Sunday, November 11, 2012

Poll for Lucid Dreamers

When you find yourself in a lucid dream, do you remember where your sleeping body is?


image from yourdreaminterpretations.com

No matter how lucid and present I feel in a dream, I can rarely remember just where I left my meat-suit slumbering. Sometimes I don't even know which era I am living in, or whether I am "alive" or "dead." In last night's lucid dream, I tried again to assess the whereabouts of my bed, and quickly gave up in favor exploring my surroundings.

I enjoy the perspective this particular mystery brings. I am sure there is a "scientific" explanation for the areas of our brain that we are and are not able to access during the lucid dream state. But the way I think about it is: What better way to widen our sphere of self beyond a specific set of spacetime circumstances? Repeating this experiment never ceases to delight me.

In the words of William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” We dream even as we walk waking through the daylight. Lucid dreaming is sunlight ripping through the cavern. It alights a stable entrance in its illuminating way.




2 comments:

  1. I never have, yet.
    But I have awakened in this reality not sure of my dimensional position.That is, unsure of which is the dream and which the waking.
    I also take great joy in this.

    Love,
    Terri in Joburg

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  2. Thanks, Terri. That is a great story! Have you heard the story of Zhuang Zhou? He "dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakably Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was now dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou." :-) (excerpt from The Butterfly Book, edited by Liu Ming)

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