Dream Jumper Prologue

Have you ever had a dream that felt so intense, so real, you thought you were truly that rabbit jumping through the hole of space and time? It was as real as being in the conscious world, awake and alive and beating with the drum of your heart. And, when your eyes flutter open, after you wipe away that small bit of crud at the corner of your eye and the silent, heavy yawn escapes your dry lips, you wonder how it could have been a dream at all. Every moment of that dream standing firm like a memory, a bit of time that will forever fill your mind just like each and every day of your breathing and walking life. It was just that real. I have dreams like this. And I remember all of them.

I remember everything that happens, and the conversations I have, while in my sleep state; just as if I really lived them. I remember the faces and the names of the people I meet – strangers in the mystical underworld of my subconscious that come to life at night.

My dreams are as real to me as if I am living two, separate lives. I’m just a double agent living the secondary part of my life in a secret underbelly of a world that no one can access, aside from me. The only difference is that I typically remember more of my dream world than I remember my actual daily life.

I started investigating and researching dreams at an incredibly young age. I was curious, sure; but I wanted answers more than anything. I read up on a very wide range of topics – pretty much anything I could get my hands on, really. Articles on dreams, memory, psychology, parapsychology, the brain, the paranormal and supernatural…you name it and I have probably read it. Along the way I had a lot of conversations with friends and family about dreams, too, enough to make me wonder why I’m different. Because I am different.

From what I have gathered after all my research about dreams, I have categorized three classes of dreamer: the non-dreamer, the average dreamer, and the psychic dreamer.

Believe it or not, there are quite a few people out there who have no recall of dreaming at all. I know this might seem strange to you, but it’s oddly true. The non-dreamer will fall asleep into a world of black abyss and wake up with absolutely no memory of the goings on in their own head while asleep. There is no rhyme or reason to it, either. Some of the non-dreamers fall into a dead sleep, dropping off into nothing as soon as their head hits their memory foam pillow, and then it’s simply good night moon for them. And others have trouble falling asleep at night, flip flopping like a fish out of water all evening long. Others wake up in the middle of the night and cannot force their mind to shut off enough to allow themselves to drift back off to La La Land and rejuvenate that ever-wandering brain. There are a lot of people out there who cannot succumb to sleep without the help of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. For these people, it is like the Sandman has forever forgotten them, forsaking them for eternity. These sad souls seem to lack the ability to fully shut down and restore before the rise of a new day. Yet, it makes no difference how they fall asleep or stay asleep, they just do not dream while they slumber or don’t remember any dreams they do have.

The vast majority of people I’ve conversed with fall into the average dreamer category. These are the people who remember their dreams on occasion – like walking through the halls of their school (or office) completely naked; as if it’s not abundantly clear their fear of inadequacy is screaming at them in reality so their sleeping brain has to spell it out for them. Most typically, the dreams of the average person will just fade out and slip completely from their mind altogether after waking. What is left in its place the following morning is only a vivid swirl, a flash of color, or taunting notion that they dreamt something but are unable to recall their dream and it’s now and forever out of their grasp.

Emotion seems to hang on a little longer. Now, I’m talking about super intense, powerful emotion behind whatever event was taking place during their dream. Perhaps it was a horrendous moment of grief, nauseating, crippling fear, or maybe even orgasmic sexual arousal. But in the end, that also fades into absolute nothing, too.

That leaves the psychic dreamer – the déjà vu and déjà rêvé people of the world. You know who they are. These are the people who seem to have visions or prophecies while they sleep. They think they have a crystal ball in their head and share fantastic tales of their dreams forecasting what will be in their future, or our future, collectively. And others are continuously revisiting moments from their past over and over, like their favorite scene from a movie on constant rewind. For these people their dreams can be like a never-ending wash cycle: wash, rinse, repeat.

Maybe they meet their future spouse all in a night’s dream or get to visit a location before they actually take that well planned road trip. Hey, believe what you want, but I’m the last person who will ever say this is absurd, impossible, or even crazy.

I know most people don’t believe this is real psychic activity – there are a myriad of articles out there about the mind and memory and how it is believed that the mind is pulling memory into our subconscious dream world. Researchers believe that our mind only thinks what we’re seeing, or feeling, is real, but they say it’s truly only memory and our mind playing tricks on us, in a way.

Freud even had a theory that our dreams don’t really mean anything. His thinking was that dreams were just a wish or fantasy, maybe even a repressed impulse from childhood that comes to life in our adult dreams. I am not so sure most adults will hold onto something they wished for or desired as children since we all grow and mature and those desires change; but I do not have a degree to contradict Dr. Freud.

Other researchers and psychologists have a theory that our daily lives filter into our subconscious at night leaving our over-abundance of stress, worries, and deepest fears to play games with our dream-state mind. There are so many theories, who is to say which ones are right and which ones are not? In my opinion, a lot can happen while our eyes are shut, and we’re trying to catch whatever zzz’s we can.

The thing is, I’m different. I don’t fit in any of these categories. I remember my dreams, way beyond flashes of color and light. I remember every microscopic detail and not just the feelings or emotions. These dreams I have are not visions of the past or future. So, I had to come up with a fourth category for what I am.

I call myself a Dream Jumper.