Brainchild's B.O.D. (Book of Dreams)

Hey y'all!

I know it's customary for folks to make dream journals on here and although I do intend to post my dream recollections on this thread, I also want to post some lessons learned and epiphanies gained through my dream life. I don't know if many read my intro thread but I mentioned that I am a survivor of child abuse and have been trying to heal over the past year. I had vivid LDs as a young child, many I can never forget as long as I live. As my home life spiraled out of control, I lost the ability to have LDs, although back then I had no idea that lucid dreams were any different than regular dreams and I really didn't grasp that others didn't regularly have LDs. But, as of 9/4/08, I'm back in the game with 1 LD under my belt. Woohoo!

So "stay tuned" folks. I hope, at least, this is entertaining.

SEPTEMBER 4, 2008 - DILD
Last night I fell asleep normally. I was a bit stressed-out by somethign that had happened earlier in the day but it didn't affect my dream, luckily. Without any special preparations, I went to bed and had three dreams, two of which I cannot remember, unfortunately. What brought on the third dream, I believe, is that I got up with my boyfriend when he was gettign ready for work. After he left, I laid down for another 4 hours and BAM--lucid dream.

THE DREAM
Let me say first that I'm not sure how I became lucid but I think it had to do with me trying to understand what someone was saying to me but it wasn't really making sense.
I was working with kids but they were mer-kids (half-fish, half-kid) and there was this scientist that kept talking to me about some disease that the kids were catching in the observation tanks. He seemed extremely concerned and I got the feeling that he had told me all of what he had because I was supposed to do something about it. I immediately began to think "OMG. I don't know anything about veternarian science." Sounds hilarious now but in the dream I felt genuinely afraid that I was about to kill a whole race of undiscovered creatures. And, sorry you guys, I woke up.

Not so interesting for a lucid but it's a big step for me.

That sounds like an interesting dream. Happy new dream journal.

I think I've figured out one of my dream signs. My dreams tend to be staged in some place that I find fascinating or beautiful. That's about the only thing I think would tip me off that I'm in a dream.

I had a dream last night (regular dream) that was slowly becoming a nightmare. Once again, I was working with kids (that's bound to mean something....) but they were regular kids this time. I had a teaching assistant (I think that's what she was) who kept telling me that the principal was coming to review the class "real soon". And she seemed real scared. Funny thing is, whenever she told me this, the only way I could envision the principal was as Megatron, which was terrifying in the dream. I can't remember anything beyond that. I guess I still have lots of dream recall work to do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by apachama

That sounds like an interesting dream. Happy new dream journal.

---

Thanx! :)

PAST DREAMS I'M BEGINNING TO REMEMBER (all regular dreams)

* Working for a pit crew in a quaint, small town. I never see a race but me and the other crew members are always working on a car.

* Riding in the backseat of a car on the outskirts of the fairgrounds in my hometown. I only looked out of the window for most of this dream. It was very calming.

* Vacationing in Greece with a boyfriend (not the current one ;) ) when the island is evacuated as it comes under attack by demons. Oddly enough, my brother-in-law (trifling in waking life) saves me and my man from a demon before the dream ended.

* (THIS IS A WEIRD ONE BECAUSE I MAY HAVE BECOME LUCID ON-AND-OFF)On the set of a movie (of which I am the director) in a darkened soundstage that holds an enormous water tank. The dream began as we began filming our first scene. Suddenly, there's a technical hang-up with one of the water cameras so I don a wet suit, put the actors on break and dive to the bottom of the tank with crew members to check out the broken camera. It's at this point I recognize that I am under water and suddenly I'm feel like I'm drowning. I struggle with the wetsuit and attached airtank until everything goes black. Then there's a change of dreamscape and I am outside kneeling in the woods and I am terrified, sensing that something's about to happen. Out of nowhere, a being that looks like me rises from the ground and stands about three stories tall. It is some weird creature made up of various parts of nature (earth, plants, water, ice, insects, tree bark, etc.). Til this day I can only refer to it as The Oracle. It was a very profound dream, I think, (even though I have no idea what it means) although it scared the bejeebus out of me.

* Living with real life versions of The Flintstones. It was pretty real yet not as fun as I'd've thought.

* (NIGHTMARE - ONLY ONE I CAN FULLY REMEMBER) I go to stay with a relative who runs a shabby water attraction at a bad carnival. I was completely uncomfortable the entire time and he forced me to work and clean the water tank in attraction and it was disgusting. There were animals and insects in that thing that I had never seen before and still have never heard of. As the dream progressed, I noticed that there were more and more of those creatures in the tank everytime I had to clean it. I remember feeling like my skin was crawling off of my body and eventually the more uncomfortable I got, the more of them there were. When I finally woke up I was horrified all day.

I'll post more tomorrow.

I guess it would be easier to simply color-code my dream entries (so I can stop typing REGULAR DREAM, LUCID DREAM, etc.). So, here we go:

REGULAR DREAM
DREAM-INDUCED LUCID DREAM
WAKE-INDUCED LUCID DREAM

Last night, I dreamt that I was working in this very huge and ornate resort hotel (I once stayed in this hotel in another dream*). I believe I may have been in management because I didn't do any work and the staff seemed to treat me too nicely. As I was descending a palatial mahogany staircase, I noticed one of the hotel's many reception desks on the floor just below me. Suddenly, I was standing right in front of the desk laughing with two of the admins about an executive who had just slip his pants. What's weird is that he didn't have an ass. I looked at the rip in his slacks and there was only corn. Yeah, like corn-on-the-cob. Weird. Then one of them says something about "the new girl" and how she's gunning for a management position (apparently because she was a hard-worker). Like a gush of wind, "the new girl" emerges from a nearby hallway, smiling and dressed to the nines. It was my mother. She looked really healthy, young and happy and then it made sense that her co-workers would think that she was gunning for management. Despite the way she treated me and my siblings, I've always admired her work ethic. Perhaps it was the only thing I could love about her. I was floored and speechless but no one noticed. It was as if I'd disappeared because as I stared at my mother, mouth gaping open, no one seemed to notice. For some reason I felt left-out. It was as if I knew things were different and that maybe she wasn't my mother in that world, that maybe she had had a completely different life and it had been a good one. I suddenly felt an enormous yearning for her life to be this way. I think the thing that woke me up is that I had the logical realization that it could never happen.

I suppose it's obvious that I had a rough day yesterday. My dreams are rarely so serious and visceral.

*will explain later

THE ASTERISK - sleep away camp

I've actually stayed in the resort hotel from last night's dream--in another dream. In that dream I was a kid again (although I had the dream in college), going to a sleep away camp where my old church used to send the congregation's youth free of charge. I really liked it although it was an awkward time for me. When we stayed at the hotel, the elevators were out-of-order but the staff kept insisting that we take them anyway so that the techs could test out the repairs. Crazy, I know. There were only about 20 kids in my group when we arrived but for some reason they couldn't get us all on the same floor. So we were spread out across ten floors. I was on the 100th floor. The hotel was HUGE. Me and some of the other kids snuck out of our rooms for the night and played on the elevators. We pranked the elevator operators on each floor until we were dimed-out by the staff and then locked in our rooms until morning. The next day we left for the campgrounds. It was much better than in waking life. We spent maybe four days there, doing campy things and that was that.

REGULAR DREAM
DREAM-INDUCED LUCID DREAM
WAKE-INDUCED LUCID DREAM
POSSIBLE DREAM SIGN

This morning, I dreamt that I was working with a group of kids. One of my colleagues was a girl that I haven't seen since high school. I remember that she was always truly genuine.

For some odd reason, we took the children to be blessed at the church I had attended in waking life until the age of 18. Even more weird, my old church is a Baptist church. We didn't do blessings. When we got there we encountered a line that spilled out of the church and out into the parking lot. So my colleague and I lined the kids up and waited. Once the line moved inside, we encountered another group of adults escorting kids to their blessing. All of a sudden the conversation broke into a discussion of sexual practices and atheism. We were loud, too, yet no one in the church seemed to care. Once at the front of the line, I stood face-to-face with the pastor--a man who had only been a deacon at my church in waking life. On holidays he gave the poorest families in our church fried turkeys just to make sure everyone had something to eat. He was a favorite of the church's youth. Several years ago I randomly found out that he'd died of cancer.

In the dream, he blessed me first then started in about the basis of spirituality and the usefulness of atheism. And then I just woke up. No alarm clock. No extraneous noise (which is unusual in my apartment complex).

It was rather existential, IMO.

I've been reading up on what certain things mean in a dream and I ran across something that says that animals in dreams represent bad personality traits. This is surprising to me because I've Googled "animals in dreams" plenty of times and never got this advice.

I've had reoccuring dreams about wild felines since age 10; mostly lions, tigers and a panther. The common thread in all of these dreams is that I was afraid of the animals and always thinking about how to escape, although I've never escaped any of them in my dreams. But they didn't maim or kill me......

In therapy, I'm currently discussing how others see me, so after reading this thing about dream animals I can only think that maybe I've been scaring people away without realizing it. I've had lots of people tell me over the years that I'm intimidating and each time I took that observation as an indictment of the complainer's character as well as an indictment of mine. Somehow, I'd always taken offense to the accusation instead of seeing it for what it truly is; a revelation of how I interact with others and a cry for help from people who have had to deal with me daily under these apparently insufferable conditions. I'm still not sure what I need to change exactly (what makes me unbarably intimidating) but I'm sure my therapist will know when I tell her about this.

REGULAR DREAM
DREAM-INDUCED LUCID DREAM
WAKE-INDUCED LUCID DREAM
POSSIBLE DREAM SIGN

This is the dream I had before waking this morning. My recall is improving. I woke up, had a conversation with my boyfriend and was still able to write down what I remembered. :woohoo:

I was on a compound visiting a friend when a LifeFlight helicopter arrived to air-lift one of the residents to a hospital. The friend and I immediately left his house (don't know him in real life) and ran over to the house of the sick woman. When we arrived, there was no one there except the paramedics and the officials of the compound. I noticed that there was a heated exchange between the officials as they each tried to instruct the lead paramedic. At that point, the woman, a blonde wearing a large black T-shirt and a stunning light-blue and green sarong, (I never notice clothing in a dream) was strapped onto the slate-gray and orange helicopter stretcher and rolled from her backyard (where we'd congregated) and out onto the quad towards the helicopter. More residents had stopped to observe the commotion.

The officials were still arguing when my friend starts relaying the argument to me. The only specific thing I remember his saying was "She can't even walk". Soon, we're all near the helicopter and the officials are yelling contradictory instructions at the lead paramedic. Amidst the commotion, the woman got up from the stretcher. Everyone fell silent. One of the officials asked the woman if she could walk. She answered "Yes" and jumped up and down, just trying to be a good sport. The women then told them that she felt like she couldn't hold herself up. This must have been the cue for the paramedic to leave because he quickly climbed back into the helicopter and the pilot prepared for lift-off. Unexpectedly, my friend shouts "No! She can't even walk!" Somehow, this gave me the awesome insight that the woman had a small tumor on her spine.

My friend's outburst must have broken the shock that clearly had us all gripped because everyone began shouting simultaneously (except me). I backed away from the mob and thought about asking my friend why he would even live on a compound but I woke up.

A thousand years is but an instant. There is nothing new, nothing different. Same pattern over and over. The same clouds, same music, the same as I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There´s nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember, this happened to me before, this is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion, and tuck the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from, and how I became human, and why I hung around - and now my final departure schedule. This way out. Escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but infinity.

---special kid from "Waking Life"