Could it be that dreams are the analysis of our physical experiences by our spirit selves? Could it be that dreams are not just a reflection and replaying of our daily-life impressions, but are an exact and simultaneous version of the physical experience in the "language" of a parallel but other-dimensional reality, and that neither precedes nor follows the other (given that time is illusion)? Could it be that our wakened-reality is but a physical representation and interpretation of the events of this other-dimension, played out in the minds of our spirit-selves as THEY sleep... that WE are the dream? All this occured to me this morning as I tried to analyse the dream I woke from. In order to explain further, I should first sketch the dream: Dream: I found myself on a street that I understood to be in the town of Leigh, close to where I grew up in the north of England. I was gazing through the windows of a cafe that was built on the site of some demolished houses. I'd come looking for the houses on a nostalgic trip in my home-town. One house held particular importance - it seemed that a docu-film was made there by, and about, Bruce Lee. I'd wanted to see the room he'd filmed in and get a sense of his presence. So it was a disappointment to see that the house was no more. I got into conversation with a young waitress from the cafe, telling her my memories of the houses that stood here, and where the room might have stood where Lee filmed, and how he was a hero of my childhood years - way before her time. We then got talking to a group of old men who also remembered the houses, and a theatre that was also demolished. And there was a black&white photograph hanging on the cafe wall that showed the street in its former state. Another "vague" element of the dream had something to do with authority and bureaucracy, and that "by-passing" the authorities created more efficiency in whatever was taking place in the dream (getting info and access to the location of Lee's film, I think...). So - nothing particularly dramatic, or even unusual - nothing that was mixed up or swimming with contradictory elements the way dreams often tend to be - everything was as real, as linear as logical as waking life. But on waking I felt there was something deeper and I had an urge to do some analysing. First analysis: From a purely sobre perspective - that dreams are reflections of the days events, arranged and ordered by the sub-conscious mind for filing purposes - I could easily see multiple correlations with my previous evening activities - a) I often visit my childhood locations in dreams, so no surprises there. b) Leigh has "really" undergone massive restructuring over the last 20 years that it's hardly recognizable to me anymore. c) I once did a photo-project on the town, and the old and derelict "theatre/cinema" was a unique feature and foreboder of the changes to come. d) Bruce Lee was a childhood hero - and Lee rhymes with Leigh. e) I'd just watched a Johnny Depp film with a highly attractive "young" leading lady - the undeniable effect of pretty girls on the male psyche could have created the waitress of course. f) I'd also watched some videos of presentations by Yanis Varoufakis (ex Greek finance minister) - subject matter being economy and government and bureaucracy and change... So all these elements can be retrieved from the dream with a rather superficial ease. I could have just as easily dismissed it there and not looked any deeper - but I was curious, so... Second analysis: The unconscious thoughts, feelings and memories stirred in me while listening to Varoufakis are responsible for this deeper layer of the dream - combined, I'm certain, with the conscious thoughts and ideas that keep me occupied in waking life - ideas of a changing, transforming world. The end of old political structures; welcoming the new and fresh and transparent; handing the future over to the youth; letting go of the nostalgia of the past; creating new "theatres of life", out of the dark, musty halls and into the light and airy cafés; and a disintegration, a "demolition" of the choking chords of bureaucracy and authority. Just like any good movie, the storyline is a metaphor for a deeper tale. How utterly astounding it is to witness how the sleeping mind creates this level of artistic expression (and I've never been to film-school, so who is making these movies in my head?). Another important point is the metaphor of Bruce Lee. Apart from him being a physical hero, I also deeply admired his spiritual/zen vision. His presence seems to stand for bringing the physical and spiritual together. Looking beyond the "visual" and into the "feeling" of the dream, my overriding "sense" was one of peace and acceptance. Yes, there was also a sense of nostalgic sadness for things lost, but the promise of a "happy ending" seemed intuitively prophetic. And there I could stop - but something else was tickling my imagination - a feather of an idea... I wouldn't be writing this blog if I wasn't convinced of the multidimensional quality of reality. And dreams, for me, are no less "another dimension" than the idea of parallel universes. I've done a little exploring in lucid-dreaming, but always from the perspective of the physical-reality paradigm... how real is a dream according to the laws and priciples of the "wakened world"? Last night I'd been listening to talks by the "high prince of psychedelia" Terence McKenna. His perspective is rooted in his experiences on various hallucinatory substances (mostly natural plant-based compounds), and his take on reality is as far "out there" as anyone has ever gone. Comparing his "trips" to dreams is not difficult, and when you take into account the substance DMT as a natural compound within the human brain and its role in dreaming, then "trip and dream" become easily synonymous. We are so used to describing dreams as part of us, as a by-product of our physical reality experience. They come in the night and fade with the light. They are just electrical patterns, an afterglow, of our brain's daily impressions woven into orderly stories by a sleepy consciousness. Whatever they are, they ARE in your head. But as McKenna points out in reference to DMT (and by extention can also apply to dreams): "This has to be taken seriously. In other words, the “it's only a hallucination” thing—that horseshit is just passé. I mean, reality is only a hallucination for crying out loud, haven't you heard? So that takes care of that—it's only a hallucination. What we’ve got here, folks, is an intelligent entelechy of some sort that is frantic to communicate with human beings for some reason." So, taking dreams "seriously", and from a "multidimensional perspective", what happens when you take our understanding of "dreams being part of us", turn it on its head, and imagine "us being a part of dreams" instead. Imagine the "dream world" as a reality inhabited by spirit beings (our spirit being one of them), living their lives according to their own "fluid" universal laws, and when they sleep, they dream "our reality" of order and linear time and space and physical limitations. Or maybe our existence runs parallel, different representations of the same events and the same experiences, both versions happening simultaneously but only perceived to be causal and successive. So by dreaming we get a peek into each other's domain and where we forget most of our dreams and only recall the 'highlights", so they only recall the highlights of our, predominantly monotonous, daily lives. Worth wrapping your mind around. “I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon
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I have a lifelong fascination with dreams and dreaming. A lot of kids had/have "imaginary" friends in their young years (something attributed to a lively fantasy and lonely disposition, but in light of new understandings of our multidimensional essence there's more acceptance of these "friends" as real entities), I didn't, but what I did have is an imaginary universe. I loved to sleep, especially in the afternoon, because I loved to dream - and my dreams were often extraordinary adventures with intricate plots and fantastic locations.
I still love to sleep in the afternoon and I always look forward to the dreams awaiting me. And I still have some extraordinary adventures. Some of my most memorable dreams involve some kind of interdimensional travel, time travel and film-like plots that I only understand myself when the dream is coming to an end. I've flown a lot; I've woken often in bouts of laughter or streaming tears; I've heard, composed, sung and played songs that are new to me; I've played instruments I really don't know how to play; I've battled demons and dark, scary creatures; I've wandered around war-torn, bombed out cities; I've been caught in the crossfire of gun battles between rivalling gangs; I've flown to different planets in spaceships; I've had multiple plots running through each other that seem unconnected until the end; I've had the most amazing romantic relationships; and it doesn't stop there. I developed, in my childhood, the ability to wake myself up from a dream I wasn't enjoying - this started when I bit the nose off a creature that was holding and squeezing me so I couldn't breathe. This was my way of dealing with nightmares. I had a dream once where I was in bed in a cold spooky castle and I heard Nosferatu (the scariest of all vampires) coming up the stairs to my room. At first I didn't know what to do, I was truly frightened - then I realized that I needed to make myself more powerful than him, so I transformed myself and grew to about 20 feet in height, my head touching the high ceiling. When Nosferatu entered he was just a little squirt of a monster and he cowered before me..."LOL"!!! I'm also an active lucid dreamer - not as regular as I would like but regular enough. In my lucid dreams, besides flying, I've explored instant manifestation, learned to run faster than the wind, tested the illusion of matter by putting my hand through solid objects, breathed underwater and had conversations with dream characters about the fact that they are not as real as they think they are. In one dream, when I became lucid, I called to the group I was with and said: "Hey, this is a dream... who wants to fly?" I then led them in the technique of levitation, but only 3 of us could get off the ground. Lately I've been exploring and practising techniques of OBE (out of body experience/astral travel). I haven't been succesful from a wakened state, but I've had two experiences within my dream state of moving beyond the dream into astral travel - in one of those dreams I was actually following a class in astral travel, applied the techniques and moved consecutively between Amsterdam, Paris and London, at one point being in a different century where the people were looking at me very strangely (it was sometime in the 18th or 19th century - no cars, just horses and carriages and muddy cobbled roads). This last year I've finally started to keep a dream journal, and taken more interest in the messages behind the imagery. From the multidimensional perspective, the realm of dreams is a real world, not just fantasy, not just the result of sparks in the brain, not just the replay of daily events and buried traumas. This is how I've always experienced them, and more so now as my understanding of consciousness and reality and multidimensionality develops. So... I'm going to open my dream journal now and again and share them on this blog - at least the "family" versions... the x-rated versions I'll keep to myself. |
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