A Living Magazine - Day 140 - Lucid Awareness, Liz and Savannah

I was with my Livermore, California friends, Sheryl and Dave. It wasn't their house, but somewhere else... We were drinking on a screened-in porch. The porch faced the backyard.

There was a lake out back with a small swimming area, surrounded by docks. Some parents were gabbing away in lawn chairs, while their kids were having fun jumping in the water between the docks.

For some reason, I said something about the area--maybe that it was a tourist trap?, and I saw Dave disappear around the corner. Then there was a slam! in the adjacent room. Apparently Dave was pissed about my comment, and dropped the beer cooler on the floor. Sheryl and I looked at each each other. She just shrugged. 

This would never happen. Sure, I've said inappropriate things many times. But, Dave is one of the most balanced and calm people I have ever met. He would never get angry about such a trivial matter. I was embarrassed and regretted how I'd spoken.

I apologized out loud, and stepped out into the front yard; a grassy place, with a dirt parking lot. Walking over to the parking lot, I passed people going into the house. They didn't smile or say hello as they passed. They seemed angry at me, or didn't like my appearance. I didn't know, but felt a negative vibe in the air.

I walked back in, found the bathroom and changed into my swimsuit to take a dip in the lake. There was a landing some fifteen feet above the swimming area. I figured a good dive might wash away my "sins"; whatever they were. I backed up to the house and then ran off the edge. As I plummeted to the water, I saw that a little girl was on a wooden float near where I would splash down. Shit!

I hit the water incorrectly, partially flipping forward onto my upper back. This created a large wave that toppled the little girl, sending her into the lake. I swam to the surface as soon as I could and looked over at the float, which was empty. The girl took some time to surface. I was mortified, but not as much as her mother was. The mother left her lawn chair and jogged down the dock to where the girl treaded water coughing and choking.

Everyone started yelling at me. I could feel myself blushing, and I kept saying "Sorry! ... My god, sorry about that! ...I ...I misjudged... I feel awful!! I'm so sorry."

The girl didn't look upset, just surprised at it all, and smiled at me, "It's okay, mister. It was just a mistake." 

But her mother would have none of it. "You have to leave now!" she yelled at me.

"It's okay, mama, he's okay..."

"No! It's NOT okay! Get out of here! You are no longer welcome!" The mother was beside herself and now that she was angry at me, she couldn't find her way back to any state of forgiveness.

I said I was sorry again, and pulled myself up on to the dock, then stood up and walked sheepishly back to the house. Sheryl didn't say anything, but I knew that she would prefer that I left. I went into the bathroom to change back into my regular clothes, then saw the mirror above the sink. I tried to look at my own eyes in the mirror, but it was difficult. 

Then, a strange and barely familiar sense passed through me. I couldn't quite make out my own face. It was definitely me staring back, but the eyes... My irises were not blue. They were pink; as if they had been turned inside out. I shuttered. Everything was crystal clear suddenly. This had happened before in my lucid dreams, a few years ago. I had now become lucid.

[I need to now break into a side-note about this, before telling how this morning's dream ended...]

* * *

LUCID AWARENESS

Now, people who have never had this experience will not understand what I mean by "lucid" dream. A lucid dream is a dream in which your body remains physiologically in a state of sleep, but your mind literally wakes up; as completely as it would on any morning after sleeping all night; as completely as it would be as you are driving to work. You suddenly realize that you are fully conscious, but the images and storyline of your dream are still there before you--Matrix-style.

It is NOT a "vivid" dream (a highly detailed one that you remember well), nor is it what Carl Jung called a, "big dream" (an epic or grand dream about dramatic world events, etc.). It is also not what many people have experienced as "astral projection" (though it can be related). I have never experienced astral projection--leaving the body and floating around in the real world. 

None of these are what I refer to as lucid dreaming. The term is problematic and misleading, and the literature is so jam-packed with crystal-worshipping, patchouli-doused, incense-lighting, New Age fluff, that, if you were to investigate studies on this phenomenon by randomly choosing Google's presented sources, you would never understand it. You have to "be there", as it were; experience it for yourself. Most people who tell me they've done it, do not describe to what I am referring. With all of those caveats out of the way, I will briefly tell you why I first learned the technique. 

After my heart attack in 2006, I suffered greatly from PTSD symptoms; mostly, terrible dreams. I would be asleep and in my dream the pressure and pain in my chest would come on full blown, and be even worse than the heart attack had been. I'd wake up with the pressure and pain still fresh in my mind, but I realized (after the first few nights) that it wasn't a real heart attack. 

This happened every night for about three months. I wasn't getting enough sleep and my daytime mind was falling apart. Occasionally, I could catch cat naps during the day, but as soon as I would be dreaming deeply I'd get scared and wake up.

I searched furiously online and at the library for methods and ways to eliminate nightmares. I was quite desperate and my mental state was deteriorating, doubling the difficulty of my research. Then, one day, while researching something unrelated, I ran across a website that documented a woman who used lucid dreaming to conquer severe nightmares related to PTSD after a particularly violent rape. 

Basically, she started by trying to remember and write down whatever she remembered from her dreams every single morning. Then, she would read the latest entry every night before going to sleep. This focus on memory was the first step. The contents of the dreams mattered very little. It was the memory training that was important. And, it wasn't the dreams that were important to remember, but instead, it was the INTENTION behind remembering: that being, eliminating the nightmares.

She studied the written literature (as opposed to the online sources), and found that people who learned how to lucid dream would look for things that did not occur in the waking world, in order to trigger lucidity. When we dream, we are not aware that it is a dream. We take part in a storyline manifested by the unconscious mind. And since it is our own mind bringing that story into REM sleep, we are perfectly able to play along with the story, as if it is happening in the real waking world, no matter how bizarre the circumstances are. 

One night, while dreaming, this woman began to slip into the same dark space that she'd experienced so many times before. In the dream, an intruder had entered her house. She knew he was there, but didn't know in which room he might be lurking. She tried to think of a place to hide, but was afraid to look around, for fear that he might be in that place already. She went to the window and considered jumping out; when, all of a sudden, for the first time, a little boy rode by on a red bike. She continued to look at the street, and about five seconds later, the same little boy rode by in the same direction, on the same red bike. She knew it would be impossible for him to turn around and run out of sight, only to ride by again that quickly... and BOOM!, she literally woke up (came to full waking consciousness) while still in the dream! 

She had to fight her amazement at finally achieving what she had been working for. She easily remembered her waking life and her research. 

Once awake, she turned on all the lights in the house using only her mind. It was HER world now, not the intruder's! Feelings of supernatural strength filled her with confidence. In HER world, SHE was the master. No man was going to hurt her there. She walked through several walls, and straight to the rapist who had haunted her dreams for so long--even after his wicked act, and subsequent conviction in the real world.

He saw her and froze, now fearing what SHE could do to HIM. With her mind, she destroyed him, ripping his body apart until there was nothing left. Then, she woke herself up, never losing consciousness in the process. She remembered the lucid dream as well as she remembered eating dinner the night before--even better. She never had nightmares again. And, she expanded her lucid experiments, having adventures in her sleep for many years afterward.

Reading this account made a HUGE impression me. I knew now what my own answer was. Through a process that was a bit different from hers (one that I still need to write up), I broke through into lucid awareness (a term I like better than lucid "dreaming"--since once lucid you are not dreaming anymore). I conquered my own nightmares, and have never had them since. I also explored the state for years afterward, evolving the process, trying different experiments while in the lucid-aware state, and eventually became quite adept at it.

I have been so distracted on these journeys, that getting back into the lucid practice has dropped way down my priority list... until this morning...

* * *

Standing there in the bathroom of my dream's former storyline, I felt the warm waves of lucid realization flow from the back of my head to the bottoms of my heels. I had learned early on how to prevent myself from waking from the amazement. The lucid awareness was weak--a bit fuzzy, but all kinds realizations about why my dreams had been so strange, so unusual, so vivid, and so bizarre lately, came to me.

My superconsciousness had been trying to trigger the lucid state for weeks now, presenting odd situations that simply would not happen in my regular, physiologically waking world. IT WAS THE SPARK, trying to communicate with me more directly at night than it could during the day. 

I felt like I was higher than any narcotic or ecstatic experience I'd ever had. Here was the inner Universe, a place of infinite levels and channels which I could explore! 

I was SO excited, that I wanted to then try out some of my old techniques. I immediately floated up to the ceiling and passed through it to the roof of the house. There, I bent down and felt the rough tar tiles--they were REAL, not dreamlike in any way. My blue ring glowed up at me, as if lit from within. And, Power energized every bit of my mental body. Was this my SOUL?

I stood up and confidently walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, floating easily in the air, where I made my way to the treetops. All the people who had been in the dream before I'd become lucid were now gone. My mind had no use for them.

In my former experiments, I had not yet developed the concept of the Spark, to what I had since leaving Maine on the Manifest Destiny Journey. Now every concept was completing itself, every question and connection, finally making sense.

Simultaneously with floating at the treetops, I felt my real body, lying on its side, with the hard ground below me, and the edge of the sleeping bag touching my lips. I could switch back and forth from the lucid world consciousness to the material world consciousness; with the full five senses completely in tact in both--with the sixth sense (the portal of the Spark) maintaining the connection. 

The only thing that I had to constantly choose to focus on was which body I wanted to move around in. I knew that as soon as I choose that material body, sleeping in my tent, I would lose the connection to the psychic body floating in the mindspace.

* * * * * * *

Just around that time, I heard footfalls - human - in the woods just beyond where my material body was sleeping. The choice was made. I opened my eyes and was facing this...   

The footfalls grew louder, and I sat up, put on my boots without tying them, and quickly unzipped both the sleeping bag and the tent door, crawling out and standing up. I looked around and listened carefully. At the head of my path in, stood a man who stopped in his tracks and stared at me. I said nothing and stared back at him.

He said, "Oh, hey, sorry man. I'm just trying to get over this way," and pointed across the woods.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "No problem, man. Have a good day."

He turned and walked back out toward to the grassy area and away from my camp. I returned to the tent, slipped back inside and sat down, removing the boots...

When I had them off, I examined what kind of shape they were in. Not good...

Again, it was what is was. These were not LLBean hiking boots, but they were HiTechs, pretty good quality (or so I'd thought when I'd first bought them). I reasoned that even high quality boots would be taking a beating with the type of life I was living. These had served their purpose and would have to do until I could save up to buy new ones--obviously, a big challenge, since I barely made enough to survive and buy bus tickets as it was. It was time to stop contemplating these things, and get my ass into town to catch the blog up.

The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was blue--free of clouds. The air was crisp and cool; a real difference from the last few days. I packed up easily and headed into town along 3rd Street...

Interesting that the word "Livermore" (home of Sheryl and David)

is on this lid, along with "Memphis".

I got to Starbucks and worked like a madman to complete my two remaining posts. The beautiful sun traveled its sacred path across the sky, while I typed away and sipped my coffee. And, when it touched the western horizon, lighting the buildings all around with a deep orange glow, I clicked the publish button on the second post--finally catching up after more than a week of effort.

I was sad to have missed an entire day of gorgeous sunlight here in Memphis, but my goal had been achieved. It was the correct decision. In twelve hours, I had re-achieved lucidity--a MAJOR feet in my personal spiritual life, and written two blog posts (along with the processing of all those pictures and audio files). Just before leaving, I checked my card balance and saw that a good friend, and loyal reader had made a generous donation.

I didn't have the same natural high that I had on that first full day in Memphis, but I felt a new illumination in my life, and a huge satisfaction for having finally brought my work up to date. I wanted to relax, get a beer, and listen to my new favorite Memphis band, Cowboy Neal.

So, that's exactly what I did...

Cowboy Neal The Real Deal!

I hadn't eaten all day, and now with a beer in me and Cowboy Neal leaving the stage, my appetite was raging. The only restaurant I could think of to satisfy this big hunger was back at my favorite place in town, the Green Beetle. The thought of having another one of those delicious burgers was overwhelming me so strongly that I could hardly even think straight. I took three wrong turns before I found Maine Street. But I got some shots along the way, including the Gibson Guitar Factory along the way...

Outside the Ernest Withers Gallery.

Love it!

I got to the Green Beetle, and marched inside. There, I was met by a sweet young server named, Liz. I told her I already knew what I wanted: a PBR, with a glass, and Bacon, Black and Tiger Blue Burger! She got right on that, while I plugged in the laptop and began processing pictures and audio for the next day's post (the one I am writing at this moment).

Liz was very friendly and asked if I'd been in town very long. I told her about my project and her eyes lit up. I handed her a card and she asked what my favorite place had been so far. I won't tell you what I said, but she told me that her favorite place was certain beach in South Carolina.

She was from Nashville, which is my next destination. She currently lives here in Memphis with her husband, only working part time at the Green Beetle. Much of her work is at the local hospital in the Emergency Room. She is planning to go all the way through medical school and hopes to become a family practitioner. Her husband wants to be a dentist, so they are real peas in a pod!

I asked to take her picture. She was a bit shy, and called over another young woman named, Savannah (a relative of the family that owns the green Beetle) to join in the image. I was happy to take a picture of these two beautiful ladies. What I realized later was that my SD card was not in the camera, and the picture was never stored. (!) My stupid fault, as I missed one of the best opportunities to show you these two wonderful souls. But, AGAIN, it is what it is.

At least I still had my slip from the meal, which I photographed later...  

Liz finished her shift, and I finished my meal, leaving the way I had come. I had a real spring in my step as I walked the two miles back to my camp spot.

I lay there awake, enjoying all the memories from the last 18 hours.

I was right next to a train track, and every night a large ghostly freight train passes by me only fifty feet away. I have grown to LOVE trains. I like their power, their sounds, their huge size, and rather than being irritating to sleep near, they are comforting to me. Ever since my sleep spot in Spokane (for a month) under the train that ran through the sky above me every night, they have lulled me to sleep whenever I've camped near them...

And, this one did it for me. After it passed into the dark distance, I slipped back into the mindfields of the Spark, to play among the unearthly colors and infinite vistas of my own soul.

LIFE. WAS. GOOD.