The out of body experience, what Robert Monroe calls the 2nd body, can  occur during light sleep usually after waking in the middle of the night. It consistently involves rolling out of bed and falling on the floor. I will stand up and have a realization that I am in 2nd body. I then usually follow normal patterns of waking state and I will walk out of the room. The territory outside the room is always familiar but with subtle differences. Often the house follows the original design prior to any past remodels. A little shift in focus awareness will carry me back into physical body or normal dreaming.

Dream Book - October 2018 thru December 2018

Reworked with added detail

Very quick sketch

Boxes are never empty. Any box I choose will be full of objects.

New age celebrity David Wilcock makes the claim that dreams are all aspects of our selves. I beg to disagree. Sure we are bringing people and objects into our awareness, and bringing them in a less censored way, but my experience tells me that we are making communication with others. When I dream of a friend, I am not creating the friend as part of myself, but I am opening a space for that friend to communicate with me in dream space. Wilcock's explanation seems too solipsist for me. I prefer to entertain the idea that dream time is another form of reality that is open to outside people, objects and events,

Getting lost in a new city. I wander away from the hotel and try to find my way back. No anxiety, just a game.

Recurring themes include revising old jobs, packing for trips and traveling, by bike, car and bus. 

About Dream Book, process and technique.

I began dream journaling in the 1980’s. The process was simply and aid to dream recall and lucid dreaming. The end result was not the journal but the ability to remember the dream and remember when I am dreaming.

Lucid dreaming instructions were to keep a journal. Perhaps there was something in the books that said, “or you can draw pictures” but I do not recall anything like this. I followed the instructions without thinking that I might have another way, one that could better serve my intention. The present dream sketch books evolved from this dream journal process. My inclination is to include drawings but for what ever reason, I did not make the connection to the drawing as the primary method of dream image capture.

After writing a passage in the journal form, I would rarely review it and even when I did,  reading it involved the extra labor of reading my own hand writing. I performed this routine off and on over the years and only added small, thumbnail type sketches to help with the memory.

During the year 2014 I began having out of body awareness experiences and I began making quick sketches of the experience. I later developed the sketches into large, detailed drawings.

I continued to use the dream sketchbook process to help recall the experiences. Upon reviewing the sketches I did not consider them artwork, or artwork that I would want to display. They were much like my handwriting, difficult to read.

Last year I began “cleaning up” or refining drawing in a more recent sketch book which had been drawn using a variety of black felt tip style pens. This proved to be somewhat satisfactory but showed me that it would be better to sketch the drawing in pencil then add the ink. 

Ink has much better contrast than pencil so it preferable as little adjustment is needed to make the mark darker.

India ink has the best contrast and permanency as it does not fade. Drawing I have done in the past will fade to a murky brown color.

In August 2018 I switched exclusively to pencil and ink. After some ink is applied the pencil is then erased. Traditional ink nibs, give the best line but they tend to grab the fiber of the paper making tight details difficult.

This year I have added watercolor to the ink drawings. Color can be added after scanning using photo software however direct addition of watercolor preserves the organic quality of the image.

Tools of the Trade

Traveling into a future time:  OBE beings in familiar territory but the further away from my physical body I travel the more the environment shifts away from the familiar. As I move away from my house I notice significant changes in the neighborhood. Grass grows on the street, the landscaping becomes overgrown and as I turn the corner I notice the houses are in disrepair. I am told that I have traveled 100 years into the future. The houses are abandoned.

Handwritten

Recurring objects and scenes: Elevators, shallow floods on the floor and a variety of toilets. Sometimes its a symbols and sometimes it a thing and sometimes its a means to an idea.