Non-Lucid Dreams
Morning of September 13, 1976. Monday. I go out to the backyard in my dream and to the area we have regular bonfires and find that my bearded bantam Belgian (a breed of chicken) has gotten loose. I pick her up and she is very tiny. However, I understand that she is a “Hungarian quail” (my father for some inexplicable reason had began calling it Hungarian instead of Belgian with no cue form me) named Gabrielle (instead of Abigail). This was one of thousands of precognitive facets related to my future marriage and life; my wife being from a Hungarian Romani tribe and whose middle name is Gabrielle. My dream was on my wife’s birthday so this is even more validation. This idea is likely at least partly related to the (archetypical if one cannot accept the reality of precognition) “wife as phoenix” theme (recurring and related to my other life-long dreams). The hint is that I found her in the ashes of the bonfire area and she somewhat resembles some images of the mythical phoenix which I had seen in reality. Abigail also had black “ashy” feathers on her back in real life. This was the day I returned to high school (tenth grade) after my operation, but I did not go to any classes or seek information (and just sat around in the open lunch area).
Morning of September 12, 1976. Sunday. In my dream, I find myself at what seems to be the bottom of the sea, though it does not seem that I am really that far underwater. It actually only seems that I am in about ten feet of water or less. There are a few different kinds of large sharks swimming near me, but I do not feel threatened. There is something about retrieving a wallet, though I cannot recall if it is mine or not. For some reason, I am aware of at least one important credit card (possibly more) - Mastercard I think, with possible associations with implications of the word “master” - and possibly some identification cards or folded documents in the wallet I am to retrieve. I can easily breathe underwater, and move about somewhat as if swimming. My dream takes on an odd ambiguity, almost like two simultaneous dreams (both “deep in the ocean” and “looking at city features”), or at least implied bilocated settings. Above me, I look up through a “transparent” floor (as if I have X-ray vision) and notice at least one girl in a skirt walking above me in a presumed office - though I do not feel any significant voyeurism-based interest regarding this imagery and perspective and it is also unlikely that the building above me is actually over the water, as it seems like a business building somehow being seen from elsewhere. However, it may also be a high school with a young teacher present, though I see no one else. There may have been an odd level of foreshadowing and self-fulfilling prophecy here. A few years later, when “going back to school” in a manner of speaking at WWTI (after moving back to Wisconsin) to get my GED (or so-called high school equivalency), I got a student ID card for the first time ever. After the term I absentmindedly threw it over a bridge over the Black River. High school (my tenth grade classes) had started on August 30th, but I did not go until September 13th, due to having recently had an operation on my hand, and I was also still in pain for a couple weeks after my surgery. This dream may have related to the concept of trying to find my “identification” (or place at school) while starting tenth grade with certain students perceived as “sharks”, or potential bullies as well as either “getting credit” for doing school work or getting school credits in a metaphorical association. For an indeterminable reason, this dream seemed somehow “linked” to another completely unrelated and later dream (perhaps being somehow associated with the “same” presumed fictional town at one point) about a fictional movie or documentary about the “1910 Fruitgum Company” (an American bubblegum pop band of the 1960s) as if it was a real company. At one point, I watch while flying or floating from above, a 1922 red Phaeton (long-term-recurring dream feature) going down a street. It is implied that “Winchester Cathedral” (which I vaguely seem to hear playing at least once in my dream) is “their” song, when it was actually done by The New Vaudeville Band in reality. On one level, this may have been a subtle desire to “return to the past” (or at least review it).
Updated 01-13-2017 at 10:49 AM by 1390
Morning of August 28, 1976. Saturday. There were other versions of this dream, one many years later in the 1980s. The location is in the northeast area of my Cubitis home near our shed, a common dream location, often related to wanting to travel north on an otherwise passing train or by walking or running. It was quite rare for radiation (which represents emerging energies of liminal space during shifts in consciousness) to be an issue in my dreams, although I have had a lot of dreams about meteors, some threatening (though meteors are just the conscious mind entering the dream state during the waking transition). In this case, the small orange tree (that never got very big in real life) in the northeast area by the shed has one large orange hanging from a thin branch. I become aware of this fact and focus on it. Over time, a large bright meteor moves down from the sky directly to the east. Even though it is seemingly far away, perhaps a few miles, the orange begins to glow brightly, first with a dull eerie light, then brighter. It has seemingly been infused with radiation. It is sort of an ambiguous event. In some ways, it seems positive but in other ways, a possible danger. I am not sure why the meteor would have only affected that one orange on an under-grown tree. Those who understand the purpose and meaning of dreams will know immediately what this is, and what type. Firstly, an orange represents the conscious mind in downsized rendering (analogous to the light of day or the downsized sun) for more intimacy with the unconscious self, even as a form of nurturing it, and for waking preparation. The meteor, as basically anything coming down from the sky, is caused by threads of conscious awareness (another light of day association but upsized in this case). Dreaming itself is “flying”, and flying or coming down does not have to be the immediate unconscious self perspective, but any sort of projection as such into the rendering of the dream. Thus we have a typical “failed flight” symbol (the entering of the conscious self into the dream), yet also threads of the conscious self becoming extended yet downsized and more intimately present and nurturing in my dream as the orange as it glows with growing awareness, like a sunrise, the opposite of what the (falling) meteor implies which is accelerated sunset, that is, the “sunset” of the dream form. The end of the dream, the beginning of the day.
Updated 05-24-2016 at 07:22 AM by 1390
Morning of August 13, 1976. Friday. Dream #: 3,525-07. Reading time: 20 sec. I enter the Cubitis house’s southwest bedroom (where my school clothes are) in the late morning. I encounter a giant praying mantis that is about as tall as I am. It stands facing me (facing north) on the west side of the room. Curiously, I see it as an oddity, and I do not feel threatened by it. It does not attack me. My dream was probably at least partly influenced by the movie “The Deadly Mantis” (1957) though I had seen these insects in real life.
Morning of July 18, 1976. Sunday. I am in Cubitis or Arcadia, but not near my home. It may be a business office in the center of town. It seems to be late at night. Over time, there is a meeting where people talk about how certain things do not exist, including fairies, witches, devils, and oracles or wizards who pretend to interpret dreams, as well as astrologers and flying saucers. Some people give a speech. Eventually, the most intelligent speaker steps up and talks about different things relating to the supernatural as well as UFO reports, though at one point he confuses “angels” with “angles” as in the “angel” of descent of a meteor or other body falling to earth. (My father did this in real life at the time; that is, sometimes spelled “angel” as “angel” in his song lyrics, which my mother found amusing). Near the end of my dream, this last speaker turns out to be a “real” leprechaun who then boards a 1950s-movie-like flying saucer, and the audience is somewhat stunned. By a strange coincidence, my father talked about “seeing a leprechaun” the same morning, without knowing of my dream (and he rarely ever mentioned anything of that nature), talking about the newer green utility box near the culvert and seeing it through the window (through extended morning hypnopompia) as such. Later on, I imagined the same thing in hypnopompia in the morning, probably by the power of suggestion. I thought the outcome of my dream was quite amusing and would have made a good plot for a funny short film.
Updated 07-23-2018 at 04:32 PM by 1390
Morning of July 7, 1976. Wednesday. Along with “falling” as simply waking (though it also can be dream induction and also relate to partial awakenings between dream immersions), there are thousands of other dream features and events that are so easy to decode the real meaning of, I can only say “Occam’s razor”. A bed symbolizes…a bed. (Wow, that was difficult was is not?) In fact, even if you are not sleeping in a bed as you are dreaming, it still is a real-time dream sign. A lake, the first level of dream induction. (I have probably experienced thousands of water-based dream inductions, but that is irrelevant here.) Junk simply represents random threads of subtle conscious awareness linking to the dream self perspective. (This was validated by a lot of my childhood dreams, which also contained real-time bedroom-related dream signs associated with dumps and junkyards.) There have been several versions of this dream with different additional scenarios throughout my life. In my dream, I am in bed “sleeping” at first. I soon find myself in the middle of a (unknown) lake as if the bed is floating, though it may not be floating after all, but perhaps attached to something. I do not realize that this is typical dream induction (that is, the flow of water coming into dream state awareness). At any rate, I do not become lucid. There are mountains in the distance (which represent the presence of emergent consciousness or subtle threads of conscious awareness). I am also aware that there is old rusty junk in some parts of the water. Some of it is protruding from the surface, though not that much. It looks like part of a car (a typical dream “symbol” for dreaming itself, “in a car” and “in a bed” being closely related as such, driving a car being analogous to moving through the dream state), but since my dream is primarily induction only, not much else, only the waking transition comes into play, which is water getting lower over time, and in this case, reveals more plants emerging from the surface than anything else. Fun and easy.
Morning of June 19, 1976. Saturday. I am in the southwest bedroom of the Cubitis house where my father is present. We are in the southeast area of the room, near the doorway. I am facing the south windows as he is sitting on a chair facing me. He has taken a very rare species of (assumed as fictional) phosphorescent earthworm and is holding it by one end, saying that it has the ability to communicate with people. After a few minutes, the worm curls to form actual vertical handwriting with its entire body, first spelling the word “loam”, then the word “vex”. This is all that it does before my dream fades. (I consider that it is a glow worm, as one of the many songs my father sang publicly was called “Glow Worm”, though that is not actually what it is.) I sense that the worm is annoyed by people trying to get messages from it, when it probably wants to sleep. The earthworm is a real-time dream state symbol. Attempting to read it as it is spelling words is the emergent consciousness factor, as thinking skills for sustained reading are only viable when conscious. As such, it seems that a part of me does not want to get up for the day yet. Additionally, trying to get feasible “messages” from the unconscious is sometimes futile, as it is just that…unconscious. (I suspect that this dream may have also been influenced by the “Sesame Street” short “Mary Sunshine”, though related to counting, with the lyric, “I head eleven worms yawning”.)
Updated 08-31-2019 at 06:16 AM by 1390
Morning of June 12, 1976. Saturday. At the beginning of my dream, I find myself walking north on a known back road between Arcadia and my home in Cubitis. It seems I am returning home from somewhere, possibly school, although it is the weekend in reality. (My dream self often does not know what year it is let alone the day, though walking home here symbolizes my imminent return to consciousness). It is possibly late morning or early afternoon. The weeds on each side of the road are higher and denser than in reality. The road seems older or less-maintained (which may be an indicator of the presence of prescient threads, of which there are two known of in this dream). I am walking on the right side of the road, close to the roadside. Stepping out from the roadside and from my right is a hippie (at least two years older than me, possibly about seventeen) with long blond hair. He is apparently selling GRIT newspapers. He seems like an unlikely older hippie version of my otherwise soft-spoken friend Johnny C—-y, but the hair color is wrong. He is otherwise unknown. Even though he is selling GRIT newspapers, he also seems to be selling illicit drugs (a very rare dream scenario). He offers me a free sample pill called “Snakeskin” (which I first also but only vaguely consider is a reference to American dollar bills, followed by vaguely considering if the pill is actually made of skin from a snake), which is a large green oval tablet. For some reason, I take it (which is something I never would have done in real life). As I continue to walk along, I have a strange feeling of being pulled into the air and thrown to the opposite side of the road, which causes me to wake with an unusual but vague sense of motion sickness, though it is very brief. Familiar dream state components and meanings: RAS symbolism: A snake often serves as the main trigger of RAS and is likely the oldest biologically (and probably serves as such in the dreams of all primates, including lemurs, lorises, monkeys, apes, and man). Here however, the association is with its skin, for the subliminal realization of the shedding of it as releasing the fictional dream self to return to the conscious self identity. The pill, as an emergent consciousness precursor (in contrast to the alternate choice of reading the newspaper), symbolizes the shift in consciousness that occurs with waking. My dream self however, seems to subliminally perceive it as reinduction potential (though just as in waking life, some pills are known to bring one closer to unconsciousness, while this dream ultimately utilizes the opposite inference regardless of how my dream self views it). Vestibular system symbolism: The rising upwards and flipping backwards to the other side of the road is the resolving of ambiguous vestibular system dynamics in rising from unconsciousness. This is the same waking symbolism as in dreams such as “The Pole Vault Event” from 1970, though in that one, the dynamics were transmuted to another dream character. Premonitory hypnopompic precursor: My entire dream seems based on potential control (though based on passive choice in this case) of the waking transition and the nature of RAS. This is because I had continuously been working with dreams in this way since I was around eight years old (to induce apex lucidity). However, prescience always has curious potential despite the dream type or its core symbolism and inherent meaning. In fact, prescience seems far more likely to stem from known core symbolism, which has always puzzled me. Personified preconscious: Newspaper boy. The personified preconscious is rendered for waking mediation of a softer transition than “raw” RAS, though often with conflict if there is real environmental noise (and a need to wake and identity it) or biological need (for example, a need to use the bathroom, drink water, or change sleeping position). Emergent consciousness factor: The newspapers and the pill, relative to apparent choice. The role of the preconscious here is in making me aware of thinking skills (reading) that are only viable when conscious. Additionally, it introduces the choice of exiting my dream with vestibular system consolidation (the pill), of which I subliminally associate with flight and thus prefer in this case over the softer choice (though which sometimes becomes abstract and annoying since printed text is difficult to understand or stabilize in many states of unconsciousness). Prescient threads: A boy (unknown to me) selling GRIT approached my mother after this dream. She purchased the newspaper for about a year and a half prior to our move back to Wisconsin. Additionally, I needed to take both penicillin pills and painkillers after the surgery on my right thumb about two months after this dream. (I had never taken pills on any regular basis before.) The prescient nature of the latter seems to be validated by the preconscious in this case having similarities (in appearance only) to my real-life friend Johnny. Although the pills in this dream are presumably illicit, Johnny had told me a few times in real life that he wanted to be a doctor after finishing high school. Real-life influence seems to have come from a GRIT advertisement, though with altered associations. Additional notes: In this dream, the original vague association of “Snakeskin” being a reference to money was probably based on the altered association with the GRIT advertisement. The waking symbolism is oriented to my right as is most often the case. The preconscious is rendered to my right as the newspaper boy, who steps out from the weeds from my right. This seems mainly due to sleeping on my left side (as real environmental factors are more intrusive upon my right side, which is more exposed to the real environment I am sleeping in, and its ambiance - whereas unconscious factors, even when personified, are typically oriented on my left). In contrast, flying and being suddenly aware of the left side of my body (on the left side of the road) is the final waking dynamic, as it correlates exactly with my real physical orientation and sleeping position.
Updated 01-23-2018 at 10:27 AM by 1390
Morning of May 11, 1976. Tuesday. Yes, this is, after all, the original unimaginative dream journal title from age fifteen. I am at my high school in Arcadia in the lunch break area near the “chuck wagon room”/food purchasing area and I soon see that someone (unknown) had drawn an abstract life-sized asymmetrical picture of a “girl” on the outer wall facing east out into the main open area with the benches, with possibly black chalk on the lighter-colored wall, but the drawing of which is mostly only made up of triangles, rectangles and lines (and likely even distorted handwriting - perhaps implied to be the artist’s signature), but still suggesting a human form overall. Later, it comes to life (after beginning to look a little more like a human form) and I want to catch “her” to get to know her (and perhaps even make love as perhaps she will become more realistic now that she is in the “real” world) but “she” has vanished after running to the north for a time and just as my dream-self starts to attain a clarity bordering on lucidity. Looking back on this and considering how so many dreams were precognitive of my near-legendary “dream girl destiny” - I now consider that the drawing was additionally inclusive of distorted letters of the alphabet in a very similar way as the Gold Key comic book columns which featured drawings by readers of people’s bodies and faces drawn with a base of letters and numbers (and also inclusive of abstract shapes and “squiggles”). In fact, this now clear strong influence seems irrefutable - as we first made (waking reality) contact with handwritten letters. I now consider this dream fully resolved.
Updated 04-24-2017 at 10:56 AM by 1390
Night of February 18, 1966. Friday. When I lived on Rose Street in Wisconsin, I had a few dreams of there being a large swimming pool that took up nearly the entire back lot area, and was fenced in with an unusually high wooden fence (which I doubt could exist as such in reality). Samantha from the “Bewitched” series would visit on a broom (although she did not fly on a broom much in the actual series). The moon sometimes looked cartoon-like, or rather, like a colored-in yellow crescent with no detail, and the sky a deep blue - even with five-pointed and four-pointed stars instead of “real” ones. Since I saw the opening so often, I guess it had a lot of influence. Added online personal notes on Wednesday, 6 July 2016: This dream is a great example of one that holds moon induction, water induction, and a typical flight symbol. Even the fence represents a more defined liminal space.
Morning of February 9, 1976. Monday. Nothing dramatic happens here, but my dream seems to last a long time throughout the morning. Jesus Christ, in large seemingly layered mainly white robes, seems to appear standing on our roof on the northeast area near the chimney my father built, and the concept of “rooftop Heaven” comes to mind, as well as a “Heaven” association with my dream girl (who turned out to be Zsuzsanna in every way possible, including the unlikely mixed accent of Romani Hungarian and Australian). Over time, I see miniature clouds moving through our backyard (autosymbolism for the dream state itself), not that high from the ground. It seems to be late afternoon. (Note that I am not religious and have zero interest in religious dogma despite experiencing a few miraculous healings as well as inexplicable events continuously since childhood, including my inexplicable connection to Zsuzsanna long before we met in waking life.) I consider this precognitive at one level, because my real wife-to-be (and I was not to make waking-life contact with Zsuzsanna for years, until March 1991) lived in Heaven when younger, a real town name in Nimbin.
Morning of January 6, 1976. Saturday. This dream’s focus is quite ambiguous and uncertain at most levels. I am not sure of the location; it seems either undefined or an extreme distortion of my Cubitis living room relative to the east side of it. Two narrower hallways, but not cramped (the entrances only about four feet apart) go off to the east but each also seems to be a type of long kitchen - I am not sure of the distance but it is quite long (longer than the west to east length of the house I would say - although again, the area other than the hallways seems a bit undefined). Each hall seems mostly the same, with sinks, a few ovens, at least one refrigerator, and so on, with cupboards along the wall closer to the ceiling for the most part. I get the impression that there may be a television at one point - farther along. There may also be a storage area for documents near the opposite end. There is no actual plot, just wandering around. The appliances are all white. One would assume a door to be on the opposite end due to the hallway’s length but this does not seem to be the case. No one else seems to be around. There is a sense of familiarity but no clearer emotions of any kind. In reality, we only had a very small kitchenette off the southeast corner of the living room. Relative to the unusual fictional setting, see also the following dreams: Short dream of a house of mystery Submarine
Morning of December 28, 1975. Sunday. “Durio’s Slave” was the original title I gave to this dream even though I did not really play the role of a “real” slave at any point other than the potential to follow the commands of the invading apelike creature. There were a couple similar dreams with minor variations. They related to an “invisible gorilla from another dimension” (or supposed alternate universe) that could somehow speak English and was similar to the style and appearance of the gorillas in the original “Planet of the Apes” movies. I later found (or later realized consciously) that “Durio Zibethinus” was actually a kind of Asian tree (where the fruit has a strange nasty scent, but is a delicacy) even though my dream vaguely implied that Zibenthinus was a prehistoric kind of ape as well as implying “primitive” male dominance. In my later (less threatening) version of the particular dream scenario, he was called “Durio Zibethinus” and he was less of a threat to Earth. There were magazines (from the other dimension with talking gorillas) that were apparently thrown or somehow lost along the wayside of a road in or near Arcadia. There were various photographs in the magazines of the gorillas with more military power. In another dream, he was “Durio Broxum”, and in another, just “Broxum”. In my first main dream, he was sitting at my English teacher’s desk and making plans to allow the other ape soldiers to come through some sort of portal (somewhere in the school, I would assume) and take over the region. At times, he is transparent. No one but me notices this creature (as apparently he is otherwise invisible to everyone but me for some reason). No one but me was aware of the great threat he represented. Aside from the obvious “Planet of the Apes” influences here, there is a possibility that the words in my dream and their distorted meanings (as well as some words being distorted themselves) related to sexuality. A durian, especially when cut in half, can have a very sensual appearance, looking much like a part of the male anatomy (scrotum), or at least implying such. “Bruxom” (also seen as “Broxum” in my dream) could be a simple distortion of “buxom” - or “full-bosomed”. This was noted in my original dream journal entry as a teenager. However, it could also relate to “broxism” or “gnashing of the teeth” (teeth grinders known as “bruxers”) - or some sort of composite of both implying oral contact with breasts perhaps. The majority of dreams are peculiar after all.
Updated 12-10-2015 at 09:29 AM by 1390
Morning of December 12, 1965. Sunday. Summary of meaning: In the need to wake from a vivid dream state (from needing to get up and use the bathroom), my emergent consciousness is rendered as a bull crashing through the wall, as a wall symbolizes the metaphorical divisions of consciousness and the “other side of liminal space” between dreaming and waking. In this case, it seems my father was the parallel symbolism to the bull in representing my more urgent need to wake. The bull’s horn, being pointed and similar to a bird’s beak in hypnopompic physical anticipation (which is experienced as a jab in the lower back), may be a factor. I am sitting with a few family members, the two closest being two brothers-in-law, Bob and Verdell, and they are apparently drinking beer. (Verdell is on my right.) I am not sure of whose house we are in (possibly my older sister Carol’s, as it does not seem like Chipmunk Coulee, but it may be a unique composite of both). There are two couches along each wall, perpendicular to each other, with a small end table towards the corner from one couch. Everyone seems cheerful at first. There is a sudden feeling of impending danger. A bull crashes through the wall from near the corner of the room, directly from in front of me, knocking plaster and such about. This dream was recurring for a short time. In one version, Verdell actually says “look out for the bull” at the moment of waking. This was before I ever saw or heard of the “look out for the bull” Schlitz Malt Liquor commercial on television and also before I grew up and worked for Ford Taurus where I was injured on my right wrist by someone throwing a sharp metal part back down the line from them not being able to keep up (though the commercial is more relevant to dream content regarding prescience).
Updated 08-13-2017 at 11:48 AM by 1390
Night of November 21, 1975. Friday. In a diminishing transition from viable lucidity to semi-lucidity, I am chased by dogs after unintentionally trespassing beyond a fence in an industrial area that is adjacent to a desert with minimal landscape features, though which looks deserted. It seems to be in the distant future, though this perception was likely otherwise influenced by similar panoramas in science-fiction movies I had seen in real life. I am confronted by talking dogs (or so it seems at first). The dogs are mostly Dobermans and black Labrador Retrievers. They seem to be some sort of task force to catch me and somehow bring me to their owners or force me to go in the direction of where their owners are. I am uncertain of the backstory. I am not sure if the dogs are meant to be owned by people who are legitimate owners of the property or if they were trained by outlaws who have taken over the industrial area. At first, I had considered if the dogs were on their own, of augmented intelligence, and in control of the area, but this seems less likely over time. I am aware of the logo embossed on the metallic kite-shaped pendants on their collars being “K-9” as a play on “canine” (though my dream self does not seem fully understanding of this factor). It is not clear if this is the name of the industrial complex or the security team of solely dogs (or inclusive of their owners as a group). However, I start to consider if “K-9” is a codeword for the main dog and if other codes are on other collars, such as “L-10”, or “J-8”, which I seem to briefly perceive on another pendant. Over time, I manage to escape from each situation, such as by climbing up higher in one case. Eventually, I realize that the dogs are not talking but are being given instructions through some sort of comm device in their collars (which is what I had been hearing from the beginning), though I am sometimes addressed as well. I also get the impression that their collars also have small microphones. I eventually end up hiding out in a large warehouse, but not much happens after this other than initiating the usual doorway waking symbolism when my semi-lucidity returns.
Updated 09-10-2019 at 05:35 PM by 1390