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Underground > Temple >

He's a bit foxed by his dreams...

01:42 / 12.02.04

So I'm not totally sure if I'm on the right thread, but here's the problem. I've been " trying to do something creative " for a while now, and it's going ok, but most nights, in my dreams, it's going a hell of a lot better. Which is to say, I wake up most mornings with all these great scenes, great dialogue, great desciptions and so on, it's all actually down there, in print on the page, but then I reach for the pen and I can't quite remember, anything other then the gist of it really, which is never as good. It's a bit frustrating. So what I was wondering is a) has anyone had a similar experience, and if so b) what do you do ? Is there a specific technique, whereby you'd manifest your dreams in a direct fashion, call the buggers up in a conscious state, and if so, what ?
I've tried mushrooms, dope, beer and transcendtal meditation, and, er, none of those... I've got nothing against them, they just don't seem to work. Any ideas ?

03:32 / 12.02.04

Get a tape recorder. And get used to talking to yourself without feeling silly. Don't be afriad to ramble, you can translate it later. Translate the tapes as soon after recording them as you can. Don't lose the tapes.

The dreams are exactly what you might get from visualization aides like the hallucinogens you mention. If what you say is true, you're already there, you just have to figure out how to bring back what you see and touch.

After a few attempts at recording, you'll probably start to notice personal shorthand concepts, feelings and the like, which'll make things easier in the translation.

If you're trying to take from dreams and visions, the best thing to remember is that you are an antenna, not a metalworker. Focus on 'receiving', not hammering out.

09:26 / 12.02.04

I've had similar experiences with fabulous images etc in dreams. I wan't going after them delibrately they just occured - graffiti pieces on some occasions, as I used to have a bit of an interest in graf. Not much hope of me transcribing them, I'm have about as much artistic ability as a brick. I also had this with amazing improvised music and sentences full of profunity and hilarity, occasionally things that have been said to me in dream that have made me laugh so hard I've waken up. You're right in that these things are incredibly difficult to recall - I have managed to recall the odd sentence on occasion but I found them to be pretty much bizarre, sometimes impossible to understand - the logic and connections made in dream seem to have their own "charge" and logic in dreams but it doesn't make any sense when you wake up. It's as if the words are imbuded with different meanings and connections.

You could try and enter a similar state from awakening and see what happens - I find if I do this I don't go as "deep" as in sleep but you can still get pretty tranced out, certainly enough to have bubbles of ideas and images. Try lying down on your bed, face up relaxing from toe to head, imagine yourself sinking lower and lower with each breath, relaxing more adn more - then let things bubble up. You should have a degree of consciounsness that makes awakening and recall easier.

11:30 / 12.02.04

On the net you can peruse lots of stuff on dream yoga, lucid dreaming, etc. Worth EXPERIMENTING with! You can either try and will it to happen by sheer image/meme concentration - or you could do sigils or do some long-winded ritual. Praxis equals the easiest in my book. Depends on how good yer memory works and how good you can conquer yer so-called psychic censor. A tape recorder certainly seems more apt than trying to write it all down. Maybe you could obtain a special object that you could hold onto before you sleep and dwell in the DREAMING, like a gem or a talisman that you make especially for the mission?!

03:03 / 13.02.04

It's been my experience that the sweet leaf cripples your dreamself with a sledgehammer, so I don't smoke for at least an hour before going to sleep.

Other than that, I'd recommend a sigil specifying your intent. I visualize mine just before drifting off and it does help with recall in the morning. The added bonus is that if I remember nothing when I wake up, I can visualize the sigil in a vacuous moment (making coffee, my morning cigarette) and recall some of the details.

Hope that helps.