The Awareness Behind The Dream

[Summerlander]

The nose-pinch reality check was quite effective for me early in my practice. Now I just penetrate walls with my fist. Another good one is to focus on the index finger for at least ten seconds to see if its form becomes warped.

It should, in principle, be easier to spot dream cues involving the company of people during this pandemic.

I read Robert Waggoner's Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self a few years ago and was fascinated by his concept of 'the awareness behind the dream'.

It might seem like metaphysical woo woo at first, but there might actually be something there to be explored ...

Why do I say this? Split-brain patients have revealed right-brain hemispheres that exhibit more awareness and cognitive abilities than a toddler---suggesting there is more to consciousness beyond the apparently dominant and analytical hemisphere that tends to employ the reductionist approach when observing reality.

There are also intriguing cases of paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders which makes me wonder about emulations of sentient beings in dreams.

I have also noticed that, in ordinary dream states, characters seem 'more with it' than me, the dreamer; as though they are more consciously aware and know their way around the dreamworld while I feel like a clueless zombie often getting lost ...

... until I become lucid (entering the phase state via dream consciousness), and then I notice that in that 'aha' moment my metacognition is sharp to the detriment of whatever semblance of sentience surrounds me---as though, in that moment, the dream 'movie' has come to a halt, time stands still, and people in the phase resemble mannequins in need of recuperation; and I wonder if my newfound state of lucidity drained the life out of them.

And this process can always be reversed as the oneiric status quo is fluid and takes effort to stabilise; and like in a zero sum game, if I am not careful, my loss becomes their gain ...