This dream was fun to experience. It wasn’t exactly eventful, but I found myself judging at a bikini contest. All the contestants were from different countries, indicated by their clothes. However, the females heads were gigantic pieces of fruit! The dream was just that, viewing all the female fruits and male vegetables, then I woke up… and made this.
When I began documenting my dreams, it was already after years of being able to control them from my teenage years. My favorite as a kid was going back to bed in the morning and lucid dreaming “part 2” to the dream I had just woke from. As this process began and I saw how fishing for dreams could be a lengthy process. However, a trick I learned in college came into play and soon my “dream fishing” became “dream extraction.” With this new, hybrid process, I could document up to 25 unique dreams in one session. Here is a sample of 3 dreams from one session.
Dream #1
I was in a dark walkway, pushing through vinyl curtains. I could smell burning metal and hear war outside, but the now apparent factory was calm and in motions. There were corpses of human babies on meat hooks being conveyed into a vat of acid. Overhead a lady spoke over an intercom and said, “We’re running out of room.” I ran toward the sounds of outside and opened the door, then I woke up.
Dream #2
I could feel myself floating high above the east coast, from Florida and up. Even though I was high up, I could hear an see everything on ground level. It was a group of football-fanatic parents who were screaming at their children for no winning the game. These “trophy kids” were pushed into the Atlantic and forced to swim to Africa. None of them made it past Florida because I could see the sharks eat them in a frenzy, then I woke up.
Dream #3
We were in a kitchen with a large cookie jar on top of the counter. This was not out kitchen. We began eating them without asking. Suddenly a voice told us that $100 dollar bills were hidden in them. I cracked one up, saw the bill come out like it was a fortune cookie, then I woke up.
When I first began documenting my dreams, I did so in great detail for a year and posted them online. I included names of people I knew and highlights personal to me. The vulnerability of exposing such an intimate part of myself online terrified me. I deleted the posts and eventually burnt the journal in a symbolic fire to “let go” of the nightmares. I avoided my dreams and fell back into unhealthy sleep habits again. Soon, my imagination began to dry up.
After a couple of years of running away from my greatest gift, I eventually surrendered myself to deep sleep and began to journal again. I allowed myself to become vulnerable to the world again. And it is beautiful. Like a rose of Jericho, my imagination was resurrected by this ongoing rain of dreams and nightmares.
In this particular dream, I can only interpret it as my “homecoming” to being vulnerable again to this modern world of hidden, online critics. My dreams no longer shame me nor am I frightened of offending someone with these messages and inspiration. Even posting these entries here, on my website, is just another “pin hole camera” in the wall of society, ready to deal me their judgement and opinion. To that, I say, “bring it.”
One of my most memorable episodes of sleep paralysis was also the one which liberated me from my fear of falling asleep and dreaming. For anyone not familiar with sleep paralysis, you can read up on it by researching “hypnagogic hallucinations.”
During this episode, I woke up paralyzed in the dark. Breathing is slow, you can’t blink nor fall back asleep. Like a finger-trap toy, fear pulls you in harder and makes it difficult to break free. Stuck between the physical and the metaphysical world, I felt a presence enter my room. I felt it grab my legs and pull me off my bed and onto my floor, where it proceeded to pull me under my bed. Inch by inch, I watched my room move past me. Still petrified from fear, I surrendered; I made peace with the situation and my perceived death.
Then… I woke up. I no longer fear sleep.
