Blue_Opossum

Afternoon of February 1, 2018. Thursday.



Until I began to develop a greater understanding of dreams at about age twelve (though I had long since viewed “dream dictionaries”, or any books or articles on a dream’s supposed meaning, as asinine), RAS mediation, especially in apex lucidity, was more likely to render an attacking dog as a waking alert factor than a snake. There is a specific reason for this. While a snake is probably the oldest waking trigger (and of which likely serves as such for the dreams of all primates), a dog has an autosymbolic association with an attempt to control the dream state. I began to naturally both lucid dream and attempt dream state manipulation as a toddler and recognized the aggressive dog autosymbolism by around age eight, including in a later dream from 1970 where I shouted “You dogs are always ruining my dreams” when I was in an extremely clear state of apex lucidity. This caused the dog to teleport (ironically at my unintentional command) to trigger waking with the hypnopompic lower back jab event (the dog’s hard nose pressing into the small of my back). This is solely due to the “obedience” factor. It serves as a metaphor for the dream being obedient for the dreamer as would a dog for its owner. The main problem with this is that dreams are of a biological process and full biological control of one’s mind is inherently limited, not only by current biological needs (such as a need to use a toilet) and environmental factors, but by circadian rhythms. It is not the “subconscious” (as in popular myth) that has anything to do with this, but RAS.

It was common for a dog, usually black or rust-colored, often a Labrador, to be rendered as a potential dream state terminator in early childhood. However, over time, as I mastered RAS mediation to a certain point in the 1980s with hundreds of experiments, it is rare for a dog to be an attack factor in my dreams.

None of this has any relevance to waking life. I never held or maintained any fear of dogs and had never experienced negative encounters with dogs in my childhood. In truth, as with most of my focus on dream study for over fifty years, it is my natural connection to the dream state and awareness of its meanings that is the key factor. People do not seem to understand, since oneironautics is a main aspect of my dream experience since earliest memory in both lucid and non-lucid dreams (the latter by lifelong conditioning), that the symbolism relates to the nature of the dream state itself, not waking life, other than when prescient.

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