From what I can see, the first layer of my subconscious is about as complex as an episode of the Tele-tubbies. There was the past life regression guy who told me that what’s in there is recollections of my previous incarnation as an alienated medieval priestess who deplores religion, wears blue and silver robes, and walks around in minimalist cathedrals under really nice skylights. But I think he was sucking up, as they tend to do in he divination profession. In truth, what’s in there seems to be a whole lot of brightly colored objects that make me drool.
I’ve been trying to initiate lucid dreams from that place. Rather than fading in teleport-style from a half-dream, my idea is to recognize from within a deep, unshakeable dream that I am in fact asleep and therefore can mold that universe at will. Put a little will back in to the state of surrender, yes.
This is Stephen LaBerge’s method, which I’ve been loosely following since the grown-up acid trip that is a month in the Mysore social scene. It’s not that Candyland is a problem for me or (like many who are compelled to learn lucid dreaming) that I have demons who chase me at night. It’s just that I want to see what is beyond Candyland, and after that I want to with lucidity make all the dreams just STOP so I can find out if Patanjali’s version of Samadhi (conscious, dreamless sleep, right?) is really all that great. Is dreamed stream-entry still stream-entry?
After that, if dream-Samadhi happened to get boring, I’d just go back to Candyland and play. Hmmm… sex or pie? Every unenlightened lucid dreamer’s dilemma.
Or parkour.
But that’s the thing, at the moment. Most nights lately my dream-mind doesn’t understand the notion of “separate self” and thus won’t let me have a body. I’m not even a character in my own dreams, which is great in the moment if a little confusing in the morning. (Which I supposed is what you say after a rave, too.) So: mostly it’s just a disembodied float through Candyland. I suspect it’s not that I’m all merged with the world soul in there. More like I’m not even separated from the primordial ooze. (PTF alert, as with any and every spiritualization of lizard-brain.)
Last night it was purple Mike ‘n’ Ikes floating over a waterfall. They were dissolving in the water and nourishing the grass in a vast green valley bordered on the north by steep snowy mountains. Everything was in a warm golden glow.
Later a wolly mammoth wandered out from an opening in the mountains, swaying down in to the meadow where he ate chewy orange pumpkins whole, storing them in his giant hamster-esque cheeks. There was a lot of excitement about the mammoth.
Later, delightfully, more mammoths showed up and there were pumpkins everywhere. They kept swaying their big hairy heads back and forth like Stevie Wonder.
Then there was a flying diplodocus dinosaur, with a hot-air-balloon-like fire mechanism in its butt. The butt-fire would periodically ignite, sounding off like an air balloon on the rise. The diplo would float off, sort of like the inebriated snake in the old animated version of Robin Hood.
Apparently I got very excited about the flying dinosaur and started yammering about it in my sleep. I told the Editor the creature was floating and using its webbed feet to move through the air.
So go fly with him.
But I don’t have a body…
It doesn’t matter. Just fly.
But I need to have a body and I can’t find it. I’m trying to see my hands… (becoming upset)… I can’t find my body!
The Editor tired of my yammering and left. Meanwhile, back in the dream I was the dinosaur (I was also everything else, including especially the sky), but was also trying to manifest my human body. Why I wasn’t content to be a lucid dinosaur and fly around in that body I don’t know… maybe I didn’t like the fire-butt mechanism and wanted better powers before I went fully lucid. At least that was the excuse I was making in the dream. Maybe I was stalling.
So I struggled to manifest a body, growing an appendaged human on the back of the floating diplo. I think the strategy was to grow a dinosaur-human hybrid beast, then inhabit the human part and separate it from the dinosaur. But before that could happen, I woke up because my back was hurting as if someone was sitting atop me digging in her heels. In the morning I was scratched up between my shoulder blades…. It seems that floating-dinosaur-owl was trying to get nascent-human-owl off her back.
Which reminds me. There were also three monkeys; and they were wearing smooth golden hats. They were sitting on the side of the mountain, tilting their heads to the side and looking out at everything in a quizzical way. What do the monkeys know?