THE DREAM-CONSCIOUS STATE: A PERSONAL JOURNAL OF INNER EXPLORATION
Bruce G. MarcotJOURNALS -- PART TWO (1986-present)
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
--William Faulkner
The Impetus to Begin Again
Since the mid-1980's I have renewed my interest and efforts in the dream-conscious state. This interest derived partly from a revitalized effort to writing poetry; composing classical music; reading treatises on Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism; travelling widely in India, China, Russia, and elsewhere; and especially returning to a personal reading and contemplating study of Zen. What also has rekindled my interest in lucid dreaming is the sense that a part of me -- the conscious-subconscious link -- had suffered much neglect during a period of too much attention given to doing science and writing about rather positivist, concretist, materialist technological matters.
My current-period effort again is aimed at an empirical approach. I still have little interest in the cultist interpretations. Once again I pursue lucid dream experiences and experiments sans these new age trappings. There is so much the mind can do and can teach, us, if but we make the effort through intense concentration, meditation, self-awareness and appraisal ... that all the cultist crystals and pyramids and mantras and charts and chants in the world can't begin to offer.
During this "recent period" -- since the mid-1980's -- I've not kept nightly journal notes of specific dream experiences as I did previously, but can nonetheless recount some important, recent experiments and experiences, as follows.