Lucid

After desiring for at least a year specifically to start a blog, and generally to do more writing in my life, my friend Tom pushed me over the edge a couple days ago when I posted a C.S. Lewis quote on Facebook that would have been over twice as long as their previous status character cap with the preamble, "I think this is my longest status post to date...". The first comment was Tom's: "This isn't a status update. It's a blog post." 

I don't know what kind of blog this will be yet. The length, content, form and purpose may yet change entirely before long, and I certainly don't know how often I will post. For now, this is merely something I could not let slip past undocumented, even if unread by others. Putting it into the blogosphere (I am one of those people now) at least gives the illusion that this is going beyond me. If you are reading this, I thank you for your interest, and ask that you bear with the length of this particular post, and those that follow until I begin to know what sort of beast this is that I have invited home and adopted. Any feedback is appreciated.

After debating a bit between Tumblr, Wordpress and this, I came to the point of writing after a season of pondering this afternoon.

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I received an email today from Textbooks.com. I'm not certain why I don't delete these kinds of email subscriptions, but the "just-in-case" in me is now incorrigibly reinforced by the content of this one.

"Student success, lucid dreaming, and studying weird."

Perhaps the most intriguing subject header from spam I have ever seen, I was particularly primed for this moment by the discussion that preceded it two nights ago. My good friend Jon was over visiting my roommate, Bill, and I, as he does about weekly on campus here, and he had his friend Zippora with him. After I had shown Zippora, a Netherlander, a video about the difference between Holland and the Netherlands, we were sharing our interesting YouTube finds lately. Jon discussed a particularly cruel video prank that would have made anyone believe they were in the middle of an Asian horror film, and the subject of nightmares naturally came up.

This made me immediately think of a podcast I had listened to some time ago that discussed dreams, and specifically the story of a man confronted by a terrifying dream every time he came to a stressful point in his life. After about 20 years of this, he overcame his mysterious tormenter within the dream itself after learning a method of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is one wherein you realize you are having a dream, and instead of waking up, you take control of the dream. I wasn't able to play the podcast while they were here, as I wanted, but we did begin a discussion of lucid dreaming.

"We've talked about this, haven't we?" Jon asks. We had.

He says, "I think it's interesting, but I feel like it might be a little spirtualistic. Don't you think?" I did.

"It's only happened to me a few times," he shares,"but I LOVE flying in dreams." I agreed.

I told him that, although I haven't had a flying dream in years, a lot of times it required a great struggle for me to fly in the dream; a tremendous focus, or exertion of mental power. Sometimes, I could only get a foot or two off the ground, even if I really wanted to or needed to. It was like a suppression of a fulfilled hope, even within the freedom of a dream.

After a graphic of the measure of life success by students in a survey (34% = "happy marriage", 32% = "satisfying career", and 27% = "graduate degree". I agreed most with marriage, and wondered: "Why?"), Textbooks.com had a small ad for "The Remee Lucid Dreaming Mask". I Googled it (since the ad took me to a Facebook page) and found a video of the product. It uses small, red, blinking LED patterns to gently convey to the sleeper that they are in a dream, using a pattern they recognize, but not so strong that they wake up. They then are free to take the dream wherever their mind desires.

The idea is intoxicating. I tried a technology-free method once after I initially heard the podcast. He mentioned some routines to go through while you are awake that you will then repeat in your dream and thereby recognize an inconsistency in order to become aware. It never worked, and I gave up. Imagine the power to virtually do whatever your imagination could conjure.

I looked for reviews to see if it worked, and found a video of a college-age kid saying it worked on his first (or second) night, that it was the best $80 he ever spent and that he totally recommended it. 

Eighty dollars. I'm a private college student operating on grants and loans.

"I would absolutely do it if I knew it worked consistently," I told Bill.

I began thinking: "What would I do in a lucid dream?" And then I thought, "What would I do right now if I realized I was lucid dreaming?" 

I started envisioning fire. Summoning things. Disappearing through the floor into the basement of the library under me. Breaking the window with my mind before flying out. They were all displays of power. 

Someone in the video, when asked what he would do in a dream if he could control it, mentioned that he would, "Avenge myself of all those who have wronged me." I didn't agree; I was actually kind of shocked. I understood the principle, though. No one would get hurt, right? But then: why even do it? At that point it would be entirely about you. A catharsis. The same would be true of anything involving anyone else, like a relationship. Anything I could do with, to, or for another would really be all about me. It would be, by definition, selfish.

This was actually how I envisioned heaven before I had begun studying the Bible. After I died, God would hand over the keys of infinite power to me and let me go in my own little omnipotent universe, free to do whatever I pleased for all time. I had even come to the point of consciously marking things in my mind for later exploration after I had gained this power, as though I would comb through my earthly experience then and satisfy every earthly desire I ever had, when I had it. I only imagined this, of course, because it is what I wanted most. This is, it just so happens, the very central draw of a video game, a hobby that was introduced to me very young and that has been reluctant to release it's talons from my heart. 

I have since wondered about the nature of the things that bring joy to us, and to me. There are things that give me pleasure, that I believe always were designed to do so, such as good food and helping others, but there are many others that are a product of a human inbred and learned perversion. Culturally speaking, there are a great many things people do in this world with relish, that I would never even want to witness, let alone try. So if our derivations of joy can be so skewed and personally developed or informed, it would seem that if I had even somewhat more of a holy mind or perspective, I could not imagine how the things I have come to love could ever be delighted in by any reasoning creature. If eating soil, to use a tame example, gave me more pleasure than I have ever known otherwise, would I now from my distanced position choose that as a habit to indulge? As an eternal indulgence? And if joy, sheer hedonism, becomes the perpetual object of my concern, why not just place myself into an ethereal, non-stop flow of euphoria into my consciousness? 

I have heard my stepfather say that if it were possible to hook a button to the pleasure center of the brain, and pressing it had no other effect than stimulating this with no dependencies or side effects, the button would be repeatedly pressed to the exclusion of all else in that individual's life. This has been successfully demonstrated in both humans (pressing the button 1500 times in a 3-hour session) and other animals, a case of which was reported to me as resulting in the death of the primate merely because it did not choose to eat, drink or sleep any longer. It repeatedly pressed the button, because nothing else mattered. 

We cringe at such an idea intrinsically, and this gives me hope. But I also know that the most famous killers of all time have been thought well of by those that knew them closely. We never think we could bring ourselves to the point that we have heard about in the lives of others, and yet people do it all the time, everywhere. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." I know that I have certainly found my own self in a position that I could not believe I had lowered myself to. What, really, is between me and any of the rungs below that on the ladder of morality?

I have been reading C.S. Lewis' masterpiece, Mere Christianity, lately, having finished it just this morning. One thing he has emphasized in the latest chapters is that Christianity does not have as it's aim the making of nice people, but new men. He describes in one of my now infamously long posts from my readings:

"We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.
On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul. Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will. I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if (as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do—if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are—then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about And this applies to my good actions too.
How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally had led to some very bad act? But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." -C.S. Lewis

I was thumbing through a theological book years ago, and the author asked the question, "If you had the power to do absolutely anything, and you would never be punished or found out, would you still sin?" The answer had always been swimming around as a resounding "Yes! Who wouldn't?" I was alarmed because I could tell by the nature of the question that the author did not expect such an answer. If what I would do if I had all power and no repercussions involves acts of violence, or dominance, or lust, or pride, than that is what and who I am; I am become merely a shell of a Christian, or even a "decent ordinary chap", and full to the brim with festering selfishness. Everything is soaked with it. I cannot even imagine an unselfish thing.

The answer for a diseased self is not addressing individual expressions of lawlessness, but a salve for the whole soul. Christ desires to take all of me and make a new creature. This is not figurative talk, but quite literal. Here, now, a transformation of the mind, character and personality, and a full restoration of all parts physical and spiritual upon resurrection and establishment in His new kingdom. Only faintly now does this form reflect His likeness, then it shall be unmistakable. But I must choose to let Him have it, and leave it there with Him by faith. That is not complicated. It is merely the fiercest battle ever fought.  

Russell