Dream Journal
November 5, 2003
I decided to stop playing Warcraft III and last night worked on Foundations. For the first time in months, I remember a dream.
I’m in a neighborhood with some friends in the near realm. It’s dim, early-morning light. It feels high in elevation. I’ve been spending time here recently, running around with friends. The mountains are light brown with few trees, like the Sierra Nevadas, but the neighborhoods are green with trees.
I decide to do a side flip on the street. From standing, I bend sideways to the left and then flip to the right and land on my feet. This is something I tried to do in waking life after the volleyball game at Jared’s wedding — people thought it was hilarious. In the dream, we all went into this house. People were wandering about, doing their own thing, and I was practicing these flips in the wide end of this hallway. Once when I flipped, my legs softly hit this ironing board and I stopped in mid-flip, just hanging there in the air. Gravity wasn’t too much of a concern. But instantly I rationalized that I had grabbed onto the ironing board with my legs and had my back on the floor. Someone was watching. I smiled, thinking this probably looked impressive. There’s a little break in my memory. . . . Then I’m standing at the other end of the hallway where there is a sink and counter, and I’m looking into the mirror. My reflection is that of a cute asian girl I’d seen earlier in the dream. Without intending to, I had taken on her shape. As I looked, I noticed that the only obvious difference was the expression — she was always bright-eyed and smiling, while I had this sort of blank expression. I thought “I’m not nearly as cute without the smile,” but I still enjoyed the thought of being in a girl’s body and how I could grab guys’ attention. I thanked the girl next to me. She didn’t have a very animated reaction. Then a break. . . . We were playing this game. I was in a room with two light gray dogs. I was to transform into a matching one, then run about and interact with them and this bone. The others were supposed to guess which one was me by my actions, and I was to try to be as doglike as possible. Before we started, I expressed a concern to the girl from the hallway — “Will I be able to return to the asian girl form afterward?” The girl said “Usually you return to your natural form.” This was telepathic. She and the others were in a different room, waiting for the game to begin. When communicating like this, I saw them above and beyond the present room I was in. So, I transformed. I was both within the dog form looking out, and watching the dog from outside. It was strange to go after the bone with my mouth, to interact with the other dogs with my mouth, to run on four short legs. I did my best to be dog-like. The others correctly picked my dog because of the way the hindquarters looked — like mine. I had to agree. It was like in cartoons when a character changes shape but keeps some of their own aspects. When I was the asian girl, I remember thinking she was taller than I remember, and I was, because I am, proving in literal form that it’s hard to let go of that which you’re proud of.
Video Games: I played World of Warcraft obsessively for a few years. During this period, there was a tendency to have garbage dreams — dreams that were about the game, playing the game, that caused me to want to play the game when I woke up. I had little dream recall, and when I did, it wasn’t worth writing down. So I took a break and remembered this incredible dream.
Impressive Leg Strength: Gravity is a habit easily overcome in dreams. When the waking mind is asleep, or awake and lucid, we can fly. Here, when the flip is interrupted, I hang in the air. Instantly, the waking mind jumps in to alter the scene to make physical sense of this. It comes up with the only conceivable explanation for this according to physical laws.
This flipping was a memory suggestion from my waking self, so it was driving here, and thus needed the rationalization that I grabbed the ironing board with my legs. My dream self wouldn’t need to rationalize this.
Returning to Your Natural Shape: As the other dreamer explains, when going from one form to another, one usually returns to your natural, usual form rather than the previous form. I imagine it’s difficult to go back to the previous form unless the previous form is present or it’s been well imprinted on you.
Shape-Shifting for Beginners: When dealing with really different shapes like the dogs here, just getting it right is a challenge — the body shape, four-legged running, the behaviors. What a great astral game these people came up with!
True, Social Dreaming: This is an example of true social experiences in the near-realm, in what feels like a real neighborhood. The other people in the dream are also in the same focus, well aware of the laws of dreams, playing astral shape-shifting games, communicating telepathically without rationalizations.
Twenty years later I was driving around in Oakland, and came to this neighborhood that almost perfectly matched this dream. I couldn’t find any specific landmarks but everything about it was familiar from this experience.
My Newest Friends: I remember hanging out with these people in dreams regularly over a period of a few months. In dreams, we are nomads. Without the need for a home in the astral, we join up with groups for a while, make friends, and then move on to other adventures, meeting new (or old) friends and following whatever attracts our interest.