I don't claim it to be universal or original. But during lucid dreaming today I noticed a couple things.
Visual detail was seemingly present, but could never be put into focus without changing the dream. I had to keep moving and avert my focused gaze to preserve continuity.
Some relative reflections:
I have an exercise. In my waking hours I will occasionally peer into reality, focusing on one cross section of observable space and soaking up every detail of contour that I can. I find the smallest points of texture, how the matter is illuminated and what colors are present. This is what I tried to do in my dream and I was unable. The space would change. The whole narrative and context would change.
The contrast between results is interesting to me. At times in my waking hours I peer into reality with frustration waiting for all the shapes and contour to split open and reveal an underlying
mystery. In my dream, I just wanted to peer into space and find something concrete but only found a morphing cinematic reel display of my own mind.
A copy of the dream itself if you're interested:
Quote:This afternoon as I started drifting off to sleep I became sharply aware of it. I realized I would start dreaming soon. This coincided with some open eye sleep paralysis as well but not for long.
When the dreaming finally began, I "awoke" and got out of my bed (in the dream). In these first moments the content and makeup of my room were completely realistic and seemingly accurate. In this sense it almost seemed like an out of body experience. That coupled with my total, lucid self awareness made for a very surreal experience.
I moved from my bed and headed for the door. Upon exiting I took the opportunity, while in my dream, to focus my visual attention on detail within the hallway. And I quickly noticed that if I stopped to stare at one cross section of space the dream would lose itself. The context of where I was and the logic to the arrangement would start to deteriorate. My dream would begin to shift into something else. So I learned I couldn't focus on one scene. I had to keep moving.
It's as if my mind was going to keep feeding me new visual stories. And I could either continue along the path of this one dreamspace, or focus on one corner of it and have the entire context shapeshift into something else.
I went through the hallway and entered the open space of my apartment. There were three walls receding into the distance. Each staggered and the first one smaller than the next. The furthest wall being the biggest, which was the back of my living room. Each wall was covered in artwork of my own creation. Each piece of artwork was a white canvas with black lineart in an abstract style.
I went through this open space to reach the door to my apartment. I opened it to leave. All the while, mind you, I was as "conscious" and self aware as I could be. I tried to take inventory of what I saw so that I could remember it when I was awake. I opened the door to leave. I found that I was at the bottom of one tall and narrow flight of stairs. Wide enough for two people to pass in opposite direction or tightly walk side by side. This was underground, but it was a finished space between the outer walls of other apartments. At the top of the stairs was open air. Sunlight pierced through but didn't totally reach below. In front of my door, filling all of the area at the bottom of the stairs, was a large office printer with a swiveling stand up fan laid upon it. If you looked from the top of the stairs down below you would think that the room at the bottom was for old office storage. But it was my apartment.
I made my way up the stairs and found nature. A bit of walkway and man-made path leading out through surrounding plant life. I walked further and found a rusty brown wooden bridge with no railing outcropped over the deposit of a rushing white waterfall. It had the sculpted appearance of something artificially made. And in my "conscious" dream state I immediately realized my mind was showing me imagery in association with a recent vacation where I stayed at Disney's Polynesian resort. It had the same aesthetic, stylistic look and felt as if it were a piece of that place.
As in real life when we daydream and dip in and out of consciousness, I realized the dream would show me visuals of what meandering thoughts I had. I was going to see the stream of my consciousness visually represented if I just stayed on this path. And so I followed the path and I lost myself in it. I lost the lucid part of my dreaming here and the memory as well.
Arts task is to save the soul of mankind, and that anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. If the artist cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found. mckenna