So I set my alarm for 3:30 again last night, and even though I got up, I pretty much went back to bed right after I turned it off. I had a golf tournament today, so I wasn't really feeling staying up for another half an hour trying to WILD. My dreams were about: 1) Going to the range of the golf course I actually played at today. The slots were really narrow in the dream, and after I went to the driving range, I ate a free lunch. Right afterwards, I think I was told that there was a tornado and/or storm and that the tournament had been canceled, which I had mixed feelings about. 2) Finding out that my high school class schedule would be available online starting July 15th. For some reason I also dreamed that the golf tournament I had today would be on the 15th, and I remember thinking that I would resist the urge to look at my schedule before the round so that I could have something to look forward to. Too bad my schedule won't be available online this summer and that I won't be getting it for another WEEK.
I'd be lying to you if I said that I'm going to try to WILD tonight. I'm so tired, and waking up at 3:30 every morning definitely takes a toll on you. That being said, sweet dreams everyone.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Movie Analysis: Coraline
Remember the movie Coraline? That's right, the stop-motion about the girl and her world of creepy button-eyed friends and family. I recently watched it again with my little sisters, and I found some striking similarities between the film and lucid dreaming. So here it is: a list of similarities between Coraline and lucid dreaming:
A List of Similarities Between Coraline and Lucid Dreaming
1. When Coraline goes to bed, she "wakes up" in the exact same room; the only difference is that the doll-sized door doesn't have a wall of bricks blocking it. Coraline essentially has a false awakening. As I explained in my last post, a false awakening is when the sleeper thinks she has woken up but is really still in an impeccably detailed dream. As I interpreted the beginning of the film, Coraline only dreamed of her button-eyed reality, but she never experienced it in real life.
That brings me to the question of: does it matter if we're dreaming? Dreams seem very real when we're in them; it's only after we wake up that we realize anything was strange (quote from someone on the Internet). For all we know, our "reality" is just a single, elaborate dream. In that case, life is merely a dream, and death is reality. Dreams won't impact the fact that we are still alive, just like life won't impact the fact that we will be dead. Dreams are simply memories, and once we die, life will be but a memory as well. Both memories from dreams and life can affect the way we behave if we choose to let them.
2. Coraline gets whatever she wants in her dream to an extent (AKA semi-lucid dreaming). In Coraline's dream, she seems to be getting everything she wants: her dad can play music, her mom cooks great food, and Wybie's mouth is forever shut. However, Coraline doesn't understand that she is fully in control of her dream, so she thinks that her "Other Mother" is in charge. When someone is only semi-lucid, she does not know how to control her dream. Semi-lucidity is perfectly illustrated in the film when Coraline and the black cat walk past the house into a blank existence. Coraline could easily imagine some other location, but since she doesn't realize that she is in a dream (false awakening), she believes that the Other Mother has trapped her in her Other Home.
3. No one else is aware of Coraline's dream. Although Coraline experiences incredible events in her illusion, these events are are only happening in her dream; they are personal, and no one else is aware of them. Even when her parents are "trapped" in the Detroit snow globe, they have no recollection of the Other World once Coraline wakes up. Coraline imagines that the snow melts off of their clothes before they can see the evidence of the dream, which is her way of reasoning the events in the Other World with reality. In this sense, Coraline wasn't really in a lucid dream; however, the amount of clarity and lapse between illusion and reality absolutely compares to that of lucidity.
Wybie was the only other real person who saw the Other Mother's metal hand, but I think this is a phenomenon called "dreamscaping." I'm not going to get into that concept since I'm not very educated on it, but since he saw the hand in the middle of the night, plus since Coraline went to sleep and then "woke up" (probably in a false awakening), it is likely that the two of them could have been interacting with each other in the same dream.
4. This isn't exactly a comparison between the two subjects, but I thought that the movie outlined very well the contrast between dreams and reality. Coraline's Other Mother seemed to have created a perfect world for Coraline, but soon after our protagonist discovers this new world, we find that the deceptive Other Mother had ulterior motives. A few days ago, I was having a crisis about fully knowing whether waking reality is actually a dream. Dreams seem normal when we have them, so what's to say that dreams aren't reality and that reality isn't just an illusion? Coraline highlighted the differences perfectly: 1) Reality has rules, and 2) Reality is for everybody (dreams are for the individual). Even if reality is just one complex illusion, at least it has rules that 7 billion people have to live with.
So there's my list! On a side note, I thought it was interesting that Coraline's name has an "o" in it instead of an "a." All of Coraline's real neighbors thought it was strange that her name was "Coraline" rather than "Caroline," but her dream neighbors thought it sounded perfectly normal. This got me to thinking that Coraline was meant to live in the Other World after all. Or it was just a clever way to emphasize Coraline's seclusion and why she would be so tempted to stay in the Other World in the first place. (Also, my sister noticed at the very last few seconds of the movie that Coraline and her family's real garden is in the shape of her Other Mother's face. Creepy.)
A List of Similarities Between Coraline and Lucid Dreaming
1. When Coraline goes to bed, she "wakes up" in the exact same room; the only difference is that the doll-sized door doesn't have a wall of bricks blocking it. Coraline essentially has a false awakening. As I explained in my last post, a false awakening is when the sleeper thinks she has woken up but is really still in an impeccably detailed dream. As I interpreted the beginning of the film, Coraline only dreamed of her button-eyed reality, but she never experienced it in real life.
That brings me to the question of: does it matter if we're dreaming? Dreams seem very real when we're in them; it's only after we wake up that we realize anything was strange (quote from someone on the Internet). For all we know, our "reality" is just a single, elaborate dream. In that case, life is merely a dream, and death is reality. Dreams won't impact the fact that we are still alive, just like life won't impact the fact that we will be dead. Dreams are simply memories, and once we die, life will be but a memory as well. Both memories from dreams and life can affect the way we behave if we choose to let them.
2. Coraline gets whatever she wants in her dream to an extent (AKA semi-lucid dreaming). In Coraline's dream, she seems to be getting everything she wants: her dad can play music, her mom cooks great food, and Wybie's mouth is forever shut. However, Coraline doesn't understand that she is fully in control of her dream, so she thinks that her "Other Mother" is in charge. When someone is only semi-lucid, she does not know how to control her dream. Semi-lucidity is perfectly illustrated in the film when Coraline and the black cat walk past the house into a blank existence. Coraline could easily imagine some other location, but since she doesn't realize that she is in a dream (false awakening), she believes that the Other Mother has trapped her in her Other Home.
3. No one else is aware of Coraline's dream. Although Coraline experiences incredible events in her illusion, these events are are only happening in her dream; they are personal, and no one else is aware of them. Even when her parents are "trapped" in the Detroit snow globe, they have no recollection of the Other World once Coraline wakes up. Coraline imagines that the snow melts off of their clothes before they can see the evidence of the dream, which is her way of reasoning the events in the Other World with reality. In this sense, Coraline wasn't really in a lucid dream; however, the amount of clarity and lapse between illusion and reality absolutely compares to that of lucidity.
Wybie was the only other real person who saw the Other Mother's metal hand, but I think this is a phenomenon called "dreamscaping." I'm not going to get into that concept since I'm not very educated on it, but since he saw the hand in the middle of the night, plus since Coraline went to sleep and then "woke up" (probably in a false awakening), it is likely that the two of them could have been interacting with each other in the same dream.
4. This isn't exactly a comparison between the two subjects, but I thought that the movie outlined very well the contrast between dreams and reality. Coraline's Other Mother seemed to have created a perfect world for Coraline, but soon after our protagonist discovers this new world, we find that the deceptive Other Mother had ulterior motives. A few days ago, I was having a crisis about fully knowing whether waking reality is actually a dream. Dreams seem normal when we have them, so what's to say that dreams aren't reality and that reality isn't just an illusion? Coraline highlighted the differences perfectly: 1) Reality has rules, and 2) Reality is for everybody (dreams are for the individual). Even if reality is just one complex illusion, at least it has rules that 7 billion people have to live with.
So there's my list! On a side note, I thought it was interesting that Coraline's name has an "o" in it instead of an "a." All of Coraline's real neighbors thought it was strange that her name was "Coraline" rather than "Caroline," but her dream neighbors thought it sounded perfectly normal. This got me to thinking that Coraline was meant to live in the Other World after all. Or it was just a clever way to emphasize Coraline's seclusion and why she would be so tempted to stay in the Other World in the first place. (Also, my sister noticed at the very last few seconds of the movie that Coraline and her family's real garden is in the shape of her Other Mother's face. Creepy.)
Sunday, July 13, 2014
WILD Day 2 (and the basics)
My second day of attempting WILD, and this time I actually had some interesting results. I went to bed a little earlier today (10:30 PM) and woke up about five hours later at 3:30 AM. As soon I woke up, I really just wanted to go back to bed, but I reminded myself about the benefits of lucid dreaming. I forced myself to get up and go to the bathroom; afterwards, I tried WILD again. I propped my pillow up against the wall in attempt to avoid the saliva reflex and laid on my back. It actually worked pretty well, and I managed to avoid swallowing for a solid thirty minutes. I observed the flashes of color behind my eyelids; I imagined them morphing into real shapes. I'm not sure if I was just impatient, but I have to admit that the images weren't doing much for my lucidity. And then I felt the spit gather at the bottom of my throat. And I unintentionally swallowed. Great. I rolled onto my left side and started over; only ten minutes later, I swallowed again. For the second night, I was too tired to keep trying, so I rolled over to my right side and slowly fell asleep. This is when things got fuzzy.
The Basics (pre-lucidity)
For any readers who aren't very educated in WILD, I should explain some background information. WILD is when your body falls asleep, while your mind stays awake. You will be conscience as your body enters sleep paralysis (SP), which is a process that happens every night as you sleep. Many people describe the feeling as an iron blanket being pulled over them, and in earlier times, people thought of it as an "old hag" sitting on their chest. The process is totally natural, but since it's incredibly difficult to move as SP sets in, many people find it frightening. Hypnagogia will likely appear around this point. I think of these as hallucinations that are most commonly seen, heard, and felt. Hypnagogic images (HI) are the blobs of color that are seen behind your eyelids, but they can transform into patterns, and with practice, people or objects. You might hear people calling your name, screams, gunshots, etc at this stage. I've read that a common sound is tearing metal. Once you enter SP, I read that if you try to move, you might have an out-of-body experience/false awakening. You'll think that you woke up in your room when you're really in an exceptionally detailed dream. Most people who get to this point will feel a menacing force watching them, and some people even hallucinate witches or goblins (intruders) coming into their room and approaching their bed. What's even scarier is that since these people are still in SP, they can't do anything to counter these demons. It's important to remember that these are only projections in the mind- your mind, so if you expect to see a scary figure, then you probably will. The hallucinations can't hurt you, so you shouldn't be scared of them no matter how real they may seem.
Back to my bedroom. So, I only remembered this about twenty minutes after waking up, but I'm pretty sure I felt an "intruder" in my room. It's weird because I had given up trying to WILD for the night, but, and I know this sounds creepy, I fuzzily remember feeling as if a guy was standing by my door. For whatever reason, I wasn't scared; in fact, I vaguely recall even talking to him. I read somewhere that women may hallucinate of rape intruders before entering lucidity, but the weird thing was that I felt comforted by this guy's presence. I told him to come over to the right of my bed because I was lying on my right side, and I wanted us to face each other. I don't remember his exact profile, but I do know for a fact that he was pretty cute. I'm categorizing this sensation in that of the hallucinations because, as I said before, I was lying on my right side in real life, which means that I must have been having a false awakening since I was still on my right side on the bed in my hallucination. Of all of the things I was worried about hallucinating, a cute guy was definitely not one of them, so let's just say that it was a pleasant surprise. My next goal is to realize when I'm in a false awakening in order to take full advantage of lucidity.
I remember glimpses of other dreams from last night, such as: a girl I know having her pictures on a golf website (one of her winning something individually and one of her and her dad winning a father-daughter match), one of last year's MasterChef's contestants coming back older only to be told that her food had become bland, and finally one of my old middle school rhetoric teacher presenting a lesson, while my group and I made a paper caterpillar named "Emm" (someone suggested "Em-"?). I think I'm making progress.
The Basics (pre-lucidity)
For any readers who aren't very educated in WILD, I should explain some background information. WILD is when your body falls asleep, while your mind stays awake. You will be conscience as your body enters sleep paralysis (SP), which is a process that happens every night as you sleep. Many people describe the feeling as an iron blanket being pulled over them, and in earlier times, people thought of it as an "old hag" sitting on their chest. The process is totally natural, but since it's incredibly difficult to move as SP sets in, many people find it frightening. Hypnagogia will likely appear around this point. I think of these as hallucinations that are most commonly seen, heard, and felt. Hypnagogic images (HI) are the blobs of color that are seen behind your eyelids, but they can transform into patterns, and with practice, people or objects. You might hear people calling your name, screams, gunshots, etc at this stage. I've read that a common sound is tearing metal. Once you enter SP, I read that if you try to move, you might have an out-of-body experience/false awakening. You'll think that you woke up in your room when you're really in an exceptionally detailed dream. Most people who get to this point will feel a menacing force watching them, and some people even hallucinate witches or goblins (intruders) coming into their room and approaching their bed. What's even scarier is that since these people are still in SP, they can't do anything to counter these demons. It's important to remember that these are only projections in the mind- your mind, so if you expect to see a scary figure, then you probably will. The hallucinations can't hurt you, so you shouldn't be scared of them no matter how real they may seem.
Back to my bedroom. So, I only remembered this about twenty minutes after waking up, but I'm pretty sure I felt an "intruder" in my room. It's weird because I had given up trying to WILD for the night, but, and I know this sounds creepy, I fuzzily remember feeling as if a guy was standing by my door. For whatever reason, I wasn't scared; in fact, I vaguely recall even talking to him. I read somewhere that women may hallucinate of rape intruders before entering lucidity, but the weird thing was that I felt comforted by this guy's presence. I told him to come over to the right of my bed because I was lying on my right side, and I wanted us to face each other. I don't remember his exact profile, but I do know for a fact that he was pretty cute. I'm categorizing this sensation in that of the hallucinations because, as I said before, I was lying on my right side in real life, which means that I must have been having a false awakening since I was still on my right side on the bed in my hallucination. Of all of the things I was worried about hallucinating, a cute guy was definitely not one of them, so let's just say that it was a pleasant surprise. My next goal is to realize when I'm in a false awakening in order to take full advantage of lucidity.
I remember glimpses of other dreams from last night, such as: a girl I know having her pictures on a golf website (one of her winning something individually and one of her and her dad winning a father-daughter match), one of last year's MasterChef's contestants coming back older only to be told that her food had become bland, and finally one of my old middle school rhetoric teacher presenting a lesson, while my group and I made a paper caterpillar named "Emm" (someone suggested "Em-"?). I think I'm making progress.
WILD Day 1
I tried WILD (wake induced lucid dreaming) the other night for the first time in a while. I went to bed at 12 AM and set an alarm for 4 AM to the song of Airplanes by B.O.B. I woke up on schedule, did some addition and multiplication problems in my head to wake myself up a little more, and then tried to stay as still as possible on my back. I thought it was going pretty well up until I felt the spit at the back of my throat. I tried to ignore it, but I inevitably swallowed a few seconds later. I tried again to stay motionless but only encountered the same problem a few minutes later. Great. At that point probably an hour had passed, and all I wanted was to sleep. I'd try again the next night.
I woke up and remembered that I had dreamed about a demented kind of field trip with my old middle school classmates. I kind of remember jumping over pits and riding on a bus afterwards. The weird thing is that I didn't find anything strange about it at the time, even though I had been specifically trying to have a lucid dream. A guy offered me popcorn and a toy rat near the end of the dream, and when I said no, everyone on the bus laughed at me. Fun stuff.
I woke up and remembered that I had dreamed about a demented kind of field trip with my old middle school classmates. I kind of remember jumping over pits and riding on a bus afterwards. The weird thing is that I didn't find anything strange about it at the time, even though I had been specifically trying to have a lucid dream. A guy offered me popcorn and a toy rat near the end of the dream, and when I said no, everyone on the bus laughed at me. Fun stuff.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)