I recently had two interesting dream experiences. a bit ago, after talking with one of my friends who loves and practices lucid dreaming, I learned a cool new skill. He had mentioned that it is generally true that the more lucid you get in your dreams, the more likely you are to wake up, but there are techniques lucid dreamers have to keep themselves from waking up. He didn't go into details, but one night when I started lucid dreaming (becoming aware that I was dreaming) I decided to try out something to see if I could keep myself in the dream, rather than having the lucidity pop me out, like it always does. I let my mind start drifting, trying to relax, not think so hard, get a bit less lucid. My body started floating in the dream, passing through walls, and getting more fuzzy, and then it worked, I lost some lucidity, but was able to maintain enough to control the dream still with suggestions of what I wanted to do, and have a much longer and more satisfying romp through dream land than I think I've ever had previously.
So many of these mind things remind me of 1984, the book, and it's word for "doublethink": the ability to hold two opposing, contradictory ideas simultaneously. I guess there's also a section in "the name of the wind" when Kvoth is learning magic that is like it. It's a certain kind of relaxation you need to maintain, while holding your intention, that allows it to percolate deeply. I don't think there's any short-cut, I think it just comes from working with that kind of stuff, intention and intuition and prayer, long enough that you have a bunch of successes, and so have faith, and also familiarity with spiritual states of mind, so when they happen you don't automatically go "oh wow, look at that, it's happening" and then get totally out of it, in your excitement. (similar to how people who have trouble falling asleep often wake themselves all the way up when they start to feel like they're falling asleep.)
The second dream phenomena was just last night. I had a dream that it was a mixture of several different schools alumni reunions. my grade school, high school, undergrad. And my childhood crush from grade school didn't show up, and I was feeling this crushing sadness, realizing I would never see her, never get to make up for never having told her how I felt. the sadness and loss was deep powerful in that way dreams sometimes are, far stronger emotionally that I ever feel while awake, these days, and I was bawling for what felt like ten or fifteen minutes, on and off, grieving. It was kind of cathartic. Perhaps it says something about my current situation that I'm not conscious of.
In other thoughts, teaching is weird. I am exhausted and long for Christmas break. And each week, long for the weekend. Normally, that's a sign you don't like your job, but it's that doublethink thing again: I both really care about and like my job, and at the same time want to run away from it and escape to a tropical island for a few months to rest. I feel what I'm doing is important and valuable. often I get to be of service in a way that feels really good. But also it's profoundly exhausting and draining in a very thorough way, physically and mentally and spiritually. I've never been the natural born leader type, and I kind of have to take that role to do my job properly, as a teacher. There is a level of inherent responsibility with the position that I find daunting. There is a lot of things I need to learn, practical things, nothing I can get by reading a book. And until I get them, I don't think I can be the kind of teacher I care so deeply about becoming. Plus there is so, so much work that I should be doing, after my official paid work days end, to be doing what I would consider a satisfactory job. But I am so totally fried by the end of the day, I can only do a small fraction of the easier parts of that work.
It's uncomfortable and exhausting and sometimes discouraging. But I also can't think of anything I could be doing that is more important, and there are many things that I'm doing reasonably well with, that actually feel good, despite the areas in need of improvement. And at least for now, I still have hope that with time and effort, I will improve at a satisfactory rate.
For now I will just keep pushing in the most intelligent way I can.
-I Out
Waking Life (a cool strange movie, and part of the reference in my title): http://www.openculture.com/2014/12/richard-linklaters-waking-life.html
an unrelated but cool picture I found while looking for the above pic:
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