FallenAwake

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID
BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

This dream is from the night before the night before last


Book-ended Children

Children running down a sloping sidewalk that curved back and forth. Stone wall along the sidewalk. Cobblestone ground. My consciousness looking down on them as they ran toward “me”. Saying to myself I remember this, I remember reading this. My mom was showing me another reel.

There was something forced about what the children were doing. they didn’t like it but they did relatively well at pretending. I think I knew more about why, that it had something to do with the parents, but I don’t recall now.

Mom put on another old reel. it seemed to be of my father’s side of the family. I knew he would like to see it and wondered at my mom having it instead of him.

In waking life my father idealizes tradition and is also an extraordinarily creative and brilliant man. I think he idealizes being a child, simple carefree yet responsible times. He was a “hippie” black sheep in his family when he was younger. That side of my family had a lot of power that was used for massive capitalistic gains and political influence. There is corruption, greed, addiction, and yet amazing intelligence and creativity smattered around the people. I am curious and feel it is important to know more about this family history. It also makes me feel sick to think of knowing more. My fascination and desire to know the different sides of my family (and myself) usually wins out, though. Well, at least in the internal battles of which I am aware.

I watched the reel on an old contraption that displayed more like a television than a projector. My mom stood to the side, close to the moving picture.

Soft thwacking noises like an old projector. I could almost see the frames as they shuffled past, specks and lines of light flashing and morphing with them.

A man (I think a/the/[my?] father), somber and proud like in older photographs, sat on the right, looking at the camera. The children to the left of him in their sitting positions, and then sat a huge man in a tuxedo complete with tailcoat. The two men were like bookends, the children between them. We’d only been watching it a minute, and mom already wanted to change reels. I said no, I want to see them when they move. I said their body language would be very significant, would show me more about who they actually are. It felt intensely important and I was riveted.

The large, hulking man stood and walked to the right. Maybe 8 or 9 feet tall, who knows, maybe 10. Big, round belly, sloped shoulders. (He reminds me of the way my maternal grandpa looked when he was dying of cancer, that same kind of oval shape, but much more extreme, and more solid and thick.) I didn’t think he was a family member of mine. The father (it was my impression I think, though perhaps it was a waking reflection) stood and slowly walked to the right. I watched his body carefully (from where the audience would be if there was one) and couldn’t tell much about him from the way he walked. It was so slow, as if he was favoring physical pain. His stiffness swallowed up his personality.

There were a lot of dream characters projecting their personae in this dream, like they were conforming to older, more serious social pressures. Personae that were hollow yet strong. Weak, deep, and shallow and full of tightly woven rules.

I feel an association between the father dream character and my paternal great grandfather, father of my father's father. I never knew him. It makes sense, given my grandfather’s and his brother’s dichotomies, success and greed for one, creativity and susceptibility in the other. Or so I've interpreted and oversimplified.

The trickle of this history of family emotions is a reason I think this song taps a large body of water inside me.



“I am out here studying stones
trying to learn to be less alive
using all of my will to keep very still
still even on the inside

I've cut all the pertinent wires
so my eyes won't make their connections
I am holding my breath
I am feigning my death
when I'm looking in your direction

...when all the forbidden fruit is fallen and rotted
well that's when I'm gonna come down"

Even if they’re partial hogwash, I feel love flowing from new understandings.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID
BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

From the night before last

A friend of mine from waking life was with me. (He was someone I had feelings of being in love with which had been returned to a tentative extent. It was not explored more than mentally and somewhat emotionally. The timing was not right for ethical reasons. We explored each others’ minds, to the extent I could at that time and it was exhilarating.)

We were outside, in the large front area of an old looking house. The house had perhaps that pinky colored brick (which inspires me with a deep feeling of beauty in waking life) used on two ends to create rounded walls, like they were slightly punched out of the house like columns, their windows facing us. Something about that shape was important. I felt a connection to family past.

Outside, where we were, was beautiful and warm. Like a cool summer day at sunset, when the colors are deep and warm and have the feint feeling of being lit from the inside. We were standing under an umbrella-ing tree. The greens and oranges and browns infused around and through us, as if it was a time when the smells come alive to flow slowly through the warm air.

There was some specific reason (the architecture, I think) that he didn’t like it. I told him I thought houses like these were beautiful! Told him about when I’d been in another one like it, I think with family, and how wonderful it was. Though I didn't feel angry or scared, the feeling of my awareness of his (sometimes pushy) tendency to criticize was with me.

I was exuberant about the love I’d experienced in that house, though I could feel something darker inside this particular, extraordinarily similar house as we stood outside. I didn’t feel very threatened by the darkness, more just aware and happily reliving parts of the joyful memories inside the other house. The memories were infused with a sense of family and connection and freedom of expression. Curious, I want to call it almost doula-like love with a lot of feminine energy.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID
BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

Slipping a Picture Out

A younger man and a man who seemed to be something like his mentor. Doing some organizing or redecorating of some sort. Cleaning? Inside an old, historic feeling building. Many large windows around one end.

The younger man (was it me? I seemed to switch back and forth from third person to somewhat identified with him) had accomplished something, some landmark. He seemed like a learned novice. He had a picture of himself to mark the occasion.

The older man took a frame off the wall. The frame and its anchoring to the wall was complex, attached to a simple wood rod decoration with a few soft undulances and shallow, smooth, symmetrical crevices. It was dusty. Some old, shriveled cobwebs huddled against it. The frame somehow slid onto this bar to connect to the wall. He told the younger man that he was going to replace the older picture of another of his (students?) with this one. The younger man felt uncomfortable with this, knew it would upset the person who was being replaced. The older man didn’t open the frame, just slowly slipped the other picture out of the bottom, surprising the young man, who was me, and then slid the new picture in.

The new picture looked casual and somewhat professional, but not strong, solid, and fitting like the old picture. It looked too new, too much of a body shot, too bright, not authentic and serious and traditional enough, with muted colors, like the picture that used to be there. But it did look happier and younger.

The man whose picture had been replaced came over from the dim back of the building, which felt like an old bar. He was somewhat angry and jealous, disappointed, about his picture being removed. He didn’t feel positively toward the young man.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT


Dinner and “Centipede” Lizards Licking Legs

At dinner with 3 people. I felt younger, perhaps college age or just graduating. It was some kind of planned event, like a celebration. I thought we were there with others who were at different tables.

Three other people with me. Empty (used?) glasses already on the table, shoved to the side. Cluttered with, were they layers of old menus as “placemats”? Dirty, dusty, old.

They brought us drinks. Mine was a warm margarita-type drink. I wondered again about the service considering the warm drink. I drank it, flourishing it a bit like I was an old hand. I thought how I was trying to be something I wasn’t. Projecting a persona, and that wasn’t subtle enough. It didn't feel like me.

Me and the others didn’t seem too connected, but there was a comfort.

It took a loooong time for the food to come, if it did (I don’t recall).

A foot long creature came through the wall and walked under the table, turned right, and kept going. I followed. I called it a centipede in my mind but realized it was more like a lizard with 4 stumpy legs, like a long, unshelled turtle. Another one came, following the same path.

I sat back down, next to the girl (who had been a part of the 4 of us before?).

Yet another creature walked that path, and I wondered about them being young and is their mom about to come? Another young one. Then the mom, larger, with a more rounded mouth. She noticed us (unlike the children) and slowly opened her mouth near my leg. I thought she was going to lick me but maybe bite me.

I pulled my bare legs up onto the booth. She put her stumpy front legs up on the side of the booth but couldn’t reach me. She turned toward the other girl’s legs and slowly opened her mouth. The girl didn’t seem concerned and I cautioned her about the saliva, that it might be poisonous. The creature had a very large, wide almost human-like tongue. It seemed friendly. The girl let her lick her legs. The creature licked slowly and in wide strokes. I inspected the girl from a distance. She seemed fine, no reaction to a toxin if there even was a toxin in the saliva.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID BOLD IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT


Progress

I woke up a few times throughout the night and realized I was dreaming, just barely waking and telling myself I was dreaming, hoping I was still in the dream (seemed about 2 seconds out of the dream), then tried to go back in lucid. Didn’t work that I recall, though I was happy that I was so quickly thinking that thought and focusing on being at the least aware of my dreams, if not lucid.


Restaurant Fragment

I saw a previous employer [who I’d had a blow-up with and left in waking life]. I was at his restaurant, it wasn’t significantly unpleasant that I recall. Was there dark water and the sidewalks were square “docks” that resembled rafts and warehouse pallets or was that another dream? If it was then I’ve dreamed about those docks/sidewalks at least three times.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID UNDERLINED IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

Walking with someone in a town I where I used to live.. I realized I needed to go back to my old house. I told them and walked the opposite way. The parting was kind of difficult.

I realized I was walking the round-about way to the house, picturing the map.

I started to approach a place I had worked (had to walk by it) I didn’t want them to know I was back, to think I’d stay. An old coworker walked out of the building. She looked beautiful in an unconventional way. I turned my head, wondered how to avoid her recognizing me. I thought about just walking past. I dropped my files [on purpose?]. I squatted to pick them up. She came over and we talked about me coming back to work. She said I should make sure to let “her”, the director, know that I wouldn’t be staying indefinitely. She stressed it.

I saw her words as written text, up close like they were the only thing in the world. I zoomed in further. A word or two related to what she was stressing were highlighted and bold and underlined [green or red or purple? Maybe all, seemed it changed color] I came back [or was it parallel?] to picking up the folders. There was one that was particularly important and the way it was stacked relative to the rest was of importance. I wasn’t sure how I should hold them again.

I felt trapped into the job, but also like I wanted to work there. I felt confused about what I was doing, why I was in this town again, where I was going after.

WAKING LIFE DREAMING LUCID UNDERLINED IF IT FEELS PARTICULARLY SIGNIFICANT

Spoiler for Past Related Dreams and History:

History

A new experience dreaming the other night. It gave me hope even though I woke in fear. It also prompted me to get off my butt and finally join a forum that discusses such things. First, a little history.

In the past I’ve had a reoccurring dream of family members and others trying to kill me. One repeated every year it seemed, starting at the age of about 8 and ending (at least consciously) around 18. In this dream a calm and intense voice announced to me that my family was turning into monsters. I ran from them. My father chased me (the chase scenes varied significantly, thought it seems that they were always outside of my grandmother’s house, where the dream started). Sometimes I got away, sometimes I fell, and there was one time I thought I experienced death before I woke up. The dreams filled me with terror.

Other similar dreams have often occurred, the main theme being that someone is stalking me and I am aware that they wanted to kill me. Sometimes I’d confront them. Most times it would be an endless hiding and running deep fear experience. Sometimes it was a combination of both. I’ve experienced other variations of this type of terror dream, often including sharks (in college), tornadoes, and tidal waves.
Usually when I wake the consuming fear and sadness and loneliness from these dreams is so very present, infusing me to some extent throughout the day no matter how much I process and release it. It can be exhausting. Ok, pretty much done with the history.


Recent History

A couple nights ago a terror dream was different than other experiences. I haven’t been remembering my dreams as often in the recent past (I started to type recent future, lol). I had meditated right before sleeping with binaural audio that also incorporates other meditation-inducing aspects. It was a pretty deep meditation and a lot more emotional pain than usual came up, but I was largely able to hold the discomfort in a larger awareness and release happened as well. I fell asleep.

Nightmare with Lucid Meditation

The terror dream was a series of people trying to kill me. Each chapter seemed to occur in my current home or a similar one.

One instance was a psychological death of sorts, where someone wanted me to admit something I’d done that hurt them but I knew that if they knew it would hurt them more than if I didn’t tell them. I felt ashamed. As they tried to dig it out of me tears ran down my face and I avoided looking into their eyes. I think I explained to them at one point that I couldn’t tell them or they would be more hurt. I was conflicted and I’m not sure I held my ground (I think the dream changed at that point).

The dream continued, one person trying to kill me, the dream morphing, then another person trying to kill me, and so on. They were sneaky, some trying to lull me into feeling comfortable with them. It didn’t work. I knew. I resisted. After a few chapters in the dream, I became aware that I was dreaming. In this lucid state I tried different tactics.

1. Dream Control

I tried what I now know to be called dream control. Tried to turn my stalker away, tried to make them friendly, tried to make it not be about being stalked. That wasn’t as “successful” as the tactic has been in other lucid dreams I've had.

2. Wake

I tried to wake myself. In the dream I had access to my real memories: I recalled that I’d woken myself from a nightmare as a young child, maybe 5 years old, after frantically trying to wake in the dream and having no success. This is how I remember it. I became aware of my physical body in my bed. I tried to open my eyes. Felt my eyebrows raising, my lids stretching, but they stayed together. I tried to move my arms. They were heavy, they wouldn’t move. Then my shoulders responded. Finally my arms moved. I reached up and opened my eyes with my hands and woke like that…my fingers on my eyelids, having pulled them apart manually.

Remembering the success of this childhood experience, I attempted this tactic in my dream last night while lucid. It failed. Throughout using these wake-myself-up-please tactics,

I would think I had awakened only to find out I was still in the dream. I became identified with the dream and then lucid and aware I was dreaming (usually because I had a new stalker or less often because something else wouldn't be the same as in my home) again over and over after each failed attempt.

First I tried to wake myself by simply willing it, then throwing a large amount of the energy of my desire to wake into it.

Then I tried to feel my body in my bed, to establish a connection like I thought I had in childhood. It seemed that I could feel my body and that I woke. This was the first time I thought I'd woken up but after I “woke” myself I soon discovered I was being stalked again and had not escaped the dream.

Then I tried to not only feel my body but to move my body, however, I found I wasn’t very coordinated and I was flailing. I became afraid of hurting myself or spilling my water on my nightstand, etc.

The cycle of thinking I had awoken and then realizing I was still in the dream (I think called false awakenings?) came full circle at least 3 times, though in my not completely clear recollection it feels like it was more like 4 to 6 times.

3. Lucid Meditation

At one point I tried to meditate in the dream, hold the dream and the fear of the dream in the arms of my awareness so that I wasn’t so self-identified with it and terrified. This was the new accomplishment. A big one. I don’t think it lasted long, maybe a couple minutes.

I’ve been in different meditative states in many dreams, but this one was intentionally, lucidly, induced. Even though it was a meditation initially infused with the desire to escape from the emotions, I'm still goanna break out with a yay! I came to a place where I wasn’t hiding or trying to wake up. I was confronting in an accepting way while still trying to protect myself.

The meditation did not relieve the fear but I felt more me, more whole. At first the fear was very present and perhaps more so. It seems that the fear ebbed to some degree after a time. I remember looking down on my body during the meditation. The dream also may have gone to black and white during the meditation and got a static quality to it, like white noise. I don't remember ever dreaming in black and white, though now that I look back I don't recall any color in the dream at any point. I am skeptical of it not being in color, however, because now it is days since the dream occurred and I only remember snippets. After the short meditation is when I fuzzily think I woke.

I don't remember the sequence of the following parts of the dream. I'm about 90% sure I wasn’t lucid at the time:

I felt physical pain when one stalker was biting my lips. The physical pain felt so…well…physical. It hurt in a sharp way, just as if my dream body was a physical one. That realization is unsettling and also wondrous. Now I realize that both of the times I have been aware of physical pain in dreams was when I was being bitten. Both dreams were at some point lucid dreams, but not lucid at the time that I was being bitten. The other time was a dog biting my fingertips. Now I’m interested in this…why biting? Perhaps this similarity is connected to a pattern, perhaps not. Worth keeping an eye on it and a thought hanging around.

I tried to manipulate the people out of trying to kill me. I plotted quickly as they advanced. One of the people I offered myself to sexually to try to avoid being killed, to distract him. It worked. It was boring and rather ineffectual sex and I ended up feeling frustrated because I wanted more pleasure, even though I was creeped out and scared.

Well, that was long. I doubt I'll want to use the energy to write so much in the future (or try to refine the clarity of my writing so much, gah), but this dream absolutely fascinated me and I felt reconnected to past dreaming experiences after dry spells and inattention. It woke the inspiration.

I think a big part of why it waned was nobody I shared these types of dreams with had similar experiences or seemed to want to dive in. But after reading some of the forum, wow, some of you not only have had similar but extensive experiences. Thanks for reading, I'm interested in learning from others on this site if you want to respond! That said, I also have a very skeptical side and enjoy critical and insightful discussion, though it is tempered by many other sides.

- Souls or spirits coming to me for help or helping me, and/or trying to take advantage of me or invade me

- Terror, anxiety, and/or rushing

- Tidal waves and tornadoes

- Being stalked with murderous intent

- People and animals from my past

- Spiritual bliss / channeling / meditating / healing / overwhelming beauty and a feeling of my heart opening

-Extraordinarily (somewhat glowing) vibrant colors, especially in nature and spiritual symbols (usually when experiencing that blissful feeling, sometimes when interacting with souls or spirits)

I imagine these will change since I haven’t kept records of a lot of my dreams and these are somewhat based on the dreams that were significant enough to me to remember.

(And hi everyone, I'm new here.)