DREAMER: Male, 54, business owner

LUCIDITY FACTOR

 Level 1

I am 54 years old and run a technology company.  We are in the latter stages of launching a new product, an undertaking that has been fraught with problems and risks and it appears that we are breaking through on a number of levels.  My mother has been dead for 15 years.  She and my late father worked with our company until their deaths.

The dream occurred this morning about 7:15 AM, well after I usually wake up.  However, we had guests who were in our extra bedroom, where my workout machines are located.  So, I stayed in bed “late” and drowsed off and was in a light sleep state when I had this dream.

DREAM REPORT

I was in the kitchen of my parents’ home by myself.  My mother entered appearing as she did when healthy shortly before her death at the age of 68 in 1992.  She was well dressed, as she usually was.  She did not note my presence and acted like her appearance was entirely normal.  She turned her back and was doing something at the place on the kitchen counter where she usually did little things like filing recipes. 

I immediately suspected that I was dreaming and tried (as I often do in the dreams that I can recall) to figure out how to tell if this was a miraculous reality or a dream. 

I was so overjoyed to see my mother that I ran to her and embraced her and turned her to me.  As I was running to her, I noticed for the first time in the dream that she appeared quite a bit shorter than I remembered her being. 

At first, she acted surprised that I was so effusive at seeing her and then she started acting in a way that she knew this was not “normal”.  I asked her what year it was, to see if that would give me a clue as to what was happening.  She tried to speak but her words were obviously slurred in a dream-like, frustrating way, similar to how slow one can run in one’s sleep.  I noted at that time that her hairdo was slightly lopsided, as if she had been sleeping and had not brushed it out since she woke up.  At this point, I said simply, Mother, I love you and she responded, “I don’t have time for that”.  She continued with some urgency as if she wanted to communicate to me before we ran out of time, “This is going to be a really big month.  Don’t leave home….” and there the dream ended.   

DREAM STATE

This dreamer’s lucidity makes itself known “I immediately suspected that I was dreaming and tried (as I often do in the dreams that I can recall) to figure out how to tell if this was a miraculous reality or a dream” and the dream establishes itself in his Mother’s appearance and her speech.  These distinguish it from the possibility of being an inner level experience with the soul the man once knew as his Mother.

DREAM CONTENT

This dream account is a message from the dreamer’s subconscious mind for his waking, conscious mind. The message concerns his life, most probably - as he suspects - the business part of it.  Through the guise of his mother, his subconscious mind is giving him a picture or image of his desire to manifest his destiny.  He may see this as a “calling” or an obligation to carry on the family inheritance or merely as the “right” thing to do.  However he interprets the particulars, his mother’s presence symbolizes his own superconscious mind.

The dreamer has been reviewing the spiritual progress he has made as symbolized by being in his parent’s kitchen.  This may relate to his comments that a recent business endeavor has been “fraught with problems and risks”.  The dream is offering feedback concerning how the business challenges have stimulated him to think and act the day or so before the dream appeared. 

The dream highlights the dreamer’s ability to receive whole images and communicate them.  Could this relate to his expectation that the new product will succeed?  Only the dreamer knows.  This is certainly an area to begin reflecting upon, as it may be an indication of what is needed in the dreamer’s consciousness for success to be achieved in the waking life.

The dreamer’s moment of lucidity comes from the recognition of anomaly in the dream: ie, his mother is healthy and alive in the dream while he is consciously aware that she has actually been deceased for 15 years.  The dreamer maintains his concentration through the acknowledgement of the juxtapositioning of these two realities.  This is a key component in lucid dreaming.

Emotion – “I was so overjoyed” – rises.  This is significant for two reasons.  First, emotions are the primary distraction for lucid dreamers.  Owing to the function of emotion in connecting subconscious mind to conscious mind, the dreamer’s attention can easily be swept up and outward toward physical wakefulness thus leaving the dream experience behind.  This dreamer directs his emotion well, sustaining his attention in the dream state.  The effect of the emotion is noted in the mother’s slurred words, indicating the dreamer’s attention is separating from the dream-action, thus the out-of-sync and slow motion effect that can occur in dreams.

Second, in the context of the dream message this indicates how the dreamer’s emotional expectations in some way do not coincide with the diminuitive stance of the accomplishment. How the dreamer views time is different from the superconscious view, and this is what the dream seeks to bring to light. 

The crux of the dream message is time.  This dream highlights what is important about time to the dreamer and what is not.  The dreamer wants a point of reference for self evaluation.  The superconscious response follows the out-of-sync moment emphasizing the distance or separation between them.  What is emphasized is the need to be centered in Self, to account for permanency in what is being produced in the outer life.  From the superconscious view, the time for this is now.

The question posed by this dream may well be – is the dreamer accomplishing something material or something spiritual in the everyday life?  Through provoking this question, the dream stimulates the dreamer to think about his values.  Are they worthy of superconscious attention?  Do they support the superconscious part of Self?  How can spiritual and material gain work together in the dreamer’s waking consciousness to more effectively fulfill each?

Answering these questions will place the dreamer securely in his own mind (dream-home), using his resources to fulfill his potential.  In this way he will respond to his mother’s advise,“don’t leave home.”   

This last troubles the dreamer for he does not know whether to take this as some kind of warning against traveling. 

I woke up, very frustrated.  She was in the middle of a sentence that had no particular meaning to me in her saying “don’t leave home”.  We are redoing my own home this summer… and may move afterwards.  I make business trips all the time.  I had no idea in the dream what she was going to say in the rest of that thought.

The reality of the dream message is that what his dream-mother was going to say probably doesn’t matter.  Although to his conscious mind the message seems incomplete, left hanging in the air, in the Universal Language of Mind, the language used in dreams, the thought is complete and precise.  For the dreamer to master his experiences he will want to stay focused and centered in his own faculties.

An addendum offered by the dreamer signifies he is contemplating the nature of time as he experienced it in the lucidity of his dream.  He describes this as “real time”:

Other Note 

I do not ever recall dreaming of my mother in such a realistic “real time” way since her death.  I may have, of course, but I don’t remember. 

Again this reflection after awakening supports the dialogue with subconscious mind on the nature of time and how it is playing out in the dreamer’s waking life.

I am most interested in your feedback concerning your experience and subsequently related dreams, if there are any.  From this dream it sounds like your company’s development is affecting your own sense of superconsciousness.  Perhaps the technology has both made the world a smaller place for you while at the same time revealing its your importance in it.  Does this make any sense to you?

In keeping with the intent of this experiment, we will be posting the analysis above at dreamschool.org this summer.  Participation in the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiment is confidential and we will share the research anonymously, with the third person viewpoint, unless otherwise noted in writing by our participants.

Thank you again for participating in this first of its kind experiment.  We hope you will join us in future ones.

/bc