archies_thoughts [2]

I've recently entered a forum that was originally revolving around the topic of whether there is an afterlife or not. The question was short, sweet and to the point - simply a question of "is there an afterlife or not".

The conversation evolved and has touched on some very interesting topics and has now progressed to some of the less mundane pieces of conversation and started to touch on some of the more mystic types of phonemena. It was the fodder for a conversation between Mrs. Evil Bunneh and myself that lasted the better part of the evening and turned out to be quite rewarding...


My wife and I talked about this quite a bit last night. Her thoughts behind it were mixed, as were mine, largey because our experiences differ. For her, in those moments when she considers that she's been projecting (as neither of us seem to be able to control those moments unlike some who seem to have found some measure of control), her dreams typically relate to places she's been or lived for long periods of time. To her, it's as though a good portion of her energy is bound to these places, like the house she grew up in as a child and where he parents still live today, about 20 minutes from where we presently live.

Others, like me, often have dreams from the first person - that's how I know I'm usually traveling. And as often as not, I'm usually seeing places I'm familiar with, but don't have any great attachment to. As that goes, I moved around a lot as a kid. I don't think I've lived in any place for more than five years at a time until recently. So I don't have a partiuclar "grounding" spot where a good portion of my energy might be rooted. I have *felt* grounded before, places like Alaska do that to me. Mountains always seem to draw me to them for whatever reason. But those dreams I've had that have been most vivid usually are places that are kind of secondary to me or places I've passed by in my travels, like her grandparents' place.

I think this also speaks to the individual in that perhaps you were/are deeply rooted to such places. Since I have no such real roots, I tend to wander a bit (tells in my writing, too).

Another topic we went over is how to differentiate between the "mind's amusement" type of dreams and lucid or traveling dreams. And I'm not sure you really can tell the difference. As I said about my own dreams (can't speak to anyone else's), the one thing I've always noted about those dreams that were important to me was that they were always very clear and sharp. The two stories that have come to me by dreams and I am still trying to overcome my fundamental laziness in trying to get down on paper were both vivid dreams as though my mind was telling me or showing me a story that needed to be written. They're too far fetched for me to believe their real, but my mind or whatever showed them to me obviously feels that there's some sort of intrinsic value to them and that they are important enough to make them vivid in my mind, vivid enough that they carried through to the waking world.

I also think we're spoken to at a subconscious level in more ways than just dreams. And I also think we make a pretty conscious effort to ignore such conversation - I personally hate being woken up in the middle of the night. But as a musician and amateur song writer, and I write precious few songs, those that are most inspirational usually come to me in the wee hours of the morning, at about 2:00 AM. And they'll be vivid enough to me to wake me up. Same thing with stories, typically. The normal inclination for me is to say, "I'll just remember it in the morning", make a mental note of it (bad idea when you're half asleep anyway), and then go back to sleep. Obviously come morning the melody or story that popped into my head has all but gone leaving almost nothing but the vaguest memories behind. Only two such stories have ever survived my early morning apathy. And even those, while they're still vivid in my mind, one of them having been so for years, STILL haven't made it down onto paper yet.

But I do have a few songs that have come to me that are those that most people connect to when I play them. Those have come to me usually in the wee hours of the morning and are so vibrant that it wakes me out of a sound sleep and I just know I'm not going to get back to sleep until I at least pick up a guitar or a notebook and pen and dabble with them and get the basics down.

So are those moments the same? Hard to say. But I do think that something speaks to us at those moments that we're most receptive to it...just as I think we interact with the world around us at those moments when we're least confined by our senses.