Over the course of my life, I’ve had a doppelg?nger that communicates with me in my REM sleep. It’s tried to teach me things with the explicitly difficult task of translating them from a sort of knowledge that exists in REM sleep to the sort of knowledge we all have the pitifully deal with while in a wake state. Perfectly understandable processes in my dreams – things easy enough to understand, I know my dream-self is pondering them – become difficult-to-grasp concepts upon waking and I quickly lose my grasp of them.
In the past, my doppelg?nger has taught me a number of actions and concepts that have successfully translated into my real-world. One example was when I was in my teenage years, it taught me to tie my tie properly. I’d went to sleep without any experience and only the faintest idea of how ties worked. The next morning, I tied my tie for work that day with ease.
Unfortunately, flying using nothing more than my thoughts to cancel the effects of physics upon myself has never taken hold. My doppelg?nger has, on numerous occasions, attempted to illustrate how easy it is to rise up against gravity. I know in my dreams how it feels to flick these certain psychic switches, and am even aware of the sensations necessary to replicate the effects. However, upon waking I lose any grasp I had of the process.
While I don’t know if flying up into the air using nothing more than a few perceptual switches will ever happen in my lifetime, there is something it was trying to teach me this morning. And which I’ve promptly lost my grasp of, of course.
A model was made apparent to me this morning, of transactions of how our Western education system affects us in our youth. Patterns were distinguished unto me, allowing me to discern how they transgress from those school years to adulthood. Unfortunately, what seemed so simple in my dream this morning (simple enough, I told myself, “Ha, I won’t have any problem remembering this and I can write it down when I wake up,”), well, it’s lost to me now. Sad. I really want to explore this in some upcoming articles I am writing for the newspaper, as well as for other business pursuits I have.
Any of Klint’s great readers out there have any tools, exercises, or anything that can aid in my conceptual recall? I need a translation tool from epistemological state to the next. Any ideas?
August 22, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I’ve had similar problems recalling my dreams. I read about this excersise in a book a long time ago (sorry I can’t recall the book). The minute you wake up, DO NOT MOVE, and go over your dreams in your head immediately. Over and over if necessary. This works with me on occassion. Unfortunately if the alarm goes off for work, I’ve moved to turn it off, and by then my dreams have escaped me.
Try it on your days off and see if that helps.
August 22, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Yeah I seemed to have done that this morning. I knew as soon as I started moving that I was losing the concept and I tried laying back down. Frustration set in.
August 22, 2007 at 4:27 pm
The only clue I can offer (one I am still following up myself)is that visual memory is the most important skill to expand upon, with memory of sensation coming joint first and/or second in terms of importance. The information is lost in the transduction of dream experience down into the verbal thought of waking life. Verbal analysis becomes useful again once the image/scenario/sensation is entrenched in recall, at which point one can zoom in on an element of the dream tableau and characterise it in a phrase be it a poetic or diagnostic or typological statement. Good Luck, I’d love to hear how you get on.
August 22, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Tape deck to record dream in spoken form next to the bed can help; no need to open eyes, no eye/hand coordination needed, just mumble.
Taking things out of the dream world, even ideas, is rarely if ever successful. Taking something into the dream world, such as the idea you’re going to take something out, also tends to fail. Be glad you got even partial success ever. I am.
August 22, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Trevor has a great idea – I use one of those tapeless recorders that USB’s right into the desktop. Also, you can steal from NLP.
Ritually create a state of perfect memory and recall by invoking and working with some Orange based godform (Mercurial)… then create an anchor that will return you to that state – like crossing both pinkies. Do it over and over – in the morning and at night for several days (until you start to reflexively do it during the day). Then when you have those dreams, make the anchor signal.
Then in the morning, do the anchor movement and recall what you remembered.
Remember to create a PERFECT state of MEMORIZATION and RECALL for EACH SENSE (visual, auditory, olfactory, etc…)
August 23, 2007 at 10:57 am
Phil Farber offers some techniques at meta-magick.com, you can also find useful stuff on the b-conscious yahoo group.
Join up and pose your questions there.
If you’d like to deal with your doppelganger as an entity, Phil’s stuff is a good way to go.
August 23, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Hi There: You bring up several points that I have faced myself
I use a journal by my bedside
the side its easiest to roll to.
Using a thick marker pen I record my dreams, in visual sensations and energy charts. Its a pain to wake up and record but the next day I canread the graphics and expand on them with colors and words like a waterfall, one image leads to the next.
Sometimes I look atthe piles of books and get a pull from a certain one out of hundreds.
After opening it Igo to certainpage and read then mark the section with graphics and notes.
August 23, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Many plant allies can help in not only the recall of dreams, but in their physical actualization in the waking meatspace.
A good plant to look at is Silene capensis, used by the Xhosa of South Africa.
Unlike the better-known Calea of Mexico, Silene does more than just increase dream vividness and recall- it actually seems to knit together the dreaming and waking state and awareness.
Many people who work with both raw Silene and the extract that I create have reported rememberances so vivid as to seem like the result of waking-world occurences, yet attached to events that could only have been dreams.
Personally, I have worked with this plant for exactly the type of retrieval you are speaking of. I see it as enabling a connection between the “everything is possible” state of dreaming to the “actualized here & now” state of waking life.
Strength & Wisdom,
leavesofjoy
August 23, 2007 at 5:32 pm
All very awesome, everyone. Thanks for the comments! I may have to get one of those USB recorders so I may mumble to myself upon waking. Perhaps some of the NLP practises will work. The recall isn’t the problem, but that it seems to be another sort of reasoning and thinking ? like another language ? which I do not understand when awake. It’s not a gist of information I require, that is easy enough to recall, but actual complex thoughts and thought associations. I’ll try some of this stuff out and let ya know the results over time.
Cheers!