Well today I slipped into one of my non-waking states of conciousness...or almost did.

Here is is Friday, end of the week, and we had a presentation at 4 PM. Thanks goodness I didn't have one of the beers or the wine. So the presenter had a slide show, and asked for the lights to be dimmed. I was damned from there on out. I cannot maintain waking conciousness under those conditions. (This is why I don't have a desk job....I can fall asleep in front of the computer.)

Well so I had to sit there and try to stay awake, or at least give the illusion of awake. In thinking this over, I've comer to the hypothesis that the struggle to stay awake when I am sitting up anyway causes me to enter..or almost enter...a state that must have some things in common with Monroe's "body asleep mind awake" thing. Only I'm struggling to keep the body awake at that point. But I seem to hover between the two states...this gets crummy really fast and continues for the hour...but as I flicker into the sleep end, I am always engaged in something ...I'm not sure what. I'm at least engaged in thinking coherent thoughts about something going on in my sleep world. I'm not a blank state, I'm drifting to somewhere else. Where? What's going on? I can never remember. I only recall that it seems cohesive. I struggle back to the talk and try to follow that. I wish I could let go enough to get enough info to remember what I've been doing when I go back to the waking end of things. But if I let go my boss or others I want to impress...or at least not disgrace myself with...will see that I'm asleep.(the eyes do shut a little). I end up missing both shows.

I can't seem to hit this state when I'm alone...I think the stress of trying to stay awake in public also keeps my mind awake enough to see that something else is going on when I'm asleep. I've always hated being inthis state but seminars invariably put me there. I just haven't been to many talks recently. Avoids the whole thing. But I wish I could explore this more.

Does this happen to anyone else?

Also wish I understood why dimming the lights has such a powerful affect on my brainwaves....

Hi Lucy,
the state in which you were seems familiar to me (but it's not triggered by slide shows though it can make me quite sleepy too), it happens when I'm relaxing and not sure if I am awake enough to do mind-traveling or if I'm too tired. Sometimes I end up in this in-between-state; there's much going on, like conversation, planning, engineering, pictures, scenes (private slide show) but I cannot hold it, cannot remember it, and often I turn back suddenly to waking awareness which is uncomfortable. Sometimes when I'm tired and want to rest, but not sleep, I lay myself down and relax and here comes my trick: I allow that parts of mine which are really in need for sleep to sleep, but at least one part should be aware and be able to remember later what's happening. I visualize to leave my physical and other bodies behind me, allow them to go to their sleeping place. Maybe you like to try this?
Bye, Spooky