April | In Your Dreams

 A DREAM COLUMN

The arrival of spring means a collective increase in dreams, since your body is more likely to reach the end of a REM cycle in warmer temperatures. And here at In Your Dreams, we’re ready to attempt to make sense of your wildest ones. Like this month’s dreamer, who took an unexpected walk on the wild side. Let’s get into it…

In this dream, I am sitting in a field meditating, eyes closed. Suddenly I open my eyes, and there’s a gorilla slowly emerging from the foliage nearby. I freeze and feel nervous that it’s going to see me, which it does. It seems like it might come closer, but after a long moment of staring at each other, it turns around and goes back into the bushes.

Ooh it’s bit nervy to have such an intelligent, muscular creature creep up on you like that. Imagine if that happened in real life. You’re cross-legged in a lovely meadow, attempting to empty your mind of all thought, which is surely impossible but that’s what they say so, what the hell, you’re trying, when out of nowhere, there’s a gorilla. Suddenly your mind is very much not empty of thoughts, but rather the opposite, nearly bursting with thoughts that probably sound something like: Oh my god, a gorilla. A literal gorilla is in this field with me. How is that possible? Did it escape the zoo? I feel like I would’ve heard about that. I’m surely hallucinating. My melatonin from last night must still be hitting. Damn, and I was just starting to really get into the meditation groove. Inner peace was just out of reach before it was dashed by 500 pounds of wild animal. So I’ve still got all my problems, plus one additional, namely this f*cking gorilla because it’s definitely real. Shouldn’t it be in a jungle? Oh god, it’s looking around. What if it sees me? I’ll stay as still as possible, try to think myself invisible. Ahh, it’s looking at me! It’s looking at me. What do I do? Do I keep making eye contact? Or is that bad, am I supposed to look away? I can’t remember. I can’t look away. I… I feel a little hypnotized by its eyes, honestly. There’s something nearly human there…

Y’know, something like that, just spitballing. Your inner monologue may vary, of course.

In the modern world, it’s rare to not have some version of an anxiety gorilla hanging over your head. A decision you’re avoiding, a phone call you’re dreading, or a little nagging feeling that something feels your relationship feels off.

This gorilla might be something in the back of your mind making itself known. In the modern world, it’s rare to not have some version of an anxiety gorilla hanging over your head. A decision you’re avoiding, a phone call you’re dreading, or a little nagging feeling that something feels your relationship feels off. Something might be emerging from the underbrush of your consciousness to give you a jolt of recognition. There doesn’t seem to be cause for alarm at the moment. Your gorilla is pretty docile. Intense eye contact sounds pretty tolerable when you realize this is an animal that could’ve galloped in and body slammed your ass to smithereens.

Whatever it’s here for, you’ve been invited to notice. And maybe that’s enough work for the moment. In the late nineties, Harvard psychologists performed a study where they asked participants to watch a video and count how many times a group of people passed around a basketball. At the end of the clip, about half of the research subjects were surprised to learn that while they’d been distracted by counting, they had neglected to notice the man in a gorilla suit who’d walked plainly through the frame. This phenomenon—-where individuals miss something surprising because they are focused on something else—-is known in psychology as inattentive blindness. So there you have it. Awareness of the gorilla is half the battle, science says so.

And when it’s finally time to tackle things head-on, you might find it was worse in your head than in reality. You never know, you might naturally be one with the apes, a regular Jane Goodall.


If you’ve ever woken up from a dream like, what the hell was that?, and would like to be featured in the next In Your Dreams, contact us at dreams@lunya.co with a detailed description of the inner workings of your unconscious mind. We're dreaming of hearing from you.