Dream Tripping – Erowid Dreaming Vaults
Published in the Erowid Dreaming Vaults in August 2016
The urge to play with consciousness is hard-wired into the human psyche. Little kids roll down hills to make themselves dizzy or press their palms against their eyes to create visuals. They spin in circles until the world tilts into an altered state of reality. They naturally transmogrify their experience of themselves and of the world before they form ideas about the legality or morality of doing so. Adults drink alcohol, take psychoactive drugs, dance themselves into trance states, and seek all manner of altered experiences from sweat lodges to meditation retreats. Even the most straight-edge teetotaler will try downhill skiing or a roller coaster ride for the adrenaline rush.
We have a smorgasbord of substances, technologies, and practices that can aid in our pursuit to play with our minds. And yet many ignore one of the best playgrounds we have: dreams. Dreaming is the original nonordinary mind state. It’s also the one most universally experienced. Most of us visit bizarre, visionary worlds during the one-third of our lives that we spend asleep.
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