Blue_Opossum

Morning of June 4, 2018. Monday.



I find myself swimming and breathing underwater (as I have always done in such scenarios) inside an unfamiliar house of which is mostly empty of furniture.

There is a clear memory of an unknown man having told me about an experience with a shark. His son had been playing with a shark and also had fishing line wrapped around him that was also wrapped around the shark. There is a vague puzzlement as to why anyone would play with a shark (perhaps they were both naïve), but there is nothing said about the boy or his father being in any danger. The man described how he had gotten his son back, but had not been able to get him back solely from pulling on the fishing line, which seemed to puzzle him.

I eventually notice a shark remaining in one position above me, close to a wall and near the ceiling. There is a long length of fishing line trailing out from its mouth, curving through the water in at least one figure eight pattern, some of the line through its gills and some over the dorsal fin. The other end of the fishing line ends near where I am floating near the center of the room. I do not feel endangered in any way.

I consider pulling on the fishing line to see what happens, but I decide not to and swim around for awhile, exploring the mostly empty house. There is a peaceful feeling despite a shark being present, though it never moves from its original position.

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Autosymbolism explained:

Being underwater: Instinctual awareness of being asleep. (Being able to breathe underwater is proof that I have subliminal awareness that I am dreaming.)

Shark: Instinctual in-dream awareness of RAS (reticular activating system) and its waking process function.

Not pulling on the fishing line: Liminal dream control (dream control without lucidity) based on lifelong understanding of dream state autosymbolism. (If I had pulled on the fishing line, it might have initiated RAS.)

The memory of the story: I was wondering if my youngest son was sleeping well in his room before I went to bed. This carried over into a projected backstory in this dream.

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Lucid dreaming (being consciously aware of being in the dream state) and control of a dream by way of dream self modulation over RAS are unrelated despite the myth of lucidity being related to dream control still being widely propagated.

This dream is obviously modulated by my dream self (by way of the virtuous circle effect in having a deep understanding of my dreams for over fifty years), yet I am not lucid. I use the term “liminal” in a different way than some other writers. Technically, there is a subtle difference between subliminal and liminal regarding the dream self’s perception, but when I write “liminal dream control” I am describing full control of a dream without any awareness that I am dreaming or even recalling what a dream is. This is a specific type of synaptic OR gating.

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