08-04-17 Update

What I’m reading
I’m still reading Lucid Dreams: Gateway to the Inner Self by Robert Waggoner. I’m finding that many of the things he’s talking about regarding the unconscious and the awareness behind the awareness are very similar to ideas I’ve been pondering. He came to them through lucid dreaming while I was thinking about them more in terms of yoga (the Vedas) and imagining what may lie beyond quantum physics.

What I’ve been working on
In addition to reading books by Robert Waggoner and Charlie Morley, I’ve been listening to YouTube videos on lucid dreaming and I’m working on having lucid dreams myself. I’ve been concentrating on recalling my dreams and I’m making progress there. I don’t remember dreams every night but I do most nights now. Last week I remembered dreams 5 days in a row. I’m writing them down to try to get familiar with my dream environment but so far I’m not seeing many common threads or themes in them.

I’ve gone through my personal journals and extracted dreams I’ve recorded over the past couple of years and noticed a few recurring themes in them. I’d had several dreams with military themes in which people I worked with in the service were dream characters. There were also several dreams that took place in classrooms or other academic settings. I’ve also had dreams in which I’d be navigating maze-like corridors and tunnels. Other dreams were set in places like Germany though I could never recall specific locations. In the past I have had dreams featuring deceased relatives as characters, specifically my paternal grandmother, a favorite aunt, and my mother.

I’ve noticed that it takes me a long time to fall asleep, often an hour or more. In a YouTube video, I heard Charline Morley describe insomnia as “the process of trying to fall asleep.” He also described falling asleep as a process of progressive relaxation. I feel pretty relaxed when I go to bed but maybe there’s some tension or stress or issues I’m unaware of.

Quote I’ve been pondering
“The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will— and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.” ~ Albert Einstein