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This morning I remembered two or three of my dreams, but I made a conscious decision while waking up not to record them in my dream journal. I’ve done this a few times before, too, usually when I don’t ever want to reread the dream. By doing so, though, my written record becomes less representative of my dreams as a whole.

I used to forget my dreams all the time, but now when I lose a significant one it’s almost like a memory fading away.

And as one realizes…
that one is a dream figure…
in another person’s dream,
that is self-awareness.
You haven’t met yourself yet.
But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime…
is that one of them may present you to yourself.

From the film Waking Life

Last night I dreamt that Mccauley Culkin was kidnapped from Buckingham Palace and taken into an unmarked vehicle at shotgun-point.

The dream itself was rather bizzare, but what struck me in particular was that I was not any of the dream characters. All the dreams in my journal involve me as either a main character or bystander, providing a place from which I can observe or participate in the events. In this dream, however, I was nowhere to be found; instead my perspective in this dream followed various characters the style of a literary narrator. For example, although I followed Mccauley Culkin throughout most of the dream until he was forced into the vehicle, afterward I saw the car drive away, unable to guess at the fate of our hero.

A dream where I am not a character is an interesting experience.

Dream time can be deceptive. Minutes in a dream can seem like hours or even days.

False awakenings are deceptive by nature, variations or repetitions of our morning routines.

It seems possible, then, that a single night’s sleep could encompass a (nearly) infinite recursion of false awakenings. I recall at least four before finally breaching waking life this morning; sometimes a series of false awakenings can be quite disorienting and disconcerting. Bertrand Russell claims to have experienced a hundred or so false awakenings at one time.

What’s the most extended false awakening loop you’ve experienced?

I sometimes wonder how the process of remembering affects our dream recollection. During a dream, we seem to tolerate nonlinearities and non sequiturs more than in waking life. When we try and remember our dreams, then, we create links between events, feelings, and locations absent from the original dream. Certain phrases and descriptions in my dream journal developed while I lay in bed remembering, after the dreams themselves have passed. Improved dream recall reduces this somewhat, yet some dream gaps remain difficult to reconcile to a waking memory.

I recently started contributing to Memory Cemetery, a place for human memories and dreams to rest. I enjoy the interesting collection of diverse recollections from across the globe, and it seems like a good place to share some of my more interesting dreams.

My NaNoWriMo novel is finished, and I am quite pleased with the result. The story Inhabitants of Eternity is a journey of philosophical and spiritual ideas set in the context of near-future scientific discoveries. In particular, the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission will be capable of observing terrestrial planets around other stars, which includes the ability to determine the gases present in the atmosphere. It is conceivable, then, that in the next century we will observe a planet that, at a distance, looks nearly identical to our own life-filled world. Though we have continually been pushed into mediocrity by the discoveries of astronomy and cosmology, Earth is still the only inhabited planet that we know of, and so the uniqueness of Earth’s phenomenon remains a steadfast truth for many people. Set in the near future when this mission first starts surveying the skies, Inhabitants of Eternity explores the implications of such a discovery on both religious and secular thought.

The story takes place through a series of dialogues that explore our conception of knowledge, the implications of biological evolution, the likelihood of extraterrestrials, and the relationship between religion and science. The main character is also a dreamer, which provides a unique setting for his own exploration of these personal and profound ideas. I have written several essays that touch on some of the themes in this story, but I until now I had not outlined the totality of these thoughts into a single work of discussion. I certainly learned a lot from this process, and I am looking forward to what the eventual finished work will look like. I like to give my writings time to ripen, so I will likely not start revisions until January or February; revision seems most beneficial with a fresh look at the manuscript.

For thus says the high and lofty one
     who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
I dwell in the high and holy place,
     and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble,
     and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57:15)

As my dream journal entries have become more regular and longer, I have noticed a distinct change in the way I remember dreams. At first I worked simply to not lose track of dream events and sequences, but now my dreams are becoming memories in the same sense as my memories of waking life. Dreams experiences are real events, as far as our minds our concerned, allowing us to spend each night in exploration and activity.

This can also led to some minor confusion in remembering whether conversations with some people occurred in real life or not. Anyone else run into this problem?

If we eliminated our temporal sensations, how would our individual perception of time change? Would we operate on a sort of dream time?

I need to set aside a blind day to explore this question.

Back in State College after a great conference–and seamless travel.

We can, perhaps, define real life as a set of memories that corroborate present perception:

1) Perform sufficient reality checks to ensure a waking state.

2) Construct the set of all memories, from any method of perception.

3) Any memory that intersects with the sets of both physical evidence and the memories of others is considered real.

The fulfillment of one dream is the beginning of another.

Once again, ready to rock the town!

It seems strange to think that the only interactive visual perception we have of ourselves is through a mirror. Photos and video can capture our behavior (and can be either enlightening or embarrassing to view), but we cannot interact with ourselves in these preserved media. Self-interaction via mirror is limited as well, though: you cannot converse with a mirror image, nor can you even view yourself as others see you (since the reflection you see is fixed, based on the position of your eyes). Multiple mirrors allow you to increase your visual range (such as seeing the back of your head), but these do not add much toward perceiving yourself the way others do.

It seems that this experiment lends itself nicely to the dreamworld, though. Meeting oneself in dreaming life will still suffer from some limitations, but the full suite of available senses in a dream provides an advantage to the mirroring technology of the waking world. The world of dreams–especially lucid dreams–creates the ability to meet and interact with ourselves.

We explore the world and learn information through our senses; this, along with our brain’s processing of this information, forms the basis for how we perceive the world. Living in the world day after day, we learn to accept certain processes, occurrences, and events as commonplace. Through this repetition, we learn what is real in the world.

Exploration of the dreamworld and other altered states of consciousness provide a unique perspective on this perception of reality, though. This is not to say that the world is unreal, but rather that our perception of the world is strictly limited by our sensory input devices. The dreamworld is just as real to our minds as waking life, since dreams contain the same type of visual, auditory, and tactile sensations to our minds.

Dream experiences are generally considered “less real” than waking experiences, perhaps because in waking life others can corroborate and share our experiences, thus confirming the reality. Yet it is difficult to argue for universal perception among all human beings in the so-called real world: altered states of consciousness (meditation or chemical use, for instance) affect sensory input; the lack of a sensory device (blindness, deafness) drastically changes perceived reality; and individual experiences (personal history, environment) contribute to a wide range of sensory interpretation. There is certainly a difference between the dream world and the waking world–but the exploration of individual perception makes shared waking life all the more surreal.

I took a nap this afternoon and had a lucid dream–but I can’t remember what it was!

My recall is slowly improving, though.

I was tagged by Ben at Dreaming Life to blog about how I became interested in lucid dreaming.

My interest in dreams and lucid dreaming is rather recent. My dream recall was never very good, even as a child, and as a result I only ever remembered a few striking dreams; most mornings I would wake up and not give much thought to what I had dreamt. I didn’t know the meaning of “lucid dream” then, but I had experienced that phenomenon at least a few times.

A few months ago I wrote about a spider I saw on my walk home. I wondered how that spider would have any lasting influence on my life. Well, Ben left a comment along those lines as well. I followed his URL–and discovered an entirely new world of dreams. After poking around through wikis and weblogs for a few days, I decided the 1/3 of each day spent sleeping deserved more attention than I was giving it.

I’m still working on developing dream recall, with slow but steady success. Although I have not been able to induce lucidity yet, I have a very high success rate with afternoon naps (1-2 hours). Back when I was an undergrad, there was a year where each day included an afternoon nap in the student union. The noise was constant enough that I could tune it out, and I managed to train my body clock to wake up on time. In that situation there were several times that my dreams became lucid–a great way to begin the next class.

Regardless of how quickly I make progress, I think it is important that I’ve starting paying more attention to dreams; it’s amazing how much dreams can alter reality.

Back in Minnesota for a couple weeks.

There are a few dreams that I keep coming back to. I don’t realize this during the dream, but as soon as I wake up I recognize this as a dream I’ve had before. The strange thing about these dreams is that, as best as I can remember, they have almost the exact same form every time–including characters and dreamsigns—but my dream recall is still not very good, so it’s hard to verify all the details. Even so, these dreams do have a more developed plot and theme than most of my other dreams (which often seem like a random assortment of people, settings, and ideas).

Part of the Inner Exploration Carnival hosted at Dreaming Life.

I have been keeping a dream journal at Lucidipedia for about two weeks now. I don’t ever remember having terrific dream recall, although I may have been better at it when in elementary school. I know that I have always dreamed, and I often would have vague recollections of dreams, but most of the details and memories of dreams would fade as soon as I woke up.

I am amazed at how simply writing down my dreams has helped me develop the skill of dream recall. Without fail (at least so far), if I go to bed thinking, “I need to remember what I dream tonight”, I inadvertently wake up with enough memory of at least one dream that I can write it down before I forget. And, once I’ve written it down, I sometimes even remember other parts of the dream! On the flip side, if I go to bed without consciously planning to remember, I will wake up with no memory of dreaming that night.

Part of the goals of a dream journal is an assessment of personal dream patterns, so that I can eventually recognize when I am in a dream. Overall, my dreams are actually not terribly interesting to me, as the main “dream-like” features (or dreamsigns) are context-based–such as mixing the locations of Pennsylvania friends, Minnesota friends, and work colleagues.

Thematically, my dreams usually focus on things I have been thinking about during the day. If I am excited about my work or anticipating an event the next day, it will probably appear in my dream. However, I have not yet been able to identify a pattern for the characters that appear in my dream. I might have a particular event or theme on the mind, but the characters who participate are often completely out of context.

After just two weeks, I can certainly say this has been a valuable experiment. The dream journal will continue, and I’ll post updates when anything interesting happens.

Yes, I’ve changed the name of this blog!

I think the change (which is really not all that spectacular) better captures the flavor of this blog–I do much more dreaming than scheming for the most part. Also, I’ve started a dream journal at Lucidipedia. I won’t be merging the dream journal with this one, but I’ve already learned a lot by recording my dreams, and this will probably influence my musings in the future.

At last the ladder which had been built slowly, slowly, one hope at a time, reached up to the clouds. And the dreamer began to climb.

Our eyes, ears, and other sensory organs are simply devices that gather signals for our brains to interpret. Our perception of reality is not defined by these input devices, but instead by our brain’s interpretation of these signals. Anything that alters the brain’s ability to process and interpret these signals also alters our perception of reality (as the 1970’s proved).

This extends beyond chemical alteration of the mind, though. I am learning that the dreamworld is just as real to your mind as the waking world. The dreamworld is not a shared perception, but your perception of senses is still fully functional–the dreamworld is as real to your mind as anything else you perceive.