Blue_Opossum

Morning of January 3, 2020. Friday.

Dream #: 19,373-01. Reading time (optimized): 1 min 30 sec.



Water and its essence remain one of the most beautiful and appealing factors of dreaming. That is because bodies of water signify the state of sleep and its dynamics and sleep is bliss (as the virtually countless commercial recordings utilizing the sound of water to induce sleep verifies). It also expresses the fluidity of the dream state’s imaginary physicality with its abandonment of defined muscularity.

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I instinctually enter a more vivid status of imaginary proprioception without drop anticipation (as a result of my vestibular cortex nuances in sleep-wake mediation). I fly slowly near Niagara Falls. The water is luminescent, and its flow is enrapturing. When I fly directly in front of the waterfall, there is a shadow that has more definition than it would in reality. It is not my body’s shape, but the longways silhouette of a helicopter. It tips to the left at about 45 degrees as I occupy myself with thoughts of diving into the refreshing water. I am not a helicopter in this scene (only my body’s shadow is), but a vehicle signifies the extension of imaginary physicality while in the dream state. A helicopter’s status in contrast to an airplane in a situation like this implies more cognizance in emergence.

The waterfall briefly becomes a curtain of turquoise and cyan silk ribbons, some swaying out as if with a breeze from within, as wall mediation initiates.

Looking to my right again, I see the helicopter silhouette has transformed into a hake (fish) silhouette of the same size and orientation, though briefly, ambiguity dictates that the shadow is both hake and helicopter. To oblige the illusion, I perform butterfly stroke swimming motions as I fly downward. Instead of entering the water, I become incorporeal and remain in abstract space for a time.

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A dream with similar sleep-wake mediation is “Helicopter Digger” from August 23, 1987. In that dream, a helicopter dives to the ground while a friend and I are fishing. Instead of crashing, it becomes a digging machine, the rotary blades churning the soil as if with a purpose as it enters the ground while tipped to the front at about 45 degrees. Typically, going underground indicates anticipation of returning to slow-wave sleep, whereas diving into water implies acknowledgment of REM sleep.

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Morning of October 3, 1972. Tuesday.



My dream only involves one main scene over time. An unfamiliar and unknown man is somehow hanging, though horizontally oriented, from within a waterfall, protruding outward from above the waist. There seems to be no indication he is actually hanging onto anything (which at any rate would have to somehow be by his feet). His arms are forward and out as he remains somehow suspended in the waterfall face down, fairly close to where the waterfall begins at the top, as if he was perhaps somehow stuck in rocks from below the waist within the waterfall itself. I get the impression that the scene is being broadcast as a televised special news bulletin (a sparsely recurring situation mostly only in certain childhood dreams). The waterfall is fairly high but narrow. The scene is oriented to where I am seeing the waterfall primarily from the side (but not fully from the side, probably with a thirty degree horizontal rotation towards me), with the water flowing over to my right.

I seem to be incorporeal and hovering near the scene (and I do not feel threatened or concerned). There does not seem to be any backstory indicating how this situation may have happened. Something about the scene seems very puzzling and wrong (in the sense of its plausibility) but I cannot discern what it is. I keep watching the scene and there is no recall of directly waking.

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If this were my dream, and it is, I would know that water is autosymbolism for the absence of emotion and the essence of sleep and unconsciousness as evidenced by virtually countless commercial recordings that utilize the sound of water for relaxation and sleep inducement, not to mention that water induction is my most common form of dream state initiation, having occurred at least once per normal sleeping period for over fifty years. I would understand that autosymbolism would likely be rendering the thought, “I think I would like to remain in sleep longer”, thus sustaining it as a man being halfway within a waterfall when circadian rhythms dictate the waking transition and despite the dominant variant of otherwise very common water lowering waking symbolism.

I would also realize that I am subliminally attempting to control vestibular system ambiguity (which naturally occurs in REM sleep) by “holding” the illusory avatar in one position within water (sleep) to block the otherwise natural falling sensation or waking start.

I might question the intelligence or motive of someone who cannot understand the indispensable distinction between subliminal threads of the conscious self identity focusing on and attempting to hold onto, prolong, or vivify the dream state and the incomplete evanescent dream self attempting to recall or discern waking life.

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