Dream 74

This was a really strange dream. I used binaural beats for brain entrainment and took my normal lucid dream supplements prior to sleep. My method last night was to meditate for 10 - 20 minutes using the alpha beats. When I felt as if I was about to fall asleep, I set my playlist which I created in response to the approximate stages of the sleep cycle. The beats continue as alpha for around 20 minutes (during stages 2 and 3 sleep) and then switch to delta ( for stage 4 deep, slow wave sleep) which lasts for a period of 90 minutes. Then the beats change to theta/gamma for lucidity during the REM period. The only problems with this technique are that I am working on the assumption that my sleep cycles correspond exactly to the time frames suggested by scientists who have monitored sleep patterns extensively by way of EEG brain scans. Secondly. I woke up from REM sleep, vividly remembering my dream, but I am unable to say whether my dream took place during the use of binaural beats (I have only set the playlist to play through one sleep cycle as my MP3 player only has space for around 3 hours of play) as I was asleep for around 6 - 7 hours. This would suggest (in my mind) that my dream took place, not during the REM stage where binaural beats would still be playing, but in a later REM cycle, which took place closer to my point of waking. I did wake-up with the headphones removed (I have incredibly small ears and the smallest internal-ear headphones - the only type which are suitable for sleep as they are compact enough - really hurt my ears, possibly by stretching them too much! Therefore, there is no way I could use binaural beats throughout the whole night even with a longer playlist, as I tend to pull them out of the ear I lay on whilst asleep, probably due to discomfort). I try to fall asleep on my back - in the position I use for pre-sleep meditation and brain entrainment, but always find myself moving to sleep on my side with my knees raised in the foetal position. 

In the first scene of the dream, I was in a room, which at first I could not make out - as I sat in this room for longer, I was able to see that it was a brown room, filled with antique furniture and dusty books stacked in high, disorderly piles on the floor and a large wooden table. It did not look like any room I know from real-life, but it reminded me upon waking, of the second-hand bookshops I regularly visit to buy books for my Marilyn Monroe collection. My mum and nan were present, both sitting with me, and we were debating where I should live. In real-life, both live in Sheringham, Norfolk and I live in London and go to university in Norwich, Norfolk, which is located between Sheringham and London. In the dream, my nan lived in London, and my mum lived in Sheringham. I was saying that I could live with my mum during the week and my nan at weekends (this mirrored the arrangements of my childhood - when my mum and I moved out of my nan's home when I was around 10 years old, I would still stay round the corner at my nans every weekend whilst my mum worked nights or went out). We walked outside. It was dark outside - but not night, just dim afternoon winter light. It was drizzling rain, very lightly and this felt very refreshing. I could see that we were surrounded by lush green trees and tall grass, even though we were standing on a residential road of some sort. I am not sure what town we were in. I kept saying to my mum and nan that I had made up my mind, then asking: "Do you think it's the right decision?" The 'tone' of this scene wasn't hostile or aggressive, but we were arguing about where I should live. I thought to myself that if I lived in Sheringham for the week and London for the weekend, I would be able to attend university everyday. I got a text to a mobile phone (which is not the same as the one I have in real-life). It was TB. The text - I cannot recall the exact wording, as in my dreams, when I see text I very rarely make out the actual words as they appear, it's more like my brain processes them for me. I often cannot count money, do simple mathematics or read the time from clocks in dreams either. The text basically congratulated me on making the 'right decision'. 

I was then walking down a corridor - it was white and institutional. I am not sure whether, as I walked down the corridor at this point, I actually knew where I was heading. The corridor was very well-lit. I do not remember much else noticeable about it. As I got to the end of the corridor, I could see a double-set of doors which were propped wide open. This was my destination. As I entered the room, I realised it was a classroom - or a university science lab. There was a science lesson going on and I was expected to attend as a student. The class was being taught by a female - in her 40s, with a white lab coat and blonde hair tied back in a low ponytail (I do not know this woman in real-life). She was standing on one side of a long, thin table which stretched from one side of the room to the other (it was a long room). Behind her, was general equipment and furniture associated with a typical science classroom or teaching lab. On the other side of the long desk, students were seated on tall stools, with notebooks and stationary laid out before them. I found myself seated at the end, closest to the door. I found that as soon as I was seated at the long table, I was holding a small child on my lap. It was a little girl, aged approximately 2 - 3 years. I did not see her face, as she was sitting facing outwards, towards the other students (I was sitting to the side, looking down the line of students, rather than at the teacher). The little girl had light brown curly hair, halfway down her back and was wearing a white frilly dress with pink rosebuds, a pink bonnet and pink booties. From my angle, she looked as if she had been dressed up as a Victorian infant - the clothing was very pretty, but old-fashioned. I said to the child on my lap: "It looks like my mum dressed you for me". I am not sure why, but in the dream it felt as if the little girl was mine, but she wasn't actually my daughter or a relative. I got the impression that she might not even be a little girl at all, but rather, something else made to look like a little girl. I am not sure how to describe this feeling - it wasn't scary or deceptive, more like I accepted that someone or something else was present, which happened to be disguised as a small child at this moment. The feeling was familiarity mixed with a sense that something had been transformed from its normal character and appearance. The teacher came over to me. She told me off for not paying attention in her class and for having the child with me. I do not recall her actual words, because there was quite a lot of conversation between us at this point, conducted at a fast-pace and my emotions – adrenaline and injustice at being singled out – were racing, making me focus on this rather than the exact words exchanged. In this respect, it felt similar to a real-life altercation, where you see red and speak your mind without forethought. After she told me off for not paying attention/bringing the child to class, I do recall saying, in a threatening voice: "You need to fuck off" which made her scream angrily at me – her face was very red and sweaty. I was trying to act nonchalant now - making sarcastic comments about her needing to calm down and speaking in a low, slow voice. I am not sure if the little girl was still present on my lap at this point, as all I could focus on was my feelings of anger at the teacher and a desire to wind her up further. I do not know what the other students in the classroom were doing either. I must have still been sitting down until now, because I stood up suddenly at this point, with a springing leap down from the stool. I was then on the ground, and I noticed that the teacher was much taller than me, still stood on the other side of the desk. I went to hit her in the face and when I did, she didn't flinch, even though I used as much force as I could muster. Then a strange thing happened. My lucidity was suddenly triggered as I realised that she wasn't affected by me hitting her in the mouth. I realised I was asleep and dreaming, and when this happened, the feeling was overwhelming and unsettling, because I couldn't stop myself from shouting in a strange voice (it sounded hoarse and strangled, as if someone was holding my neck) "I'm asleep and dreaming!" But I felt as if I was waking up, this being experienced as an uncontrollable sensation of being pulled out of my own body from behind and losing my grip on the floor. I tried to hold onto the edge of the desk and think about my surroundings. I focused on the yellowness of the light in the classroom and tried to look at the ceiling, but everything seemed blurry and veiled by some kind of misty ‘screen’ which made it hard to ascertain if I was still in the same room or not. I desperately wanted to stay asleep, so I made my body lean forward and did my best to  think about what I had seen in the room a moment prior – the desk, the teacher and the appearance of the classroom, until I felt ‘grounded ‘ again and was able to interact with my environment. However I was still aware that I was close to waking and had to ‘be careful’ not to do anything which might cause me to leave the dream. I started scrabbling around on the desk, trying to find objects to pick up, and then began hitting the teacher with  various items of stationary I managed to grab from the desk in front of me. One of the items was a stapler, another was a duster for a chalk-board. Some I held in my hand to hit her, square in the face, the others I tried to throw into her face. I was about three feet away from her, across the desk at this point. It all seemed very frantic, and my muscles felt weak and ineffective – every time I threw an object at her, I missed my aim; and every time I tried to batter her with an item I was holding, it felt like I was hitting against something soft and spongy – like jelly or a pillow or suchlike. The teacher raised her arms up to her face, to shield herself – although at no point did she try to retaliate or attack me. I looked at her arms – which were bare from the elbow downwards - and saw a wide, shiny gold bangle on her wrist. I thought, lucidly, that I should grab the bangle off her arm and throw it at her face. I did this (it seemed like I actually pulled it through her wrist) and again, my violent action did not seem to have any noticeable effect or hurt the teacher in any way. I stopped hitting her. Nothing was said; there was silence and I felt calm and collected. The next very strange sensation I experienced was that at this point in the dream, as I thought to myself that I must have woken up and lost my lucid dream to wakefulness. I felt very disappointed, but in fact I had not of course awoken, and the dream just continued, with no further periods of lucidity (i.e. I was no longer aware I was dreaming and accepted the dream state as normal). 

I had left the classroom and now was with PS. We were walking through old stone hallways and buildings, which were dark, but through windows and ornate archways we could see bright sunshine. The structure we were in was not complete – some of it was crumbling into ruins. It appeared to be the preserved sections of an ancient castle or monastery. The floor was made of shiny stones set into concrete and there was a cool peaceful atmosphere. We turned a corner into a small, bright courtyard, surrounded by trees and plants, growing against the external walls of the building we had just been in. There was a wooden bench positioned against the wall - which on the exterior was sharp-looking grey flint. DR - a schoolfriend of PS was there. He had a bubblegum-coloured pink scarf looped several times around his neck and was wearing dark, loose-fitting clothing. I was not pleased to see him, but he stopped us as we walked past and told us that he was now a religious leader who had his own cult. He said he was no longer friends with many people in London, but named three males, known to us, who were "still normal" and were part of his cult. He told us that it would be safe to socialise with these three males, but no-one else. I do not recall which people he named. As we went to leave, he turned to the bench, where I now saw there was a rucksack. He started rummaging through it, with his back turned to us and we left the scene, walking through some beautiful, lilac-flowered bushes which had a lovely fragrance.

I was then standing outside a closed wooden door, surrounded by dirty white walls. It did not resemble an actual door I know in real-life. I could hear voices in the room - it sounded like there were two people inside the room - PS and one other male. I entered the room and was surprised to see that the room was full of males, including PS, seated at his desk - this being the bedroom in the London house, appearing as it does in real-life. I thought: ‘I wouldn’t have come in if I had known there were more than two people here’. I felt uneasy. DR was there, lying back on the bed. There were other males seated there (more than the ‘three’ he had mentioned earlier in the dream, although I associated this group as being his ‘cult’ of followers - I do not recognise the other males, present with DR, from real-life. I was only able to focus my attention on two of them, as the others seemed to be lying back in positions which hid their faces from view. Of the two other males I could see, one was a thin, bald, white male. The other was a male who looked of Native American origin - or at least he had a warm orangey-brown skin-tone, black hair (short and slicked back with something shiny, like gel) and very long, strong, angular features. He seemed larger than all other people in the room - in dimension, not simply height or weight. PS is 6 foot 5 inches, so this male - who was seated on the end of the bed - must have been huge. He seemed very happy and enthusiastic about something - with lots of energy. Everyone else in the room - including PS - looked tired, lethargic and quite still. The big brown-skinned male offered me cans of drink - it was rum. I refused his offer and sat down at my computer. PS handed me a white paper bag full of French fry-style chips - he had got a Chinese take-away. I opened the bag and saw that the chips were really pale - hardly cooked - in the middle, and burnt at the ends. They were as thin as matchsticks. I said to PS: "These chips are no good". The big brown-skinned male laughed really loudly, throwing his head back so I was able to see his prominent Adam’s apple in his throat, which appeared to be very long, almost snake-like - I thought: 'What a dramatic overreaction!' PS gave me a smaller white paper bag. I opened this and found it contained the same chips - this time even smaller - mixed with hundreds of tiny chicken bones. I felt angry and disappointed that he expected me to eat this. The big brown-skinned male was still laughing loudly - he seemed like he might have been drunk from the rum he was drinking. The rest of the males, seated with DR and the bald white man on the bed just stayed silent, in their slouching positions. They had not even registered my presence in the room. I woke up.