A spirit rattle shakes once. Coming from somewhere over by the bed
where my android phone is running an app called Awoken. I look at my
hands carefully, inspecting front and back. I remember where I am:
sitting in my chair at the desk. How I got here: coming inside from
errands and visiting the ATM. I carefully scan the room and my
surroundings for anything that looks odd or out of place. This time
reality checks out.
Last night the test almost passed, but there was a subtle slip-up. I remembered where I was and how I got there. But the memory was sketchy, glossing over some things. OK, I thought. I guess that passes. I examined my hands to make sure. Which started out well, but I seemed to be missing a part of a finger and another finger contorted oddly. Aha! This was a dream! My first lucid dream in a while. I’ve been dream journaling diligently, beginning in November. And things have been ramping back up to re-enter dream territory with more intent. Especially with the plant journeys winding down.
Now that I had awoken in my dream, my goal was simple: stabilize as long as possible. Which means, first of all, regulate emotions. Most people, myself included, when they first experienced this weird phenomenon of being totally awake, inside a dream, find it so exciting, exhilarating and wild that they wake back up immediately. So the first trick is to be a little chill about it.
And the second trick, the one I’m working on now, is to maintain focus. Meditation helps. Learning to focus on the cushion, being pulled away time and time again by chains of thoughts, but returning to one’s original focus, is good training for keeping balance in the dream. Because if one starts getting caught up in the story, just like in the “real world,” one loses oneself easily to illusions. And presence vanishes. [note]Some say we have the same opportunity when leaving this existence, and if we can maintain equanimity, we will have a few more options in our shutdown menus[/note]
So I focused on being focused. I looked at my hands and then back at the environment and back at my hands. Back and forth —a little too hyper— but it had been a while. Then I forgot and started attending to what was happening. I forgot to come back to center and things gradually unraveled.
At one point with lucidity slipping, I asked this girl I was with in the dream how to get out of my loop. She stared into my soul but had no answer. (I may have binged watched a bit too much Westworld last week.)
In the final few minutes, I was in south Ecuador and saw the shadow of a large Incan god. While I was deciding what to do about it, and what to do next, my focus frayed. I made one last play to engage the environment by asking a kid if I could have a bite of his cool looking bird shaped ice-cream, but that wasn’t the type of engagement or focus I needed, and with the bite, I woke up.
It was delicious. I am going back soon.
P.S. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner.