The Mayor of Dreams

I met him last night, the Mayor of Dreams. Well, the one in my own head, anyway.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had one or two brief moments of lucidity during a dream, not counting last night. Last night wasn’t a moment, it was a quest.

I was standing on a sidewalk in some kind of suburban shopping area–lots of banks, laundromats, and hole-in-the-wall diners. I can’t remember if it started raining before or after I became aware that I was dreaming. Pretty sure it was before, because I remember looking around and realising that the rain seemed to only be hitting one side of my face no matter where I was looking. It seemed like a “glitch” or something at the time.

The moment of becoming lucid was familiar now; it’s a feeling of rapid realisation, like when you suddenly remember that you had an appointment an hour ago. It’s not prompted by anything conscious, it’s just an understanding that comes over you quickly.

I don’t remember who I was with or what I was doing, but it didn’t matter anymore. I quickly remembered my goal (I was reciting it to myself as I fell asleep last night): I want to find the Mayor of Dreams.

I briefly looked around, trying to think of who nearby would be likely to know where to find him or her. None of the businesses nearby looked promising. Then I saw a bus that had stopped to pick up some passengers. It occurred to me, for some reason, that the bus could take me to the “real” Mayor, the Mayor of the city I was in. And if anyone would know where to find the Mayor of Dreams, it would be him.

I ran over to the bus and tried to get on, but the bus driver started closing the doors on me. She didn’t even know I was there. I shouted several times until she finally looked over and realized I was stuck in the door, and then she opened it and let me on.

“Can you take me to the Mayor?” I asked her. She nodded, and we continued on. I took a place standing just behind her, watching through the front windshield. I remember the trip seemed like it was taking forever, and I felt I didn’t have much time. I could feel lucidity waning a bit. I looked at my hands to try to recharge, and I poked them a few times.

Supposedly in a dream if you poke your palm with a finger, your finger will go right through it. That didn’t happen to me. My hands felt solid and real, but slightly numb and tingly like they were asleep. (My face, I later noticed, also felt numb on one side. I have no doubt I was feeling what my real extremities felt like as my body lay asleep in bed.)

I tried to encourage the bus driver to hurry up, but she couldn’t. So I decided to fly.

Well, easier said than done.

Dr. Stephen LeBerge devotes an entire section of his book, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, to different ways to fly in dreams. When I read it, I thought it seemed a bit excessive. How hard can it be? I thought. Turns out, really hard.

Getting airborne wasn’t a problem, I just shot out the front of the bus like Superman…but making any progress turned out to be difficult. I could see where I wanted to go, but I couldn’t seem to make the world around me move. The view stayed the same, moving slightly and resetting. It’s hard to describe. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t getting anywhere.

(I realized upon waking that what I had failed to do was expect to be making progress. Dream logic works on expectations. I was trying to fly, instead of actually flying. Yoda would be disappointed in me.)

I actually don’t remember how, but eventually I made it downtown and found myself outside the Mayor’s office building. I was told the Mayor wasn’t in, so I waited outside. (Outside the building, not just outside his office.) Finally a car pulled up and about four people got out. I only remember two of them: a very tall man with thick features, and a short, kind of frail older man. (Think George Carlin in his later years.) The old man was the Mayor.

I followed them into the building, and onto an elevator. The old man ignored me–actually, everyone did–although I knew he knew I was there to talk to him. (At some point he was talking to the others about his experience working as an extra on the set of Ben-Hur.) Finally we got to his office and I asked if I could just have a moment of his time. He begrudgingly complied, and I asked him if I could meet the Mayor of Dreams.

At this point, my memory of events is a bit hazy. Sorry.

I don’t remember how, but we ended up in, like, an underground room. Maybe we were taken there to discuss this matter, which was clearly a very sensitive subject. After all, I had just revealed to my subconscious that I was aware that I this was all just a dream. I’m sure I got ushered away into a secret meeting space.

What I do remember was that it was the Mayor, the tall, thick-featured man (who appeared to be some kind of bodyguard), and me. The tall man grilled me with a few questions, the content of which I don’t honestly remember. But when I answered satisfactorily, he said, “One moment.”

Then, to my surprise (but not really, because on some level I was expecting this to happen, because dreams), the tall man sent the Mayor away so it was just the two of us left. Now he was even taller–maybe nine or ten feet tall–and he had to stay seated in the room in order to fit.

“It’s me,” he said. “I’m the Mayor of Dreams. My name is Shiba.”

I repeated the name back to him, because I wasn’t sure if he said “Shiba” or “Shiva.” To be honest, I still don’t know which one it was. He seemed very friendly and amenable to meeting with me.

Shortly after that we weren’t in the underground room anymore, we were out in the city again. I explained to him as best I could what I was hoping for.

“Persistence,” I said. “I want a persistent world, so when I leave the dream I can come back and it will be the same.”

I pointed to an apartment building next to us. “If I decide that I want to live in a…Japanese house” (he said the word for it, which I don’t remember and I’m pretty sure was probably just gibberish) “and I make one, then when I come back I want it to still be here.”

Shiba/Shiva seemed to think this was acceptable, although he indicated that he could only promise to do so much. I understood that it could be a difficult job. Overall, he was a really friendly guy!

At one point, I asked him how he would know when I wasn’t in the dream anymore. He said that it wouldn’t be hard. “Once you’re not in here pushing around hydrogen atoms anymore, we’ll know.” I’m pretty sure he said “hydrogen.” It was kind of a joke, but also not. The implication was that my presence could be felt by everyone throughout the dream world, and when I wasn’t there it was still and calm and static.

Shortly after that, I woke up quite suddenly when my alarm went off. Hopefully Shiba/Shiva is still there waiting for me to return tonight.

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Notes:

1. I am overjoyed with this new development. Even if I never see him again, it was cool to meet that character, and even cooler to spend such an extended time in a state of lucidity. However, I can’t help but still be somewhat skeptical of my experience. After all, how can I tell the difference between being aware that I am dreaming, and dreaming about being aware that I’m dreaming? Is there a difference? Perhaps not; if in both cases I am aware of being in a dream, and I’m seemingly able to control where I go and what I do, then I guess that’s what matters. Still, the fact that the lucid feeling was somewhat dulled from the usual vibrant experience suggests that maybe it was a “lesser” form of lucid dreaming.
2. Behold the amazing power of the mind: After writing this post, I decided to look up the word Shiva, because I was pretty sure it was an actual diety of some sort. Well, my mind apparently knew more than I realized, because it turns out that in Hinduism, Shiva is the supreme being who creates, protects, and transforms the universe. (Wikipedia) Sounds about right. I’m glad he didn’t get offended that I kept calling him “The Mayor of Dreams.”

Lucid Dreaming update…sort of

It’s been a while since I’ve written about lucid dreaming, hasn’t it? Pretty sure the last time I brought it up, I was saying that it was basically my new religion. I was going to devote my life to worshiping at the alter of dreams and become the Buzz Aldrin of oneironauts.

Well, heh, the best laid plans of such-and-such.

Waking life, as it turns out, has a way of crowding out things like that. I did devote a lot of time to reading about lucid dreaming and using my dream totem (actually I think that was the subject of my last dream-related post), but after a week or so of failing to see any meaningful results, I am a bit embarrassed to say that I let my dedication slip. I wasn’t consciously deciding to quit, by any means. Not at all.

But I began to see it as something that I had to put on autopilot in the background, because there was pressing business in the real world to attend to.

And to be honest, reading nothing but books and articles about the subject of lucid dreaming became a little bit…boring. I wanted to read some fiction. Some comics. I wanted to work on some other projects, too.

So here I am, several weeks later, and feeling like a failure. I honestly began to question whether I was even capable of having a lucid dream.

But then I realized that I just wasn’t taking it seriously enough, for long enough. If I really do want to make it happen, I have to focus on it. I have to make a priority–even if it’s not my #1 priority–and keep it as such.

So this is a note to myself as much as to you, that I am re-re-affirming my dedication to the art and science (but mostly art) of lucid dreaming. As long as I take it seriously in my waking life, then in time I will begin to take it seriously in my dream life as well. It may take a month, it may take a year, but it will happen. It’s like beginning a workout plan; you have to just trust that if you put in the effort now, the future will deliver the results.

Dream Totem

First of all, I now have a dream totem. If you’ve seen Inception, you already know what this is. In the film, all the characters have “totems” that they carry around with them at all times. The object of the…object…is that it is something that you will also have with you in your dreams. (Spend enough time focusing on it, and it will happen that way.)

The thing is, objects behave differently in dreams. The main character of Inception, Dom Cobb, carries around a small spinning top. When he does a reality check to see if he is dreaming, he takes out the top and spins it on the table. In the waking world, the laws of physics cause the top to eventually slow down and fall. In the dream, however, there are no laws of physics and the top will continue to spin indefinitely.

As cool as it would have been to have a top like Dom’s, I had to work with what I have. And what I have is a little homemade jewel that a very dear friend gave to me years ago. It’s purple on one side and orange on the other.* I have always treasured it, but it never served a purpose until now.

Now, I carry it with me in my pocket everywhere I go, and I frequently use it to check my dreaming state. I take it out of my pocket, feel its weight, roll it in my fingers, and toss it into the air. So far, it has yet to show up in my dreams, but when it does I am quite confident that it will work as intended. I imagine that it will feel slightly heavier or lighter, or it will hang in the air slightly longer when I throw it.

I’ll update you when I have something to share.

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*Technically, it’s a pair of Infinity Gems. See, my friend is a big comic book fan, and one of his favorite characters is Thanos. You may know who that is if you’ve seen any Marvel movies lately, but this goes way back before that. The gems in particular are the ones for time (orange) and space (purple). My friend thought it was appropriate to put them both together. I will cherish this gift forever, and even more so now that it will become my gateway to lucid dreaming.

Oneironautical

What a weird, fun word: oneironaut.

It means one who travels in the dream world. Personally, I think it’s kind of an awkward sounding word, mostly because it sounds so much like you’re saying “oh no you’re not,” but I guess we all have our hangups.

However it’s a very appropriate word for me, I think. I posted a while back about getting into lucid dreaming again, but I haven’t posted any follow-ups about that. There’s a good reason for it: I haven’t followed-up.

Every time in my life that I’ve gotten “into” lucid dreaming, it’s been for a fleeting few days. Much like being lucid in a dream, it’s a feeling that dissipates if you don’t pay attention to it. The so-called “real world” always begins to take over my waking thoughts again and I find myself only usually thinking about lucid dreaming at night before I fall asleep, if at all.

And even though that sounds like the best time to be thinking about it, the fact is it’s hardly enough. One must be immersed in it all day. It must be in the back of your mind as you’re doing everything else. It’s like going on a diet; if the only time you think about what you’re going to eat is when you’re about to eat it, you’re not going to be very successful.

I believe I’ve stated before that my main goal in life is to have as many experiences as possible. It’s a wonderful and unique thing to be a human being, you know. (Well, “wonderful” is subjective, but it is certainly unique.) So I want to take advantage of being a human as much as I can, while I have the chance.

As far as I’m concerned, that absolutely includes experiences in the dream realm.

So I’ve renewed my conviction. Using the power of my Five Things Philosophy, I have decided to make Lucid Dreaming one of the top priorities in my life for…well, for as long as it can sustain.

I will be an explorer. An adventurer. And my frontier will be the dreamscape. My dreamscape, specifically, but I don’t see it as a purely selfish endeavor. Despite the fact that we cannot literally share dreams, and their content is extremely personal and subjective, they are still more universal than people give them credit for. After all, they come form our minds, and the processes that govern our sleeping minds are subject to rules the same way that those of our waking minds are.

That’s what I want to experience: Not just my own fantasies and adventures, but the rules and the structure of the dream world.

I am not just a dreamer, I am a dream adventurer. A dream explorer.

I am an oneironaut.

So, I’m reading Exploring the Wold of Lucid Dreams by Stephen LaBerge, the Magellan of lucid dream explorers if there ever was one. His work in the field represents the most intelligent and insightful information you’re likely to find. He is the reason that there even is a field of study into lucid dreaming.

Reading his book, it’s painfully obvious how lackadaisical my attempts at lucid dreaming have been. As I said above, it’s not just something you can casually be into. Or rather, it is, but not if you expect to actually see results and you want to truly have lucid dreams at will. I’ve read stories about people building persistent worlds in their dreams (not unlike the characters in Inception). Entire cities, with neighborhoods and suburbs and reoccurring dream characters.

I want that.

We spend a third of our life in the dream world. If I really want to have every experience that life has to offer, why should I ignore the life in my dreams?

Lucid Dream Experiments Journal #2

I consider it progress.

Today I attempted to induce a lucid dream during an afternoon nap using a technique called WILD, or Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming.

Essentially, the idea is to keep your mind awake while your body falls asleep. I’ve actually found it quite easy every time I’ve tried it, although it has yet to result in a truly lucid dream.

Today was the closest I came.

I was having difficulty getting any kind of dreamscape to materialize, thanks in large part to the fact that it was the middle of the day and the room was rather bright. Any images I conjured up were washed out by white light, and at best it made things seem hazy and partially-rendered.

However, sometimes I would suddenly find that I had actually drifted deeper into sleep and the surroundings had become more solid, only to have them fade away again as soon as I became aware. The first few times this happened, I would lose the scene completely and become aware of myself, lying in bed, eyes closed, trying to ignore the sunlight.

However, after a while it became just a little bit easier to retain just a little bit of the dreamscape, even as I still became conscious of what was going on around me: my wife shifting in bed, making noises, the sunlight on my face, etc.

But then I found myself thinking about what else I could do during my waking life to act as a reality check while I was dreaming, and the idea that my (clearly dreaming) mind came up with was that I would become excellent at flipping coins into a cup. I would get so good that I would never miss, and if I did miss then I would know I was in a dream.

I immediately found myself flipping coins into a cup-like container that was attached to the wall in front of me, and I was making every shot. I became aware of a dream character standing next to me, watching over my shoulder, and a door in the wall next to the cup.

“The dream is trying to trick me into thinking I’m awake!” I thought, seeing myself as very clever indeed. “I wonder what’s behind that door that they don’t want me to find!”

At this point I became lucid again, and everything faded except the door. I struggled to maintain my concentration, and managed to eventually go through the door. The next thing I knew I was falling into a pit. It was a trap! There were a few dream characters looking down at me as I fell down into the pit and slid down a long chute. As I was falling I remember thinking, “Of course,” and then also “I’m dreaming!”

I became lucid yet again, and the scene began to vanish.

This happened basically over and over again during the entire nap. I was never able to fall fully into an immersive dream, let alone a truly lucid one. It was something like a half-asleep state, because again I was, for most of the time, aware of where I really was and what I was trying to accomplish.

Still, I consider it progress because it was the first time I was able to intentionally enter into something like a lucid dreaming state by willing it so.

And I made progress in one other way, as well: At one point, I was casually examining some architecture on a building as I walked out from it, walking next to a dream character. (There seemed to be someone with me constantly. Not sure what that signifies. My subconscious mind? Another version of myself? An interested third party?)

As I examined the structure, I could feel the dream world starting to solidify more. Once it solidified enough, I lost lucidity again. When I gained it back and the dream began to fade to white light again, I remembered the building’s architecture and just imagined myself back there again, looking at it, like I had put the scene on a loop suddenly. I was walking out of the building, looking at the wall again, and I could feel myself gaining focus once more.

I tried this trick several times after that, every time the dream would start to fade, and every time it seemed to more or less work.

I believe I may have found a useful technique for salvaging a dream that seems to be fading. We’ll see if I am able to use the technique effectively again, or if I even need to. One of the struggles of a beginning oneironaut is keeping the dream “stable” after you realize it’s a dream; but seasons veterans have no trouble with this at all. Even if my “loop” technique works, it may not be necessary after enough time.

Lucid Dream Experiments Journal #1

I attempted to lucid dream last night and this morning. Last night I fell asleep like normal and dreamed, but didn’t achieve lucidity despite lots of obvious dreamsigns. This morning I was able to let my body fall asleep but keep my mind awake. That doesn’t seem to be difficult for me to do. But then I was unable to let my mind fall into the dream for some reason. It never went past the hypnogogic imagery stage, basically. I could visualize places I wanted to visit, but the dream never solidified for me. Still, I consider it progress! I’m looking forward to more experiments.

Lucid Dreaming

I’ve taken up lucid dreaming, again.

About fifteen years ago I got heavily into it. Read lots of articles online, found different techniques for inducing lucid dreams. It was fascinating stuff. (And it’s funny to remember the internet back then. It felt like you could find anything, but it wasn’t nearly as sleek and streamlined as it is now.)

I remember reading about dream signs, and that just blew my mind. If you don’t know about them, or lucid dreaming, let me explain this: You pick something to be a dream sign. Say, crows. Every time you see crows in your waking life, you make a mental check if you’re dreaming. You ask yourself out loud if you’re dreaming. You try to fly. You try reading text or digital clocks (neither of which work right in dreams).

You do this throughout the day, every day, and eventually it becomes such a part of your routine that pretty soon you’ll start seeing those crows in your dream. And when you do, you ask yourself if you’re dreaming. You try to fly, and it works. You try reading text or digital clocks, and you can’t. Suddenly you’re lucid dreaming.

You’re conscious while your mind is asleep. You’re in control of your dream, now.

That’s lucid dreaming, and it’s amazing.

I’ve done it a handful of times. Maybe less. And the feeling is incredible. Imagine real life, and all the experiences you have, but your body doesn’t exist. Your sensory experience is direct. You don’t feel things through your fingertips and your neurons; you feel them directly. You don’t see light filtered through your eyes; you see it directly. You don’t feel the clothes on your body or the air on your skin, because you have no body, only the visual illusion of one. It’s something that has to be experienced to be believed. When that switch happens and you go lucid, everything becomes brighter and more solid.

And, best of all, you can do anything.

Or you can try to, anyway. That’s another reason lucid dreams are so cool. It’s not just like daydreaming, using your imagination. It’s more like reprogramming a video game. Remember Inception? “There are rules,” as Leonardo DiCaprio said, and it’s true. When you’re conscious that you’re dreaming, you can make changes but it takes effort and willpower, and some things just can’t be changed. Dream characters will still behave with apparent autonomy; structures and roads are solid and can’t just be changed with a thought.

This may seem nonsensical, since everything in a dream is happening inside your own head. How can people in your dreams have their own will, if you’re the one creating them? It’s because it’s not your conscious mind that creates them, it’s your subconscious. Yes, it’s still your brain, but it’s a part of your brain that isn’t fully under your control. (If any part of your brain can be said to be under your control. But that’s for another blog post.)

It’s all about expectations, that’s what the articles say. If you open a door and expect to see a unicorn, you will see a unicorn. If you jump off a roof and expect to fly, you will fly. (Remember The Matrix? “Free your mind.” Neo fell off that roof because he didn’t expect to be able to make the jump.)

So people act like people, and buildings are solid, and water flows downhill, because these are all things you expect to be true. If you want people to act differently, you have to expect them to. If you want buildings to change shape, or water to flow uphill, you have to expect it.

Anyway, this was all fifteen years ago that I first stumble upon lucid dreaming. I got heavily into it, had a couple of (brief) lucid experiences, and then sort of left it behind. Frankly, I’m not good at sticking with things. Even things I’m super into. When something else comes along that gets my interest, I always follow it at the expense of previous things I’ve been interested in. (This is the single, fundamental aspect of my personality that led me to develop the Five Things philosophy!)

So here I am all these years later, and suddenly getting back into it. I was listening to a philosophy podcast a couple of weeks ago about…well, honestly, I don’t remember the topic. But they mentioned lucid dreaming, in passing. It reminded me how interesting a subject it is, and I realized that I’m in a much better place in my life right now to dive back into it, thanks to the Five Things.

I can easily fold lucid dream study into my daily routine, and I have.

For the last three nights (and at least one nap) I have made attempts to induce lucid dreaming. It’s been mostly unsuccessful, but that’s not to say it’s been without progress. The first night I had a few minutes of lucidity where I walked on water, but upon waking I couldn’t be sure if I was actually lucid or just dreaming I was lucid. (It’s a fine line, and a fascinating one that leads into all sorts of crunchy conversations about free will and such.

I will continue to practice every day and night, and I feel confident that within a few weeks I’ll be much better. Even people who have been doing this for decades still don’t have lucid dreams every night. As you can imagine, it takes a bit of practice to even get yourself to become aware that you’re dreaming, let alone get yourself to stay asleep after you do become aware.

I believe this is an area of mental study worthy of my time, and that can prove very fruitful in the study of philosophy, as well as the betterment of the mind. If you want to build a better mind, I can’t think of a better place to start than in dreams.

Now I need to go watch Inception again. Excuse me.

Links:

http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/wake-induced-lucid-dreams.html
This is the best method I have found so far for inducing lucid dreams. What it says about “kinetic movement” helping to solidify the experience is definitely true for me. The first time I had a truly lucid dream, years ago, it was because I felt myself falling asleep and imagined I started spinning around in place. When I stopped, I was fully immersed in the dream. My personal theory is that forcing my mind to keep track of the visual field as it spins around me forces it to step up its game, so to speak, and really make sure it’s consistent and believable.