lucid

I flew last night over trees with my sister, Maria, and it was exhilarating. I saw someone walking far below, and flew behind leaves so they wouldn’t see because I thought they might wonder how someone is flying, unless the person was Maria. At that, Maria was flying with me, and I said “Flying in dreams is such an important life skill which I had lost. You have no idea how hard it has been.” Then I came to a golden pillar, as of a temple, and held it as if the substance of the temple understood.

Later, I was walking under a tree that was full of lights. Someone pointed under the tree and said “Your bulb is there.” I hadn’t seen it, but there was indeed a large bulb, which I picked up.

That last part of the dream reminds me of what Jesus said, “I am the Vine and you are the branches.” The feeling of having fallen from the vine is an anxiousness sensation that I have had at other times in life, but then I remember the other parable, of falling, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

When I awoke, I set the dream in verse:

My bulb had fallen from the vine of lights,
but I recovered it beneath a tree,
within a dream realm, after joyful flights,
when someone pointed out the bulb to me.
The bulb will do no good, though, in my pocket.
For it to shine, I have to find the socket.

I thought of the candlelit mass on the night of Easter vigil, where everyone lit their candle with someone else’s flame, and I recalled the words of a hymn we sang that had made me think of Maria and brought me to tears…

I will hold the Christ light for you
in the night-time of your fear;
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear.

I walked up the stairs in an apartment building. At the top of the stairs there was an open corridor with a long balcony and a woman at the door of one of the apartments. She seemed to have spilled something like coffee on her cheek. I told her, and she said, "That's not possible. It can't be." So I said, "Maybe it happened in a dream." She replied, "Dreaming, that's what you guys do isn't?" I said, "We might be dreaming now, let me check." So I raised my hands and concluded this was a dream, but the realization was not euphoric but of wanting to do something, but I didn't know what to do in this corridor. Then it occurred to me to start calling Maria, to meet her in a lucid dream, and I called her loudly, at least 5 times, and the calls reverberated through the complex with an indescribable other-worldly echo. This, I believe, is the first time I've called her, or anyone, to try to meet in a lucid dream.

I was in a dream car, and I had the thought that I was in a dream share with a woman who was driving the car. I told her we were going the wrong way, towards the Longfellow bridge where it crosses from Cambridge into Boston, and she did a quick 180 to head back into Cambridge. The dream car sliced through all the barricades that were between the lanes. Then I detached into 3 versions of myself; one who was in her dream, one who was in my dream, and one who was observing the dreams. In both the dreams, the car had become a little flying saucer, but as I observed the dreams I said, "they don't match" because in one I was hanging on to the outside of the flying saucer, and in the other I was seated inside.

dream archive 12/2013

I stepped out the door of my house and noticed some pickups with construction equipment beside the driveway. A woman in the driveway called out "Hey, stupid." I turned to see her and was amused rather than offended by her manner of addressing that called my attention to a bunch of contraptions in the driveway. I picked up a toy house with little block people and informed myself that I was dreaming.

This time, I felt like I could hold onto that knowledge and just wanted to observe things. With the realization, I was suddenly inside a high rise apartment, its layout the same as the one where I moved after my divorce. I determined that I wanted to fly, thinking that it had been a long time since I flew in a dream. I flew around inside the apartment though I had a large hollow cube strapped to my back.

I noticed there was a sliding glass door that led outside and went there, but when I saw that the view outside was uninviting and featureless with just a blanket of white clouds very far below. I did not want to fly there; I wanted to be able to see the ground, a place where I could land. I backed out away from the glass doors but noticed I was being pulled there, and, in resisting the pull, I woke up.

Dream notes by Maria: Never resist the dream, it is your Inner Self wanting to take you somewhere. Void Space is to be embraced, not feared. Sounds like you ran into one of your Guides out on the driveway!:-) Seriously, I have noted the phenomena that people who are beginning to have lucid dreams (are still in the driveway but slowly pulling out onto the road:-) are aided by Dream Entities who seem to deliberately try and get a rise out of them either by frightening or insulating them. She was getting your attention.*

A toy house with block people is a nice way of portraying waking reality and our physical bodies vs. our spiritual-dream bodies and a realm beyond time, space and solid forms. Obviously.

"This time, I felt like I could hold onto that knowledge and just wanted to observe things."

Excellent! Baby steps. We all initially felt flat on our faces when we began learning to walk, and similarly, we tend to wake almost immediately from our first lucid dreams we get so excited. The next step will feel even more steady and the dream may last longer, especially if you don't resist it.

"With the realization, I was suddenly inside a high rise apartment, its layout the same as the one where I moved after the divorce."

This is very significant. You moved to a higher level of the dream space. And some part of you you have been divorced from is seeking to reunite with you. "I determined that I wanted to fly, thinking that it had been a long time since I flew in a dream." This part of you that deep down knows how to lucid dream. Or so it strikes me.

"when I saw that the view outside was uninviting and featureless with just a blanket of white clouds very far below. I did not want to fly there; I wanted to be able to see the ground, a place where I could land."

This is what lucid dreamers call Void Space. It is a place between dream scenes. For me it resembles a blue-gray-black starry space like being in the "middle" of the universe that is endless. It's where I find myself when the dream is taking me somewhere. You need not fear it. I know I did fear it the first time, and I called out to Hapuseneb (I was writing Truth*at the time) and immediately a hand grasped mine and then I felt a man take me in his arms and we "traveled" through absolute darkness together as I saw a series of scenes, fully formed, pass by before waking; I never "landed" in one. Next time I encourage you to let the dream take you and show you what it wants you to see. The Dream is a mystery but I do believe it is allied to our most Inner Self.*

dream archive October, 2013

I walked up a flight of stairs knowing I was a character in a sitcom arriving at a new apartment. At the top of the flight of stairs, I could see inside and could tell it was a very nice apartment with large windows facing trees and with a large dining room table close to the door. I reached in my pocket for the key, and when I looked at it I saw that it was my real house key. At that moment, when I remembered my waking life home, it dawned on me that I was dreaming! I quickly looked at my hands excitedly and went into the apartment thinking 'this is so awesome!!..to be awake while my body is asleep!'

But I wasn't used to being aware of myself in a dream, and I started to worry that in this dream world I was a sitcom character but didn't know anything about the character, because I was only aware of my waking self now. I was worried about how I would play the correct role with the other characters. I walked into a room where there was a baby sitter with a child and I had to make like I knew them, and I think in this worrying about playing the correct role for the sitcom I lost awareness of being dreaming.

The dream became so ordinary that by the time I woke up I wondered if I had really had a lucid dream or whether I had just dreamed about having a lucid dream. But that brief sense of being conscious while dreaming felt so memorable and striking that I felt that it well could be a baby step in dreaming lucidly.

Dream Notes: Something illuminating for me was that in the dream I was supposed to be a certain character, in a sitcom, and after I became aware that it was a dream character, I believed that I was still supposed to fit into that role rather than act as a character with a meta-awareness of a reality outside the dream. Identifying with the dream character and with trying to play the correct role led to a loss of that meta-awareness. This is I think too what can happen in life, identifying, naturally, with being a certain character, with a certain role, which may likewise be a dream character, a dream role and there is a mysterious meta-awareness beyond these dream roles of which we only have inklings. I think the startling sense of waking in a dream instills that sense or premonition that this is true and dislodges the sense of self as being a certain character with a set of well-defined, finite traits and corporeal boundaries. It dislodges the lingering notion that logic holds the key to ultimate knowledge.

dream archive May, 2013

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I 'awoke' in a dream on the top mattress of my childhood bunk bed to John Lennon's voice from a tape deck "We are with you….(a pause for dramatic effect)…Mario." This was good, but I was still scared. I saw a spider suspended between dad's easy chair and a window. Its thread formed a perfect geometrical arrangement of five pointed concentric stars, one outside the other. I wanted to clear it, but the ray that revealed it passed, and the web disappeared as if it had been sun-woven. Aware I was dreaming, I thought that intense things always happen when I dream of my childhood home. Now only one must: I ran to the kitchen and embraced my mother, who was sitting writing a letter.

The scene changed to my looking at a small black screen in a window of my Boston home, displaying a telegram from heaven in luminous white letters. It said something about the sacred temple texts I was to procure, but before I could read any further, the cat woke me up.

dream archive 9/90

I went into the yard of my childhood home in Virginia. It was a summer night, and the crickets were chirping loudly. My beech tree was there, and beside it, in the center of the yard was a new young tree. I realized I was dreaming and raised my hands to look at them, but then quickly thought, 'None of that Carlos Castaneda shit!' I was nervous as I remembered the dream of "Merry Christmas in March" that had taken place here, and I sensed something intense was going to happen again. I thought I saw my grandfather (who had become in my mind a metaphor for God) drive by, but his profile that I saw in the dimly lit car was a profile of long ago, and he didn't stop.

Finally, I mustered the nerve to look in the house. I saw a blue bed and knew at once there had been extensive redecorating. I knocked at the door, and a little boy answered. I asked if this was the house of Bernardo (who had bought the house), and he said no. He turned to the right to indicate his dad was there absorbed in the TV. I explained that I grew up in the house and wanted to see it, and he let me in.

There were three children in an interior that was very different. Many material things made for a tight squeeze, but I knew that to the children it was big. One asked me if I had lived in many places since I'd lived there. "God, yes, many!" I told them that they probably would too when they went to college, and the little boy turned away with a nervous smile as if contemplating the prospect and said, "Yeah, we don't want to be tied down by it (the house)." I said, "Still, you'll dream with it always…it will be a setting…in fact, I am visiting you in a dream…." A wave of emotion suddenly engulfed me, and, speaking to all three said "to tell you I love you!" I embraced them and gave the little girl a small white heart with a transmitter / receiver (not for radio but love frequencies), and awoke while still just inside the house's door.

dream archive, 2/14/89