OK, time for the riveting Part Two of my two-part series on sleep. Last night I let you in on why I hate sleep. But, eventually, sleep must come. And with it comes one of the greatest wonders of the human mind: dreams.
Dreams are amazing. I love dreams. I don't really know how they work (it's probably not a movie theatre inside your head, like in Osmosis Jones), but I am very thankful they exist. They give me an escape from my real life for a few hours a night. They give me a place where I can explore the things that course through my mind daily, not only consciously, but subconsciously. They give me insight into my inner workings. I love waking up in the morning after I've had a particularly vivid dream and spending a few minutes trying to figure out what it meant. Sometimes, they lead me closer to answers I'm dying to find: what makes me tick? From where do my problems stem? How can I fix them? Dreams, the windows into the subconscious, can aid with that.
These peeks into the subconscious are all well and good, but do you know what I'm really fascinated by? Lucid dreams. If you're unfamiliar with the term, a lucid dream is a dream in which you are fully aware that you are sleeping, and therefore you can consciously act out whatever you want to do. These things are so cool. It's like, at a certain point in the dream, your brain kicks in and says "yeah, this isn't real. Go wild!" It's like a second life, an alternate universe, and you just stumble into it.
Unfortunately, I can't recall ever actually experiencing an actual fully lucid dream. They sell books on how to meditate yourself before going to sleep in order to enduce lucidity in dreams, and I'm sure there are plenty of how-tos about it on the internet. As awesome as I think lucid dreams would be, though, I don't know if I'd want to know how to do it. I'm afraid I would get so wrapped up in my virtual-reality pseudo-life that I would no longer have any desire to face my actual-reality life-life. I mean, why would I want to continue my day-to-day trudgery/misery when I know that, if I just dope myself up and sleep all day, I could remain in my fantasy world where I go anywhere I want, possess anything I want, party all the time, watch the Sabres win the Stanley Cup and the Browns win the Super Bowl, and (as if I even have to mention the obvious) have all the sex I want with whomever I want? Talk about dangerous, and you know I'd love every second of it.
So anyway, thanks for reading this two-part blog post concerning my issues with the act of sleep. Keep checking in, because you never know the next fascinating topic that's going to spring from these fingers, through this keyboard, onto this blog.
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4 comments:
It's 2:00AM and I am not getting any right now (sleep that is). I'm not getting any of what you were thinking either. But anyway, I just wanted to mention something cool about lucid dreams.
I used to have a re-occurring nightmare every night over and over that I was working in the supermarket. I worked in a supermarket about fifteen years ago. I think I put in more hours working in my dreams than I did in reality.
I talked to a friend at a party a few years ago who was teaching a class on dreams in a community college. When I told him about my dream, he gave me a strategy to use. He told me to look at my watch in my dream or at writing in signs. If I could not read the time correctly or read the words in the sign, it was a dream and I could pull myself out of it. I found this to be true. Whenever I found myself working in the supermarket in my dream, I would look at my watch. The numbers became fuzzy or wouldn't stay still enough for me to read them. I knew I was in a dream and I would awaken. I still wear my watch to bed every night.
With this method I could stop the dream at a certain point... when I would get riled up enough in the dream to examine my watch, realize it and come out it.
The only problem was that I still kept having the dream. I finally stopped having the dream on June 25th 2006, but I had to kill someone horribly in the dream in order to stop the pattern. In fact, I had to die myself.
I have written a little bit about these dreams. I would share them with you if you are interested. The last one is for mature audiences only.
A "re-occurring nightmare every night over and over" does sound a bit redundant... sorry. I guess that is the problem with Blogger... not being able to go back in and edit your posts... Yea, I'm still not sleeping.
Comments I meant to say, not posts.
I can't recognize the characters in the word verification box, maybe I am in a lucid dream right now...
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