2017-05-13
[I've been having a lot of success lately, night after night, with Chaining dream content from non-lucid dream to non-lucid dream. This is in fact a form of lucidity which I hypothesize will inexorably overflow into the higher levels of lucidity. I've been waking from dreams without moving or opening my eyes, then going directly back to sleep using the REM breath (one second inhale, one second exhale, repeat) while mentally going over details of the dream I woke from and stopping the internal dialog. The result is that I have been spending most of my dreaming time in related, recurrent or similar dream plots, thus "Chained content". Not only will this have the effect of making me more likely to spot Personal Lucidity Objects due to repetition, but just the continuity of plot elements and duration of dreaming is more likely to trigger lucidity than random dreams here or there. In Synfonemia-speak, this means my 3ness dream body or the 2nd chakra is being trained to be of use to me in the Unworld environments. Threeness is the holder of the memory, which is a big part of lucidity, especially triggering it. Threeness is also all about the Moment.]
[My dreams lately have shown a lot of emphasis on workplaces, which kinda points to the fact that I am working so hard to have certain kinds of dreams vs. random dreams generated for reflexive psychological reasons. This has to do with training 4ness, which is the harmonic of work, organized effort and time. Value, as indicated by the money (energy) passing hands to my newly re-adjusted, unusually casual 4ness dream body in the last scene. This dream body always appears as a workman or a pair of them (Nitpicker and Potwatcher) but in this case he is so casual as to draw my attention. Which indicates he is being trained to not overdo his skill at organization, which would be an indulgence and a waste of energy. This energy is needed for the Uppers, so that the abilities of the remote mind can take over some lucidity duties that the conscious mind is not well suited for. In the lucid dream related below, I was also under the watchful eye of the Boss, which is my 3ness dream body. This personage is a trainer undergoing training. As "Mr. Murray," my most frequent dream mentor--based on a longtime employer from my distant past, a most influential older man I worked for, and the mentor of a lifetime--the Boss is getting better at asking me questions that direct my Attention to make me think and become more lucid. The air compressor and emphasis on a certain bellows were also Personal Lucidity Objects since I spent my life studying compressed air and am now highly focused on breathing techniques.]
[Lucidity is not a black-and-white phenomenon. It is definitely a spectrum and while the lucid dream below does not demonstrate a high level of lucidity, I was focused on increasing the duration of lucidity as will be obvious by the thought I got hooked on sometime after I realized I was having a lucid dream. The first dream related below was not lucid but it also involved Personal Lucidity Objects--maps--and developing lucidity by trying to travel to a specific location while trying to remember the exact route. The pianos and player pianos in the lucid dream are examples of one of my key lucidity objects, musical instruments. Normally the Boss is considered my 3ness dream body, but the 3ness dream body is generally merged with the 2ness dream body which I personify as the Inventor. This dream character disappeared at the moment of lucidity, that is, I merged with him, absorbed his lucidity, and realized I was dreaming.]
2017-05-12 3:00 am
[Dream of the Day:]
[More success with Chaining.] J. has become deceased and an immediate decision to marry Alex'a has been accepted by A.'s family despite my rush. Her family [my Soul Retinue] has piled into a pickup and gone with me on my rounds to take care of business while burying most of my former life's accumulated stuff in the back of the pickup under a camper shell. The pile of stuff is covered by a large blob of LIME GREEN SLIME [the Nowhere] which I smooth out the best I can with a long tool, while keeping out two file boxes [Nitpicker and Potwatcher] which contain vital documents needed to make the change.
[Meditated in bed for about 10 minutes after sitting up while T. got ready for his 3:30 a.m. trip to town with uncles and cousins to go jogging in the park. Lay down with mask on and had maybe six Awakenings in which I used REM breath to Chain dream content. Each time I went to the same Communal House and interacted with different people. The plots don't matter. What matters is that I didn't remember to cycle through techniques and I tried rolling over physically then just gave up and went to sleep. Have to focus on Indirect Method and Forced Falling Asleep (see The Phase by Michael Raduga ).]
8:30 pm
[Went to bed alone and practiced Vac-U-Move for one hour. Uneventful except that I got into a steady, placid state of some kind, sort of a dreamless suspended animation, thoughtless in a void of sorts [the end of the Tunnel, Monroe's Focus 10] and almost aware of being almost aware. In other words I had succeeded in reaching the borderline of sleep and was just hanging out there, when the others came to bed and woke me up about 9:30 or so. At that point I did the right thing for a change: I decided to go to sleep and wake up later without moving in order to practice Indirect Exit later on. I am trying to get myself to stop exhausting my enthusiasm on bedtime practices which in Raduga's opinion is characterized as trying to run before you can walk. So far I've been impervious to this advice which comes equally from almost every direction, but at least I make it clear to myself that the bedtime practice is just practice, just a dry run, and not an attempt to get unworlded as such. Just daytime practice, really, as 8:30 p.m. is too early to go to bed. This is my evening meditation.]
2017-05-13 1:30-4:30 pm
[Took a long nap on a very full stomach and surprisingly had vivid dreams. Usually in naps I haven't been remembering dreams. Didn't write them down as I'm doing more Daytime Practices now--including Practice #1 = Dream of the Day--instead of spending my days writing down every scrap of every dream. I feel this is more likely to generate lucidity than making a gruesome chore out of journalling to the point where some part of me hopes I don't remember my dreams so I won't have to write them down and then type them up later.]
3:20 am
[At the end of a longer dream which I forgot. Dream of the Day:] At one point I am angry at KK for borrowing my map and not giving it back. Later I'm staring at a map, reading street names, relating it all to where I'm trying to drive [the Tunnel], and maintaining a general thread of plot through chaotic twists. The word on the map that stands out is "unused," placed before a certain street name for the major thoroughfare I'd been unable to find [the Tunnel and my eternal quest for what's at the end of it. Also note the vague similarity between the words "unused" and "urumara", not to mention the insinuation that I haven't actually been there.] I learn from the map that the portion of the road marked "unused" had been shifted ILLOGICALLY to a place several blocks away from where one might expect to find it. Finally I've driven beyond the point where I feel comfortable [into the Urumara] in order to confirm the revelations I got from studying the map so closely. I don't want to be there so I turn around [trying to escape backwards out of the Urumara, back into the Tunnel] but the return trip is resisted by my having to pass through the Elementary School campus where children are lollygagging on the road with their feet pointing into the driving lane, so I have to be very careful to aim my car between their feet so as to not run over them [the Urumara is like a one-way valve, so crawling out backwards in a panic isn't really any easier than facing your fears and going through it the right way].
[I chose not to do my usual ~2:00 a.m. meditation since it was so late, and went right back to sleep after peeing. Apparently I Chained into the following detailed dream, became lucid, then I lost lucidity but remained aware I had just had a lucid dream. What I'm getting at is that Chaining seems to make mincemeat of the supposed 90 minute interval between REM states, which is good, and which I believe is part of the message behind the number 90 oddly appearing in the final scene of the dream below. Recall that on the night of my last lucid dream 11 days ago, I dreamed of the number 195 and the number 9. Nineness is Whirly, my body of air, my higher self or future self. The composite of the Seven, my dream bodies all merged with each other.]
4:00 a.m.
I'm working in Mr. Murray's piano shop, which is clogged with ODD little pianos and player pianos, cluttered and dusty. [He is silent companion or SC, not seen, but his presence is felt up until the moment of lucidity when we merged and he thus disappeared from the narrative.] I'm trying to decide which job to tackle first, and I think since there is such a backlog of pianos to be rebuilt, it would make sense to take on the biggest job first ["Work Hard Early" is a Personal Lucidity Object, a slogan, a pseudonym, and the name of my higher self, Whirly]. I am exasperated to discover, on opening the piano up, that it's one of those antiques with funky mechanisms [which don't work as well as the more modern contraptions generally put into pianos for the past 100+ years]. Looking away from that, I am even more exasperated to discover more pianos have been brought in while I was looking the other way. I look in the bottom of one of them to see it has some BELLOWS in it, but not in the normal configuration of a player piano, so I WONDER what the bellows is for. I also see what looks like a PUMP organ.
Mr. Murray is trying to help me focus on the first step, which is to clean the piano up. He asks me whether we should blow the dust out with COMPRESSED AIR. I say yes, but then I reconsider and suggest we should take it outside to blow out the dust so the dust doesn't just land on something else inside the shop. He demonstrates the weak and watery spray of his compressor hose, and I suggest that I go home to get my compressor, which is new and in good condition. I clearly picture in my mind the drab GREEN compressor I have at home [the Nowhere, the Dream Usher].
Some thought grabs hold of me [maybe because I've never owned a green compressor; green is the Dream Usher's color] and I announce ecstatically that "I'm having a lucid dream!" I grab the first person I see and tell this person that he's dreaming, but decide this is a waste of energy and not my problem. [Forgetting my plan of action which is to kneel and crawl out of the room instead of wasting my energy flying,] I fly straight into the air, blast through a flimsy partial ceiling made of thin old plywood, and stop in the attic. I am happy to lower the volume of my enthusiasm so as not to get too excited. I am aware that remaining calm will extend the dream, and then get obsessed with the thought that I'm having a long lucid dream. [If this was true, I must have forgotten some parts. Still, it was longer than others, but not to the degree that I wished.]
[Unconsciously and partially carrying out my plan of action, which was to "go back-and-forth through the Urumara both ways, over and over,"] I march like a happy child back and forth along an anomalous dry dirt path [the Tunnel, the Nowhere] that I've landed on in the attic, bent over in an odd posture and singing, "Well it's the longest I've been lucid in my life, it's the longest I've been lucid in my life, it's the longest I've been lucid, it's the longest I've been lucid lucid, it's the longest I've been lucid in my life." [The song is sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It (Clap Your Hands)," a children's song which I consciously hate, and this tune was based on a song from the 1930s Russian movie Volga-Volga, a musical comedy which was inspired by and named by Charlie Chaplin.* Once again take note that casual good humor, temporary lack of self-importance or ego protection maneuvers, and the ability to take myself lightly seem to go hand in hand with lucidity. These qualities of the Magical Mindset can't be faked.]
A light brown fog obscures my visual sense [the Nowhere]. I rise into the air and start spinning, but since I've read conflicting reports as to whether or not this is a good way to maintain lucidity, I stop. Unfortunately this moment of doubt and not remembering my Intent Agenda makes me think I'm about to wake up. I recapture lucidity but only for a short time.
I wake up [in a non-lucid dream] at home [not my real home] excitedly telling J. [SC] about my lucid dream. I want to write the dream down right away. I'm so happy to have gotten unworlded that I start crying, and head down the hallway [the Tunnel] to get some tissue to blow my nose. As I reach into the dark bathroom [the Nowhere] for the tissue, I'm visually distracted by a piano being delivered [Chaining plot content] and end up blowing my nose on a clean, stiffly starched brand new white shirt with a dark blue pattern [the Projection Room]. I'm about to try and explain to J. [who is morphing into my mom, which is Chained dream content from my last lucid dream 11 days ago] that I accidentally blew my nose on the shirt she must have just ironed, when the sloppy teenage piano delivery dude drops the piano on its back due to its legs not being unfolded properly [Nitpicker and Potwatcher trying to get my attention]. I am upset by this sloppy work and even more upset when my mom CONSPICUOUSLY hands the dude A $90 BILL. I am horrified that she's tipping him so much but she thinks he hasn't been paid enough for his work. What work??!! I object, looking at the half-finished and wrongly done refinishing job, with the old varnish obviously having been scraped off the piano instead of removed properly.
[I wake up and do a reality check to make sure I'm really awake.]
[*https://kidsongs.com/page/IfYoureHappyandYouKnowIt/ 'The international pedigree of "If You're Happy and You Know It" traces back to an old Latvian folk song from the early 1900's. An instrumental [sic] version written by Isaak Dunayevsky was featured in the 1938 Soviet film Volga-Volga, directed by Grigori Aleksandrov. When Aleksandrov came up with the idea for his movie, he was rowing a boat on the San Francisco Bay with his friend, silent film star Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin jokingly told him that the movie should be called "Volga-Volga". Apparently Aleksandrov took him seriously!' Note: I don't know how much of this is true. In the movie, the "instrumental" version was sung by a large group of ecstatically hyperactive dancing people on a big river raft. The name of the song was "Молодежная" ("Molodezhnaya", which means "Youth"). --ed.]