Blue_Opossum

Afternoon of January 9, 2018. Tuesday.



Three common waking space settings (in my fifty years of dreaming history since earliest memory) are as follows:

Porch

Parking Lot

Store checkout

(There are many more, which I will provide information on in future entries.)

The fallacy of “interpretation” (often incorrectly referred to as “meaning”) works like this: A random member of society (even an “expert” or “professional”), who almost always lacks the understanding of what a dream actually is (or what is occurring unconsciously), will see one of these three settings and pretend it has a concurrent meaning related to real life, in the pretense of nebulously “indicating” something about real life. That would be a good trick since the above settings have occurred on a regular basis in my dreams for over fifty years, typically in the last segment of a dream sequence.

When rendered as settings in a dream, these elements are typically symbolic of the dream state itself and the waking transition, and as such, often have nothing to do with “interpretation” or waking life. I know this from having continuously studied my dreams for over fifty years. There is no doubt in my mind, especially as I am aware of my own dream self and its viewpoints as I move through such waking transitions, with the actual understanding (though subtle) at one level, of what I am experiencing. That is, I am otherwise (though vaguely) lucid enough in waking space to understand the symbolism. (For some reason, just as with other common factors of my dreams, the majority of other people do not seem to experience this. Consequently, from a very young age, I have believed that much of society is either missing a major part of the thinking process, or, using the example of mathematics; people simply are not interested or consider it too difficult or unfamiliar.)

To quote (verbatim), the first text that comes up on Google with a search relating to liminal space: “Liminal spaces, such as waiting rooms, parking lots, stairwells and rest stops, make you feel weird if you spend too much time in them because these spaces exist for the things that come before or after them. Their ‘existence’ is not about themselves.” However, this is not entirely true. In contrast, “The Beach as a Liminal Space” (chapter 28 of “A Companion to Tourism”) and “Porches and the vocabulary of liminal spaces” (Ruth Walker) relate the positive factors.

“In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals.” (Wikipedia.) Certainly, a dream could be viewed as a type of ritual in its waking process and the symbolism that represents the waking process, as a person is between dreaming and waking. This is what such symbolism actually means in contrast to the belief it has an “interpretation”.

Are there specific differences in meaning regarding whether my dream ends on a porch, in a parking lot, or at a store’s checkout? Is it just incidental to the nature of being unconscious and the mind trying to make sense of the shifts in unconsciousness during the sleep cycle? The only time I have validated any sort of connection is when my dream has a prescient thread as such. (Still, prescient threads are most commonly linked to the known symbolism of the dream state itself, something I have found peculiar since childhood.)

I could note that, while a parking lot is often considered an open space (excluding enclosed or multi-storey car parks), a porch and a store’s checkout are usually enclosed spaces. (A carport, originating in my dreams from the years I lived in Cubitis, also represents typical waking process symbolism, especially when that house’s door was used as my dream’s liminal space divider or purposeful exit point, though a carport is more open than a typical porch.) However, the dream state perception (irresolvable by my conscious self) sometimes presents the essence of being indoors and outdoors at the same time, which is different than when I feel the essence of bilocation based on setting dynamics. Even so, this ambiguity so present (and dominating) in some dreams does not occur at all in other dreams. It depends on which neural patterns are active in the waking process.

A store’s checkout as a preparatory symbol in leaving the dream state has an additional factor in some cases. Such a waking process is sometimes more focused (depending on my dream) than other waking transitions. For example, it sometimes has the additional feature of a wallet, which symbolizes the transition of the temporary fictional dream self coalescing back into the conscious self during the RAS mediation (as the cashier can be understood to represent the preconscious in such a scenario), because a wallet “holds identification”. However, porch scenarios also often include RAS mediation or a dominant preconscious “intrusion” (though not in every case, as it depends on the stage of the sleep cycle and whether it is the first or last dream). A parking lot, other than in certain childhood dreams, is less likely to have RAS mediation, resulting in a less dynamic waking process. All three settings occur in different stages of sleep, which validates their connection to the dream state itself in most cases (again, other than when there is a prescient thread).

There are also forms of liminal space of which are perceived as mobile, in which case vestibular system symbolism links to the RAS mediation, which may depend on sleeping position, though is typically more about temporarily ambiguous perception of the physical body while unconscious (especially as the dream self does not have a real physical body). For example, an elevator would be a waking process symbol, though as with other types of liminal space settings, it can also serve as induction (as it is deliberately used in some forms of meditation and hypnosis as such), that is, deeper into the dream state and sustaining it while also vivifying it.

In other entries (at least on my main site), I will go into more detail about known symbolism (of which I am absolutely certain about). I will relate more about how I have been able to understand most aspects of my dreams and sleeping anomalies since childhood, though still present alternate possibilities when they might feasibly (that is, intelligently) exist.

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