On Lucid Dreams

The Significance of Family

2012-07-19T09:47:00.004-07:00

Out of all of my dream experiences, I do make it seem as if I am alone. But I must let you know that I am most certainly, not. I have a great litmus test through generations of dreamers that I can come to for advice, spiritually, emotionally and scientifically, and I honestly believe this is why my ability to lucid dream has developed so strongly over time.

She loves cards and puzzles.

My grandma (on my white side, not my Salvadorian side) has played a huge role in raising me. She is one of my best and closest friends and knows nearly everything about me. She is a prayer warrior in every aspect and is highly conservative, but smart and never judges anything. That being said, she will stick up for what she believes is right and tell it like it is, in her shy and bashful way. I love my grandma so much, but she is fraught with constant worry and that, in turn, worries me. She has had prophetic dreams throughout her life, but asked God to stop giving her these types of dreams as the visions they portrayed were often too horrible to bear. She's been there, and places a high priority on dreams, but also doesn't pay much attention to it like I do.

Honest to God convo with
my mom about Star Trek.

My mom is probably the most skeptical person I know (besides the two Shawns in my life), but her skepticism mostly comes from a lack of willingness to observe and confront areas of mysticism rather than from a logical, hard and fast mindset. That being said, she has had many a crazy dream and even some shared dreams with me and my sister, which I will get to later.

Probably my favorite pic ever of my sis
taken on Halloween in Chicago.

My sister is the constant rock of dreaming and mystical exploration in my life. She's 4.5 years older than me and has a completely different perspective on life than me, but more often than not we find ourselves in the same boat on any given issue. She is alarmingly brilliant, and no offense to her (I believe she would agree) has a darkness about her spirit. It's hard to put into words, but it is a very strong manifestation of melancholy. That being said, she is one of the single most hard working people I know and has this resilience about her that I admire every day. She is the only person in my life who really gets where I come from. If you have sisters you know how special that bond is.

My great aunt used to have people come from miles around to hear her religious prophecies and receive prayer. My cousin has the same strange dream patterns that I do - specifically the powerful fear accompanied by feeling forcefully pressured back to sleep by some invisible hand. My dad and uncle, when they were kids in El Salvador, had multiple mystical experiences they never could explain. My aunt sees angels. My other aunt has revelations from God where she prays from the Spirit, and dreams of people's future children. While I rarely see a lot of my relatives and have had very few times to actually talk to them about their experiences, I see a pattern in my blood of both sides that can't be denied. We have some serious spiritual mojo going on. And as for the religious part? They are mostly Southern Baptist, Catholic or Agnostic.

I wanted to talk about family today because they are huge indicators of your dreams and the potential there. In my family, on both sides, there is a long history of prophecy and dreaming, but not a huge emphasis. They don't talk about it unless I bring it up, but I know it's there because they always have something new to say and share. I do believe in generational blessings and curses, and biological tendency, so knowing that my family has this thread in common gives me empowerment and support, for something the world tends to shun, almost wholeheartedly.

More specifically, many times I have a dream that I will share with my family and will find some significance in that connection. We will see the same symbols around the same time, have vital information that impacts each others dreams, or just be able to speak to the lack of truth or veracity in a dream that felt super present. And yes, we do tell each other that we are getting carried away sometimes. What kind of support network doesn't call you out?

The next blog post I write will be specifically about instances where I feel my family's presence has been incredibly important, and I may even talk a little bit about my family's past and strange supernatural happenings that have gone on between us. Maybe if you're really lucky, we can get my sister to share some of her experiences with us via a guest blog.

Tell me, do any of you have familial experiences that influence your dreams? I'm interested to know.

Background Update!

2012-05-25T11:24:00.003-07:00

So last time I wrote about myself was a good two years ago. Here's a quick snapshot of the basics that haven't changed.

"Generally when I tell people the experiences I am about to share on my blog, I'm afraid they will think I'm crazy. More often than not they take it in stride knowing my character but it's very hard for them to relate. I think it's important to note that I have a few stress related diseases that you may argue contribute to my dreams, but given their nature, I doubt it. I have mild colitis, TMJ, and Raynaud's syndrome. All of these things are mild cases, but the most prominent disabler is TMJ.
To typify myself, I am a classic choleric/sanguine. I've been kicked out of Baptist churches, events, and mission trips (but still consider myself a Christian). I'm positive there are people out there like me who haven't been taught these things, who aren't making it up, and who just know how to lucid dream. I am also positive that there are people similar to me who will at least find this blog interesting simply because someone took the time to write all of this down."

There are some other wonderful things about me that have changed though. I graduated from Baylor University in December of 2011 with a BA in Film and Digital Media and a minor in entrepreneurship. My last semester I started a business that has two iterations, VideoGram and HDListing. While I still work on those businesses, my main focus is Real Estate investing in the Knoxville, TN area. Yes, I just packed up and moved from Waco 16 hours away because I missed some of my friends who had moved there. I've never lived around mountains before so it's been a big change in mentality for me. Spiritually and physically, I honestly feel like I've transformed since I started writing this blog. I've been through a lot of trials and major life events, but the little pulsing crystal of light inside of me that can't be broken is still glowing an emitting a me that is as constant as it is changing.

Oh, and I also like to make music too. I have a soundcloud so feel free to listen to my weirdness.

If you're new to my blog, a great place to start would be at the beginning.

Level 5: When Dreams are More Normal Than Reality

2012-03-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

So this is the last installment of this series about how my dreams are trying to take over my reality. The previous entries have been about the different depths that my dreams have gone. They have used a few other tricks as well. Before I tie up this end, I’ll give you a quick explanation of those tricks.

First off, taking a page from inception, I decided to find myself a totem. I went upstairs when I was home visiting and started looking through my old toys. I found a marble that I thought would be perfect (since I used to be obsessed with marbles) and the second I found it; I held it up to the light. It was still the beautiful green I had always known. But then, I dropped it and I couldn’t see where it had rolled. As I was trying to find it, I woke up in my dorm at college. I hadn’t gone home – I hadn’t looked for a totem, heck – I have never even played with marbles. All of that had taken place in a dream space. If that’s not a dirty trick I don’t know what is.

Second, I started pointing out things in real life that I don’t do in my dreams. Such as constantly check my phone or adjust my glasses. That next night, you guessed it; I was texting people all throughout the dream and cleaning my glasses regularly. And I firmly believe the normality and routine of those things kept me from even realizing I was dreaming. I didn’t have one iota of lucidity that night. Now, I regularly use my phone in my dreams. It’s actually kind of convenient sometimes.

Third, and this is the title of the post, my dreams started being way more normal and way less fantastic, and my reality started being more and more dreamlike. I know - it seems like a difficult task for my subconscious to pull off, but I’m a sneaky one through and through. My dream was simple, I walked around my dream hometown with my good friend, Sean, and we ran into these two girls that I made a fool of myself in front of. I called them fat, thinking they wouldn’t hear, which they did, and then proceeded to call me fat. Yeah, yeah I know. But I probably would do something like that in reality. Then I forgot my wallet at home, ran back and grabbed it, and made plans to meet Sean at a local diner. I walked in to the diner, ordered a glass of water, and waited for Sean. That’s it. That’s the whole dream, plain and simple.

This is us in front of the store. It's real!

Now reality, that’s a completely different story. My friend Sean was moving to Chicago so I offered to go help him activate his electricity. We had to go to a town two hours away from Chicago with a population of about 500 in order to do this though, and meet someone in a grocery store. Which we did! We passed a weird old museum in this town, got lost, ended up at an abandoned store, found our way to the right store all in order to get told my a grocery store employee that they don’t do activations anymore. However, they do them in a nearby town. We proceeded to this town and found the store in between a shady liquor store and what can only be described as the old person depot – complete with special made toilets!

We walked into the back of the store that was filled with old greeting cards and fake pies and asked the clerk at the back if he could help us. He was obviously clueless as to what we needed, but I was entranced by his big blue eyes and couldn’t stop staring at them. Finally, we got it sorted out after Sean found out he could have done all of this online and the people at the company had simply lied to him. We started the drive home and talked about conspiracy theories and religion and then I got horribly sick at a restaurant we decided to eat at. End of day.

I started asking myself, why does reality feel more like a dream? Why do my dreams feel more like reality? If reality is indeed the totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence, wouldn’t the place where my existence has more sensation, more action, more essence be a better indicator of reality? In that case my dreams win out every time. Would the better indicator of reality be the detail, the amount of every second that I remember? Then dreams win out every time. Would the better indicator of reality be the closeness of my relationships? The hardship, the adversity, the difficulty? If that’s the case, then dreams win out every time. There may be more to our dreams than we know. They may hold a key to essence, existence, and reality that we have never given a chance. Maybe they are two halves of the same coin. Maybe dreams are just dreams and that’s the end of it.

So let me ask you, which of my realities is actually reality?

Level 4: 12 Dreams Within a Dream

2012-03-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

This one gets a little personal, but I feel it is necessary to demonstrate just how far my dreams are willing to go to convince me they are reality. I went to bed just like any other night, except my boyfriend at the time was still at my place. Thank the Lord he was there this time because if he wasn’t, I might still be stuck there (joking).

The dream I entered was a Sherlock Holmes type narrative where I was just watching Holmes and Watson solve a mystery. It was initially kind of boring since there was very little back-story and I wasn’t involved. All I knew was they just had to go find this old lady because she had some information they needed. Just as they were leaving the run down London house they were in, I woke up.

My room was bathed in darkness with just a little bit of light coming in from my window. I looked around and tried to get up, but couldn’t. It wasn’t like sleep paralysis; it was more like my legs had turned to jelly. I tried to think but my brain was slow and my thoughts jumbled. I just knew something was different. I fell back asleep in to Holmes dream, and the two characters were now walking across a snowy London. I awoke again, more panicked, and my boyfriend looked at me and said, “you okay?” Then he grabbed my legs and pulled me down onto the floor (I had a raised bed so this was a long drop) and I started to scream. I fell asleep again and noticed a little ticker at the bottom of my field of vision. It was a semi-circle with 12 little dots on them and several of them had already been lit up. I oscillated back and forth between this dream and waking up for quite a while after that.


I only wish this woman was Madea: unfortunately it was much more unsettling

Notably, one time I woke up in my room and dragged myself out of bed. I couldn’t move very well (my body still felt like jelly) but I managed to crawl to the door. I looked around. It was so eerily spot on to reality. The dirty clothes over there, bathroom door slightly open. I started to scream for help, panicking. Then my body turned to pain. I fell back asleep. I woke up again to my boyfriend staring at me with dark, empty holes where his eyes should be. I saw Holmes and Watson talk to the old woman, who labored with every step but when you looked into her eyes you saw untold mysteries revealed – wisdom I have never seen before. I woke up again to throw myself off of my bed and slam my head into the ground, thrashing about in order to wake myself up from whatever interminable hell I was in. I quietly woke up and leaned over to my boyfriend and whispered, “Please, please pray for me. Something is really seriously wrong.

12 times this happened, the panic getting worse and the ticker at the bottom filling up higher and higher until I actually awoke into my room bathed in darkness, sitting up perfectly straight in my bed and hyperventilating. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t see straight. I was blinded by panic. My boyfriend at the time grabbed my shoulder and just sat there asking me if I was okay. I finally regained composure and told him the tale, just as I have written here. He got very quiet – I could tell he was debating whether or not to tell me something. I asked him if I was indeed awake – if this was reality. He quietly replied, “Yes. Although, Casey…” I looked at him. “What?” “You did wake up one time as ask me to pray for you. I was scared, you looked petrified.”

I started asking myself, what is the true nature of reality?

Level 3: The Fight

2012-03-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Actually a cool site for retrogamers

As blatantly hostile as the party was, this next dream takes hostility and magnifies it tenfold. At the beginning of the dream, I was not lucid at all. I was with two young girls, presumably my younger sisters, (why I always get trapped with helpless little ones is beyond me) and we were being held captive by a scary, faceless man in a small room of a big house. I was formulating an escape plan as I was packing our bags for escape. When I realized that I was packing up old N64 games, my lucidity factor kicked in and I immediately switched gears entirely. First off, I removed the two little girls from the dream completely. Then, I ran out into the building, which had a largely unfinished look – as if my brain was creating it as I ran along it. As I came out into the amazingly large entrance way of the house, I was stopped by a menacing voice from the balcony above. I turned around.

Like this guy, probably because of my
obsession with the Phantom Tollbooth

“Nice try escaping.” Said the faceless man as he laughed, filling up the entire room with a billowing echo. Not taking time to play into his drama I simply summoned four party members to help me with what I knew what the inevitable boss fight. (If you’re wondering why I didn’t just change to something else in my lucidity – it was because I was really curious to see how this dream would play out now that I had my wits about me.) To counter my strength in numbers strategy, the man floated down to the bottom of the ground and started taking his gloves off. He walked towards me very menacingly and I just hastily responded by yelling, “Instead of fighting, we are going to have to race to assemble the silver monkey! (you know, from Legend of the Hidden Temple. I always wanted to play that game.)

So Close!

In a flurry we started racing through the temple and trying to collect the pieces, when the faceless man just shook his head and pointed to the bottom of my field of vision. A timer appeared there with a two-minute clock. Frantically, we traversed the obstacle course and threw the pieces down to the podium where we had to assemble the statue. Just as I was about to put the last piece on, the timer ran out and the faceless man ran towards me, hand outstretched as if he were going to strangle me.

My party members attacked about as ineffectually as they do in every video game, but they gave me just enough time to get free. I went all Assassins’ Creed and starting laying into this guy with throwing knives, one after another. But he didn’t slow down at all. To my surprise, he was unaffected by any of my attacks. So, boldly, I just walked up to him, put my hand on his shoulder and said, “you’ve taken way too many throwing knives to still be standing.” And he crumpled to the ground, defeated.

It felt this epic.

I removed the party members from the room and ran outside. I crossed the empty road turned around as I heard a familiar, but weak voice. I realized in that moment that the dream had never intended this character to leave the building; so most of his power resided in the structure. But as this persistent villain walked through the doors he turned into an old man, limping in pain towards me. I am a villain in my own right though, and as he entered the road I summoned a giant bus that wiped him out for good. I woke up.

I started asking myself, how do my dreams know how to respond to me?

Level 2: Trapped

2012-03-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Level 2: Lucid, but Trapped.

Trapped, but not in a sleep paralysis sort of way. I had fallen asleep normally and entered into a dream state. I was in my dorm, exactly the way it was when I had fallen asleep, and there was some sort of fire drill going on. It was at that point when I realized that I was dreaming and became fully lucid. I tried to change the location but… nothing happened. I was simply in my room, trying to open the door. I thought to myself, “now, isn’t that strange?” and proceeded to walk out into the hallway. My whole dorm was completely empty – I could feel it. I started looking around and wandered out into the main hallway. As I tried to change anything about my surroundings… it remained constant. Even with lucidity I could not leave this building.

Imagine these guys entering your dream

So I started to get a little dramatic. I yelled (to my omniscient subconscious I guess), “Is that all you got?! You’re PATHETIC!” And started running through the main area, smashing things and trying to break anything I could find. I summoned a bunch of tables to fit inside one room and yelled, “PEOPLE!” as tons if generic looking extras filled in the chairs by each of the many tables I was cramming in to the place. I screamed, “CRAFTS!” as thousands of copies of identical tiny red and pink pieces of paper flooded the room. I picked up some of the paper and yelled, “Oh really? You’re going to have to better than that. How original.”

Felt a lot like this guy

Finally, I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could on rearranging the space. I opened my eyes to find a great hall with clear glass walls looking out onto a mountain range. I sighed a sigh of relief – too soon. A crowd of people ushered me onto a platform and started congratulating me for the wonderful party I had created. I was so angry and frustrated at this point in being trapped that I started wishing I could just smash the whole building against the mountains in the distance. I saw an old friend in the room and looked at him with pleading eyes, and he just nodded his head as if he was trapped to but could do nothing to change it. I had to sit through the rest of the party, being celebrated for my creativity and action oriented personality. A great satire party custom made from my brain to no positive end.

I started asking myself, what’s the point of lucidity?

Dreams Taking Over - Level 1

2012-03-05T11:16:00.003-08:00

So last blog I mentioned that my dreams were taking over. It seems silly to be warring with your own subconscious, but alas, that is the point I am at. Ever since my freshman year of college, I’ve been having some weird experiences that lead me to believe that my mind is trying to convince me they are reality. Since my dreams keep leveling up in craziness, I’ll explain them starting with the most demure and ending with the most convincing.

Level 1: Sleep paralysis

I’m no stranger to sleep paralysis. I’m well aware of the reasons and exit strategies that revolve around this phenomenon. However, there are some occasions that are notably… different from normal sleep paralysis. These times are when I don’t just hallucinate, but I predict the future. Hallucinating is easy to explain – and terrifying. For instance, I once was paralyzed and hallucinated that someone came into my room, talking to me normally. I sat up on the bed and watched them leave. As I tracked their movement, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I saw myself clawing at my own face and screaming in my reflection. I knew I was paralyzed, so the fact that I was moving without being able to control it was terrifying.

But predicting the future in my sleep paralyzed state? That’s a new level. Level 1 of my dreams taking over. In this sleep paralysis, I was in my dorm room and I had taken a nap while some of my friends were over. Suddenly, I woke up into my darkened room, completely frozen. Since this often happens when someone experiences stress of different sleep patterns, I remained calm and just hoped that someone would come in and wake me up. (Pesky friends could be my saviors for once!) And thankfully, one of my friends did. He walked up to my bed, tapped my shoulder and said, “Case, Case are you okay? Wake up.” And I did.

Awake. Into my darkened room being fully paralyzed. That was all just a hallucination of some sort – and I started to panic. But just at that moment that same friend walked up to my bed, tapped my shoulder, and said “Case, Case are you okay? Wake up.” And I did. For real. It was so exactly the same that upon waking up I immediately started to freak out. Big time.

I’ve had prophetic dreams before, but usually they are layered with symbolism. This was the first time I’d ever experienced anything like verbatim prediction. I started asking myself, what is the nature of prediction?

Sleep Troubles

2012-03-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

I wish I could talk to someone about this. I wish I could do a sleep test with a big doctor firm where they wear shiny white coats and strap things to my head and figure out what’s going on in my brain. Because something is seriously troubling in the Land of Mudd.

Recently a very strange phenomenon has been happening to me. I have had a long time battle with a theory of mine (and this is where everyone rolls their eyes and really does start believing I’m crazy). This theory is that my dreams are slowly starting to make me believe they are reality. It always makes me really mad when people tell me it’s just the movie Inception that has got me thinking this way. Will all due respect to Chris Nolan (who I believe is also a lucid dreamer), I’ve had this problem for 5 years. That extends way before the movie came out, before I had seen it, and before anyone had even heard of it.

Point is it’s not anything like Inception, but my dreams are trying to convince me that they are reality.

Anyway, I will talk more about that in another blog. This blog is all about one particular aspect of that, one that greatly affects my ability to lucid dream. And I am begging – if anyone has any suggestions, please tell me.

Lately my dreams have been forcing me to fall asleep in them. The second I will get into a dream, I will start to sway, and then I will put my head against a wall or lay down on the ground and fall asleep.

Sometimes it feels as if a giant hand is forcing me to lie down. (Oddly enough, I've been to the Giant Hand at the Awakening and fell asleep in the curls of his hair.)

The worst part about this is that the second I fall asleep in dream, I lose all lucidity. The closest thing I’ve had to lucidity in this state was basic awareness, but absolutely no control over my actions.

And not only is that scary, but dreaming in a dream is the most absolute darkness I have ever experienced. It’s like the nightmares become wilder, less organized, and infinitely darker.

In forcing me to have no control and confront these terrifying nightmares, my dreams have succeeded in freaking me out.

Just the other night while staying over at a friend’s, I had this exact experience. As I fell asleep, the dream itself was a bizarre blend of reality. I was staying over at my friend’s house and in the first portion of the dream I kept going up to my friend and asking for help. As he rushed over to help me, I fell to the ground, falling asleep without any control. I remember fighting so hard to explain to him what was going on to me, but I would quickly become completely paralyzed before falling into the next level of dream, the darkness nightmare.

I attempted to wake myself up. Sometimes I woke up in reality, and others I woke up in the dream, to look up at my friend’s concerned and confused face. And even in reality, I felt a severe pressure to go back to sleep. I even woke up one time in reality to a sharp slap on the face. I suppose I will do just about anything to myself to wake from a nightmare.

Seriously, there is so much to this strange phenomenon that I can’t begin to explain. What I’ve explained here is the rough outline of how weird this whole thing is.

Dreams That Build On Other Dreams

2012-02-28T10:38:00.005-08:00

There isn’t a lot to say about this topic, except that it doesn’t happen very often. But when it does happen… it is very strange. It is different than a recurring dream because the story takes bits and pieces from previous dreams and incorporates them into a new story. For example, a few years ago, I had a dream that I used a film business (similar to the one I own now) to make a bunch of visual poetry films for an award ceremony at Baylor. The girls I was working with were really hard to work with – I had to read the lines back to them and in some of the shots you could see me in the reflection, saying the words along with them. Because of this, I had to write little notes at the bottom of each video saying mean things like “53% of the mistakes in this video were made by the actresses.”

But at the end, I finally got to do something wonderful. At my dream setting of Baylor University, there is one main building on the top of a hill that overlooks the whole campus. This day was absolutely perfect for filming. I got one of my favorite professors to, Dr. Tom Hanks, to skip down the stairs and look over the campus – just the picture of happiness. The shot was beautiful, Dr. Hanks was perfect, and I knew exactly how I was going to use the footage. The sun set with me overlooking the beautiful view, and I woke up.

Dr. Hanks being wonderful

That was it. The end of the dream. It's strange to me that I would work even in my dream and find so much joy in it. But that sunset view remains one of the most hauntingly beautiful views I have ever seen – dreaming or waking.

How it feels to see my mom preaching

Last night, I had a strange dream. My mom was in her car and she challenged me to a race to my grandma’s. Taking the faster route you can’t take by car, I accidentally stumbled on some construction. I had to get off my bike and navigate through a series of more and more game-like obstacles until finally I got to the … church? Apparently the dream had changed and I was racing to the church, which my mom had clearly beat me to. But being the optimist, I ran into the church anyway to see if she was there. And she was, preaching a sermon. Awesome. What does that say about how I view my family? This next part may be even more telling.

I went back to the gamey construction that had gone full-blown live action game. My grandma was standing by a slide contraption and monitoring kids going down it. This place was amazing, but terrifying. The whole point was kind of like an outdoor City Museum, a giant playground for adults. Without excruciating detail, I will say that at one point I ended up singing a musical in another language with 50’s looking men while searching for old hats and dresses.

If only I could get on her level

So… as I got farther and farther into the plot of this jungle of a dream, I was finally given the option to sit on one side of a cruise liner dining room for a fancy dinner we were about to eat. We were given the choice of either the Service or Supply sides, and so I chose supply. This meant I had to team up with my long time rivals of the game – but we both knew that supply meant we could probably steal some stuff. So we went upstairs, were seated, and started eating some WEIRD food (a fried dough plate that looked like cascading bubbles) and they started playing a video.

This video was a series of visual poetry films that featured a bunch of young Baylor actresses. The actresses were sitting all around at tables, and they were ANGRY whenever they saw the little taglines I had written on the bottom of each of their starring moments. Only one had the guts to say anything though, and she railed me for my decision. Soon, everyone in the dining room had taken her side and I was left defending my shots, confused. I kept saying that I had made the videos, but not really. I had used a program that made most of the cinematographic decisions and whenever they yelled out a mistake, I just sat there, whispering that I hadn’t really made that choice.

Not quite my dream, but this is Baylor.

And then, it happened. On the big screen in the room, the film changed into my glorious moment up on the hill with Dr. Hanks. And audible gasp rang through the room as they saw the beautiful place and felt the happiness of my be-bopping teacher. I thought to myself, “This is just what I wanted. I wanted them to feel like they were there, in that beautiful place, watching the sun set.” I felt myself starting to cry as I remembered that time. I’ve since moved to Tennessee after my graduation at Baylor, and even though there are no hills on Baylor’s campus, that is how I remember it.

This concept of dreams of that build on other dreams is a tough one. In most dreams, there are moments when I realize I have never done that before or I have no idea what someone is referring to, and then my dream will supplement me with the appropriate memories. That phenomenon happens quite often. But most of the times, those memories are false. In the case of this dream, there was an actual dream, actual moments my mind had created to supplement the story with. That is rare. And again, the only comment I can make is that it is very bizarre. It’s like my dream world has it’s own me, with memories specific to it that I don’t remember awake, but asleep a new range of experiences and ideas comes into play.

Inspiration from Dreams

2011-12-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

Dream Inspired

Recently, my dreams have become a great inspiration for me. I’ve noticed that I am the most creative in that half an hour after I wake up but before I fully come to my senses.

In one of my latest dreams, I had a close friend to me hold me very tightly as I was crying and sing a song to me. For some reason, as I woke up, the song stayed with me and I recorded it.

I hope you enjoyed that song. It’s still rough and just recorded with MIDI, so I don’t expect huge accolades or anything. I made the video with a business I own called VideoGram. The photos are a compilation of pictures I took on my recent travels to several different countries in Europe.

It’s funny how the weirdest things pop into your head as you wake up. Over Thanksgiving Break I ended up waking up to a giant pun, just sitting there in my mind.

“Call the somnabulance! It's an emergensleep! He said you beta wave to me when I amneseeya next time. I told him he was being a real hypnagogic jerk and he must have given me 40 lashes cause I sure caught 40 winks.”

As you can see, there are a lot of sleep related puns there. I think it’s hilarious. But, my humor isn’t for everyone.

Apparently there are whole sites inspired by people who are inspired by dreams. (Whoa, meta.)

For some reason, most of the pictures are fantasy-based scenes of fairies or forests. Strange to me, but some of them are incredibly interesting.

On this topic, there are a few notable inventions that may enable us to more freely share these beautiful images in our minds. For instance,researchers have been able to reconstruct images from the human mind by monitoring FMRI scans. It’s true.

There are some huge implications here, not just for dreaming, but also for design, film, and all visual arts.

One author suggests that a sub-industry could emerge from this technology in the entertainment sector, one he calls “dream entertainment.” Can you envision multiplayer dreams in which multiple people can now participate in the dreamscape, creating a new type of virtual reality game? This author suggests that “dream celebrities” could emerge if dreams existed on a massive computer network.

I personally think that could be awesome, but can’t ignore the dangerous, almost Matrix-like possibilities that come with it.

Do you have any dream inspired moments? What about ideas for crazy realities that could be seen using this technology?

Stress and Lucidity

2011-11-29T18:46:00.001-08:00

Stress

I am a firm believer that if a dreamer is stressed out, it takes them farther away from being able to reach their goal of lucidity.

Whether this is because of a general loss of control in real life that manifests itself in the dream world, I am not sure. For me, even though I am stressed out, I may still realize I am dreaming. But that does not mean I can begin the process of dream control. Sometimes it feels as if I am trapped in a dream, aware of what is going on but just sort of vaguely acknowledging the dream space. For some people, this can be incredibly damaging.

For example, my sister recently described to me that she slept for more than 30 hours. She felt as if she was trapped in a dream – nightmare really – that was forcing her to live out a horrible reality. At no point did she become aware of this odd and frightful situation, but upon awakening was startled to see how much time had passed.

Another aspect of stress is how it inhibits the dreamer not only from sleep, but also from awakening. One useful aspect of lucidity is the ability to control when one wakes up from sleep. It may not be a common practice for lucid dreamers, but in the case of nightmares I find it to be quite an amazing skill to develop.

My method for refining this skill has remained the same since I was young. If I was experiencing a dream and wanted to wake up, upon lucidity I would start rocking back and forth in my dream. Slowly but surely, my physical body would also start to shake, and before I knew it, I was awake.

However, in the case of a nightmare (which doesn’t necessarily mean the dreamer is experiencing stress), upon lucidity I would repeat this process. This would often be to no avail. However, as soon as the true terror of the dream would end, I would suddenly awaken. Why would this happen?

I think stress works both ways for dreamers. As stress in real life prevents dreamers from lucidity, so does it prevent lucid dreamers from wakefulness.

I would be interested to know how many people have had similar, albeit less extreme examples of this situation. I strongly believe it is correlated with the amount of stress one experiences on a daily level. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them!

Dream Definitions

2011-02-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

I guess to start I'll detail a little of the purpose of this blog. This is meant to be a short reference of concepts and words that I use to describe things in the dream sphere. If you have any questions or want certain topics covered that I haven't included, feel free to comment or even add your own!

Basic Definitions

Dream setting: a place that is always constant in dreams. Every time you dream a dream that requires you to be in a certain type of place (such as an apartment) your mind will take you to the same specific apartment every time. For example, I have a dream mall. I know where all of the stores are and what types of food they serve. I have dreams about malls frequently (I have no idea why) and even though the dreams are completely different, it's the same mall every time. This place is made up by my mind but does take inspiration from some places that exists in reality.

Dream history: Certain dreams have an entire back story in them that the dreamer knows unexplainable at the point of entering the dream. These are ridiculously hard to remember upon waking, but they add such a huge element to the dream that it is difficult to retell a dream without the ability to fully explain them.

Dream memories: Different from a dream history, these are memories that the dreamer encounters in the midst of dreaming that allow them to recognize other characters, previous relationships, or previous occurrences that only exist in the dream space. These aid in filling out the plot and making coherent connections in the dream story. A cognitive dissonance between these memories and real life often allows the dreamer to realize that they are dreaming and thus enter into a lucid state. Also, this may represent real events that the dreamer has forgotten until a certain dream.

Dream speak: Frequently, dreamers will experience very powerful speech in dreams that have a lasting impression, but upon waking will have no way to capture the essence of what was meant in wakeful words. It may feel like if one only had the ability to speak a different language that they could convey what it meant. Conversely, they may feel the words were in a different language and that is the reason for the disparity. This is a phenomenon I have termed "dream speak" for the sake of allowing a story or structure to continue even without an exact reproduction of what happened while dreaming.

Characters

One blog has a very interesting take on this topic that's not so much different from mine.

However, as far as I can tell, there are three main types of characters in any dream. The first type are the stereotypical, archetypal, filler characters. These are often the people who change from scene to scene in a dream. They are characters that vaguely remind you of a person upon waking, but are never specifically any one person in a dream. They exist simply to further the story.

Also, there are characters who are very obviously people who you know in real life. They could range anywhere from you best friend to that man at the grocery store you saw once. These are the main characters that you instantly recognize and can remember vividly upon waking. I would go as far as to put recurring dream characters in this category. These are people that you only know from dreaming because you dream about them often. They may not exist in reality, but they a major players in the dream field. I include this idea in the main characters definition because of their persistent and important presence to the dreamer. These ideas replicate real relationships in a sense that they may come with complete dream memories and even a dream history.

The last type of character I have encountered is strange to label. For the purpose of this blog, I will call them Sense Characters. These are the people that you meet in a dream and are overcome with the certainty that they exist in real life. Like I said, it's hard to explain. Most people often use this kind of experience as backup for the validity of prophetic dreams, especially when they later encounter the person later in reality. Hard to prove, but stranger things have happened, right?

Types of Dreams

Standard dream occurrences are not really what I have an interest in describing here. There are a few exceptions, I believe, that may need to be mentioned in stronger detail, which is why I'm including this portion in the definitions. Most people have heard of recurring dreams, nightmares, and (hopefully) lucid dreaming. If you there is a definition I lack that you want me to define, let me know and I'll be happy to oblige!

Sleep Paralysis: Most people have probably had this phenomenon occur to them and wrongly translated it as a nightmare. In fact, it is another evil beast all on it's own and must be tackled as such. If you want to learn a little more of the science, feel free to read the wiki, provided for your convenience. Sleep paralysis is something I have struggled with frequently and on many different fronts. It is a state where your mind wakes up from sleep, but the brain is still sending out the signal to sedate body movement. What happens here is that your mind uncontrollably panics (thinking your body is paralyzed) but also can project still dreamlike images onto the data your eyes are picking up in reality. It never lasts very long, but if any of you learned about subjective time in a film or art course, this is a prime example.

Prophetic Dreams: Whether you believe it or not, some people actually do have dreams that somehow relate to the future in a relevant way. These people may just have a knack for quickly and accurately synthesizing information, but these dreams tend to go beyond normal human ability. Over time, these dreams have been linked to many mystical occurrences and spiritual people, but I believe this type of dream is more common than that. It also goes beyond a simple self-fulfilling prophecy, in my opinion. Whatever the origin of these dreams, their very nature is to predict a future event. Which, as it relates to lucid dreaming, can get very confusing. This definition leaves out lucid dreams, because prophetic dreams are traditionally not created by the dreamer. They simply happen as the dreamer passively participates.

Dream Within a Dream: Simply put, that feeling that you wake up and start a new activity in a very familiar setting only to actually wake up later. How later is operable. I've had 12 dreams within a dream before (only once though). Some people have even had more. Normally, it occurs 1-3 times when it does happen.

All of that said, maybe you might like to start hearing more about my noteworthy lucid experiences.

The Land of Mudd

2011-01-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

From the time I was in second grade (around 7) to the beginning of fourth grade (around 10) I...

Well this is harder to explain than I thought.

You know anything about dream settings? Well, to me, a dream setting is a place that is always constant in dreams. It can be a mall or a church or a town. Every time you dream a dream that requires you to be in a certain type of place (such as an apartment) your mind will take you to the same specific apartment every time. The dreams can be vastly different and little changes can take place, but over a period of time you can become familiar with a dream setting so well that you can describe it as if it is a memory you've had in real life. For example, my hometown is a little town in Illinois. I dream about it frequently, but each time I dream about it it has slight variations. Dream Maroa has a creepy building on the edge of it, a forest between my house and a church, and the church is right across the street from a diner. Real Maroa has none of those locations, but other structures are similar. My house, the water tower, and the main road are identical to the real town.

The reason dream settings are so important to lucid dreaming (in my experience) is because they allow the dreamer to realize that they are actually in a dream, which is the first step of being able to lucid dream. The second step would be controlling the dream completely or simply operating within it and manipulating the smaller details. This dream setting (the Land of Mudd) greatly impacted how I came to be a lucid dreamer, but also is so peculiar I have never even heard of someone experiencing something similar.

In case you are wondering, I remember this dream very well because I wrote it down every year in my classes for short story assignments. My teachers who read the stories (there were three) called them highly imaginative and (sadly) kept them all. Also, by that time I had made some strides in dream memory and it was much easier for me to recall dreams. And since I went to this dream setting for a little over two years, it's a very solid place in my mind.

So from second grade to fourth grade I went to the Land of Mudd. A peculiar dream setting because of the nature of my visits. I found this place in a dream when I went outside of my house and rolled in a mud puddle. I opened my eyes and wiped the mud away and to my surprise I was no longer by my house.

Instead of my house, I saw a little building that looked like a gas station. I walked inside and as I did a blast of cool air fell over me. I was completely clean from head to toe. One end of the room I entered had a table with five containers on it. The other end had a bored looking person at a desk. I turned, confused, and asked he person where I was. Nonchalantly she said, "You're in the land of Mudd." And as I watched here she spelled out the name lazily in the air with her hands, emphasizing the second D in the name.

Not having any idea what that meant, I left. My first view was of a typical ghost town main street, tumbleweed and all. I thought it was strange that no one was around so I curiously walked down the street yelling to see if anyone was around.

"We're in here!" A voice rang out. Well, where's here? I thought. Just then, I saw a sign hanging over a little restaurant that said "Here."

I laughed and walked in. Empty! Not a soul. So I threw my hands in the air in confusion just as that same voice shouted, "We're over there!"

Smarter this time, I looked for a sign and found it right above a room to the right of me. I walked in and saw the whole room hiding behind a big wooden table, quivering. As I walked in, the man who had been directing me said, "Why are you not hiding? Aren't you afraid of them?"

Stunned, I said, "Who's them?"

Instantly everyone in the room started whispering. Some of them saying things like, "How does she not know?" and "Is she one of them?"

Then I heard some voices and turned around to face three huge men standing right behind me.

They sauntered fully into the room and I just laughed, for some reason. They pulled out old-timey looking guns and pointed them in the air. I just said, "Don't be afraid, they aren't loaded!"

One of the guy shot his gun and it didn't fire. I laughed again and he threw it on the ground. I picked it up and held the trigger saying, "See?" And fired it. A huge gunshot rang out as I had blown a hole in the ceiling.

At that point I started running. They chased me through a street, through a warehouse where I briefly hid behind some large bags and then a bunch of really tall tribal masks, and then through someone's really well decorated house. After that I ended up back in the middle of the town unable to run any more. (I was always a really chubby child no matter how many sports I played.) They did their traditional intimidating saunter and faced me like an old west showdown. This part of the dream is really hazy to me, hopefully you all know how dream fight scenes are.

All I remember is that the three bad guys were in a pile in the middle of the street and I was dusting myself off. I had won, apparently. All of the townsfolk came rushing out of Here and lifted me up on their shoulders, cheering.

It was great because they were all saying that I was the one they had been waiting for. They said that I was the new mayor of the town, meaning I got 5000 chips of each kind. (I was really confused at this.)

Soon, I found myself with the yelling guy back in the gas station, where he kindly explained to me what "5000 chips of each kind" meant.

Apparently, they were some sort of dream token, each a different color.

Red was danger, a scary dream.

Blue was calm, a dream I wouldn't remember but would bring me peace.

Yellow was happy, a fun dream.

Green was virtuous, a long dream with a lot of action but the hero wins.

White was different. They called it "Create-A-Dream."

He then took me out back and showed me these two floating rooms. They were pink and padded and looked like cylinders floating in the air. He walked into a room with me and all of the walls were covered in these thick, square-ish cartridges with pictures on them. I started looking at them all and he explained to me that these were dreams. All I had to do was put whatever color dream I wanted into the canister and come into this room. The room would show me dreams of that type. I would pick one out and put it in a fixture near the door and instantly that dream would begin.

The next floating room was the same, except it showed me all types of dreams. When I would put a white chip in, I would enter this room and pick a dream. Instead of the dream just beginning, another door would open and I would enter a room filled with a large computer screen and enter the dream cartridge into a slot on the giant columns of machinery next to the screen. The computer would boot up and I would enter the dream I picked from that point on.

At any point during the dream if something was going a way I didn't want it to, I would come back out and use the controls to change the dream to something more desirable. One time, I remember having to jump across this large chasm. I was too afraid, so I went back out to the computer and added a one of those curved monkey bars to climb across instead.

Needless to say, I picked white chips a lot.

But this is how I dreamed, for years. Each night, I would go back to this town (I started to know some of the people), deposit a chip, pick a dream, and go.

I remember once, I picked a green chip. All I remember is that there was this large hall that I walked through with pawns (like in chess) fighting each other. Their fighting represented a larger battle going on outside between my people and the King (who's hall I was presumably walking through). I burst through the doors and threatened the King to stop the war at sword point. He waved his hand and all the pawns fell to the ground at once. I heard my people shout and woke up feeling more victorious than I ever have to this day. What that dream started as I can't even hope to remember, or why any of that made sense to me, who knows.

Another time I remember I was running low on chips (how, at 5000 a piece I wonder) and so I decided to do some odd jobs around the Land of Mudd for more chips. Apparently the people there worked for chips and traded them as currency. I just remember a large stage that I had to clean, being a blacksmith somehow, and running through crowds of people. At the end of the day, I hadn't earned nigh a chip. I woke up feeling very tired and a little defeated. It's the most work I've ever done in a night, haha.

Through this experience, I strongly believe that my ability to lucid dream was fostered, dream by dream, through this strange experience I had as a child. From this point, I started to notice when things weren't going the way I wanted them in my dream. I had to first recognize my discontent and then take a step back and use my own creativity to fix the problem. These are the clearest fundamentals for any lucid dreamer; first realizing the disparity between your consciousness and the dream reality and then engaging you own mind to work with or against the dream mechanism.

I don't know why this happened to me, and frankly, I even have a hard time believing it sometimes. After a while though, it just stopped. I have always wondered why, and distinctly remember trying to get back there multiple times in my dreams.

At this point, before I continue, I will definitely need to write a blog that details more of my very own dream definitions.

The Beginning

2011-01-21T12:17:00.000-08:00

I know exactly when I had my first dreaming experience. I was still looking through my crib bars. As a child, the types of dreams I had were recurring dreams. This particular recurring dream was one I always called "Red Lightning". This weird stick figure looking guy made out of lightning would walk down my street towards my window and say "I'm gonna get you." The voice sounded kind of like the 10,000 volt ghost from the Scooby Doo movie, although the movie happened much later and they look nothing alike. When I was 7, I remember freaking out when my dad took us on the boat and a red lightning storm actually happened. Sometimes lightning actually does turn red (which I didn't know at the time) so when I saw it I was terrified and made him take us back to shore (we were going back anyway.)

Another recurring dream was about this orange and blue child slide that we had in my yard. It would chase me all over my house and tell me "You can run but you can't hide."

The next strange recurring dream I had was around the age of 6. Every night I went to sleep I found myself in a weird dream daycare center of sorts (since I never went to daycare I have no idea where I got this idea from.) Some nights I would try and save the other kids from the evil caretakers, some times I even succeeded. One time I remember overhearing that the caretakers were going to rig the bleachers so when we all sat on them it would break. Some how I convinced the other kids not to get on the bleachers. The caretakers were really mad at me. Other times I remember I wouldn't even concern myself with the other children. I would just try to escape. We all got one phone call and I would always try to call my cousin. This little bubble popped up showing my cousin in the top corner and me in the bottom corner. I would try to get her to help me and she would just say, "I'm sorry, Casey, I can't help you." And then her little bubble would pop and I would have to find another way to escape. The weird thing about these dreams is that when someone would pick me up or I would escape, I would see this weird brick building, a blue sky and a sidewalk and instantly wake up. Every time that door opened I woke up.

Also, I have this half remembered dream that occurred intermittently throughout my childhood of me entering a computer screen (like physically shrinking down and walking into the screen) and then finding this graveyard playground behind the icons on the screen. The best computer games were hidden there, I remember finding through many adventures.

The first time I reached any sort of awareness was not far off, but an important milestone happened before my first lucid experience. I used to be able to wake myself up from dreams when I was very little. This happened by me shaking ever so slightly in my dream until I was shaking all over with a lot of force. Eventually, I would wake up in reality shaking. The first time I remember doing this was when I was dreaming about a playground and a giant came to terrorize us. I climbed to the top of a tower in the playground and started shaking. Before I knew it I woke up.

Something I should bring up here, which I will touch on more, is the ability of strong emotional attachment in a dream to prevent lucidity or control. If I was feeling too afraid, the stress of all of the events could prevent me from waking up. The second the dream changed to a less stressful environment I would instantly be separated from the dream and enter into wakefulness. I eventually figured my way around this problem, but it's definitely not a foolproof system.

So, this is my early childhood of dreaming. If I seem like I had some really traumatic experiences, my father and my mother divorced when I was 4 and my father passed away when I was 9. Honestly, though, I was a happy and oblivious child. I was always really close to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins from both sides so there was a lot of family to keep me going. My family makes fun of me for always being in what they call "Caseyland" which is just a constant state of distracted and creative happiness. Self-entertained is a good word for it.

Another valid point to bring up here is that my house is really creepy. I mean, I wouldn't call it haunted by ghosts or anything, but we've definitely had various types of activity. I know that sounds bad, but I will explain those experiences later as they aren't really pertinent to this part of my life.

Well, the next blog should be about my first big milestone in lucid dreaming - The Land of Mudd.

Background

2011-01-21T08:09:00.000-08:00

Before I get into all of the crazy that undoubtedly accompanies talking about this subject, I wanted to express a few items about myself that may help you to understand what I write and why I write it. I am a 20-year-old student at the lovely Baylor University. I have the highest grades you can get and I'm graduating a semester early with a BA in film and digital media with a minor in entrepreneurship. My ideal goals are to work in the emerging gap where technology will cease to exist and new technology is necessary. I also would like to be involved with selling and starting 2 companies that I have developed strong ideas for. Hope you don't take that as bragging although I wouldn't blame you.

I also have a few stress related diseases that you may argue contribute to my dreams, but given their nature, I doubt it. I have mild colitis, TMJ, and Raynaud's syndrome. All of these things are mild cases, but the most prominent disabler is TMJ.

To typify myself, I am a classic choleric/sanguine (scroll past the weird chart and just read the definitions. They are some of the best definitions I've found. Feel free to comment otherwise). I go to Lakeshore, a very faith questioning and discussion based traditional church that I think has a good blend of figuring out why/what we believe and action. It's very different as far as churches go; I hesitate to call it Baptist even though that is their own classification. I've been kicked out of Baptist churches, events, and mission trips so it's surprising to me that they label themselves in that manner. In all honesty though, I have no idea what to call them XD.

At the point of me writing this right now, I have both strep and mono. That will change soon, I'm hoping, because I'm missing a lot of class lately (and I'm one of those who loves class.) When that changes, I will post it. The nature of my dreams hasn't really changed because of this, but I sleep a lot more so the amount of dreams I have is increased. Also, the higher stress levels take a toll on the control I have in the dreams, but such is the life of a college student. :D

Generally when I tell people the experiences I am about to share on my blog, I'm afraid they will think I'm crazy. More often than not they take it in stride knowing my character but it's very hard for them to relate. I'm positive there are people out there like me who haven't been taught these things, who aren't making it up, and who just know how to lucid dream. I am also positive that there are people similar to me who will at least find this blog interesting simply because someone took the time to write all of this down.

I guess the best place to start would be at the beginning.