I am in high school, in a hall. I don't know why I'm there and think I'm supposed to go downstairs to the basement and find the gym. I get in the elevator, but the door slams shut on me. Then the buttons don't work. I notice there's a button for a lower level and a basement. I'm afraid of the lower level and manage to get the elevator to stop in the basement. I find the pool there, but it's in a big, dark room.

Then, somehow, I know I'm dreaming. I ponder what to do. I think of [Paul] Tholey's article [on facing fears in lucid dreams] and that I should seek the darkest and lowest. I find I am quite afraid of doing this. I realize, however, that I like the idea of self-integration. So, I decide to go to the lower level. I go to the stairs, sit, and look down. It's dim and scary. I wonder what I fear to find. I go down, peering about nervously.

There's no one and no living thing. It looks like a hall of lab rooms. I fly down the hall making sounds that in the echoey hall sound like eerie ghost wails. I think I'm seeing how it feels to be a ghost. I see two mirrors on top of the lockers and fly up to look at my naked body, and focus on developing a positive appreciation of myself.

I'm interrupted by a dark-haired woman with a gun. I float on my back as she points it at me. She is pointing it at my crotch and I think it's funny. Clearly she thinks I ought to be afraid. I say things like, "Put it to me, baby!" Momentarily, I'm afraid of what sensation might be produced if she did shoot.

But then she kisses me. I encourage her. She is still angry, but she does it again, until I think I've convinced her to do that instead of threaten me.

Then she says, "Go to sleep!"... and I close my eyes and wake up.

SOURCE: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold, 1990, pp.260-61. I added title.

EDITOR'S NOTES

This one's a weirdie. First AL's scared, but turns lucid, and tries to explore those fears--down in the depths--but is still scared, and sort of becomes, or mocks becoming, a ghost. Achieves flight--a classic lucid move! But then AL wrestles with body image stuff instead...

And then a gun-totin' girl appears, both flirtatious and threatening. I dare you to fit this character into traditional dream roles! Straight, gay? Topdog, underdog? Jungian anima, Shadow? Virgin, maiden, mother, crone? (Don't even mention Freud!)

And think about her last words to AL (dismissive, affectionate, contemptuous, protective, exasperated?): "Go to sleep." And AL falls back into... our world. A dream figure with the power to ban the ego from the dreamworld! Does she think dreams are where we're really awake and aware of our issues, while AL, banished back out to the so-called waking world, is just... sleepwalking out here among us? Is that why she calls it sleep? Or does she think we're all just sleepwalkers out here?

Stephen LaBerge pictures the lucid dreamer--well, the "I" figure in a lucid dream--as being awake inside the dream, and thus its natural ruler. But this figure ejects that ego. Proving... what?

I haven't built a page of ambivalence dreams, but if I ever do, this'll top the list.

--Chris Wayan

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