Dreaming in Lucidity

I am sleep deprived and I tried valerian root—

my first night on valerian, I heard strange noises like paper rustling in the further corner of my room across from my bed, and my half dreaming mind imagined my favorite cat was there moving around or something, although the half awake part of me was afraid a cockroach was the culprit and if I fell asleep, I’d wake up with my worst enemy attached to my face. Nevertheless, I eventually did get back to sleep and when I did, I found myself in a horrid nightmarish realm in which my favorite cat, Delphine, was indeed in my room along with my other cat, Skadi, who shuns me for reasons I can’t comprehend and therefor wouldn’t have been in my room anyway. The nightmare wasn’t that Skadi was in my room though, but that I heard he and Delphine fighting and he being larger cat, though far less bestial, managed to tear part of her ear off, eat one of her legs, and defying all laws of rationality, burn her skin. She was still alive and I was carrying her throughout the house attempting to get someone to help me take her to the vet because I’m 26 and I can’t drive(I choose not to for religious reasons), however everyone in the house was being so cavalier despite the fact her entrails were leaking all over the floor. All they did was clean up the mess and say they’d take her to the vet later

Later. I do despise when people say they’ll ‘do it later’

but of course, the beauty of nightmares is that when you wake up, reality seems a whole lot more beautiful than it did before you fell asleep and all I wanted was to hug Delphine and smother her until she demanded I let her return to whatever it is that cats actually do when they so feverishly desire to go outside

so the next night I decided I needed to put in some real deal spiritual practice, right? If I wanted to have some wicked vivid dreams and have those wicked vivid dreams not actually be wicked, I needed to call upon the gods, my guardian angels, the universe, fucking Thor or Sehkmet or whomever. As much as I’m joking, I really did take it seriously. I have a particular protection sigil I use that works for me and I developed a new one last night devoted to dream travel. I prayed to my spirits to bring me guidance and clarity and any tools I need for my journey forward, although admittedly, I’m a child and a part of me just wants to play and explore in the astral planes. My initiatory experiences have been a lot of fun so far, so I want to keep that momentum going

I prayed, I asked my guides to be with me, I used my sigils, and enacted a bit of a ritual with intention of dream lucidity and exploration. I have developed a technique of lucid dreaming that works for me, so I used that as I fell into my lovely valerian haze and I had quite a few very vivid dreams with varying levels of lucidity, but generally very keen lucidity

But the true climax of this experience was something more beautiful than just play and adventure…it was something I didn’t consider even being possible though I do claim emphatically that the possibilities with dream lucidity may well be infinite…I decided at one point in my dream state that I wanted to go somewhere new, somewhere different. So I focused and I found myself in a dark, dimly brown hall with many, many identical doors and very few lights. Not a place I enjoyed, very simple, just a dim brown hall with basic lights and ordinary doors. I chose one on the right hand side a few doors down at random not really knowing what I’d find on the other side—

what I found was a child with straight blond hair and freckles-sweet, smart, independent, and largely left to her own devices as I assumed her mother was neglectful or busy and gave her daughter, Abigail was her name, money to buy foods and go exploring through her town

I followed Abigail and we had many lovely conversations. Oddly enough, I had this irrational sense that she was a real person and that somehow the astral world and the physical world were connected as if I was actually there with her, not just in spirit or in dream, but in reality. I even carried a journal with me to write things down and take the notes with me into my waking life.  I knew I was in the astral world, but there was this meshing collision that occurred for me and I’m not sure why. I’ll write it off as general stupidity on my part

Regardless, I stayed with Abigail throughout her day and I recall one instance of her mother opening the door to her room and half walking in, as I assumed she halfassed just about everything with Abigail, and yelling at her about something. I forgot what it was, but I could tell Abigail was upset. When I asked her about how she felt, she denied anything was wrong even though she’d suddenly closed up and gone quiet. That reminded me of how I’d react to my own mother when she would yell at me, so I could empathize and I knew she was just stewing in self hatred and questioning and so many chaotic emotions she couldn’t begin to speak about it if she wanted to

Another moment I remember with Abigail is that we were in a hospital and strangely enough, she was there to pick up medication for her mother. I looked at the mother’s name on the prescription papers and her name was my mother’s name but with a single letter different. It didn’t dawn on me quite yet that that wasn’t a coincidence and I was still caught up in this belief that Abigail was a girl living in another part of the world whose life I just randomly barged into in some strange astral form

There was another instance where my uncle who I lived with for a few years and just loved to antagonize me showed up in our adventures together to antagonize me some more which should’ve been another sign to me that Abigail wasn’t exactly a separate entity I’d visited . I could tell this greatly disturbed Abigail as his yelling only escalated, though I couldn’t fully comprehend why since he was directing his anger and screaming toward me and not toward her,…but I could understand she was a child and was sensitive to such things whether directed at her or not. I held her and attempted to comfort her by offering her some insight into why my uncle was behaving so vitriolically and so nastily— I did confide in her that I had considered killing him in the dream to ease my own pain since he wouldn’t actually die in the physical world, but I decided against it

I still didn’t quite get ‘it’

We were getting ready to part ways, so I asked her for her name and location so maybe I could find her in the ‘real world’ and I took out my notebook to write it down. She gave me her name…Abigail from Cheese Field(yes I know, funny name and I have no Earthly idea what it might mean because I don’t think it’s an actual place), and I attempted to write it down. That’s when I woke up as my physical body was filled with urge to write down that information

What I came to realize upon examining the contents of the dream adventure and trying to make sure it would store in my memory is that when I walked through that long hallway filled with identical doors, I was walking through a hallway of my own subconscious. Abigail was a facet of my childhood self. Her mother’s name being just one letter off from mine was symbolic of the fact so much of her own experiences resonated with my own experiences, but there were differences in context and some specifics

I’m new when it comes to exploring lucid dreams, but when I reach that state of true lucidity, I realize just about anything can be done in the dream world. I’m eager to explore all I can do and to maybe speak to ancestors or explore far off worlds, even worlds of my own creation, but I think I’m gonna be visiting that hallway a lot in the coming months

Working through childhood trauma and general healing from my self destructive mindset I carried for years is a new endeavor of mine and largely it can leave me feeling powerless as to how to approach it because so much has become boarded up and suppressed. But I’m doing this because I have to to become who I need to be and to no longer let my light be obscured by my darkness

I believe darkness is vital, but I believe it also must not control us. When issues related to past trauma come up, my darkness controls me and I can’t be the person I want and need to be with this beast reaching out from within me every now and again and threatening every fiber of my life and soul