Creating My Own Punchline

image from http://www.modernlife.org

Here is a lucid dream I had a couple nights ago, called Creating My Own Punchline:

I know I'm dreaming because a voiceover says, "This next lucid dream takes place in a hotel." (If only it were always that easy.) I find myself in a room with an Indian man (from India). I say, "Now what?" He says, "Tell me your favorite punchline of a joke." I say, "My favorite punchline... Hmm... I can't really think of any right now." He waits expectantly. I ask, "Can you just tell me some jokes and I'll pick my favorite one?" He says no. I explain that I'm not really a joke sort of person. But he won't relent.

The tone of the dream turns sinister now. Everything darkens, literally and figuratively. I can barely see anything. Summoning my courage, I say, "Let there be humor, let there be light!" Slowly the room becomes brighter. I keep singing these two lines, "let there be humor, let there be light" over and over while dancing around the apartment. The dream turns into a Broadway number, and horns accompany me. The whole atmosphere changes. I am sliding down banisters and marching around, having a great time. I realize I've created my own punchline that I can call upon to dispel the phantoms of darkness.

I have been practicing this in waking life ever since. I think I chose to write about this dream because of its practical value. Creating humor brings balance to the waking and dreaming worlds when stuff gets too dark or heavy. I learned this lesson from an Aleut healer when my Indigenous Mind cohort was inadvertently courting shadows one day. We were really wallowing in our ancestral wounds. He brought this to our attention by aiming his rear end at us and pretending to fart as loud as he could. In that moment, he healed about a thousand years of oppression.