As I related in my most recent Penultimate Day post, many of last year’s posts related interesting dreams as I pursued the very elusive target of having lucid dreams. I can no longer recall when the pursuit began but I’m sure it’s been well over a year now. As much as I would love to experience awareness and lucidity in a dream and be able to influence dream events and ask questions of awareness behind the dream, I’ve pretty much admitted defeat.
Am I trying to hard? Or am I wound a bit too tight? Is my subconscious a black hole that won’t allow any light to escape? Sometimes I feel that way. Was there something so traumatic in my early childhood that caused me to go into lock-down mode for a lifetime? I just don’t know. I recall having a fairly normal and reasonably happy childhood although I can only recall maybe two distinct memories prior to my sixth birthday.
I’ve explored various methods to illuminate the secrets of my shadows. I’ve tried yoga, meditation, automatic writing, pendulum divination, I-Ching, along with trying to remember my dreams in the hopes of achieving lucidity in them. I don’t know what else to do. So far, nothing has penetrated the wall.
Sometimes I wonder if, starting at the age of six, our memories of prior events begin to be put away into some kind vault or a time capsule. Why are we denied these memories? Is this a common occurrence. Is there a universal need for the subconscious to shield us from the trauma of early childhood?
These are the questions for which I seek answers. What in my early childhood formed me into what I am today, into what I was as a young adult, as a teenager, as a preteen, as a schoolboy? I’ve gone through many changes over the last 65 years but there are many traits that have remained unchanged. There are many behaviors and defense mechanisms that I have not been able to unlearn. How did I learn them in the first place?
From a Jungian perspective I’m quite sure there are secrets locked away in the shadows and I have yet to crack the code that will open the locks and break the chains that imprison my childhood and my potential as an adult.
I don’t have the answers and the answers are as elusive now as they ever were. Maybe Douglas Adams was right about the question and the answer being mutually exclusive.
“The Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about in the same Universe. Except, if it happened, it seems that the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out, and take the Universe with them, which would then be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened, but there is a certain amount of uncertainty about it.” ~ Prak in Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
For What It's Worth 
Though the lack of results have been quite disappointing, I haven’t given up on lucid dreaming. I know that it’s possible and that when it happens it will be when I least expect it. Maybe my expectations are working against me. It’s hard to say.
I continue to keep a dream journal even though most days I simply enter “No dreams remembered.” I often remember that I did dream but the dreams themselves seem to immediately evaporate upon awakening. Before falling asleep I repeat affirmations that I will remember my dreams but they don’t seem to take hold. Maybe the quality of my sleep is a factor. I’m generally a bit groggy when I first wake up and it’s in those moments, the dreams slip away from me.
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