Blue_Opossum

Morning of August 15, 2015. Saturday.



My dream’s location seems like the house on Loomis Street regarding the area I sense I am in, though everything is different otherwise and it is not even much like a house; more like a partly underground setting in a zoo, at least in one area, though I seem to be living here. The entire back and north side of the “house” is open, though high walls are at least two sides at the northwest corner. The front is enclosed and there is a row of jalousie windows. (There were no jalousie windows in the Loomis Street house or in any of the houses in La Crosse I had been in).

I become aware that a large tiger is in the front yard. At first, I decide to close the windows due to a slight concern about the tiger smelling me. I do not think it can get in but it might surprise me if I have my head close to the window at a later point. Over time, I realize that there is also a lion in the backyard, though the wall may be high enough so that he does not get into the enclosure I am in.

Later, I realize that these two large animals are supposed to be in the area and that they are like guard dogs in a way. Each has his own space to guard and survey and to stop intruders from getting into “my” house. Somehow, the tiger eventually gets in to where I am. I am not sure how that happened since there is no direct way in via the front. It certainly could not have gotten through the narrow jalousie window’s glass slats at any point. No door had been open, and I do not think it came over the walls in the back and north side. Still, I realize that there is nothing to be worried about. The tiger will not eat me or attack and is simply looking around. I watch it for a time and eventually pet it like a cat. It seems content.

Eventually, I am aware that the lion in the backyard can get in to where I am. This only concerns me in a way that I know it will probably fight with the tiger. I can see the tiger sniffing the air and I look back and see the lion on the top of the wall. I ask a couple unfamiliar people who are there to keep the lion from getting in. However, it eventually goes around to the north wall and I sense there may be a fight, though this does not happen. The lion stands on the wall while observing the tiger and they both continue to sniff the air, but I wake before anything happens. The lion could easily jump down into the structure that the tiger and I are in. I believe the lion will not attack me, but I do not want to see the animals attack each other. My dream fades with a soft awakening (that is, no discernible physical RAS effect such as a leg kick or abdominal twitch).

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The reticular activating system (RAS) is curiously sustained and duplicated here due to an atypically vivid subliminally lucid sequence. Tigers and lions are RAS factors just as snakes (in certain vivid non-lucid dreams) and dogs (in certain apex lucidity dreams mainly only in childhood) are and serve the same purpose with the same basic meaning (though I associate a lion more with waking coalescence as it can swallow the dream self into the “lion as emergent consciousness” as with 1897’s “The Sleeping Gypsy” painting). RAS also serves, biologically, as a “guardian” while mediating sleep-wake transitions, which was in the back of my mind in my dream and the understanding of which altered my dream’s mood and dynamics, for example, why my non-lucid dream self was not afraid of the big cats. Obviously, RAS is a normal part of the mind and nothing to fear (except perhaps in people who tend to faint a lot). Learning about RAS at a very early age is partly how my mind developed differently than many my age and why I rarely have nightmares (other than as health warnings, for example, at the threshold of getting the flu).

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