Dream 1: Driving I was supposed to get to Rosamond, I think to meet Dad for something. I pulled up the map, and accidentally tapped the wrong town, whose name started with a “B,” that was right next to my destination. The map was completely fictional – The land mass I was on was a large island, and the surrounding towns were all in their own little sections of the map. Rosamond was to the southeast of me, and the GPS had me taking a highway that went south and then out east to the town. I set my destination and started driving. The freeways were crazy – they all had ridiculous hills and steep, sharp drops. I felt myself going too fast at times, but when I went to slow down the freeway would smooth out and I’d be back to going 70-75 mph as I usually do. At one point I took the wrong exit; instead of the one that was labelled for my path to the left, I took the exit to the right labelled “Superman,” and took an almost 90-degree drop. My car started to flip over, but the scene switched into a third-person perspective, and I was able to right my angle to land all four wheels before the road started to flatten. The dream scene changed as I made it to my destination. It was a big city, reminiscent of Chicago, but it was supposed to be San Diego. The freeway had one more giant hill and drop, but there was too much traffic to get up to it. It was easier just to take the elevator up to the top of the building the freeway connected to, then drive one of the rental cars off the top. So, I got out, met a friend of mine, then we waited in line. The scene changed and ended before I got up to the top. Dream 2: Dinner Before this begins, I am now not too sure of myself – is this a separate dream, or just a change of scenery? I met my family at an Italian restaurant called Rigatony’s, in San Diego. It was rather small and busy inside. This was the kind of place that the locals would eat at. The walls were decorated with these façades of Italian buildings, so it was supposed to feel like we were eating in an alleyway, or in the middle of the street. There was a family a few tables across from us, who had a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. My Dad said this was a pretty popular place, and I asked him how that could be if it was so small. He pointed to one of the doors of the façade, a screen door with frosted glass, and I noticed there were some lights behind it. He told me that door opened up to a whole ‘nother section of the restaurant just like the one we were in. the dream faded out as R2-D2 from star wars was trying to scoot past our table. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here I would like to describe the feeling of the decoration in this restaurant. I would describe it as an indoor space trying to seem like an outdoor one. It gives me a strange, otherworldly feeling – like it is completely fake, and I can see that I’m inside if I look closely enough. But if I decide to ignore the details, then I can be immersed and feel like I am outside. Once place in waking life that gives me this feeling is the Venetian in Las Vegas. Look up some pictures of the inside and you’ll see what I mean. The ceiling is painted and lighted to look like the sky, with clouds and sunlight, and if you don’t look closely enough you may be fooled.
Afternoon of January 9, 2018. Tuesday. Three common waking space settings (in my fifty years of dreaming history since earliest memory) are as follows: Porch Parking Lot Store checkout (There are many more, which I will provide information on in future entries.) The fallacy of “interpretation” (often incorrectly referred to as “meaning”) works like this: A random member of society (even an “expert” or “professional”), who almost always lacks the understanding of what a dream actually is (or what is occurring unconsciously), will see one of these three settings and pretend it has a concurrent meaning related to real life, in the pretense of nebulously “indicating” something about real life. That would be a good trick since the above settings have occurred on a regular basis in my dreams for over fifty years, typically in the last segment of a dream sequence. When rendered as settings in a dream, these elements are typically symbolic of the dream state itself and the waking transition, and as such, often have nothing to do with “interpretation” or waking life. I know this from having continuously studied my dreams for over fifty years. There is no doubt in my mind, especially as I am aware of my own dream self and its viewpoints as I move through such waking transitions, with the actual understanding (though subtle) at one level, of what I am experiencing. That is, I am otherwise (though vaguely) lucid enough in waking space to understand the symbolism. (For some reason, just as with other common factors of my dreams, the majority of other people do not seem to experience this. Consequently, from a very young age, I have believed that much of society is either missing a major part of the thinking process, or, using the example of mathematics; people simply are not interested or consider it too difficult or unfamiliar.) To quote (verbatim), the first text that comes up on Google with a search relating to liminal space: “Liminal spaces, such as waiting rooms, parking lots, stairwells and rest stops, make you feel weird if you spend too much time in them because these spaces exist for the things that come before or after them. Their ‘existence’ is not about themselves.” However, this is not entirely true. In contrast, “The Beach as a Liminal Space” (chapter 28 of “A Companion to Tourism”) and “Porches and the vocabulary of liminal spaces” (Ruth Walker) relate the positive factors. “In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals.” (Wikipedia.) Certainly, a dream could be viewed as a type of ritual in its waking process and the symbolism that represents the waking process, as a person is between dreaming and waking. This is what such symbolism actually means in contrast to the belief it has an “interpretation”. Are there specific differences in meaning regarding whether my dream ends on a porch, in a parking lot, or at a store’s checkout? Is it just incidental to the nature of being unconscious and the mind trying to make sense of the shifts in unconsciousness during the sleep cycle? The only time I have validated any sort of connection is when my dream has a prescient thread as such. (Still, prescient threads are most commonly linked to the known symbolism of the dream state itself, something I have found peculiar since childhood.) I could note that, while a parking lot is often considered an open space (excluding enclosed or multi-storey car parks), a porch and a store’s checkout are usually enclosed spaces. (A carport, originating in my dreams from the years I lived in Cubitis, also represents typical waking process symbolism, especially when that house’s door was used as my dream’s liminal space divider or purposeful exit point, though a carport is more open than a typical porch.) However, the dream state perception (irresolvable by my conscious self) sometimes presents the essence of being indoors and outdoors at the same time, which is different than when I feel the essence of bilocation based on setting dynamics. Even so, this ambiguity so present (and dominating) in some dreams does not occur at all in other dreams. It depends on which neural patterns are active in the waking process. A store’s checkout as a preparatory symbol in leaving the dream state has an additional factor in some cases. Such a waking process is sometimes more focused (depending on my dream) than other waking transitions. For example, it sometimes has the additional feature of a wallet, which symbolizes the transition of the temporary fictional dream self coalescing back into the conscious self during the RAS mediation (as the cashier can be understood to represent the preconscious in such a scenario), because a wallet “holds identification”. However, porch scenarios also often include RAS mediation or a dominant preconscious “intrusion” (though not in every case, as it depends on the stage of the sleep cycle and whether it is the first or last dream). A parking lot, other than in certain childhood dreams, is less likely to have RAS mediation, resulting in a less dynamic waking process. All three settings occur in different stages of sleep, which validates their connection to the dream state itself in most cases (again, other than when there is a prescient thread). There are also forms of liminal space of which are perceived as mobile, in which case vestibular system symbolism links to the RAS mediation, which may depend on sleeping position, though is typically more about temporarily ambiguous perception of the physical body while unconscious (especially as the dream self does not have a real physical body). For example, an elevator would be a waking process symbol, though as with other types of liminal space settings, it can also serve as induction (as it is deliberately used in some forms of meditation and hypnosis as such), that is, deeper into the dream state and sustaining it while also vivifying it. In other entries (at least on my main site), I will go into more detail about known symbolism (of which I am absolutely certain about). I will relate more about how I have been able to understand most aspects of my dreams and sleeping anomalies since childhood, though still present alternate possibilities when they might feasibly (that is, intelligently) exist.
Morning of January 3, 2016. Sunday. I am flying throughout my dream (with no backstory in mind) yet I do not recognize that I am dreaming at any point, which is curious. Mostly, my actions are illogical since I probably could just fly off to my right at any time, to find another location or region to land in, but I do not want to land in any area directly below me yet (or off to the left where there seem to be more forests being cut down), where my attention is mostly held. I do not want to land because the area is a very large lumber camp, which seems to go in a continuous arc, though it is not clear what is off to my right from this arc - probably the ocean or possibly an undefined and unrendered area where I cannot “really” go or an implied barrier (divided by liminal space, though I am not lucid enough to consider this possibility as dream-based) which I cannot go past. It seems that the lumber camp is very active in most sections and for whatever reason, I sense the workers are very hostile to intruders of any kind, including wayward flying people. After all, they are destroying the landscape, so probably would destroy anything (including people) in their path (as I do not reason they are doing it to provide for people as they likely may be). In one way, it seems like a miniature landscape (of about one-quarter scale), but this seems a possible distortion of my perspective. I do not fly close enough to the ground at any point to see that much. There is another distortion, something almost abstract but related to having to write something in a journal or notepad (while flying?) while just outside the perimeter of this range though which causes additional frustration. My flight path is continuously aligned to the semicircular lumber camp, which seems to go on like this for a considerable distance. This of course makes no sense, as if such was the case, I would be flying in a circle yet I seem to be going in only one direction in my dream and the land features below are consistently different as well. There may be some sort of association with circumventing and circumference, as this was one of those dreams that seemed to “self-title” itself after waking, something I have experienced fairly often since around the age of eight.
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