Coping: With Very Lucid Dreams

Seems like a strange thing to be reporting on – a vivid dream – but since I have them once in a while and they are interesting down at the archetype level, why not? 

Such dreams can occasional hold perhaps just the barest traces of predictive value, such as the dream reported here a mere 18-20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico disaster almost a year ago.  In fact, if you click over (and scroll down) you’ll find this interesting part of that dream from almost a year ago:

“Last night’s “movie” involved a witness to something – some ill doings – in a warehouse which served the (offshore) oil services industry. A cook who worked on a farthest out oil platform on a formation the industry called “The Wall” was involved and the warehouse was set ablaze to cover a murder. What was so interesting was that the two perps used two sources of ignition. One was a syrupy kind of adhesive (semi-clear –construction adhesive?) and then they went back and splashed something like gasoline (or other clear volatile) on top of it. “

All of which would have been a blow-off, except for a follow-on email from a reader reported later during that April week of 2010 (post spill) reporting this:

“Hello Just a note, I used to work in the oil fields (boat captain) in LA down by Fourchon and just outside of Fourchon as you come out is a section of oil wells called “the wall” because on the radar, there are so many wells it looks like a wall or line on your radar. There is a section where boats can pass called the “hole in the wall”. When I read about the oil platform explosion in LA, it rang a bell! Take care,,, Capt. (name deleted)”

Well, that made it kinda interesting.  Not conclusive, but it was a near-enough dream to an event which followed that I figured this morning’s dream might be worth mentioning.

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But before I do, a couple of comments on the importance of being really ‘de-stressed” before getting in to this kind of dream.  I made a short inventory of all the stresses I could find in my life, and as of yesterday afternoon, I had smacked down a goodly number of day-to-day stresses. 

For one, I got our 2010 taxes completed after a couple of hours of sorting oiut options trades and discovered in the process that our quarterly filing this year would be smaller, not larger…a major stress reduction.

Another was that with company gone, I’m back on the small stir-fry of veggies and meat with no carbbies and healthy eating may be a factor.  Plus, been reading a lot about the role of micronutrients in the anti-aging process including some like cobalt and lithium oronate…the latter having some claims being made about its gray matter restorative properties, but I’ll let you Google that on your own. 

Our next ranch visitors will be one Elaine’s sons and his wife – who will arrive in a couple of weeks, so that should be fun.  Too early to stress, though, although I will have to get my golf game tuned up….

My son’s new ham antenna arrived and we made a very solid contact on 20-meters…he worked Ukraine from Seattle, so that seems to be working…

Another thing making progress is the book with Howard which continues to evolve…  So, in a nutshell, everything in life is going well because I’ve killed most major stress points at their source and that’s fine.

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In rereading the “Irwin Allen’s Dream” piece from last year, I noticed I’d made this comment in passing: “I wish I could figure out what it is in either my diet, exercise, daily activities, or general state of restfulness that sets off what I call my “Irwin Allen Dreams”…”  Still on that quest today but the correlation seems to be high that the vividness of the dreams has a lot to do with getting de-stressed to the point where the subconscious mind can do more than worry itself about daily stressors.  When the stressors get beaten back, the mind seems to have an amazing ability to ‘tell stories’ that can be vastly instructive and at the same time entertaining.  Which is a long lead-in to the dream from last night, but necessary groundwork to be laid.

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There were just a few ‘main characters’ in the dream from this morning; one was a plain clothes policeman who had his boat in a marina, and the other characters were the male & female story leads.

The story begins with the three characters coming back from a day of boating, and I got the sense it was late afternoon, perhaps four or 5 PM and that it was a weekend, but not summer as temperatures were mild and the female in the story was wearing a light sweat, jeans, and ankle-high shoes – like desert boots of Chuka boots, but a ‘lite’ version of them suitable for boating.  She was shorter than Elaine – somewhere in the 4’11″ to 5’2 range, and long straight medium brown hair.

The presence of the woman wasn’t bothersome or unusual, since at this point I had realized that I (the male character was seeing this stuff) wasn’t George either…I was experiencing this event through the eyes of someone not me.

After a bit of chit-chat at the marina, the young couple headed west in their car, back toward ‘the city’.  I know that trusting directions in dreams is dangerous, but it seems as  though the marina was on the south side of a lake or canal, and that a drive west would get to a bridge where they’d be able to cross a fairly narrow body of water and be back in the city somewhere near a historical district.

As they approached the bridge to turn right, however, there was something of a line of cars, perhaps a half dozen.

Suddenly, two uniformed police appeared, both carrying what seemed like black riffle cases and curiously, one of them had a holder for a pistol sewn or attached to it.  The other officer was on a radio or telephone and was being urgently informed that something bad was about to happen.

Just a second later, there was a dull explosion, ahead and to the left where it was like a pipeline or expansion tank for lack of a better descriptor had exploded and very thick (and obviously poisonous) black smoke began spewing into the area.

The man, being at the wheel made a snap decision to move left into the lane which was vacant of oncoming traffic and he sped to the bridge.  Behind him, thick, black, poisonous smoke was really starting to boil into the sky. 

As soon as they approached the business center/historical district, they had to leave their car because people were abandoning them, so the couple took to fleeing on foot.

I remember the man looked to the south-sioutheast and the cloud of poisonous smoke was really boiling now – up thousands of feet and headed right toward them.  There was a sense of panic and choking as the first waves of smoke (which had turned to a medium gray) began wafting through the city streets.

As it happened, there was a lot of reconstruction going on in the historical district, which was perhaps 8-10 blocks deep in old brick buildings which were being rehabbed. The couple entered the first one they came to, thinking they would get cleaner air inside and made their way north through a series of buildings, some with shops in antique mall fashion, while others were filled with building materials.  They were followed by a local businessman who was thinking the same thing…and at one point, he passed them as they had become tangled up in material of some kind which slowed their progress.

Eventually, they ran out of buildings and were walking up a a gentle incline which was not as dense as the historical district – it was one of those mixed residential, apartments, and light medical kinds of areas. 

The man paused again, looked to the south, and knew that they’d have to start walking east because the plume of smoke had changed a bit and was now coming directly toward them.

The young woman was complaining about her feet being sore – so the man took off his socks and gave them to her, so they could get moving faster.

The man then looked south and saw a series of either five, or six, fireballs rising into the air – almost in Roman candle fashion.  To the side, a radio had been turned up and authorities were were warning residents to get out of the downtown area.

Very clearly, the size of the evacuated area was given as either 800 square blocked or 880 square blocks, so it was clear that this was a very large city, on a gentle rising hill to one side the historical / business district, and there was substantial industrial/chemical processing south of town.

Somehow, it came to the man’s knowledge that people were dying from the smoke, but he then knew they would be OK if they could just keep moving eat in order to get out of the plume.    What registered was that it was some kind of chemical “like styrene gas” which I found a bit odd, not realizing until I awoke and read up on it that styrene is initially a liquid that evaporates easily.

Those who were dying in the downtown area had been totally overcome, but the radio was explaining that before convulsions, there would be nausea, vomiting, and the very first indications of illness would be a massive headache.  The man seemed cheered by this because he and the woman had only mild headaches so far…and he seemed confident they would be able to make their way through one last denser part of the drifting plume and they’d then be in free air and able to travel toward friends further east and well out of harms way.

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I awoke and noted the time:  4:41 AM.  Almost normal waking and coffee time, 20 minutes early.  I was a bit disoriented by the dream, but checking, there wasn’t even a trace of a headache, and no problems with the occasional asthma, either.  The ‘sticky parts’ were the Roman candle like fireballs coming up and the 800/880 blocks evacuated…that seemed important.

There was something about the urgent question about what it was that would be “like styrene gas” that bothered me, so that had to be investigated straightway, too.

It’s little specifics like that detail which bothers me about these vivid dreams, and drive me to Wikipedia to look up details.  What I found seemed to confirm the ‘dream” knowledge.

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As I said at the beginning, more than likely just a well-rested brain deciding to entertain itself by telling an amazingly detailed, panoramic dream. 

Logically, perhaps my mind was just dredging up some long-forgotten fact gleaned from reading the whole advanced firefighting course from the Delehanty Institute when my late father was studying for his lieutenants civil service exam in the mid 1950′s and chemical fires and dangers were detailed in depth.  Amazingly, I can still remember many parts of that course, which was in about a dozen to 18 three-ring binders with gold Delehanty markings on their front.

You can still find old Delehanty civil service course material from time to time at places like the Open Library.

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Not sure why this particular dream came along, but it was totally engaging of all the senses – taste, smell, tactiles, audibles…- and I suppose a reminder to move across any plume as quickly as possible would be the security-state message to it.  But damn it was vivid and it’d make a great movie or short story; the well-rested mind is an amazing storyteller/entertainer.

I wonder if my writing about ‘tickets’ in yesterday’s column helped me get into this theater of the mind.  Further, who was the Director?

Friday at the WuJo, 2

I’m not the only one with oddness to share…try this one one for size:

Hi George,

Just wanted to share this with the ‘wujo’ thread.

Every morning I go to work and park my car on the rooftop of a multilevel carpark. I have to walk down one flight of stairs to get out of the carpark. It is actually a enclosed stairwell. Anyway I walked down and opened the door and instead of facing the exit I was looking down the reverse side of the parking lot. Thoroughly freaked out I thought well maybe I inadvertently went down an extra flight. I walked back up and opened the door and I was on the rooftop. WTF!

I went back down one flight and everything was as it should be. Freaked me out, wondered if I had jumped into a mirror image parallel universe.

One of my motivations for NOT taking statins, despite my doctor’s advice that I do so, is that there seems to be some developing evidence that statin use may be linked to TGA – medicalese for transient global amnesia.

This kind of stuff can happen as a side effect of things like anesthetics, or other medications, and if you’re taking statins, perhaps the regular motion of walking down stairs was enough to drop you into a TGA state.

OR – and here’s where we step onto the mat where reality meets “other” – we really are in the process of colliding with another universe, orthogonal to our own, and as the intersection occurs, we get back into a world where “magic” comes back to earth.

Not completely out of the realm of possibility, especially if you read about colliding universes a bit in Michio Kaku’s Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos which will set you back about $11-bucks at Amazon, and which coupled with Dean Radin’s grand

 Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality ($12) is a weekend or two of possibility-expanding study I’d recommend to anyone who’s trying to work their mind out of being hemmed in my socially imposed paradigms which are (Big Secret here) in place to keep the real PowersThatBe ensconced.

TGA or string theory at work?  Let us know if you’re on cholesterol meds?

Prayer and Pianos Department

I got flooded with emails about my “limits of prayer” discussion earlier this week wherein we questions which one rules: gravity or positive thinking when a piano is dropped on you.

A sampling of reader input for your morning munches:

George , maybe with regular prayer you would not be under the piano to start with. ???????

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…don’t attempt to explain how ridiculous and unscientific “faith and prayer” is. I know you are not that stupid and from a public relations point of view, well, that much I’m sure you can figure out on your own. These folks apparently know the situation as well as you do and were only asking you to join in their hopeful prayers. You didn’t have to say anything, but certainly didn’t need to point out the statistical problems with their request. Sheeesh.

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Your thoughts on the relationship of prayer and action reminded me of the story from D.L. Moody, the 19th century evangelist:

Prayer PlusIt is recorded of D.L. Moody that, on one of his journeys across the Atlantic there was a fire in the hold of the ship. The crew and some volunteers stood in line to pass buckets of water. A friend said to Moody, “Mr. Moody, let us go to the other end of the ship and engage in prayer.” The evangelist replied, “Not so, sir; we stand right here and pass buckets and pray hard all the time.”

How like Moody this was! He believed that prayer and work were the two hands of the one person; that they should never be separated.

Moody, indeed had it right…pray for the best but run from the piano, too.

Being Gentle on Ben

Here’s a nice thoughtful read:

“don’t be hating on bernanke. without him the entire system would have collapsed and neither your children nor mine would be happy about that.

what bernanke is doing is keeping the system together after a ridiculous ponzi scheme enveloped the world. he is keeping it together with glue and thumb tacks and so far so good. is that inflationary? not really, and here is why.

the inflation concept is being misappropriated by thems that don’t understand it. inflation is because at some point workers have to be paid and china has started raising workers pay. for many years, somewheres around the year 2000, we decided everything should be made in china with “free wages” and cheap oil. as those go away, that raises the cost of things, not bernanke’s “printing” of money. so there has been No Labor charges included in anything that has been made for the last fifteen years, give or take. as welfare goes away, and labor comes in, this will increase the cost of things. americans have been bamboozled into believing that they have a right to “cheap.”

you and me should remember that in the “old days” when school came around in the fall, we went to look for new shoes with our toes sticking out the ends of our old ones. now everyone has sixty pair of shoes in their closet. it’s ridiculous.

it is a scapegoat argument to blame bernanke for this mess given that americans (except for moi) totally participated in the ponzi housing scheme whereby they bought 600,000 dollar houses and cashed them out to buy chinese chotchkes of all sorts for the houses. when postal delivery people are flipping houses, you know something is wrong. when double dipping for govt employees becomes a way of life, you know something is wrong. when retirement is moved from forty years (always the traditional line) to twenty years you know something is wrong. when women have endless children that they don’t pay for but the “govt”/taxpayer is required to via welfare, you know something is wrong. hell, in massachusetts, the welfare even buys them a layette and crib (look it up, it’s twue!)

this country has forgotten every single rule of honest labor and reward/ scuttled and dismantled the very pillars that made us great. so please, don’t blame bernanke. he’s working through a difficult situation the best he can. it’s kinda like donald trump’s old situation. he was so in debt the banks had to help him.

I’m not exactly a screaming “Ben Basher” as any Peoplenomics reader knows, since I often remark on the possible wisdom of trying to  gain the economic stimulative effects of war, which bailed the US out of the Great Depression in late 1941 when we engaged Japan.  That World War II drove GDP out of its 10-year slump is indisputable.

Where I have my issue is with candor.  I expect somewhere in the research departments of the various Fed branches, there is some damn fine research which outlines the strategy necessary to muddle through the present mess.

What bothers me immensely is that from about 2008, or so, the rules of investing have been changed by the various actions of the Fed and Treasury without due notice to those of us who are regular players in the Casino, if you will.

Thus, an honest interpretation of economic fundamentals of America, such as noting that there are no more jobs today than there were in the summer of 2001 would normally cause a rational person to be on deflationary decline (if not collapse) but that since the Fed mandate is not just monetary and extends to the whole of “economic stability”, it’s as though Congress while outsourcing the creation and management of money has also abdicated its role as responsible for economic affairs to what’s essentially a banker-owned cabal.

As a result, the Fed has made a certain class of assets too big to fail and since the list was not disclosed well in advance, this screwed over the players who placed honest bets (sans insider information) on companies like Chrysler, GM, and AIG.

Far from Ben Bashing, I’d simple picture myself as looking for someone currently in government to stand up and “tell it like it is” rather than keeping up appearances so much.  Is David Stockman the only one who’s able to articulate the truth? 

Why is it that government has concluded that “We can’t handle the truth”?

An admission by government that they’ve overspent, are ass-deep in compound debt, and are deliberately watering down the currency’s purchasing power to keep the rich hip-deep in concentrated wealth while the middle class is bent over in BOHICA fashion, would be a dandy starting point for meaningful dialog on how to fix America and capitalism in general now that the Age of Infinite Growth has eaten the nutrients out to the edge of the Petri dish.

I would hope Bernanke could speak that, but there doesn’t seem to be any rush toward candor in Washington these days.  However, to question why that might be (answer: accretion of wealth to those already wealthy) just underscores who’s side various players are on.

That’s not a bash.  That’s one American’s opinion based on what seem to be facts….

Send Ure comments to george@ure.net

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Last week’s report is always here.