Still Knocking...

The mysterious apartment door knocker is still at it in Corona. The reader in question supplied this month's short story. His apartment was knocked on again during his dreaming, but no one was there. He wants to know if anyone else has felt presences and what they think it might be. He lists the following as possible:

1. Nothing at all but a normal dream,
2. The inorganic beings hanging around,
3. Panic caused by an increased energy level,
4. His own Nagual being sensed by his Tonal,
5. Nicotine poisoning,
6. A serious need to finish his recapitulation.

I believe he left out, 7. Demons from hell trying to take over his body. If we could think of another three, we could send it to Letterman for a top 10 list.

Here's my own feeble explanation for the short story: The wind indicates his energy body coming out because don Juan said it was always heralded by wind. The presence he sensed (he said ancient, it was described that way by don Juan too), is his energy body. He could move his leg easily because it emerged from there (one of the women's books talks about openings in the lower leg). He couldn't move the rest of his body because his attention was on his energy body. That didn't move because it hasn't fully emerged yet. As an experiment, he might try moving only his leg as much as possible. Maybe next time he could slide out in some weird fashion. This of course doesn't explain the knocking on his apartment door. I haven't even a feeble explanation for that. Hopefully, some readers will feel like speculating.

Source: Corona, CA

Hitting pay dirt.

Before recapitulating, I tried desperately to hold onto any dreaming I got into. I discovered a lot about this and thought it was important. Recapitulating has changed my mind. I now think that it isn't too important. I am writing about this just because you asked [in the last newsletter].

My technique was based on the discovery that my sense of sight was the first to go. When the dream began to fade, I learned to stoop and grab anything I could find; for instance dirt. I would roll that around in my hands. As long as I felt dirt, my dreaming wasn't over even if the scene faded completely away. I learned from this to go back into the dream. Mostly, I learned how little we can trust our own sense of what is a dream and what is not. Sometimes I found myself cursing having woken up from dreaming, only to realize seconds later that I still had the dirt in my hand! The technique then, is to keep feeling the dirt and visualize anything last seen before the dream faded.

In answer to your second question [barriers to the initial realization], my big problem is not wanting to let go of the dream I'm having at the time. I always seem to know I'm in a dream. I even tell figures in my dreams that it's just a dream. I just don't want to stop the "important" things I'm doing. Once I do give up, my clarity increases until I fully realize I'm dreaming. A common mistake I make that causes me to lose it again is to do something that draws me back into the dream. For instance, last week I came across a shelf of china and couldn't resist the urge to smash a bunch of it on the floor. I reasoned that it was just dreaming. The owners of the china did not agree. A big fight ensued and I decided to kill all of them quickly to avoid trouble. My dreaming ego is very violent. I still can't remember how that dream ended, so obviously I re-entered a normal dream. Rule #1 for me now; tread lightly.

Starts with a voice.

It has been my experience that dream images or events don't fade, they change chaotically. Hence, the technique of isolating one particular item to return to (your hands) when your cohesion begins to falter. I find that the realization that I'm dreaming takes the form of a peculiar internal dialog (?) in which I (?) begin to coach myself to look only in fleeting glances at things and then return to my hands to refresh my attention. Interestingly, I've found that in other non-ordinary states of perception the truly remarkable experiences are always ushered in by particularly poignant internal dialogues (?) about perception in general. What this means I don't know, we're very strange animals. I suspect this may be the voice of seeing.

Source: Otisville, NY

Hog farming in NC.

...I live in a mobile home, and the center bedroom in my mobile home is very small. Just big enough for a small bed. The room in fact is like a box. When I close the door and pull the curtains tight, very little light comes through even during the day. I find that I dream the best around two or three in the afternoon. One day I laid down when suddenly I began to have a dream that I was out in my front yard. In the dream I was standing on top of a pole. I remember that a voice was telling me to jump off the top of it. I was afraid to do it. I then took out a tape measure in order to measure the distance from the top of the pole to the ground. It measured 4'5". I heard a voice saying jump, I remember saying I was scared. The voice told me to jump to the pine trees that were in the front yard. I finally did. I was told at that time to use my fibers to jump from tree to tree. This created a very odd sensation. I was unable to see any type of fibers, but I did feel as if I were a magnet being pulled to the trunk of the pine tree. Once I got to the pine, I jumped to the next one with the same ease.

Suddenly, I was totally air borne, and started doing flips in the air. During this time I was totally aware of what I was doing; it was very exciting! I finally landed and I began to walk to the mailbox which is on the side of the road. Once I got to the mailbox I took out a letter. I noticed that beside my mailbox was a smaller mailbox. It was about a foot tall, and looked as if it had been carved from a piece of wood. My total attention was put on this smaller mailbox. I thought that it was very strange. I then began to walk back to my mobile home. As I did I noticed that in the back lot behind my home my Dad was down there. He and my uncle were building a pin to put hogs in. (My dad used to raise livestock). Anyway in the dream I got upset, and said I wished that he wouldn't get back into that business. Then suddenly I woke up. I was filled with excitement. I got up and walked out into the front yard. Outside in the front yard is a tree stump from a pine tree that my parents took down. The stump is huge, and I knew that that was what I had been on in my dream. I measured it and it was four feet high. Close enough I think. Then I walked to the mailbox. There was a letter in the box, now get this, it was from a live stock market, informing my dad that there was going to be a selling in the near future...

Source: New Bern, NC

Editor: This reader wrote a great deal. I selected this dream because it showed some overlap between the dream world and the real world. He thought the small mailbox might have been a scout. Besides this experience, he seems to dream of seeing his own body. He floats in the vacinity, observing it. He also encounters a lot of black people in his dreams and wonders if they're scouts. At the risk of being politically incorrect, if I encountered a statistical skew in the racial mix of my dreams, I'd be spooked too. I guess it's good he didn't encounter a lot of American Indians or he'd really be wondering! Unfortunately, whatever you look for in dreaming is likely to show up, so we can't ask other readers to look. I had no trouble at all finding newsletters, once I remembered to look for them. When you arrive at the second gate, your question will be answered anyway. In the meantime, I guess you could go around pointing your little finger at black people.

Stephen's toys.

My dreaming is sporadic at best. I have been working with lucid dream induction techniques and devices (Stephen LaBerge, Lucidity Institute) for some time, as well as utilizing procedures outlined by Carlos & Florinda in the books. I have had some interesting results with the "Novadreamer", a device that signals with LED's and sounds in a mask, when I'm in REM sleep. Nine times out of ten when the que is detected, it just gets incorporated in the dream.

Several times, though, I have become conscious in the dream, and I find that I'm so excited and amazed when I realize I'm in the dream, knowing I'm dreaming, and marveling at how "real" it all seems, that I often get swept back up in the dream. I've been recapitulating more frequently of late, and I haven't had a single dream of any significance since I got back into it at this level.

Source: Wilbraham, MA

Editor: I take a sort of perverse pleasure in disliking Stephen LaBerge. There really isn't a good reason, I just enjoy disliking him. Still, I have always wondered about his devices and I am very happy to have a reader report on one of them. There is one thing I didn't understand though. You said "9 times out of 10". My understanding is that REM occurs many times a night. Does that mean the device triggers dreaming every night? If not, then the count must be more like 999 times out of 1000. I think some pebbles from the river would work better and you wouldn't owe Stephen a debt of gratitude.

Yikes, was that fun!

The last four years I have been experiencing in my dreams, a force that I found to be completely terrifying.

Inevitably I would wake up sweating and checking to see if I was still alive, barely escaping the pull of what I call "THE ENERGY"... About three months ago I met with "the energy" again, I decided to not wake up, but to meet the challenge of finding out what this was all about.

My body took on this sensation of being overpowered by this force that felt like a combination of an electric current and 60 mph winds passing continuously through my body. Then these arms came out of the headboard of my bed. They were large hairy arms, like a guerrilla's, and they began to throw me from one end of the bed to the other. I had the feeling I was totally at the mercy of whatever this was, but I wasn't afraid even though I had no control of the situation. I awoke with the most exhilarating feeling I've had in a while.

Then about a week later I met with "the energy" again. The same sequence started again. I laid in bed asleep, then this "current" began taking over my body. This time my body started convulsing by itself, involuntarily. Soon I found myself flopping on the floor next to my bed like a fish out of water; from my back to my stomach my head and feet changing places. Then in the next instant I was looking at myself sleeping in my usually "mock" fetus position. Then I would be back on the floor with the same convulsionary actions.

Once again I was in bed, only this time I was just outside my body witnessing the body from the floor merging with the body sleeping. At that instant I felt that the body with "the energy" moving through it was the dreaming body.

I willed the dreaming body to leave the sleeping body and I witnessed the dreaming body lift up and look down at my sleeping body. I tried to will myself to rise to the ceiling, but I could only get myself to rise a couple of feet out of my sleeping body. Then I went back to my body and lay there feeling that incredible force going through me.

I remember saying to myself, I'm having a "Lucid Dream", willing the intention to see my hands. They unbelievably appeared. They looked like my hands only for a second, then my fingers turned black and each finger was about a foot long and looked like lobster claws. I was looking at these huge, "crusty"-feeling black claw hands, fanning the left hand in front of the right hand, the right hand in front of the left hand. After this display I became so excited that I woke up, and I truly felt a sense of being so relaxed, but so aware at the same time...

Source: Laytonville, CA

Editor: After this hair-raising episode, this reader says it went to his head and the result was no more experiences. He's waiting for more fun.

I'd like to add that images like the hairy guerrilla's arms are surprisingly common. I believe that our own interpreting mechanisms come up with these things when faced with unexplainable input. This is where recapitulating and reading Carlos' clan's books can help. The recapitulating reduces the tension of the interpretations and the books help us to come up with new explanations. Otherwise we are left with the Boogeyman.

Halfway...

... On many occasions I have experienced dreams where I stated things like "well, this is just a dream, so I'll..." but it was part of the dream, as opposed to an actual bridging of waking consciousness into the dream. These serve as a true frustration for me upon remembering them the next morning...

Source: Wilbraham, MA 

Nagualist Newsletter and Open Forum / Issue 2 Aug. /Sept. 1994