Beyond the Human Cage

After decades spent trapped — in my dreams, by an unhealthy self-narrative and by my own actions — I stumbled across what turned out to be the missing piece of a puzzle. The solution had escaped me for as long as I could remember. I finally played that last piece; and for the very first time in my adult life, I exited my mind’s prison, and walked away.

The author © Nadia Dara Diskavets 2015

At 51, I finally exited the game.

After decades spent trapped — in my dreams, by an unhealthy self-narrative and by my own actions — I stumbled across what turned out to be the missing piece of a puzzle. The solution had escaped me for as long as I could remember. I finally played that last piece; and for the very first time in my adult life, I exited my mind’s prison, and walked away.

One week later, I am still processing what happened. That’s because whatever ‘it’ is, it occurred below the level of consciousness, finding its outlet in a dream. This dream, beginning no differently from nearly every other one I’ve had for perhaps four decades — one in which I am being chased unyieldingly, or bound to repeat an inescapable sequence of acts from which there is no end — was the very first one in which I can recall not succumbing to my own psychological labyrinth.

The way in which it played out — one that has already manifest in waking changes — was incredibly complex. It was, perhaps, the most complex dream I’ve had, boasting three more levels of confinement and emotional torture than the nine Circles of Hell Dante Alighieri described in his epic medieval poem, The Inferno.

But it’s just a dream… right?

Dreams

Dreams, I believe, are no less real than the thoughts we generate in a wakeful state. Perhaps, as Michael Pollan learned in writing his book, How to Change Your Mind, it’s because we now know from fMRI research that the dreaming self is — like other so-called ‘altered states’ — simply a version of reality that is unburdened by the rigid paradigms to which our brains’ master controller, the default mode network, strictly adhere. The DMN, which is a…