The day I finally breathed, or so I thought......

It was a Friday afternoon, and I was feeling a bit under the weather. After I ate a defrosted pizza and a soup from last night, I took my pills and started working on my research paper. Although I took a break from my work for the day to leisurely work on something I love, I was feeling a constant pressure to go back to my assigned work. Nudging those, I continued lazing around with just a note pad and a retro pen in my hand, scribbling ideas.

After a while, what it felt like an hour or so, I woke up. I started walking up to my restroom, and while splashing some ice cold water on my face, I sensed warping. Then, suddenly, out of nothing, as if a glass door shattered in front of my eyes, I realized with a heaviness in my heart, that I am not home and that I have indeed woken up, but only inside my dream, and not woken enough to be in my reality. I thought to myself in that constant state of frenzy, – “So, this is a what I have been reading all my childhood” and “Here I am at the center of having a full-blown Lucid Dream”, where I am vividly aware of the fact that I am lucid and I know I am in a dream, this realization comes with a host of excitement and chaos. Mine was obviously the latter, as I was frenziedly trying to get myself out of the dream, I tried multiple times going back to sleep, to wake up to my real life, only to fail.

After a while, although I was so scared, I thought, why not I try a few of the things I read about being in a Lucid Dream like “Flying”. I did and honestly fell face first on the cold floor of my apartment after only succeeding to levitate for 10 seconds. Disappointed, I pushed myself to give in to the mundane task of cooking and getting some food inside my stomach. While having my dinner in the dream state, I remembered, the day I fell asleep in my real life, it was an afternoon, where my living partner went to work and I didn’t. Realizing that, somehow gave me a soothing wind of relief, as I was certain that he would come back from work and somehow, with his all might, make me wake up to him.

With this warm feeling I waited and waited but every other day, I just woke up at the same time, that fateful afternoon and the event go on an on as the same everyday for what felt like at least a year or so.

Over the days, there were multiple false awakenings, which looked like a real one, but only iterated me back to the same dream. I thought the sound of a calling bell or my phone ringing would be my cue to come back to life. My life in this dream sequence was almost similar to that of my real one, with same memories and perceptions, except I was stuck in a time-loop lucid dream. I was hopeful because I know time distort in a dream sequence and what feels for me as years, could just be 10 or 20 minutes there in real.

Still inside the dream, I knew once I wake up, my time and space perception would also distort, which is actually happening now as I am writing this journal. The distortion is, as time moves here in reality, I am starting to perceive the time I spent there in my lucid dream was not as long as I thought it was.

Fast-forwarding the days, finally, out of thin air, my eye opened again like always, only this time as a single photon of light touched my iris, I thought to myself – “Fuck, I am back”

I want to write about one more realization that I have I had with this experience - Around a time, since it was so long, I thought maybe I died in my sleep and that’s the reason nobody was able to wake me up. I remember thinking, this might be what everyone of us is destined for – a lonely, hollow, meaningless journey without love and hope of living and breathing with pure love pumping through your heart. I became Hopeless!!

The hope of experiencing something new every day, seeing the miraculous wonders of life, nature and the universe, getting that extra push to grow curious is what I think keeps us in flesh and blood. It is said that Universe is a working model ready before we figured out the conceptual model of it, and although it is scary because of the enormity, uncertainty, chaos and the sheer randomness of it, I somehow found my peace! ??

Why this personal story: with never ending mass hysteria around AI, kept my mind busy with so many possible realities, one could be, we are all living in a dream-like state by hyper-intelligent beings and I might not have woken up yet.

P.S: Just for personal entertainment. I have a curiosity to know and uncover the mysteries behind our existence and purpose.