Most of my life when I heard of #hypnosis, #meditation, #LucidDreaming and basically any altered mind state, it was always in context of some occult/witchcraft practices. It shaped my expectations about these phenomena and for many years I thought I should develop some supernatural powers or else it would be shameful failure.
(Of course it destroyed my already poor self-esteem :/)

Some time after I recovered from this "I have to gain psychic powers" mindset I noticed one thing. In that magic context meditation training is often described as something forced, fighting agains own mind, hard effort. In contrast, when meditation (and any relaxation/mental exercises) is mentioned in more health of wellnes-related topics it's something calm, peaceful, pleasant. More like letting things go, not make them by force.

And it's really big difference. When my perception of it shifted, I started noticing any progress in meditation and "keeping my mind quiet and calm".

#occultism #mind #supernatural

This week I had some of the wildest, most vivid dreams.

On three different nights, the dreams were so immersive that I could feel sensations like rain and wind. Emotionally, they were incredibly raw. I woke up one morning crying, and another morning, livid. I often have lucid dreams, but these felt more real.

I kept thinking, what’s changed? After some reflection, I realized the only thing different about those nights was that I took 1000mg of Tylenol (acetaminophen) right before bed. I’d been taking it regularly for a few weeks due to a serious injury, but recently had stopped, except for those three nights.

Curious, I did some digging and found out that taking Tylenol before bed has actually been linked, for some people, to more vivid or emotionally intense dreams. 😮 I had never heard of this before!

Just wanted to share in case anyone else has noticed something similar. The power of these dreams has really stayed with me and given me a lot to reflect on.

*Note: This IS NOT medical advice or a recommendation. Taking any kind of medication, over the counter or not, has real risks, especially at higher doses. Please use only as directed and talk to a doctor if you have any questions.*

#Dreams #LucidDreaming #VividDreams #Acetaminophen #Tylenol #DreamJournal #SleepScience

Lately, I have been getting off of my antidepressant, Venlafaxine as I felt like it didn't help me at all but instead made my life worse by numbing me to my emotions. I'm in the (almost) final stage of stopping and so far, my suspicions have been proven true. I'm starting to feel like myself, again.

However, one thing hasn't improved and it's a big one. I have massive issues with my sleep that are making my life awful. I legitemately dread going to sleep. Every time I dream, I'm back in some very specific scenarios. More often than not, I am back in the school system which my brain has managed to never managed to escape from. A piece of my soul was murdered by the french education system and the people who abused me there.

The other recurrent factor is always: One of my parents. Either I desperately seek his approval; I'm arguing with him, trying to stand up for myself, fearing every word I dare to say; or I'm trying to escape him after I told him what I really think of him in a state of what I can only describe intense paranoia about him, like getting rid of my phone because I fear he can track me through it, very intense shit.

Worse, there is a coherency in the dreams that is bridging it to my real life, where now, instead of going through the usual school shit, the bullying, the never ending pressure, I am now fighting against my parents and teachers, because I am being forced to go through school to get a degree even though, not only do I already have one, but I am an adult nearing my thirties. I also know that I don't live here anymore. I cry about having a life that I want to return to. I protest arguing that I live off of disability governmental aid making it so that I don't need to work because I can't work, so why the fuck do I need a degree that I already have and don't use?!

I am now fully aware of all of these things in my dreams. Which I would say is a positive because it shows that my brain is integrating parts of my current reality in the one it remained stuck on.

Actually, funny thing about this: When I had "my doubts" about being trans, the whole "What if I'm faking it"* imposter thing that so many of us go through, it's my sleep that helped me go against it because it integrated my new name and identity quickly and seamlessly into its dream cycle. In my dreams, I am the name I've chosen for myself, a trans girl and if somebody uses my deadname, it's really painful. So thanks for that brain.  

Now, here is another thing about my sleep that has proven problematic. I have strong insomnia issues. To help me with this, my doctor suggested to me to take an anti-anxiety medication specifically for my sleep. It's called Tercian, it's a liquid and for my use, I drop 5 drops of it into some water a bit before sleeping.

Without it, sleeping is a total mess, I will wake up every hour if not more so. So on one hand, I depend on Tercian to sleep better. But that might be because my brain got used to it, which I'm going to try and experiment on by getting of it by lowering the dose progressively. But if that results in me being unable to sleep again, it then leaves me with another problem and it's a big one for me:

It happens often that I need to wake up and go piss after not enough hours of sleep. Like it happened this morning for example, woke up near 6 hours of sleep, not enough for me at all. I get up, go piss and come back. Problem is: my brain has booted back up partially and ADHD is here. Thoughts are starting to fuse and falling asleep is much harder. That's annoying. But if it was just annoying, I'll deal with it.

No, the problem is that when I manage to fall back asleep, I systematically fall into this strange deep sleep realm where I'm stuck in like ten layers of dreams.

To give an example of that, today, I dreamt that i was in my room, trying to wake up from sleep. My room mate was in the other room (they weren't IRL). I would wake up, and quickly realize that I wasn't actually awake. At which point, I try and act on the conciousness of actually being asleep to get out of sleep. So I wake up... but after getting out of bed, I very quickly realize that: I haven't woken up. I'm still dreaming.

And I get stuck in an extremely distressing loop of trying to wake up only to emerge in another layer of the dream. And this can last for a very long time. Today, things got so bad that by the end of it, I was actually screaming in my dream, my room mate not understanding what I was going on about and I actually started to self harm in my dreams, bashing my head against a wall as a way of forcing myself to wake up, only for it to not hurt at all and not waking me up.

When I finally escaped and woke up for real, I was left in a very strong dissociative state for the next two hours, where I was failing to properly grasp reality even though I knew that this time, I was awake for real. I even had a call with my girlfriend which wasn't well today in that state. The second I actually woke up for real, I could instantly distinguish that this time, it was real due to being able to pick up on a ton of details. The lighting was very different in the room, notably. But the intense stress I had in my state of being imprisoned in my sleep followed me out of the dreamscape and left me very "mentally dizzy".

It didn't feel like I was sleeping, it felt like I was stuck in a coma that I desperately wanted to escape. And when I finally did, I could tell that I had, but a part of my brain couldn't, leaving me to dissociate and feel floaty.

This kind of thing has become something extremely common for me. But it's only today that I have realized that this only happens in either the second part of my sleep, or in the final hours of it, presumably, when the Tercian medication that I take to sleep wore off.

The result is that I wake up extremely distressed emotionally and exhausted mentally. Sleeping has become something that I dread. I know i'm going to go through trauma fueled dreams, have an awful night and that there is a strong chance that in the last part of the night, I will move on from dreams that are influenced by trauma, to, and I'm not exagerating, dreams that are actually traumatic.

That feeling of being utterly trapped in my head, unable to escape it, to the point where I'm willing to try and hurt myself to get away from it is horrible, I have no words to describe it. The thing is too that, sometimes, I have amazing dreams, that are not fueled by my trauma, but by the amazing and seemingly limitless imagination my brain has been blessed with. But if right now, I had the option to sacrifice all dreams of any kind to not have to deal with feeling trapped in my sleep, I would do it without a second of hesitation.

I need to see my psychiatrist about this. I can't keep doing this. No one should be dreading going to sleep. 

#sleep #insomnia #mentalhealth #trauma #nightmare #antidepressants #psychiatry #anxiety #luciddream #luciddreams #dream #dreams #luciddreaming

Track 390: Lucidity

THE AWAKENING WITHIN — becoming aware inside the dream.

Starts in Db major (dreamy), shifts one semitone to D major (vivid) at the moment of lucidity. The dreamer gains control, but too much control dissolves the dream.

56 BPM · D major · Consciousness #9

🎵 https://archive.org/details/aeon-track-390-lucidity

#FediMusic #ExperimentalMusic #AIMusic #CreativeCommons #ChamberMusic #LucidDreaming #Ambient

Recently finished a new "My experience with" minizine on lucid dreaming! It was fun trying to come up with an illustration to represent this topic without eyes (open or closed), brains/heads, or thought bubbles.

Available from my mail order catalogue! 🇨🇦 https://humangray.com/mail-order-catalogue

#dreams #LucidDreams #zines #dreaming #LucidDreaming #BuyCanadian

Gareth Branwyn in Slumberland

The Plutopia News Network podcast welcomes writer, editor, and media critic Gareth Branwyn to discuss his workshop “Dreaming for Creatives,” which focuses less on dream symbolism or interpretation and more on mining the “dream-time mind” for usable creative material. Gareth and the Plutopians reminisce about early-1990s zine and cyberculture scenes (The WELL, FactSheet 5, bOING bOING, Mondo 2000, “Jargon Watch,” and “Street Tech”), then shift into Branwyn’s lifelong dream practice, including lucid dreaming as a teen and techniques to improve dream recall, especially using a “dream recall tally sheet” and the habit of staying still upon waking to retrieve dream fragments. He describes three liminal sources of creativity: “night thoughts” (hypnagogic scribbles), “night bulbs” (clear middle-of-the-night insights), and dreams themselves. He gives examples of how these have shaped his work and even his name. The conversation also touches on “second sleep,” sleep tracking, recurring flying dreams, sleep paralysis and its eerie “presence” hallucinations, and the idea that paying attention to dreaming, like meditation, can deepen one’s relationship with consciousness — while still warning against turning dream work into an unhealthy obsession.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Gareth Branwyn:

I’ve only done the workshop once so far, and one thing I wanted to make, clear because when I started talking it up before I did it — people immediately think you’re going to talk about dream interpretation, dream symbolism, which I have basically no interest in, besides the obvious things of that was clearly an anxiety dream, like I lost my wallet, or I lost my phone (I have those a lot) or I got lost at a conference. But I’m not interested in that at all, and so I really needed to make it clear that’s not what this is about. This is really mining your dream time mind for creative material. That’s really what my interest is.

Video on YouTube:

Going through my old lucid dream journal. Here's a good one from about 5-6 years ago:

"I was in a large field. I yelled, 'I'm lucid!!!' and then went on a relative rampage of doing things because I was lucid, including:
- making a mushroom grow into a giant tree
- envisioning a pheasant-like bird and then riding it
- tried to eat some of the wood chips from the ground to explore sensory aspects (it tasted bad)."

There was other stuff, but the above cracked me up.

#LucidDreaming #dreams