Posted on by Santulan · 15 Comments

Dear Dreamworld of mine

Dear Dreamworld,

Thank you for being there. For someone (or something) that isn’t a sentient being which I may address, I sure have a lot of thanks to give. Like just now, I had fallen asleep without planning or realizing. I was having a dream which had me in the same universe as The Mentalist TV show. The realization that I was in the universe of a fictional character, made me wake up. I have woken quite a few times like this when I have been sleeping when I shouldn’t have all because I realized that I am in a dream. So there’s a thank you for letting me be on time for this letter 😀

As something that is a part of my sub-conscious, you’re very important me. Not that I remember all or most of my dreams, but what I do remember of my time spent in you, is very important to me. I have had very scary nightmares, but when I do go ‘astray’ or do something that I do not want or believe to be wrong, you are there to show up with it and make me feel all uneasy about it. For it is worth, it helps me wipe dust off my own moral mirror and get a clearer picture of myself. At worst, I have woken up in a nervous sweat to realize how bad I was doing.

There is however one particular moment for which I will be eternally grateful to you. This was months ago, and I had begun to get very close to a particular woman whom we know as B. A frequent dream would be about B and me having dinner and some form of attack or invasion taking place. While it started with humans, it went to be more dramatic with armies, aliens, and supernatural elements. In it in self, there is nothing spectacular about that. I read online that it is common to have such dreams, particularly for men about women. Initially, I thought the only manner it stood out was about the manner I dealt with the attack to save her, and began to display an array of super human abilities to do so.

However, in this particular dream while the same thing was happening, everything paused and I was able to have a moment of clarity in which I spoke to myself. Dream me, was able to converse the inner conscience me. I am still amazed as to how I was able to have this conversation, particularly since it involved having two versions of me speak to each other as corporal manifestations. I asked myself the point of these dreams, and proceeded to answer that it was all manner of showing how much I cared for her by showing that I would want to defend her.

In this conversation in dream land, I told how I don’t want my feelings and care for her to be defined by me defending her particularly because it was me who was imagining different situations for her to be defended from. I was putting her in danger to defend her to show what I felt. It was then I realized how much I was de-valuating her by defining her as someone who would constantly need me instead of me liking her for being her own independent self. That was when I realized the extent of the feelings I had for her, and my own internal double standards.

For that one particular dream, and the realizations that followed, I want to give you a big thank you. It’s not that I am not otherwise grateful for you being there for me. Apart from getting to do so many things in my dreams that I wouldn’t get to otherwise, you act as a mirror to who I am, and what I have become.

 

 

Written for the 30 days 30 letters prompt: A letter to your dreams. Other bloggers can add the links to their posts for this prompt in the linky below:

Posted on by Santulan · 13 Comments

Stuff my dreams are made of

Dreams are such wonderful experiences. They can range from the odd funny thing you dreamt of, a surreal metaphor for something you’re going through in your life, or an experience that leaves a happy or sad impression based on who you dreamt of. Then there are two different types of dreams, normal dreams where you experience what you are dreaming of, and the other is called lucid dreaming where you can control what happens in your dreams. It can be in the manner of being in control of your actions as if you’re not dreaming, or influencing the ‘environment’ of your dream. You may or not be aware that you’re lucid dreaming, and it may seem like something out of your ordinary life.

I’d like to share some dreams of note.

In this dream I was with a female whom I did not know. The first thing I remember is jumping with said female. I felt as if I had just gained consciousness, but had been jumping with her all the while. We were jumping from one torrii to another. A torrii is a traditional Japanese gate which is generally found at the entrance of shrines or temples in Japan, and marks the end of the corrupt and start of pure from that gate. This is what it looks like.

 

It was a series of endless torrii as far as I could see. I looked at the woman jumping with me.
“Good, you’re finally awake.”

I still didn’t recognize her. I didn’t bother to ask her who she was, and was more bothered about why we were jumping away. The jumps were incredible. The distance between two torrii seemed to be 50 meters.

“Why are we jumping?”
“We’re being chased.”
“Chased? By whom?”

Curios, I turned my head midway in a particularly long jump to see that two people were indeed chasing us, jumping in the same manner as we were.

“How are we able to jump so far?”
“Telekinesis.”

“If we are using telekinesis why don’t we fly away instead?”
“Because we can’t use it in continuous flow, only in bursts.”
“Oh.”

We kept on jumping. It was a series of endless torrii, as I wrote before. I then realized that if we could use telekinesis in bursts, then why just use it from our feet to jump. I stopped on the next and torrii and aimed a burst of telekinesis from my hand at the top of the torrii where my chasers were about to land on. The torrii was destroyed, and with nothing to land upon they fell through and crashed on the ground. I felt a momentary sense of elation before I realized that it was all too easy.

Then it dawned upon me that I was dreaming. This meant that I was sleeping, and it was a morning that I had planned to not sleep (on account of the need to be somewhere early) and woke up. Sometimes I think a lot in my dreams, and when I come to the conclusion that it is not in the waking world, I either wake up or am able to take control of the dream. In this dream, as you can see, I was able to think and process information, and control my actions long before I realized I was dreaming.

***

There is another dream that I had quite a few months ago that had a huge impact on me. It was a mid-week holiday, and I had slept late. I dreamt that I was at work, and everything was going wrong. One after the other, things were falling apart and I was telling people to do something. No matter what I told them to do, and how much I yelled, they were doing something else. I started to become frustrated. It didn’t matter what I said or did, things started to fall apart and soon the walls around me started to crumble.

I couldn’t take it anymore, and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, I was in the Ahmedabad house. A moment later mom walked in through the door and asked me something. Then there was someone else who walked in through another door and asked me another question. Soon there were people who were coming out of the walls and ceiling, started asking me questions. All these people were asking me why I was doing something, and why couldn’t I do something like what they said. Soon it became too much for me and began to realize that it was just a dream. I woke up to find myself in the Baroda house. I was lying on bed, and saw a man comforting me. He told me to relax and take it easy. I was looking at things as another person in the room.

I realized that I was still dreaming and finally woke up for real. I was a nervous wreck. I was shivering and sweating heavily. My body was aching, I had a temperature and when I could muster enough strength, I had to visit a doctor to get medicines. This was the dream that had the most physical impact on me.

Written for the Write Tribe Festival of Words Day 7 Prompt: Dreams

Posted on by Santulan · 19 Comments

Black Hole

I thoroughly enjoy my dreams, at least the ones I can remember after I wake up. Some of my dreams tend to be lucid, where in I have a level of control on what I am doing or at least a sense of awareness of it being a dream and not the real world. How, do you ask? I don’t know. If I notice something out of place in a dream or something that jolts me I realize that I am dreaming. This either causes me to wake up, or the dream to become lucid. While I have had a fair share of such wonderful dreams (happy, interesting and scary nightmares) which I would like to write about, this particular one is about one I had today.

Now what has a black hole, got to do with my dream? A black hole is region in space which has inescapable gravity. So strong that even light cannot escape its pull, leading it to appear black. Since it is a black body that pulls everything in, it is called black hole. But what has that got to do with my dream? I dreamt of a black hole.

I dreamt that I was floating in space, and enjoying the vast cosmos. I could see planets, stars and entire galaxies as I lay floating in the infinite of space. It was like floating in a dark sea that was scattered with billions of lights of all sizes and clusters. It would look something like this:

Image of Outer Space, Wikipedia

I was floating in one particular direction towards a point. It was a black hole which was slowly but surely pulling me towards it. While I was not aware that it was a dream, I do remember feel fascinated by the idea of being pulled in a black hole. Slowly the pull started getting stronger and I was being pulled in faster. I felt that I was floating faster, but the stars seemed to be floating by slower. It was on this observation that I realized that I was not in the real world, and actually dreaming. On thinking about why the stars seemed to travel slower than my floating I realized that I was dreaming about the event horizon.

Now some of you may be wondering what an event horizon is (especially since I put an emphasis on it). An event horizon is a point of no return from the pull of a black hole. After crossing the event horizon the pull exerted on the body is so strong that it becomes impossible to escape it. In fact the pull is so strong that time itself slows down. To a person outside the event horizon, I might be still floating in the same speed, but to the object inside the event horizon time slows down due to the powerful pull of the black hole and it seems that everything beyond the point has stopped or become realllly slow.

As my fascination grew about getting to witness the event horizon, I began to feel afraid. Since I was beyond the point of no return, I felt that I may get stuck over there forever. STUCK IN TIME AND IN A BLACK HOLE, FOREVER. This sting of fear is what woke me up from my dream.

May be some time later I will write about more of the dreams I remember of. Have you had such dreams?

Posted on by Santulan · 4 Comments

I dream of death

Everyone dreams, and some dreams are more memorable than other. I dream loads and some of the most wonderful stuff (though not of genies, not yet that is).  While there are dreams that are older and more memorable, I will however share with you one that I had today in the morning as it one of the few dreams that I was able to do things in; a lucid dream of sorts as I could talk and move as I pleased in some cases.
I was sitting in Landmark that is close to my place in Baroda. I was comfortably seated on a couch and reading a book I had just purchased while a cup of coffee lay on the table. Now I know that this landmark doesn’t have a coffee joint in it anymore, but hey it’s a dream and I didn’t want to nitpick on free coffee. I notice this man walk past by me towards the washroom. I couldn’t help but think that I had seen him a couple of times before. He was wearing a fedora hat and that is a rare thing, in India for the least. So the dream me tries to remember, and has an image of him walking by my mom’s house while I stood outside in the veranda talking to a neighbour. After he comes out of the washroom I go and ask him if we have met before since he seems familiar to me. The man nods and says that he is the angel of death and that we have met a couple of times before.
“Huh, angel of death? What are you doing in a book store then?”
“Doing my job, taking people off my list to see that they die.”
“Is it now, you must show me how it works then.” And he stared at me for a moment as if I had told something that he couldn’t understand.

For future reference if you’re in my dream, and if I tell you to show me how something works, you will show me how it works. You’re in my dream, and well that is how I dream. I will extend the same courtesy to you should I ever come in to your dreams. Although I don’t know how it works if you dream of me. Would I be lucid too? But you know I lose all memory of it once you wake. Anyway, moving on…
“Ok, I have names in my book as part of a list that I must ensure die.”
“So how do you do that?”
“I strike their name of, and think of a way they must die and they die.”
“Oh, like that anime Death note I saw on Animax?”
“Manga too, they pretty much got the concept right.”
“Teach me, how it is done.”
“See that woman over there? Her name is Radha Varma. Now this is her name on my list, and I strike it off. Now I want her to buy a DVD for her grand kids and watch it with them over a good meal. When she sleeps she must think that it is just some indigestion, but it will be a heart attack instead.”
And then there was a montage of us going around take people off his list. So while we were sitting in a place and I was going through his book, I saw my name on a page with an ellipse around it.
“Tell me, why my name is written here like that. What does it mean?”
“A circled name means that I was supposed to knock off the person, but didn’t”
 “So why did you let me go that time.”
“Six times in all, I had orders from up top that told me not to do so.”
“Like a close shave you mean? But I don’t remember six instances like that.”
“Only two, others were orders. A word of advice, you really need to start working out.”
“Dude, what the hell?”
And then he smiled and I woke up from my dream. It was around 0830 in the morning because I check for my mobile and spectacles when I get up. I called for mom and she was in the other room sweeping. So I told her that I dreamt of a ‘Yamdoot’ (the closest Hindi translation of an angel of death I could think of) and that he was told to let me off six times so far, and that he asked me to work out. She looks at me (probably thinking why of all possible kids, she had to get me) and tells me that I will listen to a Yamdoot, but not her. I had a sassy reply ready but seeing the broom in her hand, I did not push my luck for a seventh time.
Now I wonder if I can write my training as angel of death on my CV.