1/125, f/2,0, ISO 400
Our mind is such an awesome and mysterious thing. During most of our waking state, everything seems fairly simple, but you soon realize that there are so many other ways to experience consciousness. Have you ever made lucid dreams? Dreams in wich you know you’re dreaming? I have these all the time, and I have them since my youth. With time I have learned to not get too excited, because if you are, usually you wake up. You also learn that if you try to have too much control, it doesn’t work either, because then nothing happen. A few days ago, I was not sleeping very well, and then suddenly I started making these lucid dreams, in wich there were no blackouts between my waking state and my sleeping state. It was like, one minute i was lying in my bed, and then, i left my body and entered in this second reality, just like that. It was amazing, and at the same time, pretty scary. I was walking in my dream, very, very aware that I was dreaming and that everything around me was not real. Still, I was touching things, fabric, walls, and I felt it like it was real. It was like doing an experiement in a dream, live. I was walking in the dream, i didn’t feel like I was sleeping, my mind was not sleeping, it was fully aware, resteless, curious. But at the same time, i could not feel my body, and when i felt it, it as like it was paralized. What’s funny is that I didn’t know what to do. Usually, as soon as I realize that I’m dreaming, I fly. But this time I was just there, doing nothing, almost bored in my dream! I remember standing motionless in the dream, just being there, looking around, alone and thinking « What now? What am I supposed to do? Can’t I just sleep and not be here? » I remember walking and then watching everything dissolve around me, diving in darkness, feeling my body changing into water, feeling the waves going through me, and thinking « Hey, what if I can’t get out of here? What if I’m actually dying? » I then tried hard to wake up, feeling far, far away from my body, getting scared, closing my eyes with the strange but very real effort of trying to wake up and make my body move, or rather, make me move into my body. I finally woke up, almost with a headache.
Later I went back into the same conscious dream state. I then tried to meet someone, anyone, talk to someone. At first I was talking to my father, I heard him, but I couldn’t see him. And then, I decided to meet my grandfather. It worked, I went into a room and there he was. I remember telling him that I was his son’s son, that he was not recognizing me because last time we met I was a very young child.
The more I have these dreams, the more I believe there is enormous potential in this state of mind. It an amazing feeling, scary too, but I’m sure that there is a way to be able to stay conscious and make decision while letting the dream go on and lead you too.
Have you seen Waking Life? It’s an amazing movie. When I saw it, It renewed in me this interest for lucid dreaming. I couldn’t believe they actually made a movie about that!