The Art of Noticing

Darin Jawahar

on The Plastic Mind

My travels throughout Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa.

To me, this film represents proof of my own visibility; an alliance between my own visual perception and an artificial recording lens. Shift the perspective, this video becomes a coping mechanism. A sad way of encapsulating an experience that a camera lens could never bring justice to. I still dream of my days in Africa, figuratively at least. The places and people I met will forever be enchanting.

I do not remember having a singular nightmare abroad. I do remember, however, returning to my hometown back in the US, and the nightmares and uncomfortable dreams that returned when I was back.

I understood that I could lucid dream after entering college. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you are consciously aware that you are in a dream, all while it is happening in your mind—even for just a moment. They call it metacognitive awareness.

There are dreams where I remember how things look and feel. I’ve had dreams where I’ve consciously been able to make choices. Where I knew I was dreaming. Dreams I’ve woken up from, but have been able to fall back asleep into intentionally. Dreams that were distorted memories.

On the flip side, I’ve had dreams where I could not dictate what was going on. I would wake up as my body temperature spiked and destabilized. Heart racing, but unable to remember anything. Some nightmares, even when I was lucid, felt inescapable.

Recently, I’ve been reading more from The Body Keeps the Score by Van der Kolk—a book that discusses in depth how the body responds to trauma—how it’s encoded in our nervous system, before our minds can even fathom, let alone realize what we are going through (I highly recommend this book, irrespective of your background with trauma).

Coming back to the Western world felt like a reverse culture shock, and I was reintroduced to an environment where my early childhood nightmares emerged, and where negative thought processes developed.

Many people are capable of lucid dreaming, but knowing a dream isn’t real doesn’t necessarily stop the body from remembering what once was. Its true that there is still a lot of mystery to dreams— lucid dreaming still lacks full characterization. However, there are actual methods, often guided by professionals or therapists, that can help us better understand our minds, past experiences, and bodily reactions in order to work through recurring nightmares. An example method is imagery rescripting, which essentially uses imagination to gently intervene in traumatic memories or dreams.

For my Stranger Things lovers, Bob did try to use this method with Will in Season 2, telling him to tell the shadow monster to go away. Unfortunately, a supernatural, evil-spirited telepathic demon interfered with this mission. Lucky for us, we (hopefully) do not have to deal with that.

The way I see it, nightmares reflect how we see the past and the future. Ruminate on the past, you are on track to depression. Overthinking the future can bring about anxiety. Everyone experiences both. But it’s important to not stop the music. Be present—notice as much as you can. Take your time. Find your rhythm. Nightmares are not necessarily a failure, but a signal. So keep dreaming.