2016-02-27 1:15 am
[Went to bed about 9 pm after a long session of fast walking and breathing in the basketball court. Made no attempt to go to sleep, rather tried to hover near the edge of sleep, resulting in a state similar to insomnia, but without the misery; I couldn't believe how much time passed while I was certain that I was awake the whole time but have no memory of it.]
[The banana packing operation next door is busy and the internet cafe on the other side of the house is busy. An arrogant-sounding businessman is on his cell phone at length right outside the house. This being the Philippines, all this late night activity is basically outdoors--in buildings without walls and outside of them--so voices drift into the windows constantly, which must have contributed to the dream plot following:]
I am unable to sleep due to the rudeness of neighbors just over the fence who I can't see, nor is their house visible in the dark since people have such small houses here in the Philippines. [Landscape looks like Kansas.] I go outside which is a mistake because now I can hear that they're talking about me. Seems I live in some kind of structure in the back yard of my parents' house but am aware of being in the Phils. I listen to the voices of several young black men who I can't see calling me "the honky".
Finally all of this is forgotten when a large rodent the size of a dog--which I mistake for a rabbit--comes out of hiding to feast on the lush green lawn. It is followed by three more "rabbits" the same size. They are white with swirly gray markings. I notice that each one has unique markings and I talk to myself about this, making a mental note of it. The rabbits have an odd habit of standing on their front paws. Then from the four corners of the yard, they all four hop to the center of the yard, forming an X configuration as if their actions were choreographed. They are feeding near each other when suddenly the yard caves in and swallows them whole.
I imagine there must be a large round hole in the lawn now, maybe six feet in diameter, and picture exactly what it must look like. My dad was awoken by the sound of the earth caving in and calls out something to the effect of "rabbits caved in the lawn again," so I tell him not to worry, I will cover the hole so no one falls in it.
I go to the back left corner of the house where some moldy old sheets of plywood are leaning against the house, and drag a sheet over to the center of the yard, but I'm surprised to see the hole is a perfect rectangle as if made with tools. I construct a pseudo-memory of my dad having done something out here recently to explain the incongruency.
[The GREEN LAWN and the GRAY AND WHITE rabbits are symbols of the Nowhere. The hole in the lawn is the Urumara and the similarity to the symbolism of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland is no coincidence, as this story was my mom's favorite and thus had a big influence on me. The X that the rabbitoids describe on the ground is reminiscent of the X that I was painstakingly learning to visualize while going to sleep, many years ago when I first got into a really focused practice and had my first series of lucid dreams. The X had surprised me by turning into a self-sustaining vision of a beautiful shimmering jewel-like light. It took weeks of visualization practice to get to this point, so at the time I didn't know how easy it was to induce hypnagogic images; in fact I had made it to the end of the Tunnel and was peering into the Projection Room through the Urumara.]
[A few years later I had a special room in my house with nothing in it except objects of contemplation. I would not enter this room without first ritualistically describing an X in it by walking from corner to corner of the room. When my friend and I used a Ouija Board in this room, it told me that I would discover the secret of the free range air car in 1988, and this did in fact come true when a stranger came to visit me to tell me about his long-dead friend Bob Neal, the inventor of the self-filling air tank. I ended up inheriting Bob Neal's goals from this stranger, who also became my benefactor for a few years. So the rabbits describing an X in the yard was a huge connection. The X signified the Moment of Choice.]
1:55 am
[Going back to bed after recording the above dream. The banana truck is gone now, so maybe I can sleep. He honked his horn three times as leaving, as if unaware that people are sleeping in houses all around. Filipinos are unannoyable, either they can sleep through anything, or else they just fail to complain about rude behavior and just wait for it to stop.]
[I'm still expecting the COLOR PINK--one of my Personal Lucidity Objects, since I used to be a rose quartz collector--to come up in a dream so I can notice it and become lucid.]
3:45 am
[Sense of doubleness.]
A feeling that I keep going back to my MOLDY OLD APARTMENT [which I commonly dream about] after having moved out of it. I'm in the apartment again with a blank mind, standing there practically unaware of my surroundings, when suddenly there's the real tenant again. HE IS VERY CALM. He has a short crew cut and short beard, light brown hair. [Looks like me with a fleshier face, a little taller, and no glasses.] I AM GRATEFUL to him for understanding my dilemma and staying calm upon finding me in his apartment again.
I ask him if I look wacko in any way and he says no, I look fine. I SEE MYSELF THROUGH HIS EYES. [This dream character is my higher self, Whirly, and the ability to see through his eyes means we are merging.] I'm wearing a jacket that's open to show a dark blue form-fitting UNIFORM shirt. It appears I'm a security guard, which kinda SURPRISES me. Back to seeing through my own eyes, I'm now confident I'm not some kind of wacko, so I prepare myself to leave. I thank him again and ask him his name. We shake hands. He tells me his name is Stephen. I say, "Luther," as we shake, considering but "Luther" seems right for now. I feel happy to know such a calm and helpful person.
Finally, I'm outside at night on a city street corner. There are all-night CONVENIENCE STORES and liquor stores on THREE OF FOUR CORNERS--my now-dark old apartment is on the fourth corner of the intersection. I start for home with a large plastic GLASS OF WATER in my hand, but before I can drink the cloudy substance in it, I drop it in a gutter. I pick it up since I'm still thirsty, but it looks really bad, so I let it lie.
I hear a terrible keening sound and look up. One of the late-night citizens of this seedy district is crossing the street toward the sidewalk I'm on, and it seems the high-pitched wailing had come from him. He is an old man with no hair, a smooth, fleshy face, crooked mouth, blank staring eyes. Tall in a dark trench coat. I move away from him.
I have a great desire for some alcohol and hoping Stephen doesn't see me, I head into one or more CONVENIENCE STORES looking for something I can afford and wondering who will take a check in a neighborhood like this. I realize with alarm that I don't have my checkbook, but then I'm relieved to remember I have my debit card and about $30 in the account to get me through the month. I look at the SHINY WHITE COUNTERTOP of the place I'm in, and I'm encouraged to see no signs saying "Cash Only" or anything like that.
With some relish, I'm looking over small shelves full of colorful, white and brown, opaque, oddly-shaped bottles of flavored liqueurs, but I'm sure if I buy something like that, I won't be able to eat till payday, so I decide to get something I can afford like beer...
[...when I wake up with a dry mouth, but I remember not to move. I feel I could go back into the dream (and should have), but I don't want to get sucked into the dream plot, so I start working on techniques, without moving.]
[A pillow or something is poking me in the back, but I refuse to move. Lifting out and climbing out don't work, so I try rolling back-and-forth and then aggressively thrashing and struggling. It's all visualization and I don't feel it's effective, so I try rolling out, and immediately with no effort...]
I see a round-screened image which is rotating all by itself [a Screenshot ]. I get excited and announce to myself, "I'm out!" then tell myself to stay calm.
I survey images which are fuzzy and remind myself to look through them instead of at them, so they will become 3-dimensional. I can't tell whether I'm out of body, or just viewing hypnagogic images. I think I should touch some things to deepen, but I don't have hands, just vision. I feel the need to move into the scene, but it's just disconnected, crudely drawn objects like a lion-colored sphinx that I can rotate and see vaguely from different angles.
The images increase in clarity and I watch them for a while, [but by now I've moved my leg several times, swallowed several times in response to the dry throat, and finally I go to move the pillow that's stabbing me in the back, and as I suspected, it's my little boy's knee. He objects to the repositioning and steals my pillow, so I find his blanket and comfort him, then head downstairs to the breathing room that I made a week ago. This is the FIRST TIME I will sleep in it at night. Normally the whole family sleeps in one huge bed upstairs.]
4:40 am
[The next twenty minutes I will meditate and then try to go back to sleep. The Moslem singing has just started in the distance, so it's a good time to be awake.]
5:00 am
[Back to bed with blindfold, lying on back.]
[Woke up many times, over and over, with a dry mouth, swallowed and went back to sleep.]
6:30 am
[I've waited 45 years for this moment: the chance to record my first conscious separation from the physical body. It's been 35-1/2 years since my last conscious out-of-body experience. I'm so excited that I can't easily control my emotions. There have always been so many doubts and hindrances. Here's what happened. I was blindfolded.]
I wake up sitting up in bed, blind of course, thinking nothing of it, although I never wake up sitting up in bed. I lay back down, and OOPS, I hit the bed and just keep going! So I'm thinking wordlessly, "Wow, I'm sliding off to the right side of the bed [in slow motion], and I'm going to hit the floor. I can't remember the last time I fell out of bed." I decide it's OK to fall out of bed, it's not that far to fall, and I don't figure it will hurt. But I just keep sliding on my back and never hit the floor, and now I'm floating in the air next to my bed! [Sha-ZAM! I'm out of my body! Yippee!]
I tell myself to stay calm and proceed immediately with my plan of action, and the first planned activity is to look in the long mirror in the dining room where my wife has her dressing nook. So I'm saying to myself in these exact words, "I'm going to need vision," because I still can't see. My field of vision is an empty HOMOGENEOUS OFF-WHITE OR VERY LIGHT GRAY [the Nowhere]. So there's the mirror, I get up close and OOPS, It's just me! Rats! I must be back in my body again, dang it anyway! [The image in the mirror is me all right--at age 30 or 40.] And my hair is too dark--oh, that's just the blindfold pushed up on the top of my head.
Oh well, it was great while it lasted, I am ecstatic. Guess I'll go back to bed.
So I'm climbing the new stairs one at a time, then I notice I'm actually balancing on the narrow concrete wall next to the stairs with the rebar poking up out of it where the railing will be attached when we get it made. [This narrow concrete structure hasn't been made yet.] I think I'd better stop fooling around and get back on the stairs proper before I fall.
As I climb the last of the stairs, I grab a piece of rebar sticking out of the concrete wall on my right [none of which exists] and bend it out. Then I bend it back where it was so it won't snag anybody walking past it.
[Then I'm back in bed downstairs of course, and only then do I realize that the mirror, the stairs, and all that... was experienced out of body. The sensation of realness had fooled me; as soon as I could see, I thought I was back in my body, and only waking up in the wrong bed told me that my antics on the stairs were performed out of body. I found this hilarious and laughed and laughed, then I was wracked by sobs of ecstasy for five or ten minutes, which I didn't bother to control. Forty-five years I waited for this, my first fully conscious separation from the physical body.]
[All through the night I'd been very focused, every time I woke up, on finding the color pink in a dream, and using that as a cue to tell me I was dreaming. Somehow I had become confident that I was going to succeed in this, partly because I've had a few lucid dreams in the past. While writing this, I've had a hanky hanging in the window, trying to dry it in the morning sun so I can keep using it.]
[The snot rag of ecstasy... but wait! That handkerchief--what color is it?]
[PINK. With bizarre Japanese cartoon BUNNY RABBITS IN THREE OF THE FOUR CORNERS.]
[So that bunny rabbit hanky is going on the wall of my breathing room as a trophy, once I wash the snot out of it, in commemoration of this day. The snot rag of ecstasy: 45 years of doubt and struggle, erased by falling out of bed.]
4:30 pm
[Lying down in breathing room.]
[LS1] Fell back suddenly into my body with great force. Not just a limb twitch, this was the strongest hypnagogic jerk I've ever felt. It made me gasp.
6:00 pm
[People are cheering because the power just went back on--as it has been doing twice a day every day--cheering because every night when the power goes out, the kids walk away from the computers and TVs and get real happy playing and running around in the cool evening air. I will meditate and then go to the basketball court for some breathwalking .]
9:00 pm
[Went to bed after verbally, out-loud, repeating various instructions. Wife and child came to bed later, so I finally entered a light sleep, but T. is a restless sleeper, kicking and poking me, and I am too fired up to sleep, so I got out of bed at 11 pm and typed up some pages out of dream journals. Ate crackers and drank decaff. Going back to bed now 12:15 after midnight.]