Being The Bad Man

I dreamt that I was in a school hall. It could have been high school, or maybe a junior college. I saw a young woman just inside one of the class rooms. She was watching me, and seemed to know me but I didn't know her. Out of curiosity I approached the entrance to the classroom and asked the girl what the class was inside. She told me it was a class about people who victimize other people. I asked if I could sit in and she backed away from the door. I took this as an invitation and entered the room behind her.

I saw the woman take a seat near the entrance, but now she seemed overly wary of me. The class was full of students, young adults, and a teacher lecturing at the front. The only seat was on the other side of the room in the back. As I walked to sit down I noticed the woman saying something, apparently about me, to the other students around her. As I took my seat, the teacher, having noticed the commotion, called for her to speak.

She told the class that I was stalking and harassing her. I was dumbfounded by her accusation! But, before I could say anything in my own defense, the teacher told me to let her finish. When I was finally allowed to speak, the entire class scoffed at me, even when I tried to explain that I did not know the young woman claiming to be my "victim". The teacher supported her and the scoffing by telling the class that such "denial" is typical of a victimizer.

I quickly realized that there was nothing I could say or do that the teacher and entire class would not view as a "victimizer's attempt to distort and evade the truth", THEIR "truth". I also realized from listening to my accuser talk that she was the one "obsessed" with the idea that I was obsessed with her. I remembered seeing her around as she described various circumstances where I "victimized" her, apparently with my presence alone.

Then I woke up feeling extremely frustrated over not being able to say or do anything to make myself understood. It was an all too familiar sense of frustration. I suspect it is one that all so-called "victimizers" feel, whether they are guilty or not. And I also believe it is a primary reason we feel justified to "victimize" anyone. Because it doesn't matter if we do or don't. So, we do, if only to stay consistent with the "truth" as it is perceived regardless of what we do.

[J.D. June 2, 2019]

Echo Chamber

I dreamt that I was in a domed room with the older MI-6 spy-queen from the BBC series, "Killing Eve". She was explaining to me that the room we were in was an echo chamber used for training purposes. Every word we spoke or sound we made was echoed repeatedly throughout the room. Then she instructed me to stand in the center of the room. As soon as I did so the echoing dramatically stopped. It was like the center of a hurricane where all the violent forces of the storm balance and cancel each other out.

The spy-queen explained that at this focal point the echoes cancelled out, so I could hear things as they actually are, with no echos at all. She then instructed me to lean over and pick up a golf ball-sized blob in front of me. But, as soon as I bent over to retrieve the blob all the echos returned. The spy-queen told me that because of the echos I could not communicate, or "commune", with the blob, which was some sort of intelligent substance responsible for formulating everything we experience, i.e. "reality" itself. Being able to commune with this substance allows one to function within their experience ("reality") in ways that might seem miraculous or even impossible. The communion allows you to see and understand the purpose of everything, not to mention the way everything interacts. She explained that with training I could learn to "hear" without echos, by "standing in the center of my own mind" just as I stood in the center of the echo chamber.

I believe this dream reflects, or "echos", something important about the way we experience reality with our minds. Our mind is like the echo chamber in my dream. And our experiences are echoed emotionally over and over, such that we commonly confuse the echos for "reality" itself. I think that maybe the people we call "psychopaths" are really just people who naturally stand at the center of their mind. So they either can't "hear" the emotional echos, or if they do "hear" them then they realize instinctively that they are not what is "real", that they are merely "echos".

Finding The Way Home, Again And Again

I dreamed last night that I escaped from a volcanic eruption that happened inside the auditorium of a high school I attended as a student. There were many other students all making a mad dash for the exit as ash and fiery black smoke billowed into the school and threatened to bury everyone alive.

Once I had made it outside the air was clear and I seemed safe. All the other students either boarded yellow school-buses or got in cars or on their bikes to head home, but I realized I was much too far from home (over ten miles it seemed) for a bus so I had to walk. The prospect was daunting and made me feel lost and alone.

Then I woke up. I was back in prison (Federal "death row") and all was quiet. I thought about the dream and realized it was an odd combination of real and fictional elements from my past, my "childhood" to be precise. The high school was not the same high school I attended as a boy, neither was it in the right location for the high school I did attend (Lakes High). But, it was in the right city (Tacoma, Washington) and the house I was trying to go "home" to in the dream was the right house I lived in at the time (8513 Lawndale Ave.). I vaguely remember another rival school at the location of this school in my dream, but I only visited it once in real life for non-school related scuba lessons at its pool after school hours (lessons that I signed up for at a local scuba shop and paid for myself with my paper-route money at the time).

This was not a particularly unusual dream, so I dismissed it, shifted my position on the bunk to make myself comfortable, and went back to sleep. I then had the exact same dream all over again! I even woke up again a few moments later at the same place in the dream (trying to get home and feeling anxious about the distance!).

I've had many recurring dreams before, but never back-to-back like this. So I thought about the details a little more carefully this time as I laid on the bunk in my cell, but still saw nothing unusual or out of the ordinary about it. So, once more, I made myself comfortable and went back to sleep. And once more I had the same exact dream!

But, this time, instead of waking up while trying to get home, I "woke up" in the dream (became aware that I was dreaming, or "lucid") and at the same time I became conscious of the fact that this was the third time in a row that I was having the same dream! Then, instead of waking up for real in prison, the dream actually became even clearer and more detailed. So, I thought to myself, what should I do? I knew that if I continued in the direction I was going --- toward home, over ten miles away --- I would be doing the same as always and accomplish nothing in the process.

Let me explain: Not only was this a repeat-dream, but the desperate attempt to get "home" on foot from so far away was in fact a recurring dream theme that I have been having for at least the last year or so. The location and circumstances that I am trying to get "home" from in these dreams is usually different, but in every case I am a long way from home and on foot and alone. And also in every case that is how the dream ends, and I wake up feeling lost and alone ("lost" in the "lost cause" sense, as I always know where I am, just not how I am going to get home!).

So, this time I wanted to do something different that might solve the recurring puzzle. I have used lucid dreams in the past to solve other recurring dream "puzzles"; which is usually a simple matter of confronting the source of fear in the dream, such as jumping from a high place, or fighting back against an attacker. In this case it meant turning around and heading back toward the volcano/high school, which is exactly what I did.

I was only a block away, and when I got back to the school, I saw a couple of buses out front still waiting for all their students to board before leaving. I approached one of the buses and asked the driver through the open front boarding door if he was going anywhere near Lake City, where I lived (in the dream and in reality, "Lake City" was the name of the neighborhood area I lived in as a boy in high school, so if I could get there, I could get home easily). The driver said, no, but he was going in that direction as far as the Lakewood Plaza.

That was great news! The "Lakewood Plaza" was a shopping center only a mile or so from Lake City! It was in fact only a short distance from the end of my paper-route (in reality) when I was a boy. So my problem was solved, as was the dream "puzzle", and I woke up (back in prison again) feeling relieved and at ease knowing I would to be having that problem again anytime soon in my dreams.

I should note here that according to some literature (books) I read in the past about lucid dreaming, solving a problem like this in a dream also resolves a "mental block" of some sort in reality. So perhaps I have learned something here about how to "get home" in some psychological sense. In fact, I believe I have!

[J.D. February 14, 2019]