Blue_Opossum

Morning of December 3, 2016. Saturday.



In the hour before dawn, I find myself in an unfamiliar setting. It is a parking lot of which may be that of a restaurant. A 1969 bronze green Land Rover Series IIA Station Wagon is the only vehicle present in the semi-darkness. Areas beyond the parking lot and building remain indiscernible.

Two unknown Caucasian males of about forty, wearing sage safari jackets, are attempting to coax two male lions into the back of their Land Rover. My dream self does not consider how foolhardy or unlikely this is, including the probable lack of space for the lions inside their vehicle. I do not feel threatened by the presence of the lions.

Over time, one of the men somehow manages to get one of the lions into the Land Rover and onto the back seat. A short time passes and I no longer see the man. The other lion is eventually behind the Land Rover. I begin to get the impression that a lion will swallow the remaining man, which may have been the fate of the other man. I begin to feel somewhat wary but not in immediate danger. The other man is standing near the back of the Land Rover and I am viewing the scene from the front of the Land Rover, to its right side.

Just as the lion that is still outside the Land Rover seems to consider perhaps killing or swallowing the man, non-lucid dream control begins…

The male lion transforms into my wife Zsuzsanna. She is wearing a long white flowing gown. The man seems to disappear as Zsuzsanna approaches me to give me a hug. Joyful coalescence is the waking factor.

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My dream is clearly explained here in a more detailed resupplementation (rewritten on Friday, 22 June 2018):

The outcome of this dream is that the reticular activating system modulation factor (the lion) transforms into the emergent consciousness factor (my wife Zsuzsanna) because of non-lucid dream control (because of my advanced understanding of the dream state since early childhood). A lion’s essence in the dream state is an autosymbolic composite of two factors. The main factor is coalescence. (This means that I see a lion as having the potential to swallow my illusory dream self back into whole consciousness). The lesser factor, as with a domestic cat, is being “witness” to the dream state and the nature of liminal space. You will see the same autosymbolic processing factors in hundreds of my online entries, but always unique.

The parking lot setting is a common form of autosymbolism for a specific level of consciousness during the waking transition as a result of subliminal association with the physical body being inactive while asleep. (In contrast, moving vehicles represent a liminal awareness of vestibular system correlation concerning the physical body while asleep.) The Land Rover is an autosymbolic association with my physical body, as most singular vehicles are in dreams. Ultimately, the parking lot’s autosymbolic nature lacks the more defined anticipatory factor of the waking process and suggests a subliminal desire for returning to deeper sleep (and as such, serves as ultradian rhythm autosymbolism).

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These are the layered causes of this dream:

The television series “Daktari”, which originally aired from 1966 to 1969.

Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion, from the aforementioned “Daktari” series. (I was sometimes called “Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion” in elementary school. This was solely because my middle name is Clarence.)

Early childhood dreams of my dream girl in a flowing white gown, originally influenced by “Isle of the Dead”, a 1945 Boris Karloff horror film, certain scenes of which fascinated me in a romantic sense, rather than frightening me, at age four.

Erin Moran, as in the aforementioned “Daktari” series, resembled my real-life schoolmate, friend, and neighbor, Brenda. My first known euphoric waking transition, also the result of a hug, featured Brenda in the final scene. This astounded me and, because I was only eight at the time, I did not know what it was biologically until a few years later. Brenda was also validated as the prescient stand-in for my wife Zsuzsanna when my dream girl was not more efficiently rendered (that is, looking and sounding exactly like Zsuzsanna before we knew of each other in waking life).

“The Sleeping Gypsy”, an 1897 oil painting by French Naïve artist Henri Rousseau. Rousseau described his painting as follows: “A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic.”

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In decoding my dream, the autosymbolic dreaming and waking processes reveal the following sequence: Brief contemplation of “Daktari”, my childhood dream of hugging Brenda, subliminal awareness of being asleep, emerging awareness of my conscious self identity and that I am sleeping with Zsuzsanna, liminal recall of “The Sleeping Gypsy” mixed with romantic non-lucid dream modulation related to “Isle of the Dead” (and its analogy to being in the dream state), liminal perception of my wife as a “sleeping gypsy” (as she is Hungarian Romani), and finally, transmutation of the lion of coalescence (being “swallowed” into waking consciousness) to euphoric coalescence (being hugged, which is a more positive analogy of being “swallowed”), which is otherwise of the same autosymbolic foundation.

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