Cohabitation

I have adopted today a new term which I have been moving toward for a long time, but haven’t been thinking about clearly. Today is the day to put it all together.

Please indulge me today so that I might briefly summarise my dreaming career thus far, and how it has stalled out, due to lack of this word.

In the earliest phase of my dreaming career, which I think lasted a decade, I had not only dream-guide dreams, but also dream-police dreams. In the former case, dream guides often took me to psychedelic dreamscapes I would not find on my own, and their goal seemed to be to enure me to them. In the latter case, if I managed to reach a psychedelic dreamscape on my own, dream guides would come around to herd me out. If a dream guide could get within a few meters of me, I would awaken. Many of these dreams were therefore about evasion, and I became reasonably good at it. I later decided that the dream police were there for my benefit.

These evasion dreams ultimately gave way to dream academy dreams. I found myself with a large number of other students — say, fifty or so — who were kept milling about some place (like a school or a park), until a dream guide came. In the first years, there were very few environments i which this happened. The most common one was a 19^th century boarding school whose classrooms, library and dormitories were in a single building. Our library had a reading room whose ceiling was three storeys high. Instead of the usual rows of reading tables, there were many dream stations — areas where students could gather to learn some aspect of dreaming. Small groups of students would be taken away by some dream guide for a hands-on lesson. Over time, it seemed that I was taken away with the same classmates — three or four men and one woman. I was often with them, even outside of training contexts. We were often hanging out in a shared flat — some weeks, I dreamt only of that. Sometimes, we went on adventures unsupervised to other dreamscapes, only to return a few nights later to our hang-out.

After the dream academy, there were a mere two weeks when I was on my own, but I proved to be too imbalanced — there was not even the issue of incompetence. It seemed that my (assumed) responsibility was to rescue other dreamers from irking situations, but I sadly had never truly overcome my own vulnerabilities. I think that most of the other dreamers are more even-keeled by the time they acquire the dreaming abilities I have. I am therefore problematic.

After that came a long period of isolation or non-dreaming. For example, I would sometimes dream of being alone in an empty room, thinking about the kinds of things I normally think about in waking life. It took me years to claw my way back to having dream guide dreams again. I had to come to terms with something I have only today given a label to: cohabitation.

In the past year, I have begun to have insights into my condition. I would characterise it thus: I believe that I have vulnerabilities and weaknesses. I am annoyed by situations that annoy me and I am stressed by situations that stress me. I desire what I desire. If these statements seem nonsensical things to say, it is because they are nonsensical ways to be.

I have observed in some dreams this past year, that I sometimes believe myself to be imperiled or harmed, but of course, in the context of a dream, that is nonsense. It is drama for the sake of drama. For example, I dreamt this morning that I had awakened in my bed and was having an asthma attack. I thought to text the person who ought to have been in the next room, but who had discovered better to do elsewhere this week-end. You can see the dream logic here: my abandonment was suffocating. My ability to breathe collapsed so quickly, I decided I had better call, and then the panic was such that it caused me to awaken for real.

This last case is not a matter of respect, but let us consider the matter of respect as a mental trap. Humans have a need to be treated respectfully. If disrespected, they injure themselves. That might sound like an odd thing to say, but consider that feeling offended or belittled is something that happens only to the victim. That feeling is experienced by no one else, therefore, it is a self-injury. Imagine a dream in which you are pointing a water pistol at your own face and some else says, “Okay, now.” It is a stupid dream.

The big insight I have had this year is that whatever stress I experience in waking life is the same phenomenon. It is all drama for the sake of drama. Experiencing stress is simply mismanagement of thought. Driving a car can be stressful if one fears being struck by another car, and driving is quite routine if one is habitually aware of one’s surroundings. In other words, the threat of being struck is always real, but how one reacts to the threat is a matter of choice, of training, and of habit. What it means to be imbalanced is to deny choice, avoid training, and to develop habits based on the first two. Mind-blowing. So obvious, and yet, so alien.

Consider the following options:

1. One is fighting a threat, and that means, the experience is the fight, not the threat.
2. One is destroyed by the threat, and therefore experiences nothing.
3. One has overcome the threat.

Those are the only honest options. All other fabricated options are instances of cohabitation: getting uncomfortably comfortable with what ought to be unacceptable.

I find myself outside mainstream opinion in this regard. I may not acknowledge sources of stress as sources of stress. I may not respect triggers. I mean, I still have triggers, but now none of them are valid. They are like a second left shoe. I finally see the nature of my imbalance.

Wild animals have a zen that we do not permit ourselves because they react to threats with either aggression or flight, and nothing in between. I recognise that I use the word “zen” in a unique way, namely, that it be a substance that one can obtain, but stay with me here, I need vocabulary for an idea that does not widely exist. There is an equanimity of mind that one can “de-achieve,” that is to say, it is what is left over after the shabby modes of mind have been deactivated. It is some kind of ungoal, and if that is not zen, what is?

I want to make clear that what I mean by ‘zen’ here is not cultivated indifference. One reacts to threats, and the reaction must be decisive. There is no kicking the can down the road, such that the threat haunts you for ever. Negotiation and compromise are cohabitation.

In case this notion is not yet clear, let me restate it thus: you may negotiate and compromise with parties that have orthogonal interests and even contrary interests. But bullies and predators are not such parties. Fears and anger and outrage are not such parties. It is no compromise to be ‘a little’ harmed instead of greatly harmed; the question is harm itself, not its degree. There is no mentally healthy environment that expects you to accept some harm — whether that environment be created by society or by your own mind. It is a nightmare to negotiate degree, and it is even the definition of a nightmare, if you think about it.

In 2020, I had a series of dreams featuring a character that embodied this view. She was not a cold character who disregarded her feelings. On the contrary, she was a very passionate character. However, she did not tolerate cohabitation. She had her zen. This character is the inspiration for Ophelie in “The Salt Island Diaries.”

The Ophelie dreams were evidently the manner in which my mind was begging me to get my zen. I have thought that I would be best served by adopting her attitudes in some circumstances, but now I see that this is a matter of all or nothing. Anything else is the thin edge of a wedge.