I've been sick for about a week. It started out as a really bad sore throat that made it hurt to swallow. Then came an intense fever that alternately had me shivering so hard that it made my chest hurt and sweating so hard that I'd wake up in a wet hoodie. Since doing things like standing up and walking made me feel like I was 95 years old, I've spent most of the week sleeping. And there's the silver lining: when I'm sick I have crazy dreams, and I keep getting better and better at having lucid dreams.
For those of you who don't know (and don't feel like googling it), lucid dream is the term used to describe what happens when you realize you're dreaming, and thus (with some practice) you can control what goes on in your dream. A lot of people tend to wake up once they realize that the luncheon they're attending with the third grade teacher they had a crush on and the little guy from Fantasy Island isn't taking place in reality. This often leaves a feeling of disappointment upon waking, followed almost immediately by thoughts like, "How the hell didn't I realize that was a dream? I'm fairly certain the dwarf from Fantasy Island is dead!" With lucid dreaming you can avoid feelings like these. You can finish your delicious chicken croquettes and ask that little man how to pronounce his name. You can have super powers, dude!
Like many humans, I've always had a fascination with dreams, especially my own. My earliest childhood memory is actually a dream. I was lying in my crib one peaceful night, when suddenly the damn thing turned into a bear and wrapped its arms around me! By the time my mom answered my terrified cries I'd already figured out what had happened. I was thinking, "Shit happens when you're asleep that's not real and shit!" (I paraphrased that, since I don't remember the thought word for word.) From a very young age I knew that reality would never be as cool as dreams. Also, all of my other early memories are Batman-related, which means nothing that I remember from my earliest years is stuff that actually happened.
Fast forward a few years. I was now a school lad, and my dreams had advanced from bear-crib attacks to being able to fly. With a running jump off the hill in my backyard I could float through the air for a little while before dropping to the ground. The dream made such an impact, and seemed so real, that I excitedly dashed out to the backyard after school the next day and attempted to recreate this feat. After a few embarrassing nose-dives into the grass and dirt I admitted to myself that I must have dreamed the whole thing. The point had been proven once again: dreams rule, reality drools. Or whatever.
Let's skip my awkward adolescence and go right to my freshman year at college, which was still awkward but not quite as much. I had done a lot of reading on lucid dreaming and decided that I wanted to become a Dream Master. (It was never referred to that way in any text I read, but that is essentially what it is, isn't it?) The basic idea that appeared in just about everything I read was that the way to start controlling your dreams was to start recognizing when you were dreaming, and the best way to accomplish that was by forcing yourself to remember as many details about your nocturnal visions or skipped-class-to-take-a-three-hour-nap visions as you could. The way to accomplish this most easily was by keeping a dream journal. With the journal you could start recognizing patterns in your dreams, and you could then start seeing the patterns as signs that would clue you into the fact that you hadn't really inherited a Hulk-Hogan-themed castle but were, in actuality, dreaming.
This worked for me to a degree, but I still often woke up once I found out that I was sleeping. Mostly my dream journal made me notice the pattern of violence and Batman-related imagery that my sleep-self engaged in. (Perhaps I was revisiting my childhood "memories". WHY DON'T I REMEMBER ANYTHING FROM BEFORE I WAS FIVE, MOM AND DAD!?!?) I had started taking baby steps toward dream mastery, such as determining that I was at slumber because I was in high school again but I was 82% sure that I was really in college, and so throwing chairs around knowing that there was only an 18% chance of repercussion. But I was not to become a master of lucid fantasies so soon, as just after my 19th birthday I found out that I was going to be a father and started suffering from insomnia.
Over the past nine years I've grown into my role as a family man, now with two kids and a third little fucker on the way. I'm well-adjusted when compared to the younger version of myself. But living within me is still a desire to beat people up and/or steal giant coins from outside of a courthouse. Perhaps due to even more experience in detecting the subtle differences between reality and dream ("I don't normally have a Proton Pack... this must be a dream!") I'm quite often able to understand that I'm in a dream state. I have a simple trick for remaining in this state: I just tell myself not to think about it being a dream and just continuing what I'm doing. And, believe it or not, this usually works!
I am now free to escape to an alternate reality where I can beat up punks with no legal consequences. I can steal giant coins without worrying about being arrested or pondering what I'm going to use giant coins for. And I have super powers, dude! Yes, Dream-Baxter has the ability to control the weather, move in fast motion while everyone else gets stuck in slow motion, and freeze/unfreeze people with his fingers. I still haven't mastered the whole flying thing, though. I can get up in the air and float around a bit (or sometimes swim around), but it just feels so weird that it typically breaks my concentration.
If you're like me, you're wondering by this point what the purpose of this post is. Is it just a shallow bit of gloating, as if I'm only here to proclaim that my dream-self can kick your dream-self's ass with my mental powers instead of threatening you with a knife and hoping you won't call my bluff like I'd have to do in real life? Perhaps it's a little bit that, but the real purpose was to share some of my personal experiences with lucid dreaming in the hope that you try it yourself. Why? Because it's awesome! If you'd like to give it a whirl, do a little bit of research on the subject, find a method that works for you, and then you too can be on the path to super-powered violence and self-fulfillment. I'll be waiting for you. The little guy from Fantasy Island may also be waiting.
Super powers, dude!
No comments:
Post a Comment