My False Awakening Waking Paralysis Dream

So I had this dream that was really strange. I had a false awakening, and in that false awakening I had waking paralysis.

False awakenings are when you think that you have woken up, the bedroom appears to be your normal bedroom, but then it turns out that you are actually still dreaming. False awakening.

Waking paralysis is when you wake up and your body can't move. I think this is a somewhat well documented phenomena. Your mind is fully awake and alert, you are awake, but your body can't move for a period of time. People often panic or something. But yeah, waking paralysis.

Also, I have really been thinking a lot about astral projection because of this dream. My past with reiki and yoga introduced me to a lot of things about astral projection, and I still find it very curious. If you haven't heard of it, astral projection is a self-induced out of body experience. People believe that in addition to our physical bodies we possess something called an astral body. And that there is a place called the 'astral plane'. A spiritual sort of realm where your astral body can travel. Some people think we have like 7 bodies or something. Astral body, physical body, emotional body, etherial body, so on. I forget.

But anyways that is the necessary background to what happened in this dream.

This dream had three parts. I know one of them came first, and then I can't remember which of the other two happened next. In the first scene I was in a huge room that was whitish gray. The walls were composed of giant slabs of something. Giant squares, like sidewalks are built of squares. The walls were soft though, I think. They may have been concrete. I can't be sure. But the room was enormous. Hundred foot ceiling. Huge panels on the walls.

I was flying in this room. And more interestingly, I was flying with another person who I knew was my 'master'. Whatever that means. He was someone who was a guide of sorts. And we were flying together, but not fast or forward or anywhere in particular. We were floating in a circle around each other. We were orbiting each other sort of. We were talking, but I have no idea about what. Frankly this scene of being in this huge room with my master was only a flash. I only recall one moment of orbiting with my master. I don't know what he looked like, but I know that he was there, and that he was my master.

I find that all very interesting because reiki and all that, martial arts, yoga, there are relationships that are like master/student type. Reiki masters, yogis. Perhaps not. But often the term master has these connotations of martial arts, spirituality, etc..

But then I was pulled from that space. I went to another layer of the dream. And this is where things get blurred between the other two aspects of the dream. This room with my master was the highest layer of the dream, and I know that happened first. Also, I remember one thing my master said. As I was being pulled from this top layer of the dream he said 'We'll talk about this next time we are here'. And then when I got pulled out of that layer and I was in the next layer I said 'But we aren't always here'.

Then the blurred two layers. But I think that the next layer was me in a white bedroom. And after this white bedroom was the false awakening paralysis.

So after I was flying with my master and I suddenly left that scene. He said we would talk next time we were there. Then I think I was in an all white bedroom with a king or queen sized bed. A big white bed with a white comforter and white walls and what bed posts. The bed posts had white balls on the edge of them. And when I said 'But we aren't always here', I was looking at one of these balls on white bed post and I was touching it with my index finger. I was talking to my master in this white room even though he was no longer there. It was like I had been pulled into that white room so suddenly that I was still finishing a conversation that had begun in the large white room.

Outside of this all white bedroom there was another room. And I knew that my mom was in that room. I don't know what she was doing there. I am pretty sure that we talked together, but I don't remember about what. But I knew I was going to talk to my mom. I'm sure I did.

Then I was suddenly no longer in that bedroom. I was in my bedroom at my aunt's house. I was lying down on my left side. My eyes opened very suddenly, and I couldn't move. I think this was still a dream, but I'm not sure. Maybe I really woke up and had waking paralysis. But for some reason I think it was a dream still. This was my false awakening where I had waking paralysis. I dreamt I woke up and had waking paralysis, but I think I was still just dreaming.

But in any case, when I had this false awakening I had a bizarre sensation of something extending out from my body. With astral projection people believe that your astral body and your physical body stay connected by something called the 'silver chord'. Sounds weird. But in this waking paralysis I had the sensation that there was a chord rapidly extending out from my body. Imagine what a spool of thread sounds like when it rapidly unravels. Imagine what a spool of thread feels like in your hand when it rapidly extends. Then imagine a giant invisible thread unraveling from the front of your body. Lying on my side the whole front of my body felt as if it was being pulled forward by the unraveling of this chord. I don't know what was going on. But in this false awakening I immediately thought that the unraveling I was feeling/hearing was my silver chord unraveling as my astral body moved through the astral plane. Really weird stuff. That was the final layer of the dream. I forget what happened when I woke up. I don't remember waking up. Or when it was or what it was like. But in this last part I definitely couldn't move, and definitely felt/heard an invisible chord unraveling from the front of my body.

Some people think that waking paralysis is caused when you astrally project during your sleep and then suddenly wake up. The idea is that your physical body can't move until your astral body returns to you. So if you suddenly wake up while your astral body is out of your physical body, then you will feel waking paralysis.

This was all really weird. I hardly ever dream. And this dream was quite bizarre and layered. It has really got me thinking about astral projection and potentially attempting it. Or trying to attempt it.

Psychoanalytic interpretations of dreams annoy me, which I think is funny. Because clearly they are legit and can be interpreted in those ways sometimes. But I dunno, it is tough to do. Sometimes it is easy to do. I just wish spirituality could be real in any way at all. I wish astral projection was real, or reiki was real. And that might be. I don't write them off. But it is just hard to know.

Weird dream.

A Prolific Month and A Bizarre Nightmare

So the month of August has been a shockingly productive month for me. I was actually anticipating that I would not be producing quite so much. I moved across the country in the middle of this month, I went off in search of jobs hardcore, and managed to find a job.

I was honestly very concerned that my writing was going to take a back seat. I really thought I would be writing less. But no. I wrote more reflective posts than normal, and I also wrote more substantial essays than normal. I produced around 200 pages of essays alone this month. Reallly wild stuff. Finished like 120 pages of the 'Society's Implicit War' series, which was chapters 2-6. I also wrote two smaller essays, one on tacit theory and one on mental modeling and mindfulness. Then yesterday I finished my essay 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind' which is very exciting to me. I write another middle sized essay called On Creativity, and another one on military history. So I guess I really produced about 4 medium sized essays, 1 big stand alone essay, and the 5 big essays of the SIW series. Jeez. About 10 substantial essays this month. I also produced a smaller essay on mindfulness and thoughts about time.

Basically I have produced a ton of stuff this month. Lots of essays and lots of reflections.

I also wanted to blog about a nightmare that I had last night that was insane. Totally insane. I don't usually have nightmares. And this one woke me up it was totally bizarre. I'm not going to go full blown into it because it was a little bit too strange for full disclosure. But I want to give the gist of it.

Basically I think it started with me and my friend Rob at a monastery of sorts. It was night time when we arrived and I have no idea what we were doing at this place. But then I was sleeping in this monastery and I remember being freaked out because you could see people walking outside. It was night time and the room I was in was a big stone room with large windows with metal frames. The people walking around outside I had identified as 'night porters' but I'm not sure if that is really what they were. They would approach the window and take away the chamber pots. Some trap door would let them take these buckets, these buckets that were bathrooms in this monastery. But that was the general discomfort I first felt, these people, these weird rooms where I was lying down.

Then I ended up meeting up with Rob somehow and we were walking around outside. I think at some point I approached some outdoor bathroom that was a big wood shack of sorts. I opened the door and there were two guys in it. They should have locked the door and I remember thinking why didn't these people lock the door? Then as I was walking away from this place one of the guys in the outhouse, who was a big fat guy, started running after me trying to fight me. Really this guy wanted to attack me. So I fought him. I remember that in this dream I was being verbally aggressive to the max, telling this guy I was gonna wreck him and to stay away from me. I ended up hurting this guy, really hitting him a lot and screaming about him. I won the fight basically. Then me and Rob went inside and were sort of talking about how weird that was and what to do next.

Then while we were preparing to leave the monastery weird things were happening. I think I was bleeding from my nose or mouth or something, and I think Rob did it somehow. I don't remember. But I was pacing or something and was bleeding and we were getting ready to leave this place. We grabbed some brooms that had broken in half because we were expecting to have to fight these guys again on our way out. So we left the monastery together and we did indeed see these guys on our way out. There was a third person with them, and weirdly it was someone from my past, a guy that I don't know well at all. A guy that I had run ins with in middle school. They all had nerf guns. Rob started attacking them and I was like 'Whoa! Rob! We don't need to fight them we just need to get past them!' Cause they weren't attacking us explicitly we were just going past them and they may have let us pass. They did eventually, but this guy from my past shook my hand and said 'Nice to meet you'. Which was totally bizarre because we had met in the past. But I knew what he meant. He meant that in middle school when we fought we were totally different people. That we were effectively meeting each other for the first time because middle school was a totally different time and we were totally different people.

Anyways when we left the monastery I think we ran down some stairs into some garage and we got into my car. The car that I sold, my red Volkswagen. As we were walking towards it all these people started chasing us. They were right on us. I got good ground on them and made it to my door no problem. But Rob had a harder time getting in because his door was slammed directly up against a wall. And I remember thinking 'there is no way Rob will fit in that space'. He started squeezing himself up against this door and the wall and all of a sudden POP was inside the car. It was like magic or something. And at that moment all these people, some of which were friends from the past, slammed against the car. And one of them actually managed to pop inside the car too somehow. But we told him to get out and he did. So me and Rob drove away together.

Then we went to a different place. We went to a tall and weird dilapidated sort of apartment building that had weird spiral stairs. Somewhere on the way or something I saw a weird thing in a window. It was this big cardboard outlet that was a halloween costume of mine from a number of years before. It had a phone number written on it and it was the wrong phone number. It had fallen apart some. Apparently I had given it to Elliott Bay Book Company as my phone number or something. And they were giving me a hard time about 'well why did you give us this thing with the wrong number on it'. It was totally strange to see this paper outlet in a window, peeling and with the wrong number on it.

But anyways then me and Rob were at this big messed up tower apartment building. We were walking up the stairs to buy something. Some of our friends were there, and we talked to them some. My friend told me I owed him 15 dollars but I told him I'd already payed him. There was some cat in this tower too. But we left this place eventually and then we got in Rob's car. I don't know where my car went. Perhaps these were two different dreams. But any way, Rob was making a left turn onto I-95 as we were leaving this tower. He took the turn so wide that we he just side swiped the right wall of the highway. As soon as he hit this wall he just started swerving like crazy all over the road. I said to him hey its okay just even it out. He couldn't stop swerving and he said to me 'Oh man you don't want this, just go home with your parents when we get back.' Which is so weird. Because I knew we weren't going to make it back and I had no idea why he was so out of it or was driving so badly or so insanely, or had accepted his own death so much.

Then he drove off a bridge. Right before he drove off the bridge he said 'This music is so repetitive'. We had been listening to the new Killers album. Even though it doesn't exist, I knew thats what it was. But apparently the music was boring and distracting him. I think he was sickly, had sores on his face or something. I could feel the car moving so fast downward and I knew I was going to die. I knew I wasn't going to be able to go to grad school or do anything I want to do in the future. I said to Rob 'My seatbelt isn't on', and he said 'Neither is mine, but thats okay'. I tried to get my seatbelt on in mid air. I almost got it clicked, but there was a shirt in the way, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do it and that I was going to die. I woke up as the car hit the ground, and I woke up reaching for my seatbelt. I was lying in the dark and I reached over my shoulder in the bed and tried to find the seatbelt.

This dream really scared me. All kinds of weird things happened, these fights, these weird places, this weird car crash. Really really scared me. But hey, whatever, what an end to a weird month of living and a weird month of writing. I suspect it has something to do with moving across the country and missing Rob and feeling weird about family and life and habits.

Oh well. I wonder what the future will bring in terms of living and writing. I hope that I will dream more, because I never dream. This is the only dream I remember having in the last years. In all of 2010 I have no idea what dreams I've had.