Sharky Night Hag

Add photoshop to the 2017 resolutions...

The other night I dreamt about sharks swimming in the sky. They were swimming through the air, and I watched from high on a hill, overlooking a valley. Like ocean currents, there were layers of the wind. Leaves were blowing in one layer, and sharks swimming above.
This is the third time in the last month I dreamt of shark swimming (or flying) in the sky. I'm having a hard time understanding what the message is, and based on the reoccurrence of it, I'm assuming I haven't reached the correct conclusion. From what I've been reading, the meaning of these shark dreams aren't so great. A looming threat about a person who, like a shark, takes whatever they want, or expecting the worst in someone, or an omen about "dangerous water." However, in the dream I'm not scared, but rather impressed and captivated. The best I've come up with is some sort of message about coexisting with fear.

I read a post about Mugwort Body Oil as a way to enhance dreaming, and I ordered some, hoping to gain insight into whatever the universe is trying to tell me. The oil can be used to promote lucid dreaming, as well. I'm going to avoid lucid dreaming, hoping the dream will unfold without putting in that kind of work. The reason I'm hesitant about lucid dreaming is due to a period in high school where I became terrified of falling asleep because of sleep paralysis, also known as the Night Hag. To this day, I don't sleep on my back because I realized this brought on the horror of becoming wide awake in the mind, but still having my body asleep, so I'd lay in bed paralyzed, yelling at myself to open my eyes.
During this time, I read "freaking out" (the internal yelling) is the worst reaction, and remaining calm will allow one to use these moments as an opportunity to go on a celestial exploration. I was a bit too wounded by my past experiences to turn my poop into poop juice, but by practicing a calm state of being, I was able to ease myself back to sleep the next time I came into this night terror, and it was an extreme comfort.
To say I smoked weed throughout high school is an understatement, and if there is one thing I'd go back and change it'd be not to fall into the peer pressure of obliterating my afternoons with mindlessness when I could have been getting a head start on life, but alas, everything is a learning experience, even years of lackluster inactivity, for if it weren't for them, I'd probably not realize how important it is for me to live life passionately. The Night Hag and extremely potent NorCal ganja were most likely correlated because after going to college and completely stopping marijuana, I don't have anymore occurrences of sleep paralysis.

I took a nonfiction narrative writing class when George was around 1 year old. The professor advised us students not to write about dreams. It was a bizarre instruction, since she assigned Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge as one of the course texts, a book that is filled with the author's dreams. The teacher said Terry is the exception, and for the most part, reading people's dreams is not interesting. Then she said, "Besides, who has dreams that are so vivid?"Me and a handful of other students raised our hands, and I had an aha moment. It hadn't occurred to me that some people go to bed, and just get a couple blips of their dreamtime escapades, and then wake up. I figured everyone got to ride the nighttime roller coaster I'd find myself on frequently.

Just last night I dreamed I was on a train, looking at a couple maps with various routes. Eventually, I was at a long dinner table with an underwater jungle in the backdrop. At one point a person from the table grabbed a giant snake from there, and as it was about to bite the mans head off, the man ripped out the snake's teeth, killing it and splaying blood all over the people at the table. The blood contained something like tiny razor blades because everyone started complaining about their mouths having tiny cuts in them.
I woke up to George shouting for me to walk him to the toilet and then back to bed. I laid with him till he fell back asleep, and at 2:30 in the morning, I was too tired to write the dream down, and needed to focus on getting back to sleep because who knows when the other kid will wake up shouting for my servitude.
One of my goals in 2017 is to keep a dream journal (err, not off to a good start). I feel like I better keep good documentation. It will be eye opening to come back and read the dreams after some time passes, since there is usually clarity looking back on things.  Another one of my 2017 resolutions is to let go of paranoia, which is especially hard after reading shark interpretations since "a shark indicates deception, do not trust anyone at this time," is a common theme.

I plan on getting to the bottom of this. It might not be pretty, but rather, oily with the Mugwort help. I'll let you know how the dreams turn out!