Category: Dreams (Page 2 of 2)

Flying Through Lucid Dreams

July 23, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Did you ever have a dream that you realized was a dream? That’s a lucid dream. Did you ever have a dream where you realized you were dreaming and then you were able to manipulate what was going on in the dream? That’s a crazy, awesome lucid dream (no, that’s not a technical term, but it should be).

I’m not even talking about Inception type stuff either (I wish I could do that). It’s just a regular dream, and then Whoa! you realize I’m in a dream and I know it. The subconscious dream become conscious, but you’re still asleep. (You can go from awake directly into a lucid dream, but that’s never happened to me before.)

For me, a lucid dream usually starts when I notice some logical inconsistency. It’s like my brain can’t just let the dream world unfold before me; it has to question it. Right now I can’t even think of a concrete example (even lucid dreams are fickle to remember in a wakeful state), but I know the feeling it gives me. All of a sudden something happens in my dreams that I know can’t happen in real life, and just like that, I’m aware.

And you know what the first thing I almost always do is? Fly! I imagine that says something about my personality, like I have lofty aspirations or I feel I’m in control of my life or something, but really being able to fly is just fun. It’s never a Superman faster-than-a-bullet flying, but more of a floating, gliding flying. I tend to drift up and then down, even landing on the ground at times.

I had a lucid dream the other night, and man was it exhilarating. And not only because I, of course, went for a nice fly. The experience alone of having that kind of power in a world, where you can pretty much do anything you want and physics be damned, is unbelievable.

What kind of dreams have you been having lately?

No More Waiting!

October 24, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve never thought that sitting around wishing for something to happen makes that thing happen. Not that I haven’t done my share of wishing on shooting stars, on eyelashes that have fallen out, when the digital clock reads all one number (like at 11:11, for example), on a coin thrown into a fountain, when splitting a wishbone, when blowing out birthday candles…okay, I really don’t just sit around wishing on things all day.

Oddly enough, though, a lot of writing is sitting–the old butt-in-chair as you write–is waiting–to hear back from critique partners, agents, or editors–and is wishing–because you’ve got to have something to keep the hope alive. But you also have to be active too. I need to experience life in order to be inspired while I’m sitting and writing, I need to send out my work in order to wait to hear back, and I need to actively daydream about my life as a best-selling author to fuel all those wishes (okay, that last one doesn’t really work, but you get the idea!).

So for that past year or so, I’ve been submitting my writing more actively than I have in all my previous years as a writer. Some opportunities have come up. And a strange thing happened: I found myself turning some of them down.

It wasn’t because they weren’t good opportunities or because I had so many offers pouring in that I could just shrug off the ones that didn’t give me the most gain. It was because they didn’t feel right in my gut. Not that the offers were bad; it’s more that they were not the right fit for me at the time. Every time I’ve said no, it’s been very, very hard. What if I never get another opportunity for that piece of writing? What if I never get another opportunity for any piece of writing? Did I just say no to the only chance I ever had as a writer?

The thing I’ve come to realize is that a single no or a string of noes (I originally typed “a string of nose,” which would be an entirely different thing…LOL!), whether it’s someone else telling me no or me telling someone else no, doesn’t mean the end of my writing career. My career ends when I stop sitting and writing and waiting and wishing.

It just so happens that some 3,120 days since I first conceived of the idea that, yes, I can be a writer for real (this is an estimate because I don’t remember the exact date I thought this), a pretty big opportunity has come up. One that I feel is right in my gut…one that I am going to say yes to. One that makes me want to climb to the top of my house and shout “YES!” from the rooftop (admittedly, this wouldn’t be too hard because I live in a one-story ranch).

So maybe sitting, waiting, wishing worked out okay for me after all. I think I’ll go do some more of that and maybe the next offer will be even bigger.

The Possibilities of Dreams

February 28, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

Dreams—both sleeping and waking—are funny things. I’ve always been a very vivid sleep dreamer. As a young child, I had a reoccurring nightmare that I was being chased by wolves. Eventually those nightmares gave way to ones in which I was stalked by dinosaurs. Then I had a period in which most of my nightmares were end-of-the-world scenarios.Most recently I’ve been having dreams in which I am running late for some type of engagement (sometimes I’ve reverted back to my school days, other times I’m late for work) and I just can’t seem to get where I need to go. These don’t invoke the same fear as my wolf, dinosaur, or apocalyptic dreams, but a great deal of anxiety goes along with them.

I think these reoccurring dreams are a manifestation of anxieties or fears I am having in real life. The real-life fears have nothing to do with wolves or the end of the world, but this is how my brain interprets the fears and anxieties of my waking life in the dream world.

The nightmares, though, aren’t the hardest dreams. I wake up from nightmare with my heart racing and my body chilled from a cold sweat, but pretty soon I realize It was all just a dream. The hardest dreams are the ones about my dead little sister, Kylene (and forgive me here for displaying a little emotion…something I hate to do in any kind of public forum).

It’s not that these are scary dreams in which she’s coming back from the dead to haunt me or anything. No, they’re usually quite pleasant. Often we’re kids again, but sometimes I’m an adult (she was 16 when she died, so she is never really older than that in my dreams). We may be off on some adventure, but often we’re just hanging out.

(Here I am reading to Kylene when we were kids…I know, my hair is terrible and she’s cute as a button!)

While I’m having these dreams, there’s always that little something niggling me in the back of my mind. That voice that’s saying Something isn’t right here. You know when you’re dreaming and you’re in a place you know in real life, like your house, but it doesn’t look like your real-life house, yet somehow you just know that it is your house. That’s the feeling I’m talking about.

Sometimes the revelation of what’s wrong comes to me while I’m dreaming, but the full meaning of it doesn’t hit me until I’m awake. And that something is that my sister is dead, and even if the dream felt completely real to me, I know it wasn’t because people don’t come back from the dead.

And that’s the hard part of these dreams: that moment when I realize It was all just a dream, that my sister really is dead, and she’s never coming back. For a split second, the raw emotions are all too real and even though it’s been almost nine years since she died, I feel like it’s only been minutes and I’m losing her all over again.

But it isn’t all bad because maybe sleep is a place where you can bridge the gap between life and death. Maybe she can come back to life, even if it’s only for a little while in my subconscious. Or maybe she really is coming to visit me in some spiritual form (a little far-fetched for my logical mind, but I suppose it’s possible). And you know what? Even if it was just a dream, I got to see my sister again and that’s worth all the pain of remembering she’s gone.

That’s the beauty of dreams: they open up a world of possibilities. Like black holes, we don’t know all that much about them. They’re one of life’s great mysteries. And I think that these dreams we have in sleep help fuel our dreams in life. I dream in sleep and I feel my sister is alive again. And I dream in the waking world to become a published writer, so that my sister can live again in a fictional world.
But waking dreams are a discussion for another post. What have you been dreaming of lately?