Dreamscape - Where's Waldo?

I dream about him every night. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for many years, and in the last couple have worked harder on the skills that go with it. At one point, I tried to stop remembering what I dream, because they were all about him and it freaked me out and made me sad. Ironically, it was him that changed my mind. He said something to the effect of: Well, maybe it's still good to remember your dreams, maybe they're telling you something, or maybe it's at least good to know what's going on in your unconcious. Reluctantly, (I'm no wuss!) I went back to my exercises.

In the last 3 months, it's begun to be a mental joke when I wake up. My eyes are closed, and I'm relaxed. I will myself into that hypnotic half asleep stage where you're still in touch with the dream world, but actively awake at the same time. In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy we learn that the way to fly is to forget to fall to the ground. The way to stay in touch with the dream world is to forget to completely wake up, while taking your waking mind with you... it's sort of like a little tiny camera in your gym bag that you take in the girls locker room to make internet porn. It's sneaking a concious mind into a place it shouldn't be, to be able to recall what isn't meant to be recalled.

I remember the basic content of the dream, and then the game begins. Where is he? Sometimes he was just there, present, a companion. Sometimes he called me up, asked me to join him. Sometimes, no warning and no justification, he's grabbing me and dragging me off to my room, the other day he said he was going to spank me with these felt chalkboard erasers... I curled up in his lap, melted into his shoulder and said "ok Daddy, but I prefer your hands." Sometimes we argue. In the butterfly dream, I thought they were monarchs, he said they were anglewings. Turns out, he was right. I didn't even know there was such a thing as anglewings until a friend looked them up after I told her about the dream. I can't even win in my own dreams.

I had something of his, and I thought if I gave it back, the dreams may stop. They did, for a 2-3 blessed days. Then they came back, more vivid and invasive than ever. In Dreamscape, the movie, there is a man who violates a woman he likes (but who has rebuffed him in the daytime) physically. There's some question as to her agreement to the situation, since they were playing in an arena *they* knew was real, but was still "just a dream." Did he rape her because she never gave her consent when they were awake? Interestingly, the answer to that tends to be split down gender lines. Generally women say yes, men say no. It becomes a question of whether something is real if it doesn't happen physically. Perhaps since women are generally more in tune with metalanguage, they understand that something doesn't have to be said out loud or experienced physically to still be real. (this is often the basis of conflict for sexual harassment issues: women don't object to the words being said, but *how* they were said. Men don't think they should be accountable for their body language and inflection, but only what they actually say or do.)

How real is the dreamscape? It's a recurring theme in our culture and cultures around the world to wonder how much interaction people have when they sleep. With him, I've always thought of our interactions on the dream plane as in some part real. We shared dreams, we met and danced on the dream plane, arguing and making up and saying we were sorry when we slept. It made changes that were felt in the daytime. What is it doing now that we don't talk in the daytime?

I watched a movie recently, Stepmom, I believe it was, where the mom and the son made dates to dream together. When they were apart, they would decide on a place to meet while they were dreaming, so they could be together there. My immediate reaction was: Oh wow, that's a good idea, I should suggest that to my boys when we have to be apart and they miss me. There was never even a question in my mind that the meeting wasn't real. I only wondered about that later.

In Willy Wonka, the shrink says something like: believing in the content of dreams is a sign of psychosis. Then turns around and demands to know what the angel of his clients dreams told him about where to find the golden ticket. It's meant to be amusing, to show how desperate he was to get the golden ticket, but deeper than that, it shows that we just don't *know* what the deal is with dreams. We have no idea why we have them, and what we're tapping into when we're on that plane. Sometimes, we're just working out the details of our day, but some dreams... perhaps the one you remember most intensely the next day, have a different quality. They have power. They have the power to disturb us, comfort us, solve a problem we can't seem to get.

Shamanism is based, I believe, on entering this state willfully. From all descriptions of the experience, the rhythm of the drumming, the inward exploration are all trying to get you to tap into that place inside you where you know everything. The conversations you have with your totem animal, we all know that's a conversation we're having with ourselves. But, where does that knowledge come from? Where is the wisdom you access through this self hypnotic state coming from if you don't possess it when you're awake, presumably thinking clearly?

Maybe there's a place, the place where all the minds meld, a place that floats in another dimension where the dragons and unicorns went. In Mute, when they surgically removed a persons psychic ability, that energy went somewhere... it went out, and it collected and became a force in itself, gathering strength as it grew larger from new additions. It was the uncontrolled psychic energy that had been utilized by individuals before being cut loose. I like this idea of psychic energy having a shape and density of its own, I like how it relates to my pondering of the dream world. Many many primitive cultures valued the lucid dreamers of their people. They felt the person who could tap into the power of the dream world at will could be counted on to have expanded wisdom to help guide the people of their community.

He may be consuming my subconcious in a way that makes me feel helpless and confused about my concious, but I think he was also right. Ignoring your dreams doesn't move you down the path of better understanding and expanded wisdom. I'll close with wise words from Mr. Willy Wonka: There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free, if you truly wish to be.