Beginning My Own Dream-Quest
I know, I know. One of the hundreds of "hi, look at me, I'm new" topics that clog message boards across the internet. I'm sorry for their existance (particularly this one :P). However, I was introduced to this website through a friend who became interested in lucid dreaming from a friend that is quite well versed in it. That aside...
I'm a 19 year old university student who has indeed had lucid dreams before, I remember greatly enjoying them and having dreams where I was in partial control of my actions and surroundings. It was an exhilirating experience and my mother cites the fact that I loved dreaming so much that I was the easy child to assign to napping. Increasingly, though, I've longed to replicate those care-free dreams that I had so often as a child, for they've become infrequent. Each one I can remember is more beautiful than any jewel or gold. I have managed to have fairly vivid dreams recently and have even very minor control over the most detailed and easily remembered. Upon hearing about the concept of lucid dreaming from my friend (I knew there was a name for it, but I had never known it...now that I do I want to understand what I was doing right as a child ;)) I've embarked on a quest to regain that lost part of myself. That part that allowed me to inspire my teachers and earn their respect from even a very young age.
Perhaps there are Lovecraft fans out there, you can probably tell by my sign name then. I myself am quite the fan and recently from reading his stories (started reading them when I was 15 after watching a horror film on SPACE which mentioned the Necronomicon (which I went out and purchased and researched to discover its TRUE origins!)) reignited my love of those fears that grip me while I sleep. Perhaps this seems strange to you, because one of the reasons cited for wishing to lucid dream is to overcome nightmares...I disagree with this. In fact, I want to do this to encourage nightmares, which have been one of the few ways that I can understand and hopefully exorcise the demons of my past. Nightmares mean a lot to me. They reveal more about myself and my understanding of my surroundings than anything I've known. In fact, my reverance and love for the fear incited by my own sub-conscience often had my school councillor (nightmares do have a reason, and every child needs a friend and mentor to help them through these reasons) asking me to recount my nightmares as far back as I could remember. However, nightmares aren't my only love of fear. Perhaps my most beloved dreams are those that I call the "myst" dream. One where I am plunging through cloudy skies and see myself in the third person (which is oddly how I envision myself throughout the day...I have tried explaining this and ended up irritating and confusing many people). Well, when I wake up my body quakes and I awake with my heart beating and jumping. I love it. Plus, dreams are where I'm always the stronger individual, even when I'm cowering. I can see myself for what I really am, a good person (something that I rarely, if ever, have the oppurtunity of feeling while remembering my past realities).
Dreams are my inspiration in life, almost everything I do is relegated by what I can remember from my dreams. However, as I remember less and less of my dreams I realize now that perhaps many of things that I recall as memories are perhaps dreams of my childhood. Feeling the warmth of my deceased grandfather's hugs or feeling the sadness of remembering my dog's death and holding her just before she was put down...I know that these events happened...but the emotions, raw and clean, are remember through the endless times that I re-enact these things in my dreams. And again I resort to my literary mentor, Lovecraft, and his use of dreams (Witchhouse, etc.) and bizzare scapes of imagination to inspire me. These raw emotions that I "remember" and these dreams that I used to have can bring me back to where I need to be - the joys, the terrors, the love, the sadness, the purity of the emotion of a child - so that I can use my maturing writing skills to allow these ideas and feelings to transport themselves around the globe, to evolve and to take form and inspire. Most importantly, to allow me to exorcise those demons of the past (and those that I am sure are to come) that plague all of my memories. To put them into the perspective that the past will never hurt me. To prove to myself once and for all that I am the individual I know myself to be. I intend to write out my dreams and bring myself forward and reveal to the world who I am and understand my complex self a little bit better.
I have much more to say, but I'll not slay your so-far uncoalesced kindness with an even longer post.
P.S. - I'm starting to have a dream journal to encourage my recall abilities, but I'm having a LOT of problems...could an oldbie or regular point me to a thread that will help out?
