Dream Journal
April, 1999
Context: Friends is a TV show.
I knew this wasn’t a dream all night.
It was night. There was a group of us in the front room of a house. Ed and Chapin came to the door and knocked but I didn’t answer. Then I got up (it was still dark), and did my morning routine. After that, I saw them waiting outside in their car. They knocked again and came in. It was like a slumber party, except everyone started out sleeping and slowly woke up.
I was having a love affair with Rachel from Friends, who I knew was Rebecca. I was pleased that there weren’t actually any relationship problems like on the show. It was altruistic, true, cuddly, and warm.
At first there was fear in the room. Only Rebecca and I had awakened. Someone gave a warning but I knew it was just fear. I must have been talking about thought forms, because some of the nonlucid sleepers had expressed doubts about the reality of them. Since I KNEW they were real, I decided to play around with them and practice making some thought forms. It was still dark and I looked out a window. I pointed and said to Rebecca, “Look at that. . . . MAN!” Surely enough a bearded spooky face appeared out of the shadows in the window, from a black silhouette to a full face, giving the appearance of approaching. Rebecca got scared and fell to the floor in a fetal position. She seemed to be locked in her own world, shaking, and these grapefruit-sized semi-transparent black orbs were skittering all over her body. I told her to stop creating thought forms like that, that they weren’t real.
Throughout the night people went in and out of activity, reflecting their sleep cycles — napping here, more awake there, forming different subgroups to hang out in the slumber-party atmosphere of the house. Throughout the night we traveled to different dimensions, experiencing our own adventures. Some of us were more limited in what they thought they could do and others not. We often met back up around a dinner table or on the blankets and pillows on the floor. It was lit up later by a general light coming from wherever we were physically sleeping. I was fully connected with my dream self (like every night) and REMEMBERED IT.
I didn’t know everyone there. There was one guy with thin, brushed-back hair who was all kissy and mouthy and grabby at me. Annoyed, I just kept pushing him away.
There was an experience I called “receiving a fax” where my perception blurred with sudden streaks of lights and colors, as if I was looking through a waterfall. It was usually a sign that someone was in great emotion, calling to me. When this happened, I had to leap into it before the edge. If I did so, I’d see Ben Kenobi in a little room telling me the message. The second time it happened I caught myself thinking it was from “Rachel”, but then saw that I had placed that hope over the actual message, which was that I was supposed to be at a job interview in the waking world. This wasn’t actually true — it came from someone else at the table.
When someone was scared of something, there were no attempts to hide emotion — they immediately tried to gain control of the situation by yelling or whatever. Near the end, a girl at a table next to us freaked out when some of us were playing around by throwing water at each other. I looked at her and threw water at someone again, not afraid. She stood and yelled again that she’d beat us all up. Then I awoke from the alarm.
Later, awake: Wow!! Rebecca dreamed of scary men out on the porch! After she fell into the fetal position with the black orbs all over her in my dream, she dreamed she was unable to move with cockroaches running all over her body. She dreamed all night of the men on the porch trying to break in and get her. That’s the last I saw of her all night, too! I feel bad for scaring her — I inadvertently caused her a scary night of dreams. But WOW — an independently verified shared dream caused by lucid thought-form creation!
A Verified Shared Experience: This is one of the rare times where two people in a shared experience both remember it, and I was fully aware I was in the dream state. Not only that, I unintentionally scared her into a subjective dream by creating a thought form. If only I’d thought to create something beautiful. The atmosphere of fear and the darkness outside made the scary man emerging from the dark behind the window an effortless choice. Next time I’ll see if I can defy the emotional environment and conjure swirling fireflies.
Social Dreaming: This dream is so important because it illustrates a very common situation in our nonphysical activities. There is a sort of social gathering, a gathering of people in the near realm, very much like a slumber party. This can be anything from a couple sleeping in bed together to large groups of friends, family, neighbors, and/or strangers gathering together. This can happen routinely or randomly, forming relationships that often do but may not always reflect relationships with people in the waking world. From here we move through levels of astral wakefulness and dreaming, our astral bodies ranging from motionless sleep-like states, to sleepwalking states, to awake-seeming states. In the first, we are in our own private dream world, and the the latter, we are “awake” nonphysically, in a social, communicative state.
During this time, people have bizarre, unpredictable influences on each other across their dreams; my dream of affection for Rachel finding a receptive target in my girlfriend Rebecca; the affectionate guy’s dream of love finding a poor match in me; our playful water fight finding an unwilling participant in the yelling girl, who was probably having a dream about something horrible; just as Rebecca, surrounded by friends, privately dreamed of fending off a break-in by scary men on the porch.
Thought Form Creation: Thought forms are effortlessly created by the mind to fulfill expectations. That’s why it was so easy to take in the feeling of fear in the dark room and conjure up a scary man outside. It would have taken considerably more strength/effort/focus to create something happy and positive in such an environment.
Had I not been aware that I was dreaming and been afraid of a scary man appearing, the very same thought form would have been created, and it would have scared me. But since I was aware and created it deliberately, I was not surprised or scared by it at all. In fact it was really well done! It would have scared anyone!
Telepathic Rote: This was a rote! I had to “leap in” to get someone in a “small room” telling me a message. That person, taken to be Ben Kenobi, may have just been someone who looked like him, or perhaps this communication just reminded me of the scene from Star Wars where Ben receives a small holographic message from Leia. Maybe the sender was semi-transparent like in that scene as well.
This would imply that telepathic messages can be rotes, though communication in dreams is typically rationalized as physically talking with each other. Sharing of experiences involves far more than what can be conveyed in words.
Note also that I had the option to “leap in” or not. One doesn’t have to open a rote. In fact, this one wasn’t intended for me. Emotions are known to be powerful in the astral/dream world so it’s not surprising that they would break through into my awareness, even if they were intended for another person who the sender took me to be.
The Dream Self as Itself: This is the reality behind dreams — a social, out-of-body gathering of friends in the astral. My dream self considers this not dreaming. To it, the stories we share, the little reveries, the subjective spaces we go into — those are the dreams. And that’s true, from that perspective. The house we were in was not painted over with rationalizations or projections from my waking self. I knew all about dream reality, about thought forms, but my waking self wasn’t fully engaged, or I’d be extremely excited. I’m just calm, in this familiar space I go to every night.
Now contrast this with “Bedroom Soccer” above in which I’m projecting a full outdoor landscape around me. It’s taking the shape of my room, and I’m projecting my childhood bed over my real bed. Even as I walk away, a car rationalizes around me and the hallway I’m walking down is a road with houses all around. My dream self considers this obviously a dream. It’s astral but very much influenced by my projections. I’m “dreaming” — in other words, I’m projecting my environment.
Into a Fear Dream: Upon receiving a fright, Rebecca fell to the floor and became locked in her own fear-based dream world. To her the black orbs (an energetic fear reaction) were cockroaches, and she was unable to move. She was turned internally, energetically closed around that moment of fear, and continued to dream of scary men all night. Closed as she was, she became absent from the social scene.
She had left the social scene into a subjective dream. It’s a distinction my dream self is aware of. Even in the dream state we affect each other. And sometimes we enter dreams together.
Streaks of Color: I caught some interesting visual effects of the message rote communication.
Objective and Subjective: Within our gathering of dreamers, we each shift throughout the night between socializing and engaging in our own private or shared dreams. My partially subjective dream of a love affair with Rachel from Friends painted that idea over the objective reality of Rebecca being there.
The creation of the thought form man outside had a huge effect on Rebecca’s dream, causing long-term subjective fear dreams. The objective nature of her panic reaction (collapsing into fetal position with black fear orbs scurrying over her) caused her to feel unable to move while cockroaches were running all over her in her subjective dream.
This shows that social dreaming takes place in an objective reality painted over to varying degrees by subjective colorings. I didn’t just dream of Rebecca responding to the scary man, she really did react that way, and remembered the resulting dreams when she woke up.
Skittering Orbs: Rebecca became scared by something and fell into a fetal position. The energetic response to the fear was black orbs scurrying all over her body. Within her own dream, she rationalized them as cockroaches.
Focusing In: The thought form person comes into focus before my eyes, starting as a shadowy figure before coming fully into focus as a person.
Into a Fear Dream: My prank has the unintentional effect of scaring Rebecca into a subjective fear dream about scary men on the porch. The astral response of her falling to the floor in fetal position and being unable to move is also brought into her dream, with the skittering black fear orbs being rationalized into cockroaches. She remains in this dream a long time. From the social dreaming scene, she is present in her astral body but unaware of us, emotionally focused within the dream.
Let’s Pretend: Rachel was the love interest in the TV show Friends. We were really into the show at this time. So in the dream state, I was hanging out with Rebecca and partially dreaming that she was Rachel, though I knew it was Rebecca the whole time. I could compare our relationship to the one on the show, while still enjoying the fantasy.