The Labrynth of the Mind

I took 800 mg of valerian before bed last night. As often happens after taking valerian, I had some very unsettling dreams. Perhaps not so much what others would call nightmares, but so vivid as to be hard to go through.

Nursing Home

I go to a nursing home to visit my great aunt. She is supposedly suffering from Alzheimer's, but seems to be bright and talkative. In fact, she is almost a little overbearing. She keeps talking real loud, laughing, and telling stories. I wonder if she really has Alzheimer's, or is somehow cured.

Death of my Father

My father goes to a doctor's appointment. On the way, he calls me, and tells me that he is dying. There is nothing I can do to save him, as he is having a heart attack right on the spot.

For a while after this, the dream is spent in tears. This dream really felt like RL, due in part to the valerian supplement. I go home, and my mother informs me that they found my father's body. I say that I know. We cry together. After a time, I think that perhaps I should try to go on with life as usual.

I look up. My father is sitting on the couch. "Enough of this crying," he says. "What are we going to do tonight?" We look at him, and my mother says something about how loved ones will appear after their death when you are in mourning. He disappears, and I go back to crying. He shows up again once or twice, and appears to act like nothing is unusual. I know it is not real, though.

A little later in the dream I am talking with someone. We are discussing grief, and how I shouldn't cry too much. I bring up a part I read in CS Lewis' "A Grief Observed" where he talks about giving in to tears as almost a self-indulgant pleasure. I say that an honorable person should not do that.

Baseball

I am at a basebell game, watching the Cleveland Indians win some kind of championship game. They hit the winning home run, and it comes my direction. I am unable to catch it, and it goes out of the stadium. I get really excited about the Indians winning.

Still happy and excited, I walk down the street, leaving the stadium. I look at the yard of a house on my right, which is just behind the stadium. I see a baseball sitting in the yard, and can see a path in the snow running from the direction of the ballpark, as though it had landed and then slid across the ground before coming to a stop. I know that this is the home run winning baseball. I pull it over to me with my foot since there is a wooden fence around the yard and I don't want to trespass. I am about to pick up the ball when I realize that perhaps if it is in their yard it rightfully belongs to them. I debate about this, knowing that the winning ball will be worth something. I think that the honest thing to do is to bury the ball under snow, and send a letter to the owner of the house telling them that the ball is in their yard.

I will adopt the color coding convention from here on out, to make my lucid parts more distinguishable from the non-lucid parts. Blue is lucid, Red is non-lucid

I am with my mother, walking our dogs. One of them wanders into the neighbor's yard, and we go to get him. My mother starts out first, and I follow along behind. Partly across our field, something strikes me as odd, and I begin to question reality.

It becomes clear to me that I am dreaming. At first I am not sure, but the more I question the more obvious it becomes. With that discovery, things begin to fade, and to seem less like a dream and more like a daydream. To hold on, I kneel down and feel the snow.

I reach the neighbor's yard, and wonder what I should do I think about Hyu's dreams with Yuya, and how I would like to have that kind of experience.

I decide to try again to summon my dream guide. However, the dream begins to fade again, and I enter the Void. I am still lucid, but everything is blackness. I remember what someone told me about trying the "linear acceleration" technique to get out, and try that. It doesn't seem to work. I try spinning, for no good reason. What I am attempting is to become aware of my dream body again, I guess. Then "someone" suggests that I blow my nose. Maybe it was my dream guide, I don't know.

I seem to feel myself reaching up and blowing my nose with a tissue. But I think it is my physical body that does this, and I must be awake. I don't open my eyes, but try to lie still and do a WILD.

I don't think I really blew my nose and woke up. I didn't have a tissue, and I can't do that kind of thing while asleep anyway. So it must have been a false awakening. Upon reflection, what I ought to have done was open my eyes, do and RC, and continue the dream from there. Oh well, you live and learn.