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Eyes, Vision and Visualization

Dreams about vision--with ordinary eyes, third eyes, whole sets of weird eyes. But also the mind's eye: visualization and visions, imagery and imagination. Not a territory I understand well! This'll sound crazy coming from a visual artist, but one reason I love dreams so much is that I have a weak, blurry mind's eye when I'm awake. Dreaming and painting are about the ONLY ways I can see something imaginary. I have a good mind's ear, in fact a mind's iPod that plays all day (and sometimes, annoyingly, won't turn off when it's found a cool new musical idea)... but vision? Blurry, masked by a gauze curtain--until I paint my visions. Or fall asleep again. For in dreams, I visualize quite clearly! I've even deduced I was dreaming and gone lucid because of my mental clarity in REM--and watched it fade back to myopia, as I wake. (Examples: Dream Clarity, or, the Field of Psychotherapy and Lucid Girders)

RELATED TOPICS: hallucinations - depth perception, viewpoints, and artistic perspective - illusion and blindness - invisibility - focus - meditation - prayers and wishes - assertion - lucid dreaming - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

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THE AIR BURUNDI PAINTINGS: by Wayan; 7 illus., 2007/1/20, a dream of art & courage
Weird paintings cover a hill town in Africa, demanding I paint them when I wake.
Paintings on courage, flight... and defying tradition.
AIRACUDA: by Wayan; 2008/9/9, a dream-poem, Dreamverse #25
The jeweled fish over San Francisco grew and grew
until it landed and the crew told me the secret code...
AIR PIRATES IN FAERIE: by Wayan; 1984/8/25, a complex predictive dream
DREAM: The future. A party. A woman spills her drink on my white pants. Off to Faerie, where fruit trees are mean...
NEXT DAY: I do not wear white pants to Sally's party. So? A woman spills her drink on Sally's white pants...
DAY AFTER: I open a book on musicals & see a shot from The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy baiting an angry fruit tree...
CAUTION: PREDICTIVE
THE ARTIST'S WAY: by Wayan; 1994/6/10, a visual-pun dream.
I'm a parade route. A group of child artists walks all over me. But their soles are bare, so I don't mind...
AUTISTIC THUNDER: by Wayan; 2018/2/12, a predictive shamanic dream
DREAM: a concert by autistics admits my bandmate Mike but locks me out! I summon thunder & quakes till they open up...
AWAKE: I called it metaphor--till it happened. I was sitting silent in our band's recording session and Mike asked me to leave...
CAUTION: AUTISM & APPARENT E.S.P.
THE BEAR'S RIP: by Xanthe; dreamed 1990 or 1991; a lucidish dream with four sketches.
A bear rips open my wall and guides me into a psychedelic space where I learn to see with new eyes...
BLACK BLOT EYES: by Wayan, 2023/12/22, a predictive little nightmare
DREAM: I see photos of smiling couples at the beach, but someone's scribbled on them: just black blots for eyes. Creepy.
DAY: Read a fantasy novel in which a prince has a cursed double, identical except: he has black blots for eyes. Creepier...
BOAT MEETING: by Wayan; 1985/4/28; a predictive dream that hints at its own nature
I swim far out in a lake to a business meeting on a dinghy; but that's trivial.
What matters is mapping the murky lakebottom, dive after dive...
THE BRUNDIBAR SEA: by Wayan; 2005/12/18, a mystical manifestation dream
Biking, I stray into the steamy Brundibar Sea. My bike dissolves!
But hot-tubbers explain the Sea manifests what you visualize. Yay! Uh-oh...
CAUTION: MYSTICISM AND HOLOCAUST HISTORY
CENTAUR QUARTET: by Wayan; 1982/2/26, 83/12/24 & 84/10/16, recurring dreams of my spirit family.
Can our interspecies family survive? Our very instincts clash around solitude/boundaries, sex and incest
CAUTION: SEX, INCEST, REPRESSION/DENIAL
CLOUD WAR: by Wayan; 2012/12/22, a dream of eco-apocalypse on the darkest day of the year
Clouds wake up. Maybe they were always aware, but now they're aware of us. And rage against us all.
Oh, humanity'll survive. But easy times are over...
CAUTION: PARTISAN INTERPRETATION
CUTENESS PAGEANT: by Wayan; 2008/8/29, a dream-poem, Dreamverse #16.
I'm trapped in a cute cartoon universe! Worse, to judge this beauty contest,
I have to see past our style to our souls...
DEER AND WOLF MYSTICS: by Wayan; 2015/2/1; an odd peacemaking dream
The wolf and deer people are getting along well--a relief since I like both.
Now, can the wolves learn from the deer how to open their third eye?
THE DEER'S HOLY LAKE: by Wayan; 1995/5/15, a dream of holy turf.
A magic lake where deer glide on water... so I try it. And start to realize I could build such a lake...
DESERT EYES: by Wayan; 1984/3/4, a dream of portals.
We desert-hobbits break through to a world of jungle giants who
see differently from us. Will they believe us about the UFOs?
DON JUAN AND THE FLYERS: by 'Rasselon'; 2009/12/17, a shamanic dream about focus.
Winged things lurk in the shadows. When I focus on them, they attack! Castaneda's teacher watches amused...
DREAM CLARITY, or, the Field of Psychotherapy: by Wayan; 1996/11/27, a dream on dreams
While we're making crop-circles in the field of psychotherapy, my hypnotist and I start to argue...
DREAM LOVERS: by Wayan; 1995/9/11, a dream on shame.
This dream's not about a man whose dream lovers keep materializing till the bed overflows.
This dream's about who those lovers are and what the neighbors will think...
CAUTION: SEX
DREAMKU, APRIL 2007: by Roswila; various dates up to April 2007; 30 dream-poems--mostly haiku
Dream haiku laid out like a calendar. Roswila's favorite is the pirate, but mine is the were-salamander...
EASTER HEALING: by "Clairity"; 2008/03/23, a joyful lucid dream
I will a clay cat to come to life, then start healing real cats and dogs and...
THE EGG PROBLEM: by Wayan; 1990/3/2, digital painting of a magical dream.
I'm an intellectual ballerina trying to stop zombies hatching from stone eggs, but I succeed
only when I become a dragon using touch, scent and visualization to persuade the eggs...
EGYPT: by AE (George Russell); 1890s?, a brief telepathic vision
I wondered where a friend was, and felt as if I were walking at night near the Sphinx. Months later...
ESCAPE BY INTUITION: by Wayan; 2010/1/11; four dreams of breaking through
I must see a community as a whole, and intuit my way out of a sealed room, and spot details, and join a trio in bed...
CAUTION: NUDITY IN LAST DREAM
THE ETHICS OF LUCIDITY: by Wayan; 1994/2/19, a thoughtful dream on time and cause.
I'm at a symposium on how our beliefs alter not just the future, but the PAST...
CAUTION: CONTAINS IDEAS
EYE AND I by Wayan; 1999/11/15, a drawing that shifts me into a new way of seeing
I met a colorblind artist with an amazing grayscale sense. He inspire me to
draw a huge eye full of abstract shapes in gray, trying to see his way...
EYE-SAVIOR: by an Oldham girl, c.1784; a curative (not merely diagnostic) dream
I had gone blind in one eye. I dreamt our Savior came to me, and when I woke, I could see...
EYEBOLT: by Wayan; 2005/10/1, a squeamish advisory dream
I'm on a British train, sitting across from an attractive, stylish woman
with a massive databolt stuck in her eye--and I have to unscrew it...
FEVER HILL: by Wayan; 1991/4/13, a comic Buddhist nightmare.
My fever-dreams manifest physically and mess up my whole neighborhood. Seismic inspectors arrive...
FLY, DANCER!: by Wayan; 1993/4/2; an advisory dream.
In my ballet class, we were learning to leap. But I wanted to FLY. So I went outside alone...
THE FOUNT OF CANADIAN WISDOM: by Wayan; 1982/11/17; a dream-poem on miracles. Stupid miracles.
A Jungian figure dispenses Wisdom. Overwhelmed, annoyed, I try to shut him up
by manifesting money out of nowhere. But nothing shuts up the Fount of...
FOUR EYES!: by Wayan; 1984/5/28, a metaphoric dreamlet.
I started life as twins, but slowly we fused. I still have four eyes, though. Then, one day...
FOX AND THE EYE OF GOD: by Wayan; 1984/8/14, a predictive mythic dream
DREAM: I hike up my Career Path into the hills. On a snowfield,
a bird and a fox create the eye of God, who banishes all evil!
NEXT DAY: I read a novel full of images out of the dream...
FROG ORDERS: by Wayan; 1986/7/4, a dream on piety.
I'm in medieval England on a mission from God, but I meet a Priestess on a mission from...well, we argue.
GRIEF KIVA: by Wayan; 1980/2/16, a lucid psychic dream.
In a Hopi underworld, I find even lucid dreaming can't cure guilt and grief over losses yet to come...
HAWK RIDGE: by Wayan; 1990/2/15; primitivist digital dream-painting
I dreamed I was a gull in Middle Earth fighting Sauron, though he
blurred my vision; but my hawk-eyed gullfriends helped me out...
HIGHER LEVEL: by Wayan; 2011/12/13, an absurd transcendent dream
I paddle through the grim streets of Karachi on my belly, on a skateboard,
with my flipper-hands, until at last I reach the border to a Higher Realm...
HIPPIE MISSILES: by Wayan, 1990/7/23, twin dreams of risky leaps leading to flight
1: I try to grow feathers and fly, but half-fail, half-succeed--experience two bodies at once...
2: I fly to escape a hippie cult. They fire heat-seeking missiles! But I may be too cool to track...
HORSESHOE MAGNET: by Wayan, 1983/12/3, a predictive dreamlet
I'm badly disoriented because I'm seeing through walls! My sixth sense is from a high-tech helmet
shaped like a horseshoe magnet. Four days later I see Brainstorm, a movie about a high-tech helmet
shaped like a horseshoe magnet, recording and playing back mental experience. Talk about disorienting...
HUMBLE THREE-EYED GIRL: by Wayan; 2008/12/30, a dream on giftedness and shame
I meet a circle of students with up to five eyes. The lone three-eyed girl
is embarrassed, indeed ashamed she's merely attained enlightenment...
IN THE NIGHT OF 13 OCTOBER, 1942: by Peter Birkhäuser; 1942/10/13, a shamanic dream painted Sept. 1975.
Sybelle & I climbed the cathedral spire. Bravely she kissed the monstrous guardian, exhaling
blue light. My own challenge was to leap across an abyss, under the luminous eye of God...
JETPACK AND TIGER: by Wayan; 1988/3/17, a nonlucid yet lucidlike shamanic dream.
After watching both Star Trek & Doctor Who, I find I'm held prisoner by the Rani
and her laser-toting tiger guards. So I meditate--and manifest a jetpack and a laser gun!
I never deduced I'm dreaming; it's not lucidity. It's simpler. What have I got to lose?
LACED WITH TERROR: by Wayan; 1999/5/3, an anti-nightmare.
Researchers show me weird little objects like shoelaces that drive people mad with fear...
LEFT EYE: by "Anonymous #9"; 1938, a predictive, quasi-reassuring nightmare
I dreamed of an explosion--a stabbing pain in my left thigh, right fore-arm, and left eye.
Two years later, in World War Two, a grenade...
LEMON-EYED SPIRIT: by Wayan, 2019/10/24; a predictive dream-poem
I dream I'm a woman possessed by spirits with yellow eyes that tint the whole world lemon...
I wake, the sun rises, and for a single minute, the world turns that exact, strange yellow...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.
LONG ROAD TO HEAVEN: by Edwin Muir; 1920, an epic hypnogogic shamanic initiation
Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in...
LUCID GIRDERS: by Wayan; 1993/8/18, an illustrated dream about dreaming.
Stayed up late, painting foreshortening. Then I saw a scene in color, motion, 3D, and knew
I had to be dreaming: I was visualizing too clearly, THINKING too clearly, to be awake...
CAUTION: NUDITY
LYNX: by Peter Birkhäuser; Sept? 1976, his last dream-painting, facing his death
The Lynx, my dream-god,
comes for me at last...
MAZAMA: by Wayan, 1990/8/16, a predictive dream on deep vs. shallow sight
On our roadtrip, I notice strange crags north of our highway, and deduce they form a ring: a caldera like
Crater Lake. But my friends can't see the pattern, just the pieces! I wake. The mail comes. With postcards of...
CAUTION: ANNOYING TO E.S.P. SKEPTICS
MITHRAN'S LAKE: by Wayan; 1988/1/17, a predictive dream justifying personal reserve.
DREAM: Gay boys, underage girls & my own sister all mock me, sure I want their forbidden sexual fruit
at a beach where grotesque trees make their own precipitation and salt-dunes spill into saturated, toxic brine...
NEXT DAY: I read Margaret Atwood's The Salt Garden--sex, guilt, and grotesque trees in saturated, toxic brine.
CAUTION: SEXUAL GUILT, EXHIBITIONIST TWEENS, APPARENT E.S.P.
THE MONK STRUCK BY VISION: by Wayan; late 1979 or early 1980, sketch of visionary stress.
I sympathize with visionaries whose gift is so urgent and extreme, most would call it illness...
MY FLUORESCENT WORLD: by Wayan; 1997/8/16, a psychedelic dream.
I always thought I saw differently than others, but when someone builds the Goggles...
NIC'S THOUSAND PAINTINGS: by Wayan, 2017/7/9, a dream with creative advice
My friend Nic vows to paint two pictures a day, and, impossibly, does.
Meanwhile, I'm blocked. Can she show me how to get unstuck?
NIGHT-BLIND: by Wayan, 2023/9/14, a dream incubated for another
My sister Miriel asks me to ask my dreams if it's safe for her to get cataracts removed.
I find myself in her body, biking at night--near-blind. Surgery has risks, but this is riskier!
ON MOLLY'S FOREHEAD: by Wayan, 1988/11/19, a spiritual sex dream.
A child of radicals goes wild in Rio. When we bail her out, we find she's had a strange enlightenment...
CAUTION: UNSAFE SEX
ONE-EYED BOY: by Roswila; 2009/4/5, a dreamku on the limits of desire
You'd think his Christmas wish would be "a new eye"; well it was, in a way...
OVERLAY: by Wayan; 1984/2/11, 1995/8/26, and 2004/9/11, 3 dreams shape a 9-page comic on living with ESP
Dreams of translucent fairies, centaurs, robots & gnomes prompt me to cartoon
on transparent overlays to show how dreamworlds overlay ours...
PAPER BAG: by Pete Peterson, art by Jesse Reklaw; pre-2000; a comic dreamlet
God issued me a paper bag to go over my head & protect my eyes
when facing him--at first. But as I advanced spiritually, I tore...
PASS THE VIAL ON: by Wayan; 2000/4/18, a dream of renunciation
A vagabond king showed me the way into Faerie, and it made my fortune. But now it's time to pass the gift on...
A PILGRIM DREAMING: by Denise Levertov; 1977? a dream poem
A man I loved goes into the Jungian depths, but when his anima appears in the mirror-pool, his nerve fails...
PINKIE CLEANS THE WINDOWS OF PERCEPTION:
by Wayan; 2017/2/5, an advisory dream fusing Aldous Huxley & My Little Pony.
My new housemate Pinkie is a party animal, but she's really nice. She climbs a high ladder to help wash my
Windows of Perception. Then our unicorn friend Rarity walks in. She warns me to pace this renovation project...
CAUTION: PONIES
PITS OF POWER: by Wayan; 2005/11/16, a dream of rival miracles
One tribe builds earth-magic pits that can teleport you or grant wishes.
But the other tribe's more powerful flow-state magic is harder to define...
CAUTION: SEX FANTASY GRANTED
THE POWER OF NON-VISUALIZATION: by Wayan; 2018/4/29, a mystical dream whose teaching worked
I'm listening to a film-talk on Non-Visualization. "Don't wish--don't will--don't visualize.
Just face what you really want, and then don't push..."
CAUTION: MYSTICAL
PRACTICE IS REAL: by Wayan; 1998/1/6, three small dreamtales.
Three teasing sex-dreamlets chipping away at my shyness with women I like...
CAUTION: SEX TALK
REVELATION: by Anna Kingsford; 1885/11/27, a prophetic, almost messianic, dream.
Dreams and other revelations shouldn't be dissected--they need to be reveiled, not revealed...
CAUTION: INTENSE MYSTICISM
RUG-SHAG: by Wayan; 1994, digital; a sexy daydream that suddenly found a voice.
I just wanted to imagine getting licked by a nice friendly escapist dog on a nice shaggy rug, but...
CAUTION: BESTIALITY! SEX! METAPHYSICAL DOUBTS!
SATURN'S EYES: by Wayan; 1990/4/28, a surreal dreamlet
Our expedition to Saturn finds new moons with huge, deep craters staring
at us like gigantic eyes--because they are gigantic eyes...
SELF-MADE GIRLS: by Wayan; 2000/2/15, a public dream.
Two souls coalesce from bars of light into human beings by the power of words. Words like stupid, ugly...
THE SHOP SPILLED OVER: by AE (George Russell); early 1890s, a telepathic flash
Closing my eyes I saw an old man and a red-haired girl in a shop. My workmate was writing home...
SING TO MY ALIEN FRIEND: by Wayan; 2017/3/7, a dream-poem on... alienation?
From a crowd in a gym, I sing to my wolflike alien friend. But she can't recognize my voice--
too convincing a falsetto! I slide deeper, but once she heard a girl, she can't imagine...
SOCK PUPPETS OF THE GODS: by Dee and Wayan; 1994/4/14. Parallel shamanic dreams!
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
SPHINX'S WOOD: by Wayan; 1981/11/19, a dream of puns, riddles and advice
After my dad lets me down I dream black may be white, and white, black--if you're a Sphinx...
STABBED ALIVE: by Roswila; 2007/10/9, a nightmare-poem
I defeat the knife-wielder, in spite the blade in my belly I can't pull out. I may have to let it be...
SUMMONING SHADOW: by Jo Equinity; 2006. Three meditative paintings apparently cause a miracle.
I had to sell my horse Shadow, but I missed him so much I painted him. As I finished, a strange impulse led me...
THIEU, I'M SORRY: by Wayan, 1997/11/1, a troubling dreamtale.
Visiting Time City, I witness the "suicide" of a woman named Thieu but suspect it was really assassination...
CAUTION: SUICIDE? MURDER?
THIRD EYE: by Wayan; 2009/3/25, three diverse dreamlets on the same theme: enlightenment
1: Three sisters flash me; one has a third eye in there! Clothed, it's blind. Was she just enlightening herself?
2: In the future, most cars self-drive. I'm the last driver using my own muscles and mind. Can I hold out?
3: A friend charts all of history's wars to prove: democracies don't fight each other. So to get peace...
CAUTION: NAKED EYE
THREE-EYED WOLF: by Wayan; 1992/12/14. Digital comic of a dream, done movie-poster style
A 'toon liberation dream. I cartooned a new self and slowly she grew realer, until she ran Disney...
CAUTION: FRANK SINATRA SWEARS
THYROID: by Marc Ian Barasch, c. 1985; a set of life-saving diagnostic nightmares
In 1985 I was flooded with nightmares about heads and necks. They had an unparalleled intensity...
TITANIA: by Wayan; 1981/12/7, 83/1/7 & 2/13 and 84/10/2, a dream-epic in installments
Clarence the sappy angel from It's A Wonderful Life and Milton's Lucifer land on Earth, offering treaties.
Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're fine as is, but the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures
like me and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full palette of feelings. Like the feeling she's fake...
UNICORN FEEDBACK: by Wayan; 2009/1/3, a double dream of advice
A telepathic unicorn gives me some subtle advice. I wake, and tell a friend, who easily proves my account
is distorted by my own biases. Telepathy's confusing! Wake again. Her correction was part of the dream...
A VALLEY NEAR HOPE: by Wayan; 1984/10/17-19, an epic dream.
I wander a valley where unicorns love cyborgs but fear giant ants, who love unicorns but
fear cyborgs, who love ants but fear unicorns! And while the Three Tribes squabble, cave-monsters
sculpt them all. I set up peace talks between these four aspects of my tetrahedral soul...
CAUTION: SWEARING, DRUNK LIONS, CYBORG SURGERY, AND GOGGLE-BARFING
WATERMELON MINE: by Wayan; 2023/6/18, a surreal dream with long-term advice
I'm the new manager of the watermelon mine. And to free the trapped minors--
oops, miners!--I have to plan. So I cover the floor with My Little Pony post-its...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY
"WHAT SHARKS?": by Wayan; 1990/4/22, a dream of multiple viewpoints.
A cowgirl is driving us in circles round the dusty parking lot, fleeing the air-sharks... or is she?
WONDERFUL SPECTACLES: by Anna Kingsford; 1877/1/31, a clairvoyant advisory dream
A mystic postman delivers a letter on the world's best glasses and a reply from me, telling how to find them...
THE WOODRING LAYER: by Wayan; 2008/7/7. A dream questioning art's job.
Great towers rise into a fog zone--or is it another world with other rules? And how to draw both levels?
YEATS: by Wayan; 1990/1/1, a nondream poem wrestling with Yeats's dreams & visions
Our dilemma is, now that we have the power to get what we want... what exactly was it we wanted?


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