I go diving in my mind sometimes. It’s become something of a habit.
This is difficult to explain to someone else. I’m not sure whether this is imagined or not. But as I lay back in bed, with my eyes closed the blackness stretches out as if it were endowed with some wild and feral energy. It takes the form of the cliché we associate with our minds and subconscious- that of an ocean.
I submerge myself into these dank waters. The trick is not, to not think, which is what I believe meditation is, but to take as little active role in your own thoughts, letting them leap from each connection however wild. To unmediate and unguide those thoughts as little as possible. To withdraw to the quiet black void behind ones eyeballs.
I don’t remember how I started doing this, or how I learnt how to do it. One day I could do it. That was it.
As I sink down into the depths, I hear... well things. Voices, snippets, random thoughts changing shape and flow. Strangely I sometimes hear radio noise, the sound of it being tuned as if my thoughts were controlled on different wave bands. I hear words I’m familiar with said in different voices or in different modulations. Nothing really coherent... just perhaps what one would observe if you were to skim the tip of the thought patterns of a person, not what lay buried [deep but what’s just breaking to the surface. I made the mistake of thinking of this as the subconscious. I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried.
I sometimes see the shape of connection as they spark and fire and change. I dare say that it’s beautiful to me. But my mind would be, to me. I make no claim that this would be the same for every person. This is just what happens to me.
Sometimes as you dive down, you may wish to ask a question. When you’re not thinking and not prejudiced with emotions or distractions, or the baggage of the day I find that an answer can come clearly, like the ringing of an epiphany bell. I’ve done this a few times. It is tricky-you have to hold the question in your mind, without thinking it. To think it will disturb the depths, change the patterns, cause pressure on you to become more conscious, will push you to the surface.
Anyway, you hold this thought without thinking it and as you sink you’ll feel out the moment that you’re meant to ask. It just seems to work like that. The question rings out, echoes in your head into the black. Don’t try and think any more about it, or you’ll disturb the answer, distort it with distractions.
Like a lazy sea serpent it will bob up into your mind and answer. You have to be prepared for the answer to be uncomfortable and sometimes nonsensical or unfulfilling. It’s your mind that answer and you may not necessarily have an acceptable answer within you.
I’ve thrown it the question of how to lucid dream before. I once asked it advice on a girl, as to whether I loved her. I received conflicting advice, one voice chiding me telling me that I didn’t love her, the other revealing that perhaps the first voice was caused by insecurities or fears (I asked it twice, a good habit to use).
I once asked it what love really is. I didn’t get a complete response, just half a phrase. A stuttering really. I sensed in the lack of words, the missing part, the real meaning, just beyond the grasp of myself and whatever part of me that answers back. I don’t quite know what this means, or what it says about me.
One time, I decided to continue diving, deeper then I’d ever gone before. I seemed to drop rapidly through my thoughts.
Something like pressure began to build, even though I wasn't actually diving. I swear to god my eyes crossed. I dropped further still, with great speed. Old nightmares and thoughts seemed to hit me in quick succession. I thought of old Lovecraftian horrors, sharks, strange monsters…
Patterned upon my eyelids, were swirls of colours, formed into a huge eyeball-
The pressure got greater, the flood of nightmares stronger, the eyeball more leering-
There was a sudden pop- a shiver that ran through me and my eyes forced themselves open.
After that, I was pretty spooked about diving again. I haven’t done it since.
I realised I’d been wrong about the subconscious. It wasn’t the flow of thoughts near the surface. It’s what ever lay at the bottom of the deep black that had acted as a barrier to me. Beyond the mind-ocean surface. I couldn’t get to it. It would seem so alien, so strange and incomprehensible. There are depths of ourselves, perhaps, of which we shouldn’t really know.