Paradise with a friend

17/4/2015: Two days later...
IMAGE: Gazornonplat

This is a reoccurring dream I have had, possibly 3 times or more. I loose count, I literally forget every time but the memory becomes stronger somehow. Now I have had this dream enough times I am brought to the point where I can write about it. 

The dream starts out a variety of ways, but I am always brought to a place from my childhood. It is (in real life) along a river bank near my childhood home, right between a horse paddock and a golf course. There is a hidden path that link the two areas; across a gorge caused by soil erosion and a fallen tree. It was always a prime place as a teenager to sneak away and smoke mysteriously acquired cigarettes and other exciteful contraband. I have no idea why my dreams keep revolving around this place, but they appear subtly different every time. The following is an account of the most recent.

In the most recent dream, I had come across this place as always.The sense of awe and mystery that invariably accompanies the discovery of a childhood place was certainly there the first time, but has been fading in every subsequent instance. More recently, it has been replaced by a creeping lucidity that I am about to have 'one of those pathway dreams'. And on this instance it was just strong enough to arouse some mild excitement. I jumped across the gorge and went exploring, wondering what the dream would have in store for me this time.

The dream was very vivid, as were all my dreams that night. They were also exceptionally repetitive, which I put down to all the cheese I had eaten the night before and the subsequent 5-hydroxytryptophan synthesis while I slept. I remember walking back and forth along this path, to collect a friend for some meaningless, unimportant activity. It was a very euphoric dream, despite the repetition. Eventually I came to a crossroads at the end of the path, that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the actual path in real life. It contained on the one side, a field of marijuana plants, and on the other a stony uphill pathway. I had in my possession a BMX and decided to explore the stony uphill path, aware at some basal level that it was the better of two options but entirely oblivious as to why. In all my dreams to date I have followed this path, and all have had the same positive conclusion.

At the end of the path I found myself at a spectacular sight: It was an epic landscape of rolling green hills that progressed at steady declination into the horizon far bellow. These hills were somehow far up in the clouds, despite being at ground level only moments ago, and were saturated with bright warm sunlight. In some of these dreams I begin exploring, either running up and down or lying down and relaxing. A persistent feeling came to me: "I have to bring this friend back here, she would enjoy it so much". At this point, I am usually filled with a very strange kind of reverse lucidity, I say to myself:

Me: "I know I am not dreaming so I will certainly remember to take her back here. If I was dreaming then I would just enjoy this by myself, but since this is real I definitely have to remember to tell her!"

Most of the rest of the dream is split between me enjoying the experience and being so anxious not to forget to tell her; I don't enjoy it much. Eventually I work my way back down to ground level, and the dream starts changing. I then become aware that I am, in fact dreaming and feel a momentary pang of double disappointment: I will not be able to take Chantal to this amazing place, and I also forfeited much of my potential pleasure remembering the location of a place that did not actually exist. And so the dream changes, and I eventually wake up with no memory to recall except for a trace of a hint of something that never actually makes it to conscious awareness.

In this instance I think I worked out that I was dreaming before the green hills came to an end, and thus I was able to bring this memory into waking awareness after the fact. Curiously: rather than enjoy myself, the anxiety was replaced with something else. I was stressed that the bike I had been given, the BMX, was not my usual mountain bike and I would not be able to handle the hills as effectively as I could otherwise. I made my way down to the bottom in equal measure of euphoria and dysphoria before once again the dream moved on.

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Analysis...

 

This dream is interesting for several reasons. It seems clear to me that this whole phenomenon is an exercise in training myself to live in the moment, to abandon anxiety, and the tendency I posses that sees me walk away from real happiness just for the chance I may have to improve it. And clearly I fail, time and time again. What makes this more interesting still; is the gradual eventuation of dream lucidity that ultimately sees me aware of the paradox I am in, but does not make one shred of difference, in that I still end up divided and anxious over some technicality of the dream itself.
 

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned in all this: about the pursuit of happiness. If you are searching for more happiness than you have, you probably can't be happy as an ipso facto. Lesson number two: bringing a problem into hyperconsciousness is not necessarily a viable solution to such dilemmas either. In either case, I suppose I have not been a very well behaved dreamer. In waking life I have no difficulty reprioritising my thought process to achieve high states of happiness... it seems in my dreaming state this talent is lacking.

Then again, if the purpose of the dream was to take my friend back here, then perhaps all the anxiety was not ill-spent: I have now remembered the dream and have a chance to transport here to this place through my writing. It may not be the same, but I hope it will be enough. And perhaps now, I can simply enjoy these dreams for what they are. A beautiful place, just for myself.