Over the past couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with lucid dream exercises. I haven't managed to achieve lucidity quite yet (have pulled it off in the past), but my dreams have been remarkably vivid as I've been concentrating more on trying to differentiate between the two "opposing" forms of consciousness.
Yesterday, as I was coming out of a nap, I was halfway between sleep and dreaming, and my mind started to fill up with some pretty nasty images. As I felt myself falling deeper into sleep, I realized that I was calling forth the images, and that if I didn't like them, I could exchange them for something else. So I did, imagining myself sitting in the lotus position, levitating off the ground and then soaring through the sky.
This took a great deal of mental effort, so I started to let the whole go and began to fall asleep. Once again, my mind filled with discomforting images and I started to think that it was really happening, until I realized that I was falling into a dream state and that I was conjuring the images myself. I stopped, dangling near the edge of full sleep, and posed my a question to my unconscious:
"Why do I keep dreaming of these awful things?"
The response that arose out of my mind, "These are the things that you love, that you have hidden in the darkness."
I pondered on that a while, then I said (or rather, thought), "Fair enough, but why do I keep mistaking them as a reality? Why can't I remain lucid?'
The response had a hint of...well, not exactly mockery, but there was definitely teasing in it, "You walk through your waking life, believing that what you see and hear is 'ultimate reality.' Why should your experience in dreams be any different?"
I awoke fully, sitting on in bed, blinking. It was definitely a sobering lesson, but I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that my unconscious might be smarter than I am.
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