On Thursday, I had a doctor’s appointment. As usual, my medications were adjusted to try and reap more benefit. Before Thursday, I was not sleeping enough but now I find myself in and out of consciousness during the day. Sound too simple? It is!
I have a history of vivid, and lucid dreams. The first dream that truly struck me as lucid, was on the way home from Burning Man 2008, in the family vintage GMC Wild Rose van, beside the giant green Sparwood dump truck…My lucid dreaming continued off and on for years. After a time where the dreams were more lucid and frequent than ever, I sought help from my trusted acupuncturist who had successfully treated me for chronic back pain, and many other conditions since. Acupuncture really helped me stop, and control my dreams to an extent. The dreams would come back occasionally, but not every night as they were before. When you lucid dream every night, you are left drained, and sometimes confused as to what truly went on in your subconscious versus your conscious mind. Now, I have to note that my dreams were rarely night terrors. I consider a night terror to be when you wake up having a panic attack, whereas I consider a lucid dream to be one where the you are aware of your choices in the dream, and act on those choices relatively consistent to your conscious self. I have learned to recognize lucid dreaming as there are often inconsistencies presented that contradict my life as I know it. I’m not sure how else to explain that bit.
Since I have been spending more time asleep lately, I have been having lucid dreams again. So it seems as though since I can’t go to acupuncture right now comfortably, I need to take back some control again as my body gets adjusted to the new medication dosages. One trick I will never forget, and has allowed me some success will be my tool in the upcoming days. It is so sad that I can’t remember who taught this to me, as it has helped me a lot over the past 8 years of dreaming. The trick? When you are in a lucid dream and you realize that you are dreaming but cannot wake up…Pick up an object, throw it in the air, and try to catch it. Most often, when I go to catch the object I will wake up. The more consistently you can connect this action to waking up, the more successful it will be.
Lucid dreaming has an in-between that can allow lines to be blurred. During the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, moments become both too slow and too fast, too real and not real enough, and both lost and retained at the same time. This is one of the reasons why I have sought help with lucid dreaming in the past, as the familiar in-between can be a scary place sometimes. I deeply value my intelligence and mental faculties, so any sensation that makes me question either of those due to some bullshit blur between being awake and dreaming is unacceptable to me. (Another reason was that the inconsistencies in the dreams started increasing, so it dawned on me that the lucid dreaming wasn’t harmless anymore.)
Time to start dream training again! If anybody has some other tips they have used for lucid dreaming, please let me know. In any case, I’m off to catch objects in my sleep.
It Is What It Is 