it stops, but it does not spread. A moving vehicle (analogous to the body) typically represents the anticipation of a vestibular-cerebral handshake, and I often summon vehicles in all modes of dreaming. The fire near the gas pedal anticipates atonia to myoclonus, which is often a spontaneous leg kick with waking.

19791106. FIRE. In a parking lot (management of liminality during an absent vestibular-cerebral handshake), I see a car erupt into flames as its unknown owner enters it (though I feel no emotion or sense of dread). Curiously, as a result, the car reveals what looks like an oversized human ribcage that had been its top and sides. Nighttime, low light. It is a direct validation that a vehicle is analogous to the human body.

19820905. ANTHROPOMORPHIC LIGHTNING (ELECTRICITY). Early morning setting. An imp, about a foot tall, lives inside the kitchen cabinet under the sink. He seems to be made of electricity, though he maintains a sketchy human form and monitors the plumbing (seemingly with the pipe missing). Although he seems mischievous, I do not feel threatened. Later, I see Earl in the back of a car in a parking lot (liminal space management). He is instead the disabled man from a real advertisement in which he had said, “I’m a little tired. I’m alright though,” when rising from the water in an Olympic-size pool. It ties in with how the “electric imp” was a simulacrum of melatonin mediation. (The clue is the statement “I’m a little tired,” though unspoken in the dream, meaning I am sleeping, as water signifies the dream state’s dynamics.)

19901209 FIRE. I see the front-left heating element on the stove catch fire for no discernible reason in the otherwise dark Loomis Street kitchen. I feel no sense of threat. (Audio: An unknown girl exclaims “Fire!”) This variation of the candle flame summoning has an association with the area underneath the stove element as a virtual portal deeper into dream space.

20160222. CANDLE FLAME. I summon a giant candle to undo the magic of a male cult leader. (Audio: “…and now a golden candle, taller than me, appears here.”) (My dream was extremely long with a complex narrative.)

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I include these detailed explanatory factors with each relevant series about my fundamental dreaming habits and their inherent dream-based meanings, so I can remove the more extensive redundancies from past entries (on my two main online dream journals), and keep this introductory page as a public reference for future entries.

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Morning of April 4, 2015. Saturday.



I am lucid in this dream, though it is not of the level of lucidity that enhances the dream state to full vividness and highly focused dream-self awareness. It starts out at our present address on W street, rendered fairly accurately in layout and overall appearance. My wife is with me for most of the events. Two unknown people (late forties perhaps - male and female though not necessarily a couple), dressed somewhat formally as for a business, are on our porch while there is a storm beginning. A thicker bolt of lightning comes down and strikes them, actually curving around underneath the eaves, seemingly knocking them unconscious. I decide to summon the lightning to strike me to see what will happen (regarding my in-dream state of awareness) as well as thinking it may improve my physical well-being. I am not able to do this though and become somewhat annoyed though not outright angry.

Later, my wife and I are on a crowded bus in a larger city though the storm seems to threaten to tip the bus over. We get off the bus and the other people do as well, though we hold a cheerful disposition. There is a strange sudden heavy rain that blows horizontally (mostly only in one small area of the street, near the corner) and for a moment, almost seems like a large unseen hose spraying from the front of the bus (from near the rear-view mirror). It is not even near us so we do not get wet.

I am later walking down the sidewalk and there is a large gnarled tree that actually moves one lower branch to avoid physical contact with me, which annoys me in the manner of an insult. I then demand (though without projected anger in my voice) that the tree make contact with me and heal me. The branch perfectly forms the shape of a human hand and holds it over the back of my wrist. (This reflects somewhat on a long vivid dream of over twenty years ago where trees on a boulevard reached down to caress my face and express love though the mood is entirely different here.) The mood is not fully positive though, and my lucidity is not that pronounced - though I am still aware that I am making most of my dream’s contents.

Later, it seems to be after sunset and there is still some sort of unusual storm activity (but not directly threatening in any way). My dream takes on a similar mood and setting as previous dreams where I am looking straight up at the sky; the zenith (and almost always with abstract features). It actually seems to take place in the same setting as other similar dreams somewhere in the southwest area of La Crosse. (It is not anything like the “remember the twilight” dreams where I watch lights or other things and events in the sky over the horizon with a nostalgic sense.) The sky is very unusual regarding the cloud formations and I also see various “objects” moving around, such as an orange trapezoid and other geometric shapes now and then, though which seem two-dimensional and not related to a spacecraft of any kind. From here, my dream becomes too distorted to hold cohesion of any kind. The sky; the zenith; becomes a random hodgepodge of abstract morphing shapes.

Morning of March 7, 1997. Friday.



In my dream, I am apparently part of a science-fiction scenario, though it is not directly evidenced as being a movie in progress. Much of it seems impersonal and inconsequential to me despite the fanciful nature of the events. It is occurring in afternoon. The situation seemingly relates to invisible aliens coming to Earth to invade and conquer. However, the alien activity seems more like magic or perhaps even the work of one entity, though it is possibly just advanced technology that is being utilized. I feel vaguely puzzled about this situation, though I do not feel threatened at any time.

At one point, hot air balloons that first seem normal transform into brontosaurus shapes and eventually come down to land on the ground, becoming more lifelike. (Curiously, I do not make the association with parade balloons even though this was a probable influence.) Some people seem amused, others alarmed. (There is no focus on what may have happened to the people in the hot air balloons.) Some people remain in the area. Others flee. I remain impassive.

Another scene involves finding a business that may have been taken over and which is also corrupt. I burn some curtains by sending white lightning from my fingertips.

Don Knotts, another actor (possibly Andy Griffith), and I ride together in a car. The trip is uneventful.

There is also a scene where an unknown unfamiliar female has several guns in her house in preparation for the supposed increase of alien activity, which may change the nature of society. My dream fades with no dominant RAS mediation and a soft uneventful awakening.

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Looking at very familiar symbolism in this dream, it is recognized that the depth of my sleep changed a few times, which affected my level of lucidity. The hot air balloons are a combined link to real-time vestibular system dynamics and depth of breathing while sleeping. The balloons coming down to land on the ground signifies sustaining the dream state rather than the waking transition being more imminent. Despite natural vestibular system ambiguity while unconscious, my dream held my focus of imagination with living dinosaurs and aliens, factors not related to waking life.

The main liminal space division (other than the basic implication of ground and sky) features in the scene where I direct lightning at the curtains. The curtains are implied to be over either a window or a door. The liminal space divider is that which keeps the dream self identity as uncoalesced with the conscious self identity (which is why opening a door, normally a dream’s implied exit point or otherwise a shift in the present level of unconsciousness, sometimes serves as apex lucidity induction for me). Additionally, lightning symbolizes neural energy. As my dream self has the ability to produce and direct lightning, I am attempting to bring additional threads of awareness into the dream state, but there is a biological factor that mediates my depth of sleep and level of awareness. My lucidity is only at about fifty percent in this scene where it otherwise remains much less.

Still, the natural RAS mediation never fully dominates. In the final scene, the preconscious takes the role of an unfamiliar female who never uses her guns, which means I allow myself to enter the waking transition without a need for prompting.

My understanding and acceptance of the natural stages of the sleep cycle (and the inevitability of waking) and the dream state in this case prevented a more violent scenario. However, there are many times when I challenge RAS (due to wanting to sleep longer or to hold full control over the dream state) which results in shooting all contents of the waking space (inconsequential of course, other than coloring my mood to seeing my final dream of the sleeping period as frustrating for a short time).

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Morning of September 5, 1982. Sunday.



There is some sort of creature or imp that lives in a cupboard under the kitchen sink at my brother Earl’s house in Florida (though he had not lived there for several years in reality), though which later seems to be in Wisconsin at a motel. My dream and the offset sequence seems to take place in late morning.

The creature, which is apparently made of electricity, projects small bolts of lightning up through the drain somehow (as if the pipe is not there and the creature is directly under where the water would flow). However, I am never directly threatened by the imp and the lightning seems mostly inconsequential. I visualize the imp as probably only being about a foot tall.

At one point, he sounds like a human talking, but with a sort of hollow or metallic sound. It seems that Earl will be unlikely to live in the apartment anymore until the “electric imp” is gone. I do not see this imp at any point, only the smaller patterns of lightning coming out of the drain now and then. Although the imp may be talking to me (though I do not focus on what it is saying), I do not speak at any point in this dream or the following offset segment.

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In an offset dream, though still part of the same sequence (without waking), I find myself in an unknown parking lot (though is possibly near Shopko on the north side of La Crosse). I see Earl sitting in the back seat of an unknown car, on the right-hand side. His face seems distorted, without the potential for it to be a real human face (which my dream self finds inconsequentially puzzling). Still, he reminds me of a handicapped male in a television commercial from years ago, who said, “I’m a little tired. I’m alright though,” when emerging from the water of a large indoor swimming pool.

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The last scene is a transmuted water lowering waking symbol (subliminally associated with someone emerging from water as analogous to leaving the dream state), even though the electric imp was already a factor of water lowering waking symbolism. A parking lot is also a common waking space symbol for me, though typically the second-from-last dream of the sleeping period (as this was) while a porch is typically the final waking symbolism setting of a sleeping period.

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Morning of July 4, 1975. Friday.



I have an old leather-bound book that is entitled “The Annelid War”. In some ways I think it may be science fiction, but in other ways it also seems to relate to a soon-to-air television documentary about an upcoming event. Supposedly, various species of worms become gigantic and fight each other, causing earthquakes. One rises up from the ground at a distance. I am not sure if this is a natural event or related to mutations caused by radiation or environmental pollution. My dream is mostly set outside in my backyard in Cubitis. It seems these giant worms can manifest purple lightning or perhaps draw lightning to a particular area of the ground to manipulate it.

Because of their shape, both snakes and worms have associations with the human intestine and the human spine. Because lightning resembles the human nervous system, this one probably relates to conflicting thoughts, the worms, to me, associated with spinal energy.

Morning of October 17, 1970. Saturday.



It seems to be late morning. I have two small pet bats and I am walking around otherwise on my own in the main part of Arcadia. They are on my arm shooting small but long and forking lightning bolts at each other from their mouths. They express various funny faces when the lightning hits their eyes, mouth, nose, or ears, and eventually even a public US mailbox (which seems important for some reason). There is a vague feeling that I may become embarrassed if this continues in public, but only based on the idea that someone could come along and accidentally get struck by the tiny lighting bolts and blame me. At one point, they sit on my left shoulder (and now it seems as if I am seeing myself while incorporeal) and one licks its “lips” as small lightning bolts from the other bat hit it near the mouth.

As I start to focus more on the mailbox than my pet bats (though I am unsure if I have a letter to mail, though perhaps one my mother gave me to mail for her - though in reality at this time, it was usually my mother that mailed my letters), I begin to wake.

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Note One: The mailbox “seems important” to my mostly non-lucid dream self because it is a symbol for a sustained conscious intent for dream self communication with my conscious self identity to trigger lucidity and augment awareness (first put into practice in December 1966, around age six), though never intended to be rendered literally as here. However, there is duality in this dream (the two bats). This makes me suspect that I am in communication with someone in addition to myself.

Note Two: Lightning is often a real-time dream state metaphor that represents increasing neural activity (dendrite synapse analogy) as a RAS precursor as well as an associated play of the same symbolism based on lightning supposedly “bringing something back to life” (as in the movies “Dinosaurus” and various Frankenstein movies) simply (and obviously) analogous to waking up. (Though in some cases, it reflects physical pain or the residual memory of physical pain.)

Note Three: The very common (over one in five of my dreams) “return flight” waking symbolism factor is here, as the two bats (though they had not been seen flying). In this case, they seem more of an induction remnant, as bats are nocturnal and a symbol of being unconscious. (They are also a circadian rhythms factor which seems out of phase here as my dream’s setting is late morning, probably because of sleeping later on a Saturday yet still focused on the wonder of nighttime.)

Note Four: When Zsuzsanna was a child, her father caught bats in a large jar. Additionally, as there is duality in this dream, I feel that the mailbox is prescient of the fact Zsuzsanna and I wrote to each other before meeting and marrying, especially as bats also symbolize prescience (as in a few other dreams, especially the recurring “Patches” series, which had very detailed long-term prescience relating to Zsuzsanna before I met her or even knew of her real-life existence).

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Resupplemented on Sunday, 8 October 2017.

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