All DJ Entries

Morning of May 29, 1995. Monday.



This is a long dream of a factory that is mostly under the ocean but partly above it in some areas (and thus would be autosymbolism for the sleep cycle and the essence of different areas of consciousness in REM sleep). I go there in a boat after exploring a different building near the ocean. At one point, a shark keeps coming up through the bottom of my boat and roaring like a lion. This “shark” eventually becomes, or somehow always was, only printed on a small thin piece of cardboard. The bottom of my boat seems to be very thin cellophane-like plastic that allows you to see the motions of the water. (This is not the first time that a three-dimensional RAS modulation precursor was transformed into a two-dimension presence, thus a result of my dream self non-lucidly modulating the waking autosymbolism. It always happens in a liminal space buffer - “from under the boat” and in another dream “in the doorway”.)

Later, an unknown female near the factory is eaten by a “real” shark. There are female dancers on a high platform and a staircase that goes down several levels (implying a desired return to deeper sleep). The factory is later threatened by the intrusion of a giant alligator and a plesiosaurus and everyone in the factory goes down to the lower levels rather than evacuating the factory itself. (In other words, hiding from the waking mechanism of which in this case implies coalescence and consciousness unification, though in maintaining an unwillingness to wake yet, in a negative context).

This potential waking trigger does not cease (which of course is a good thing, as one cannot sleep forever). As a lion, a shark, and an alligator are all basically the same factor for this dream type, it is typical multiplicity here. Even the plesiosaurus represents the coalescence precursor here (as it has been in other dreams) though is often a lucidity trigger (as the long neck implies being above the essence of the dream state in the manner of being able to mediate it).

There is a large gun that is robotically linked to a duplicate one on a higher level. When one correctly aims at a projection of any creature above and shoots, the other gun automatically shoots the “real” creatures above on the surface. When I use the weapon, I get both monsters the first time. (This scene obviously represents non-lucid RAS modulation, that is - my dream self non-lucidly utilizing the essence of my conscious will without being directly lucid.)

The factory apparently produces a lot of different things made solely from sea salt and perhaps features of the sea bottom. I look around, as I finally allow my dream to fade under my (liminal) terms. (Even though I took control of my dream on one level by avoiding the waking precursors, which were violent coalescence metaphors, I still did not attain full lucidity.)

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Morning of October 1, 1988. Saturday.

Dream #: 7,957-03. Optimized 2 min read.

My dream concludes briskly. Its foreground is defined by rich imagery and lively movement but without adequate realism. (Its content is unrelated, but the outcome has a similar essence and momentum as a childhood dreaming experience in which Toby and I rescue Brenda from a fire.)

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It is late morning in La Crosse. Without evidence, I assume an accident has occurred in the factory where my brother-in-law Bob is working. The mentation does not infer any details of the accident. I remain standing near the street, about half a block from the factory (probably Machine Products Co. Inc. - where Bob works in real life, though lacking its correct appearance). The rest of the setting is a featureless lawn. There is a sense of urgency, but I do not interact with my dream’s surreal content. There is awe but no concern regarding Bob’s fate or how he might recover.

An ambulance suddenly arrives off to my left, but I do not focus on it. The ambulance crew rushes into the factory. Immediately (with my dream not including any intermediate details or realistic timing), I see my brother-in-law lying on a stretcher, being quickly carried into the foreground by unfamiliar young men in white. Bob is oriented with his head away from me, though partly at an angle oriented to my right. One man holds the end of the stretcher near Bob’s feet, though grips it from behind him while running forward. The second man is supporting the other end.

Bob is on his back, with only the right side of his body remaining. His left side is missing as if he was vertically cut in half, yet there is no blood or gore. Even so, he seems to be alive but semi-conscious. The exaggerated stride of the two interns is vaguely reminiscent of a Mad Magazine Don Martin panel. The impossibility of the scene does not register with my dream self as such.

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This dream is merely a waking trope, correlating with the absence of mind-body connectivity resulting from sleep. Its self-evident causation is immediately recognizable.

Half of Bob’s body on the stretcher is an atypical feature caused by anticipating vestibular system correlation, feasible mobility, and viable physicality in emerging from in-dream sleep paralysis (of which I usually am only instinctually aware other than when I navigate the hypnopompic state). Bob is this dream’s sleep simulacrum, a fundamental factor of my dreaming experiences each sleep cycle for over 50 years.

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A lifetime of experience has taught me that waking tropes usually do not have a real-life meaning or significance. Why would they? They are fundamentally the result of navigating dream space or emerging from sleep. Whether sleep simulacra appear as deceased, sleeping, in suspended animation, or with surreal or impossible injuries as here does not have to correlate with anything other than my depth of sleep and my anticipated transition into mind-body reconnectivity and wakefulness. Even the sense of urgency is often irrelevant, sometimes triggered by an insignificant sound in the environment.

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