Beyond the Blue Horizon

[amd1953]

I sense that I am approaching the blue horizon.   Even so, it retreats further away from me as if trying to conceal something important from me.   What is there to hide that is worth so much subterfuge?   What is it I need to know in this final stage of life?   Who knows?   Who cares?   Well, I certainly do.   I want to understand everything that comes my way whether it is meant for me or not.   Life is short enough without the sensation of feeling cheated and deceived.   The challenge is to discover how to cut through the nonsense that cloaks its true meaning.   If I were a camel, I would feel at home in the desert.   If I were a dromedary, I would, indeed, feel cheated.   See Wikipedia for camels/dromedaries.   Spoiler alert!   A dromedary only has one hump.   If I were searching for a new home, I would look to the exoplanets.   Cosmologically speaking, a much better place to permanently reside.   The moon would be much too close for comfort.   I am thinking another galaxy would be great.   Certainly within a short drive to the restaurant at the end of the universe for tea and crumpets.   Like Albert Camus, I am a rebel without a cause.   I choose the absurdist rather than the existentialist philosophy.   Everything in this life is engineered towards those with skills, talent and the will to succeed.   I have now lost sight of the blue horizon.   I am in freefall back to earth where I will lie quietly in the lush meadows and star at the blue sky.

amd1953

[amd1953]

We put so much faith into our relationships in the hope that they will work out and happiness will prevail.   We trust without question that the other half of the relationship will work as hard as we do to make it all work.   It's not a game to see who emerges the winner.   We don't use people like that if we value our own sanity.   At least, we shouldn't.   I made the mistake of trusting a lot of people in my time, only to discover that it was just a game to be played out and the winner takes all.   I made the mistake of thinking that a marriage/relationship was based on mutual trust and making decisions together so that the relationship was always on a solid foundation and moved forward.   Silly me!   These are lessons that inform and punish at the same time.   Kowing what I know now how fickle and insincere some people are, I would never have put myself through the experience that I did a few decades ago.   I would have stayed on my own and made the best of what I had and what I could do for myself.   Love and romance?   I don't even know what they mean any more.   They are just words in the dictionary without meaning.   When I was younger, I hated the thought of going through life without someone to love and be loved in return.   All empty dreams now as the memories fade into dust.   Every day pushes those memories further away from me, as if they never really happened.   Perhaps better to acknowledge that I was never intended to find love.   Probably not the kind of sentiments from a rapidly ageing old man.   However, I am human.   That is one thing at least that I have going for me.

amd1953

[Croix]

Dear Amd1953~

Ive read your other post Disenchanted where you decided to live with the things that please you but express unhappiness that so much costs too much, not for good reason, but just so a segment of society can profiteer.

Frankly as one gets older the warning attached to just about everything, while mainly correct, mean less and less. I hope you enjoy these choices and live well.

Here you have talked about the fact that not all partnerships have worked out, and you have suffered greatly as a result. It's been so bad you have lost faith in people - quite understandable.

While I'm not advocating you take any particular action I would like to disagree with you - at least in part. My idea of a partnership is pretty much the same as I imagine yours to be. Wanting  life long association, with love and caring, looking after the other person first and being there for them in good and hard times - someone you can trust and share fun and intimacy.

Some might say my expectations are not realistic. All I can say is that in my early 20's I found my soulmate and we lived a loving relationship until she prematurely passed away with multiple health issues. She was all the things I've described above.

At 50 I remarried and have one again been incredibly fortunate having had nearly 30 years of love, we are still together and I expect will remain so.

The only rule we have is that we never say anything, no matter how angry, that cannot be taken back. For example we never threaten divorce. We also do not in anger try to hurt the other, so if my partner was overweight (she is not in fact) I'd never say she was fat.

The world is a mix, you have been unlucky, however you may meet others whom you can respect and admire, neither of us has a crystal ball

Croix

[Croix]

Dear Amd1963~

I've replied in your other thread The Loss of Faith

as I think they may be related

Croix

[amd1953]

After a night of sleepless dreams, I am not motivated to do anything productive today.   I got dressed to go out but now I dislike the idea immensely.   Hearing the traffic roaring past outside has reduced my desire to absolute zero.   Why did I want to go out anyway?   This is what I ask myself every time I feel I need to escape my reality.   Much better to remain behind the stout walls of my castle keep.   Here is a place that I can be whatever I choose to be whether anyone else likes it or not.   Far from the madding crowds of hostility and possible confrontation.   Out there where it is cold and grey with never a smiling face to be seen or a kind word spoken.   I hear the world turning, day after day, with no purpose in sight.   My blue friend opposite me is nodding in agreement.   Only he truly knows me and understands exactly what I go through each and every day.   He just dropped by for a chat and now he doesn't seem to want to leave.  This is not life, but an existence based on the will to survive.   How wonderful it would be to awake one morning and discover that I am the only person left alive on the planet.   What manner of madness is this?  What logic or reason seeps through the cracks of civilisation?   We should all go back to the trees and start over again.   Outside, the world sinks into silence after the passing of each horseless carriage only to be replaced by something more deadly, the sound of nothingness.

amd1953

[Mark07a]

I found your post comforting to read.

[amd1953]

I almost forget what a full night's sleep feels like.   Usually, I manage to grab about three hours sleep before I wake up and wait for drowsiness to overcome me once again.   I dream, which equates to deep sleep.   I dream of fantastic distant lands and people who only exist in my head.   I look forward to my dreams, and I am disappointed when I cannot recall them later upon waking.   I often find myself wishing that I could invent my own dreams.   A kind of alternative reality.   Anything to get me away from this one.

But is it real and which is the dream?   A subconscious state in which anything could and often does take over me.    Sometimes, I know I am still me but other times I adopt another persona.   In my dreams, or my flights of fancy, as I prefer to call them, I leave this world and enter the twilight zone where I often become someone else completely.   I even think differently while I watch the dream unfolding.   I am usually running away from something or running towards something.   I am often chased by one or more people.   When they get too close, I stop and open a hidden trap door and disappear.   Sometimes I am walking through a vast building full of corridors and twists and turns.   How wonderful it would be to be able to capture these adventures on video.   The possibilities would be endless.   It must be something similar to a virtual game experience.   Sometimes, I know that I am someone else.   The scary ones are where I change sex.   Perhaps the least said about those, the better.   I love my ability to dream because of the variations that present themselves to me.   It is almost like watching someone else living the dream and I am merely the observer or spectator.   I am going somewhere but I never know why.   I see locations that I could never imagine.   Worlds that fold around me and draw me into whatever new scenario that happens to be.   Many times, when I awake, I remember all or part of the dream and I am wondering where the source of the dream begins.   What triggers the dream itself?   Does it mimic reality or is it just an offshoot of my normal life?   So many questions remain unanswered.

amd1953

[therising]

Hi amd1953

That sounds absolutely amazing. I'm wondering whether you have some control over the dreams, like with opening that trap door. At the moment I'm invested in an audible book called 'Lucid Dreaming Plain and Simple', by Robert Waggoner & Caroline McCready. I bought the physical book as well, after watching/listening to Robert Waggoner on a podcast recently. I've heard others speak on lucid dreaming but never in the same simple, exciting and insightful way as Waggoner. He's a practitioner of lucid dreaming himself.

The book offers the idea that there's so much more to be achieved through dreaming than what we imagine. With studies and science backing certain findings, it's actually quite mind blowing. Whether we're lucidly dreaming to find an answer to a question, consciously navigating our dreams just for fun or we're doing it in order to get our subconscious to help manage physical ailments, the possibilities seem endless. So, it's about next level dreaming. I suppose a little like daydreaming but on a much deeper level, while consciously managing the subconscious. What a trip! By the way, my 20yo son manages lucid dreaming. Before going into sleep at night, he decides what he's going to dream doing. Whether it's flying, shooting fireballs out of his hands😂 or something else, he loves it and is offering me tips such as 'You have to start a dream journal'. 

I suppose you could call dreaming a kind of virtual reality, with us virtually there minus the physical body aspect. No matter what, it's an alternate or alternative reality. Sixteen hours in this reality, which can definitely be a tough one to navigate, and eight ours in our alternate reality. Let's not forget some time spent daydreaming too. While I think the word 'reality' can be incredibly important when it comes to offering us a sense of grounding in a world that requires us to be grounded in a number of ways, the word can be taken way too seriously at times. No harm having some light hearted soulful fun with it, 'I'm going into my favourite reality tonight when I go to sleep, so as to have a well earned break from my not so fun reality'.

Some of the greatest minds in history were great daydreamers or night dreamers. Some ideas, inventions, mind blowing revelations etc can only be found in dreams, before being brought into our waking reality.