subconscious

Yesterday I was reading something about meditation. It mentioned the importance of keeping the muscles relaxed. I hadn't heard that about meditation before. It also mentioned clearing the mind, but it said that after the mind was clear, the point was to view aspects of my life, and see them objectively and dispassionately (whereas under tenser circumstances, I might get too emotional or egotistical, and not "see myself as I am").

So I lied down, facing up, and tried to relax all my muscles. It took a long time. I tried various things. I tried counting down from 10 to 1 with each breath, trying to relax a little more on each out breath. I tried relaxing my body parts in turn. I tried imagining walking into water, and relaxing the muscles as they entered the water.

I would notice my mind coming up with images and feeling as if I was entering a deep state of meditation, but I decided they were fake, and kept just relaxing.

By the end, I wasn't counting or imagining anything in particular, I was just breathing and relaxing.

I was still awake, but my mind was pretty clear. I suspect that if I had been on my side, I would be close to sleep, but for whatever reason I cannot sleep facing up, which is why I chose that position.

I remember feeling heavy, and feeling like the arms by my sides weren't really mine.

I could say things to myself. I said "I'm flying", and I did feel a sense of floating in the air, but I knew also that I wasn't.

I examined some aspects of my life, and felt like I was seeing them dispassionately  I feel like I gained some valid insights. However, I also felt like I was cheating somehow, and not really seeing things as they were, but rather perhaps as what I expected a "dispassionate" view to be.

This seemed like self hypnosis. It also seemed like meditation. I'm not sure there is a difference.

I watched Fringe, and then went to bed.

dreams

episode 1: I'm in a math class. I'm nervous. The teacher pulls me aside and asks me what's wrong. I tell him I forgot to bring a calculator. He loans me a calculator. It turns out none of the people have calculators, and now I feel like I'm cheating. I try to talk to them about sharing it, but I'm not sure what the teacher would consider cheating. The episode goes on, but I forget the "story", but I recall images of taking the square roots of large, e.g. ~20 digit, numbers. I recall the square roots being half the digits of the original numbers (which is right), and most of the digits in all of the numbers being the digit "9" (which is wrong).

episode 2: I'm in an apartment building. I'm told to look at an apartment on the 6th floor, where me and my roommate are thinking of moving. The apartments have numbers on them, but the number indicates how good the internet connection is in the apartment. I think the lowest number I see is 6, and the highest is 8. The numbers tend to get higher as I go up, but the apartment I'm supposed to look at has an 8, and the one above it has a 7. I knock on the door, and a woman opens it. I was told her name, and something to say to prove who I am, but I forgot it. I ask her is so-and-so is interested in moving into her place. I ask her if she was told about me (I give her my name). She lets me in to look around. It is a single floor, with a view of the street. It looks nice. I ask her why she is leaving. She says her mom thinking it would be a good idea for her to invest in a house because housing prices are so low right now.

I woke up and wrote those things down. Then I decided to try "meditating/self-hypnosis" again. I lied down as before, and relaxed as much as possible. I got very relaxed, but nothing came to my mind. I was suspicious of anything coming to my mind as coming there from my conscious rather than subconscious, and so I suppose some things did come to mind, but I kept on relaxing.

Eventually I decided to roll to my side and fall asleep.

I had many dreams. I don't recall them all.

I had my first successful lucid dream. I was outside a house where the cars were. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I tried to pass through a car, but I bumped into it, finding it to be quite solid, and was surprised. I said "this car will be open". I was able to open the door and get in. I was somehow able to get the car moving down a hill, but I hadn't actually started it yet, since I didn't have the key. I said "I have the key", but it did not appear in my hand as I was expecting. I said "I will find the key" and I searched around in some compartment and did find the key and start the car. I was on the onramp to a freeway. I got onto the freeway and went very fast, passing cars, but the cars were very small. I said "the cars will be bigger" (or maybe "make the cars bigger"), and the cars became very big, filling their entire lanes. I kept going. Eventually I wanted the car to turn into an airplane. I think it got wings, and I think it started to fly, but then the dream stopped, and.. I'm not sure what happened next..

But at some point I found myself in "my" room, on the top bunk of "my" bed. My mom came in and brought a kitten to my bed. I recall seeing an object moving in the sky out the window. I could see it clearly. I could then see other spacecraft in the sky, and I remember knowing they were hallucinations  and think "hm.. the lucid dreaming has spilt over into real life.. I'm not sure this is good."

I think it eventually occurred to me that that was a dream as well, and I had another lucid dream experience, including petting my first cat (which was not the kitten on the bed, but rather the first cat my family owned when I was a kid, named Tiger). I could see the cat clearly, and it moved in a very convincing cat fashion. But eventually I "woke" from that dream too, again to be lying in the same bed as before, and my mom bringing in a kitten, and I remember thinking "how strange that my dream predicted this"..

actually she brought in three kittens, but one was in a plastic bag because it was mean (the bag was not closed). The mean one started biting my finger, and I said "oh, it's biting me", and my sister was there and said "oh, you live in California, so you need to make up problems." and I remember thinking this was very funny, and trying to tell her so.

I think I woke up for real soon after that, and wrote what I remembered down here.