Blissing Out

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

-PJ O’Rourke

Lucid dreams

I lucid dreamed as a child a few times. I realized I was in a dream and proceeded to do as I pleased.

In college and after, I started to write down my dreams when I woke up. My dreams followed patterns. Eventually, I began to notice more and more when I was dreaming. It was an odd realization. Everything felt so real then I went, “wait, this feels familiar. Things don't add up. Is this a dream?” I’d always have the time in the dream where I’m not sure if I’m in a dream or not. It’d take a few minutes to suss things out.

Then, after trying to reconcile it with my real life, it’d be confirmed. There’s no way I’d be in this place. Why are these people all in this area? I don’t remember how I started my day. How did I get here? There’d be inconsistencies with the real world. I’d then know I was in a dream. I could wake up if I wanted to, but I could also explore the world and do whatever I wanted.

I have vivid dreams. I dream even when I take a 20 minute power nap. This makes writing down my dreams easy. It took me a couple years of writing down dreams to be able to lucid dream consistently.

I had so much fun. I had too much fun. It became addictive. Dream life was better than real life. 

I know someone who is talented but is unmotivated to do anything significant in her life. I learned she has lucid dreams every night. Her view is why toil in real life if I can do what I want in dream mode. Her dreams are essentially a free play mode where she can do whatever she wants with no consequences.

In the show Naruto, the main antagonist wanted to enact the infinite tsukuyomi on the world. Meaning, he wanted to put everyone and everything to sleep. Not in a lucid dream, but in a dream that is their happiest world. The catch is, they’d be dreaming forever, until they died. They’d be asleep for the rest of their lives. They’d have dreams of love and friendship. Even those with the most awful lives would get to live out the remainder of their existence in the most blissful, fulfilling dreams. It’d feel amazing to everyone.

But it wouldn’t be real. It’d be an illusion. None of it would be real. It’s why the protagonists fought to stop the infinite tsukuyomi. Similarly, I stopped my lucid dreaming.

Meditation

I started meditating in 2006. Over the years, I went into different types of meditation (mindfulness, transcendental, loving-kindness), exploring what each of them had to offer. This coincided with me getting into philosophy. I leaned into stoicism. I went too deep into both meditation and stoicism.

I felt I had gained control over myself as no matter the external reality, my internal reality stayed constant. Nothing mattered. I’d continue being me, budging for nothing. I’d imagine aliens coming to Earth whether to come in peace or to conquer. I imagined loved ones passing away. I’d practice every extreme scenario until it didn’t phase me. I became perfectly content to simply exist. This sounds great from a resilience standpoint, but I became numb. No ups or downs.

I then learned how to bliss out. To feel immense joy just from meditating. To create and live in a false world. It was less visual than a lucid dream but felt more bodily. I did it for a bit. It felt amazing. It also felt pointless. 

I stopped meditating. The same way I stopped writing my dreams down and stopped lucid dreaming. Now, I still meditate but my practice is reduced, and I’m more purposeful with my meditations.

Meaning

At their extremes, lucid dreams and blissing out meditating both fall into the same bucket as drugs and hedonism. Any practice, even one that is positive can become masturbatory.

Masturbation is great in the moment but feels empty afterwards. You don’t get the lasting positive feelings that real life gives you. The positive hangover doesn’t happen because it’s only positive in the moment. Lucid dreams and blissful meditation satisfied my mind, but it was a simulation of the real thing. Lasting fulfillment comes from real life. 

This is the same reason universal basic income (UBI) doesn’t work. It fails to address human dignity and solve for self worth.

If I thought what I was feeling was meaningful, I could have become a hermit. Between lucid dreaming and meditating all day, life would be stupidly easy. Although demonstrating internal mastery, ironically, it’d be an unexamined life. There’d be no real feedback to examine my life with. I’d be hooked into my own personal matrix. 

My experiences give me hope for future generations. Even once VR worlds are essentially free and tied into our senses, and it feels as good as real life, we’ll know it isn’t real. There will still be people who decide to unplug. People who want to feel something real. I wonder what percent of humanity will be in that cohort.