Hogwartz parade

In a dream about Hogwartz, I was Harry Potter, but I was also omniscient and knew things my character didn't know.

In one early episode I saw what was supposed to be a primitive electrical plug. It had one prong shaped like the tip of a soldering iron, but was much larger, and we stuck it into an even larger metal crevice to make contact. I don't remember what it's function was, or how it related to the rest of the dream.

We had already fended off on earlier attack against Hogwartz, in which bad things had happened to good people. Somebody ended up covered with rose petals, but this represented something much more serious. I don't remember much else about the first attack. I knew a second attack was coming, but Harry and the other characters didn't realize this.

We were getting ready for a Hallowe'en parade. In the middle of the parade, I was supposed to pull some kind of surprise stunt. This was a ceremonial role. Everyone knew something was going to happen, but only Harry and a few friends knew what and when it would happen. Harry had performed this role for the past several years (I guess this was my preferable, more cerebral alternative to being the seeker in Quidditch). I seemed to be ill-prepared, uncertain what the stunt was going to be. However, I was also omnisciently aware that another malicious attack was coming and would be coordinated to exploit Harry's show.

I was in a dressing room with Hermione, who was "played by" Mary Jean (a lifelong friend whose family owns a cottage near ours, and who does look a bit like Emma Watson). There was someone else there helping us get ready. They had a wispy, incorporeal quality I've recently noticed about secondary characters in my dreams. I couldn't really see this character except that he or she seemed to be wearing a white shirt. Mostly they were helping Hermione get dressed. I was just hanging out and talking to somebody like Professor McGonagall (who was also invisible), who was checking up to make sure our stunt plans were in place.

I left the dressing room. Our school resembled the early 20th Century building where I went to school as a small child. So it had wide, straight staircases and lots of big windows. I went upstairs and down a long, dimly lit corridor to a boys' change room. A friend of mine (Ron?) and two wispy, incorporeal boys were in there having showers. I talked to them, but I don't remember what about.

The next thing I remember I was in a different waiting room with Hermione again. We were sitting and talking on a couch and there was a coffee table in front of us. Something ominous started happening: an invisible presence came into the room. This was the begining of the attack I was anticipating (but Harry and Hermione didn't know about).

Harry and Hermione invoked some magical helpers: a man and woman and one or two children who were members of a family. They were supposed to interview us, and by asking us questions they would help us solve the problem. We communicated with Professor McGonagall and some others by intercom, updating them with this development and letting them know we had it under control. But I would have to leave, because the parade was about to begin. Hermione was supposed to be part of the parade, too, but she would have to stay behind and fend off whatever attack was coming.

As I prepared to leave, the helpers began tying Hermione into a chair. They were tying her arms to the arms of the chair with bands of white cloth. This was a necessary part of the spell, as it allowed them to interrogate her properly while also giving them control of the situation. But omnisciently I knew that this was also part of the attack. The enemy had anticipated how we would respond to the situation and had intervened by sending helpers who were part of their plan. As I left the room and the dream ended, Hermione was in deep trouble.

(It seems important to reveal here that rope bondage is one of my kinks: I enjoy being restrained. During the depressive episode of the past two years I lost much of my interest in sex, particularly in any sexual play that required extra effort. However, since my mood began improving several months ago, my libido has been edging back. So has my interest in sexual toys. Only yesterday, I was playing around with my favourite rope harness and my desk chair. So this dream made an unusually and surprisingly literal reference to waking life. I guess it was referencing whatever psychological implications bondage has for me. However, Hermione's predicament was completely non-sexual and more dangerous than playful. In the way of Hogwartz stories, I was 95% certain that she would escape or be rescued in the end.)

Landscape of a writer's mind

While doing my "daily writing" action (15 minutes, stream of consciousness) I reflected on how intense daydreams have begun invading my mindfulness meditations (another daily action). In mindfulness training, daydreams are treated as a distractions, so I must repeatedly return to the clear and simple focus of meditation. Ironically, I'm currently working through a series of meditations to promote creativity. So while I'm aware that these daydreams are themselves a kind of creative impulse, I am practicing letting them go. In other words, in order to really learn how to listen to what's going on inside, I have to keep turning off the radio that magically keeps turning itself on again.

But it's fascinating how much the landscape of my mind has changed from six months ago when I was in crisis. At that time, meditation brought relief. Daydreams seldom appeared, and I had an easier time staying focused. Distractions usually arose as abstract thoughts about things going on in my life at the time. They were softer (though sometimes unpleasant), and easier to recognize as thoughts or feelings. However, the meditations I used at that time were closely guided, with plenty of instructions from a recorded speaker to help keep me focused. I still use recordings, but they increasingly consist of silence in which I'm left to my own discipline (or lack of it) to stay the course.

It would be interesting to explore these daydreams further in the right time. The images are a lot like dreams in that they often sweep my consciousness away completely. I soon come back to the meditation, but I'm discombobulated -- can't remember for a moment what I'm doing or what my focus is supposed to be. In a sense some of the daydreams are lucid and many are not, because I forget where I am or that I am in charge of the situation. There's no sensation that I've been about to fall asleep, just that my mind has become relaxed to an extent that still unfamiliar to me. In fact it's pretty bizarre to find there's such a thin veil between reality and fantasy in waking life.

Writing about this also led me to contemplate the weirdness of writing itself: that some high function in my brain was playing with abstract ideas, and passing them down the hierarchy to the wordsmiths to translate them into interesting English, who then passed them to other parts of my body and ultimately my fingers to type on the keyboard. My fingers themselves each know a small pool of keys, but know nothing of words or letters. In fact no part of my body is conscious of the letters they're tapping.

What this has to do with daydreams, I'm uncertain. But all these thoughts come from a new awareness (thanks to a lifelong fascination with psychology, fueled by the fresh new tool of mindfulness exercise) of what the hell is going on in my body. One of the speakers in one of the meditations from the cognitive therapy course I took refers to the "workbench of the mind," an image I love. It's the space in which mindfulness as therapy allows problems to remain in focus ("How does this affect your body?"), while conventional mindfulness treats all such thoughts as distractions. From that I have developed a metaphor of my own: the landscape of the mind. As an inhabitant of that landscape I am guided by choice (rather than rules or impulses) over where to turn my attention.

It occurs to me I should write more about this philosophy of creativity. I expect many people of artistic persuasion are conscious of their creative processes, as I have been, but recently I've become far more sensitive to actual mental events. It's partly because anti-depressant medication had largely turned off part of my creative impulse. I had drug-induced writer's block for 12 years. But now that quality (which I can describe succinctly as whimsy) is back. So I can perceive what's happening that wasn't happening before. It's entertaining and informative. At times I'm ecstatic about it.