Lucid dreaming and alter egos

          Lucid dreaming is often described as being aware of the fact that one is dreaming.  The dreamer can have a full recollection of his or her daily life and can act voluntarily.  Some people think that reading in a dream is an indication of conscious awareness. Lucid dreams are often distinguished by enhanced, intense sensory imagery as well. Hugh Calloway wrote in 1902 of dreaming lucidly:

  Instantly the vividness of life increased a hundred-fold.  Never had the sea and sky and trees shone with such glamorous beauty; even the commonplace houses seemed alive and mystically beautiful. Never had I felt so absolutely well, so clear-brained, so absolutely free!

          What I find interesting about that passage is that it could easily have been describing an experience with hallucinogenic drugs. Or a near-death experience. For that

Aug 07 a medical contest

I was in a hospital-like setting and a number of us were participating in a contest to see who could do something. We had needles in our cubital veins, which were attached to a lot of plastic tubing, but the tubing just ended, rather than leading to a machine or collection bag or anything. I kept looking at mine, wondering when they would “turn it on” or finish attaching it, but then I found out that we were competing to see who would accumulate the most of some fluid in the tubes over a period of time.

I walked around and had difficulty because I had to avoid snagging the tubing on furniture and things as I passed. I also kept bending my elbow by mistake, and while it didn’t hurt, I knew I could push the needle all the way through the vein.

Then I was lying supine on an examination table, and there was a machine next to me on my left. A doctor who might have been named Glass, and was not a medical doctor but and optometrist or something was straddling my pelvis and performing some procedure. I was uncomfortable with his position but I also could see that that might be the only one that allowed him to do what he had to do because of the equipment in the way. He was looking intently at a yellow spot on my chest, which interested him greatly. I was conscious of the fact that the spot he was looking at was near my breasts, and it embarrassed me, but he was definitely looking at the spot, and not my breasts. He then kissed my lips, my temples and my forehead. Four kisses, placed clinically.

Later I was walking around and saw a woman with light brown hair whom I was familiar with. I started to whisper to her what Dr. Glass did, saying that it was unethical, and I planned to report him. I looked across the room and saw the people who would register my complaint. I wanted the woman to confirm that I should report him, because I was unhurt and reporting him could compromise something.

The doctor is my brother, who convinced me to experiment sexually with him at a very young age. He did me no harm – except emotionally -only he really shouldn’t have done it, and our parents never noticed.  Perhaps the medical setting is an expression of the feeling that I need to be fixed or attended to. The woman is the aspect of me which is more objective and detached from my feelings. I think the competition stems simply from the fact that I give platelets regularly (tubing) and the nurses always comment that I have the highest platelet count in the room.

aug 07 in the ocean in the dark

I was swimming in the ocean in the dark. I looked back and saw an enormous, black whale behind me, so I swam hard away from it. I was aware that it could swamp me just with a motion even if it meant me no harm. I swam the crawl for a while and was surprised at how much easier it was for me than it usually is, but even so, I switched to the breast stroke. Allie was swimming behind me.

 

I was underwater, and I felt a rope against my legs. I popped up out of the water and found myself in the midst of a flotilla of inflatable rafts. Now it was daylight. They found me a small boat to get in, but there was no room for Allie. A young man found her a life-ring and a rope, so that she could float along behind me. All the people in the boats were young, and spoke different languages. One young man did speak English, and he told me that the nearby islands were Sumatra. I asked which of the Sumatran islands it was, and he said it was an archipelago, not any one island. I let it go. I looked back at where the whale would be and saw that I was never far from land, and the whale was now a big ship.

 

Now we were on land, and I was trying to ask the English speaker how to get to the nearest American Embassy, but he didn’t answer me. I said I really, really had to get back to Turkey. A young, dark street boy came up to me and started pulling money out of his pockets to give to me. He had wadded-up bills of all sorts of currencies mixed in with papers and trash. I asked him if he had stolen it. The English Speaker said it was for me because I had nothing. I said I couldn’t possibly take it from such an obviously poor boy, but they said it was a part of their culture to give. I was touched and accepted the money, but I told him that in the future, I was going to give something to someone in need, and it would be for him. I thought about buying him a boat, and was working on the technicalities of how to get it to him when I was back in Turkey. I leaned in and kissed him on both cheeks, though I wondered if it was culturally acceptable since he was male.

 

I sat down and flattened out the money, and busied myself with putting the money neatly into a wallet and a plastic sleeve. I was trying to hide the money so it wouldn’t be visible through the plastic. I found a pen there, and wanted very much to write down my experiences in a notebook. A notebook appeared, and I started to think about where to sit where I wouldn’t be interrupted.

Water is often either spirituality or emotion. Here I’m swimming confidently, even though its in the dark, and I’ve escaped the danger of the whale. My rescuers are diverse and in rag-tag rafts, but they do find accommodation for not only me but for Allie. If they are aspects of my personality, they are largely unintelligible, but kind. Aspects of my younger self. Am I processing events from the time when I traveled the world in my youth? Yes, I think so. I swam away from the dangerous emotional situation in my family then, and found help from the strangers I met.

 

Recently a group of people have offered me help in ways that I hadn’t expected or asked for, and I’ve felt really honored. That would be the boy with the money.  I think the bit about the notebook was probably an awareness that I was dreaming, and should write this dream in my dream journal.