I dreamed this morning that I was back in Summit House (a preferred prisoner housing unit without bars or concrete walls at the McNeil Island prison in the 1980's). I had some dirty laundry and was trying to find my way downstairs to the laundry room but the stairs had been moved. When I found them, on the wrong side of the stairwell, I went down and discovered that all the halls and doorways - including the main entrance and exit - were walled up with bricks! But, there was one small door that looked like a utility or maintenance closet. When I opened it and looked inside, sure enough, I saw a dimly lit room that had a dirt floor with various pipes, ducts and conduits running through it mostly along the walls. But, I also saw a long and wide tunnel in place of one wall that looked like it extended out far beyond the prison perimeter security fences then opened up to the outside. It was a way out of prison.
At first I thought it must be a trap. But, then I realized it didn't make any sense for there to be a trap like that, in fact, the whole situation, I suddenly realized, didn't make any sense. At that point I thought I must be dreaming, though I wasn't 100% certain. But, I decided if it was a dream then no harm could come from exploring the tunnel. So I did.
I went through the tunnel and exited on a paved area next to a warehouse. I seemed to be in some sort of warehouse district. There was a six-foot high chainlink fence that ran along one side of the roadway I was on and a warehouse on the other. I walked the length of the warehouse hoping to find something interesting, but the fence curved around then end of the warehouse and forced me back toward the tunnel I had come through, but only on the otherside of the warehouse.
At one point I saw a very interesting looking all glass house on the otherside of the six-foot fence that hemmed me in, about two-hundred yards away across an overgrown grass field. The house was brightly lit from the inside (it was dark out in my dream) which made it stand out beautifully. I wanted to take a closer look, so I began to climb the fence.
But, I couldn't get over the top, and I somehow started sliding down the fence as I hung onto it trying to get over. I was moving away from my goal of reaching the glass house, so I let go and fell back on the paved warehouse-side of the fence.
Then I got mad and thought, whose dream is this anyway? This is my dream! I should be able to go where I want! So I redoubled my determination to get over the fence as I grabbed it to pull myself up. This time when I got to the top I saw another fence, just like the one I was on, not twenty-feet away. That other fence wasn't there before. I realized that someone or something was deliberately trying to discourage me from going where I wanted to go.
That only made me even more determined than ever. So, I stood up on top of the fence and leaped into the air, trusting from dream experience that such a leap would result in my becoming airborn. And indeed I flew! I flew up about fifty-feet and easily cleared the second fence, though I was much higher in the air than I needed to be and promptly began to fall!
But, I also knew that I would not hit the ground. Experience told me to just relax; my dream would not let me get hurt, and once I was down I could continue to the house. So I just turned over on my back as I fell, expecting to be levitated again before hitting the ground. But, instead - and very much to my surprize - I hit the ground hard, flat on my back, with enough force to knock the wind out of me.
I was stunned, to say the least. Especially since at that exact moment of impact the dream ended, and I physically raised my arm - threw it into the air actually - as I woke to try to compensate for the impact I had just felt.
Wow! It seems clear that I was forcefully ejected from my own dream, and clearly because I refused to accept my containment. That was the firs time I'd ever hit the ground from a fall in a dream that I can remember. Here is the question I am now forced to ask: Is there an intelligent force, other than my own, somehow preventing me from exploring my own dreams? I have had other lucid dreams recently that were similar to the one just described, though until now I had not been so forcefully ejected, but in every case I have been clearly discouraged and prevented from exploring my own dream. None of the books I have been reading recently on lucid dreaming have mentioned this problem. In fact, they all express unrestricted freedom once lucid state is achieved. Could this also be the reason I have been having so few lucid dreams despite so much effort which in the past resulted in many lucid dreams?
It is a mystery I fully intend to pursue. I don't know, but I'm inclined to believe that some other intelligence than my own is involved, and hopefully I will be able to find a way to converse with it, or maybe learn how to listen to what it's trying to tell me.
