Adventures in lucid dreaming, part II

Part I here.

continued...

So how exactly did Goran Bunjevčević kill me?

I’m dreaming. A standard run of the mill dream. I’m walking along a high street whilst watching a commotion across the street. Nothing serious. An argument which then turns into a fight. But it was still nothing too serious. More comical. It looked like they were all flapping their hands at each other in the most wimpish way possible. I laughed, lost concentration momentarily and tripped over.

I fell.

But rather than allow gravity to do it’s clever pulling me down to the ground thing, I end up floating before hitting concrete with face. And for the next twenty or so yards, I continue to float (just above the ground) until repositioning myself upright and on both feet. I think to myself, ‘that was pretty cool’. And then the trigger kicks in.

‘I can fly. Just like in a dream’.

Almost there.

I look around and can’t quite place my surroundings. I’m still uncertain, even though I’ve accepted that flying isn’t possible in real life. So if this wasn't real life...?

I’ve yet to go completely lucid. I keep looking around and then look back on the street I’ve walked up from and try to and picture how I got here. How did I travel to this place? I can’t quite remember. So I attempt to think back to the last thing I was doing before being here.

I then have flashes of being at work. Travelling. Getting home. Eating. Watching tv. Then going to bed.

Bed. That’s it. I went to bed. And I can’t remember getting out of it. Which means I'm still asleep.

I'm there.

The trigger is unequivocally pulled. I’m dreaming. So I say it out loud. ‘I’m dreaming’. The surrounding area is then engulfed by Technicolor and I awake in my subconscious playground.

Now, usually when this happens, the first thing I do is look around to see if there are any fit women to harass. You’d do the exact same thing so don't you dare shake your head at me. Alas, nothing of interest that I can see, other than the skirmish which had literally snowballed into a mass ball of punches which rolled past me as it made its way up the street.

And up the street is where I decided to go.

As I made my way towards what resembled a town centre, the street curved and I’m suddenly bang in the middle of what feels like a carnival atmosphere just without the music and floats. I also notice it's now late evening. I can smell burgers cooking. The sky is a moody and a majestic red. I continue to walk through the crowds of people made up predominately by blokes.

Blokes who are all staring at me.

Nothing malicious in their glares. In fact, I’m almost being drowned in waves of smiles and comforting pats on the back. People nodding and winking at me with star-struck recognition and gentle applause. The further into the crowd I go, the more smiling which then turns into (inaudible) chanting. I can’t make out what they’re singing but it’s in my honour and it’s a good-feel vibe.

Centre of attention. Quite a rare experience because usually I prefer not to attract too much attention – unless I want hordes of people chasing after me. The crowds were no longer walking, just buzzing around outside what looked like a 1970s football ground. Old fashion boxed in stands. Plenty of wood and painted signs. Looked completely out of place but quite magnificent with the evening sky brooding over it.

I decided I was going to be playing football. I have to be playing football. Why else would I be recognised and have songs sang around me as I approached the ground?

The crowds queued for the turnstiles. I walked towards what I assume has to be the reception area and I’m greeted by an old(ish) looking bloke who welcomes me without words and shakes my hand. I decide that he’s Bill Nicholson. He’s not. He looks nothing like him. And when I hug the man and ask ‘where you playing me tonight Bill? Centre-mid or up front’ he just stares back and laughs nervously, almost like he was embarrassed for me for embarrassing myself.

This is one of the many quirks of dreams. This old man, his only role was to greet me. It’s like being in a movie where the main star improvises a scene and the actor opposite him has no idea how to react to something not in the script and wants the director to just shut out ‘cut’.

I continue walking and find myself weaving in and out of hall ways, eventually finding one that leads to the main tunnel which leads out onto the pitch. Either side are the dressing rooms. Home and away I guess. I walk up to the end of the tunnel and take a quick glance at the ground. The stands are heaving. Wonderful dream dynamics at play in the way of visuals. The ground is like the Tardis. From the outside, small and compact. Inside, there are about 60,000 to 70,000 fans. Noise is immense. The chanting, once again inaudible. I can’t work out the club and can’t tell if there are any away fans or not. Banners and confetti and drums. And the red sky above is still looking down majestically with moody night clouds gathering.

It's a beautiful beautiful image.

I go back down the tunnel and attempt to open one of the dressing room doors. It’s not locked, but it feels like someone (or perhaps more than just one) is pushing the door closed. I can hear voices, aggressive shouts of disdain from within. I decide to try the other door. It opens, I walk in.

There’s a battle cry, not because I happened to walk in. All the players getting changed and prepared punch the air and shout ‘FOR THE WAR’. I’m not greeted or shown the same type of attention the fans outside gave me. Just a knowing nod here and there. I was expected to be present. One of the lads.

I get given a kit to change into. The kit colours are white. A detail I’m thankful for. The badge not something I recognise. A combination of beast and tree.

I look around, and ask out loud ‘who are we playing?’

‘The enemy, for the war' I’m told by John Charles. The Gentle Giant himself, in black and white (literally, he was completely grey like he was plucked out from an old newspaper). I also see George Best lacing up his boots, bearded and youthful. And next to him, George Best. Twin brother? Doppelgänger? Who am I to question being in the presence of two Bests? For the record, twin Best had no beard and was also wearing a tight top. Yes, it was pink.

Also present in the room wearing shorts and boots:

-The Jolly Green Giant (I have a theory that seeing John Charles inspired the sudden emergence of the rather big animated quaint hulk).
-Various 1930s style footballers all looking rather debonnaire and serious.
-Sergio Aragonés ‘Groo the Wanderer’.
-Lord Lucan (with an accompanying afro and Sony cassette walkman).

The more I look around trying to put names to faces, the better it gets.

Greaves. Di Stefano and Puskas. El Diego. This is more like it. Genuine footballing legends to go alongside the aforementioned Charles. My brain is beginning to churn out the players I’d like to stand alongside with on the pitch.

The sound outside the dressing room, down the tunnel and within the shadows of the four stands is now thunderous. We’re all dressed, all ready to go. Smacking each other around the face to pump each other up. Yes, smacking. I got smacked around the face by a rather impish looking Steve Archibald who had to jump to get his hand up to plant a right-hander across my cheek. Archibald was a hobbit, complete with fat hairy feet (he wore no boots). I slapped him back. I had to bend down to do it and he was annoyed I didn't smack him hard. Which I didn't. Because he was so small and I took pity.

He bite me in the leg and run away.

The team then walked out of the dressing room and into the tunnel, all twenty or so of us. Probably more in fact. It was hard to tell, I kept seeing new faces and losing some old ones. The other dressing room door remained closed.

‘Don’t worry about them’ I hear voiced.

I also hear what sounds like a muffled song, a radio playing, but can’t focus or see where it’s coming from.

The dream had me a little mesmerised at this point, just moments away from taking the field. I was lucid, yet accepted the role of a passenger. A tourist. I found myself in a football ground and part of a super-human team of players plucked from the history books, randomness and probably bits and pieces of daily consumption that my brain had processed during the course of the day before I feel asleep.

I also had questions that needed answering which I looked forward to finding out.

What was the war? Who exactly is the enemy? What the f**k was behind the other dressing room door?

Up ahead of us, the ref and his assistants. Around six or seven men dressed in all black with sub-machine guns and swords. New FIFA directive I guess. Maradona approaches me and begins talking in what can only be described as Queens English. Very posh. He also had a quivering Rio Ferdinand lip. He tells me I’m a good lad and to be a team player. Very concise and articulate and also in context what with it being more than passable as a pre-match pep talk. He also tells me not to swear or curse.

‘It’s wrong and God will judge you’.

I smile. I’m now the one star-struck. I’m really lost in it all by this point. The players start running out onto the pitch, not waiting for the away team to line-up. Their dressing room door still closed.

The Jolly Green giant, on all fours, crawls past me making his way through the tunnel then stands tall once out on the pitch to rapturous applause and begins to tap dance.

I look back at the closed dressing room door. No sign of the other team. Maradona waves at me as he takes to the pitch. I can hear the radio again and distorted singing and talking. Then, directly in front of me as I walk under the archway before stepping out into the cauldron of noise – my grandfather appears.

This is a reoccurring trend. He points at me, gesturing his finger widely. I don’t move. Even a lucid dream can leave you feeling haunted. I walk up to him, with one eye on the pitch and it looks like the game is about to start. The opposing team were already on the pitch. Either that or they somehow made it there without me noticing. Another wonderfully annoying quirk of the dream arc, jumping around like a Quentin Tarantino movie ignoring a traditional linear narrative.

I looked back down the tunnel, noted the ‘away’ dressing room door was open. And my grandfather was now standing there, ignoring me, as he walks in.

The game had now started. I still couldn’t work out who the opposition were made up of. I could see Maradona who was clearly infuriated at my lack of movement, watching from within the tunnel. He continued his screaming at me to run onto the pitch as I walked towards the dressing room that my grandfather had disappeared into. He got so irate he removed his head and throw it at me, missing me by inches as it bounced down the tunnel and disappeared. I looked back at Diego on the pitch, who had now grown a new head and had turned into fat Diego. He sank into the turf and disappeared like a man caught in fast working quick sand.

I remained standing at the away dressing room entrance. The room was completely empty. It felt eerie.

"Screw this".

I decided instead to just go and play some footie. I'd be damned to be following ghosts around and no doubt my grandfather will appear in another dream at another time. As I jogged up the tunnel eager to hear the crowds reaction as I appeared before them, I suddenly felt a numbing feeling across my waist and I suddenly found myself being pulled down to the ground. Except, I didn’t actually fall down. The reason gravity was winning was because my legs – both of them – were no longer attached to the rest of my body.

No pain felt in dreams. But it was still unnerving. The radio sound was now very loud. Indistinguishable, but it dulled out the football chanting. I looked around to find my legs. Shuffling. Struggling. I couldn’t muster the strength to attempt to re-attach. I couldn’t change my dream environment either. I was stuck there, on the floor. I  felt a disturbing lack of control over my predicament.

I was alone.

And then I was not alone.

Out of nowhere stood a sinister looking Goran Bunjevčević. With lightsaber.

Which explained the sudden loss of my groin area and legs, leaving me a little stumpy.

“You will never play football again” he said, without the need to move his lips.

The tunnel no longer led out to the pitch. No archway, replaced by a wall. I could no longer hear any noise from the stands. Just the increasingly annoying radio.

He held the saber to my face and then lifted it up, holding it tightly with both hands. I could see where this was heading.

Two choices. I could quite easily let go of the lucid state and just wake myself up. All I would need to do is just think about the dream being lucid and that it’s a dream. The more I think about waking up will trigger me to actually wake up. I decided no harm could be done by just waiting for him to hit my over the head with the Jedi weapon of choice. So what if he does?

It’s a dream. I can’t die.

I look up at Goran and tell him to f**k his mother.

‘Die’. He replies.

Down comes the lightsaber. The radio music is now very clear and I can hear people talking and laughing.

I guess he split me in two because I can remember peeling to the left and to the right, my vision sliced.

'Don't come back' he says as my lucid dream begins to quickly evaporate. I wake up in my own bed, staring at the ceiling. Questions left answered. Not a single ball kicked. I playfully rub my forehead, just to make sure I'm awake and I have no lightsaber lodged in my skull.

The sonofab*tch killed me. He killed me and he woke me up. A dream character with an agenda actually succeed in removing me from my fantasy. I was evicted from my own subconscious in brutal fashion.

The radio and the talking coming from outside was the usual Monday morning wake-up call, market traders setting up their stalls directly outside (on the high road). It was around 7am.

I attempted to fall asleep and re-enter lucidity but failed. In the months that followed, I also failed to cross paths with the Beckenbaueresque defender and equally failed to conjure up his return by fixating on him when lucid. My quest to find the Serbian Sith continued for months in vein.

I also found it nigh impossible to play football in a lucid dream (or normal dream) since he cut me in half then quartered me. I was jinxed. I never found a football ground in a dream or any known footballers or even kids kicking a ball about in the road.

Jinxed? Cursed. Goran had activated a fail safe blocking me from fulfilling this one important past time. Who or what was he? I was never destined to find out.

That is, until two months ago. When I came face to face with him again.

And this time, I was tooled up.

This was part 6 and the final part of the International Break Diary II

#5 Forget about the price tag

#4 Adventures in lucid dreaming, part I

#3 Back in the day, isn't half as good as it is now

#2 The Spurs Madrid El Clásico

#1 Hands up if you want to stand up at football matches

Adventures in lucid dreaming, part I

I'm content with my life. In part, it's been extraordinary.

I've stood, with studs on ball, wearing a yellow jersey with Garrincha to my left screaming for the pass. His gesturing drowned out in the noise the Maracanã is making as they chant my name.

I ignore him and just run forwards, beating every man and majestically passing the ball to the back of the net instead.

I've scored goals that defy gravity. Single-handily rushed into an away end to fight hundreds of hooligan fans because they dared to give me the finger having scored a last minute equaliser in the goal directly in front of them. World Cups, FA Cups, the North London derby. Been there, done that. Countless times.

Content I said, and I meant it.

I've also flown through a star going supernova, indulged in Roman orgies which involved no males other than myself (it's how I roll) and have visited places that to this day remain indescribable because they do not exist in the known universe. Mainly because they all exist in the depths of head.

Welcome to the world of lucid dreaming. It's fantastically tinged with Guillermo del Toro and a dab of David Lynch.

The subconscious mind is a vastly under-rated commodity we possess. We are mostly all far too busy in the waking world playing with our iPhones and Playstations to care about tapping into this rich tapestry of entertainment available when snoozing. And there of course far easier ways to achieve a higher state of consciousness if you wish to go on a personal journey every now and again. That particular route is bad for your health. No brain cells are damaged when partaking the path to lucidity.

Fact is we are too tired and consumed with the troubles of reality to bother about something that probably sounds quite whimsical and irreverent if you hear someone else talk about it in passing. When you go to bed, you do so to unwind and relax and boot-down. Yet it remains quite possibly the most intensely real 'unreal' reality available to us. And its free. However, it's not an easy task to achieve, which is why it remains a niche for casual dreamers like me and the true experts sitting on hills in Tibet mediating for hours on end.

There have been many instances of lucid dreaming in the mainstream, usually just borrowing one or two aspects and then exaggerating it all for the sake of box office. Vanilla Sky and Inception two prime examples. The latter borrowing a fair bit from it but not quite retaining its purity. There are countless books, guides and journals and even an institute. You can even buy an eye mask that sets off a red alarm when you hit REM sleep to aid with achieving lucidity.

I'm not about to detail how to go induce a lucid state and then retain said state. It's a long and labourious exercise. I've been doing this for a long time and struggled for years before I could even remain 'awake' within my dream for longer than ten seconds. Lucid Viagra isn't available as a pill sadly. If you want to last long enough to have an adventure you need plenty of practice.

I had the time to work on it all thanks to the insomnia that preceded it. When I finally got my much needed sleep, I found myself having vivid dreams. This eventually led to awakenings (you know how you wake up, get out of bed, make yourself a cup of tea, get dressed - then you wake up for real) which then led to lucid dreams.

The Internet is your friend if you're curious for a more complete guide. For the sake of the story I have to share, I'll explain some important fundamental basics.

You might think, what's the big deal? It's a dream. Big whoop. Well, imagine going from a small black and white tv with poor audio to a high definition television with 3D capabilities. I cannot emphasis the difference in clarity between a normal dream and a lucid one. It's monstrous in size. And when it happens, when the transition occurs, you get a rush from it. It's very dramatic.

When you become lucid it's thanks to the accompanying realisation of a trigger in your subconscious mind that tells you 'you're asleep, it's a dream'. Basically, a dream sign acts like a trigger which will wake you up only if you recognise it. Some people use binaural beats others use the mask that sets off flashing red lights that can appear in the dream (as red traffic lights or red sky or whatever) to give you a hint (a reminder) it's not real. Or you can simply train yourself to work out it out naturally.

I tend to work on these more traditional dream signs:

• Turning a light switch on or off. No idea why the dream state struggles with this, but it's incapable of replicating it meaning you can't turn any lights on or off.
• You can't feel pain. Numb feeling if something like a pack of wolves attacks you and attempts to break your skin open. The brain simply doesn't attempt to replicate the sensation here, probably as a means of protecting you from having a heart attack in your sleep. Much like the brain shut-downs the muscles so that you don't act out physically when dreaming.
• Reading. Attempt to read a watch-face or a page from a book, turn away and turn back and continue reading. It will have changed each time you look at it because the subconscious mind does not bother with retaining consistency with such details.

The most common dream sign is the one most miss. If you're flying, you're obviously dreaming - but as obvious as this is, it's also quite difficult to question it during a normal dream. So in real life, back in the day, I'd always ask myself the question 'am I dreaming' if say I looked at the time. I'd then look away, look back and if the time was practically the same (spare a few seconds) meaning it's real life and I'm awake. Simplistic logic this, because if you test yourself often enough you'll end up doing it in a dream - which means you'll end up questioning what you see and working out you're actually asleep.

Slightly better method than say jumping off a tall building and then admitting it's not a dream because you're not able to float away into the clouds.

The dream scape is also in some ways much like those old style point and click pc adventure games in terms of design. Not everything works. The inconsequential stuff is partly ignored by the dreaming mind, tagged as filler and background details and retains no consistency - as cited already. Also when talking to people within the dream. Some will react to you, talk to you, others will stare blankly back because they are simply empty of any thought. Others will be reactive (depending on what you do to incite).

I am not at the standard of some who can wipe their dream canvas blank and create something brand new (Inception liked this). I can however think of something and have that something usually appear at some point in the dream. I can manipulate at a very low level but that's probably because I've never bothered too much with using lucid dreams to solve problems or create dream characters and places from scratch.

I prefer to interact with the dream I awake in.

Walking around and telling people you meet that they don't actually exist and they're a figment of my subconscious whilst attempting to explain 'I'm God' is not a constructive way to spend my time there. But it's joyful megalomania. You can quickly turn the dream against you (Inception sort of used this one too). I've been chased by dream characters as if they knew I shouldn't be so self-aware and tampering with the dream environment. Possibly the dream mechanics here relate to insecurities and in some deeper lying way I'm controlling the other dream characters without knowing it. But let's not delve too deep in it.

Fact remains, it's utterly mesmerising to go on a jolly wondering around the dream you've awoken in.

Now in an normal dream (the type you wake up from and remember for a few moments before it begins to disappear from memory) you feel part of it's arc but more so like you're watching yourself on television or following a script. In these dreams, I cannot ever partake in football. Everything slows down to snails pace. I can't run. I can't kick the ball properly. Other players around me blink in and out of focus. It's a mess.

Now in a lucid dream it's all akin to that World Cup Nike advert (or any big budget football boot ad for that matter). Loud, vibrant, ridiculously impossible physics with gorgeous sounds. Others around you are people who might exist in real life but they look different in the dream but you still know who they are. A thousand million colours compared to the monochrome of a normal dream.

Its important to understand that lucid dreams - they feel as real if not better than life. There's a buzz to it. You know it's not real but because of what you can do, it feels completely without restraint and yet somehow still dangerous. You'll still question yourself about it, but you know it's safe.

A lucid dreamer can describe how it feels to fly through the sky, above the earth's atmosphere and across the solar system. The sensation within the dream, the emotion and the feeling, it comes from the brain executing what it believes the experience would actually feel like if it was actually happening. Every emotion, every movement. So it's pretty f*****g special.

So what in the hell has any of this got to do with my beloved Tottenham Hotspur?

Allow me to tell you about the time that Goran Bunjevčević killed me in a dream.

With a lightsaber.

...will be continued in 'Adventures in lucid dreaming, part II'

This was part 4 of the International Break Diary II

#3 Back in the day, isn't half as good as it is now

#2 The Spurs Madrid El Clásico

#1 Hands up if you want to stand up at football matches