4.15h after falling asleep – (Supposed REM stage of sleep, 3rd interval) – 09/10/2011

09/10/2011

Bedtime: 1.00

alarm: 5.15

audio-recording duration: 1h

Now it seems to me that my mind is riding the wave of the flow of my thoughts, it does not watch it flowing away, my mind is upon it.
6sec
it is easier for me to complete my sentences…
20sec
it is easier for me to complete my sentences, although there  is still a tendency to complete them through my inner voice. on my own.
1.04
mmm
10sec
I hope that then Riccardo… he will really like the new school, he will meet my expectations…
9 sec
yawn
23sec
… my mind is getting prepared…
2.41
…let’s see what Riccardo will think of this new school
1.14
mmm
6sec
I need to go to the toilet
1.47
…because I have admitted Riccardo in the “*incoprehensible”
8sec
mmm
29 sec
I have just thought that I fell down, I slipped…in the new neighbourhood, where the school is bigger…
1.07
maybe Riccardo… “*incomprehensible”
7sec
… they are free in their…
23sec
Like before even now there is a periodicity of ideas, they are born out loud, then I completed them through inner voice and then…the subject of the flow of ideas… changes…
33sec
mmm
3sec
…if you don’t cultivate…the room number 6, you cannot cultivate well “*incomprehensible”
6.05
movement and a sigh
40.30 and then – after 1h – the recorder stops by itself.

 

Comment of the day after: The sentences related to the subject I want to talk about – my mind states – are now completed almost in a single breath, while unlike the other recordings of different stages of sleep, this time I don’t need to make the effort to try to catch or to try to remember even my ongoing thoughts: parts of my thoughts/dreams spontaneously turn my speech in almost a delirium. And then I speak again about my mind with lucidity…and then again delirious words… and again about my mind… and delirious sentences…

Pauses between sentences are longer now, they represent not only a moment of switch between the most intimate part and the outward part of my mind. Pauses are now an occasion of switch among several mind processes and condition: dreaming (…because I have admitted Riccardo in the “* incomprehensible”;…if you don’t cultivate…the room number 6, you cannot cultivate well ”*incomprehensible”), consciousness of dreaming (I have just thought that I fell down, I slipped…in the new neighbourhood, where the school is bigger…), loss and regain of the control of my speech, emotions related to upcoming events (my son Riccardo would have changed school soon), judgements about the school (they are free in their…) …

Emotions were leading my thoughts/dreams and for moments they completely led my speech too. Actually one emotion was especially involved: my concern about the new school and neighbourhood; but this one emotion could unfold a wide range of imagined situation in which it had a reason to be, it got a sense.

This time I didn’t talk about the condition of my body; I couldn’t distinguish the difference of my body in movement in the dream (…I have just thought that I fell down, I slipped…) and my body still in bed.

30 minutes after falling asleep – (Supposed 4th stage of sleep, 1st interval) – 09/10/2011

09/10/2011

Bedtime: 1.00

alarm: 1.30

audio-recording duration: 1 hour

If I think for too long…
15seconds
… or if I listen for too long…
9sec
… about…
59 minutes of supposed deep sleep

——————————————————-
——————————————————-

09/10/2011

Bedtime: 1.00

alarm: 2.40

audio-recording duration: 0

I have not even heard the alarm

Comments of the day after:  I was especially surprised I have not even heard the alarm in my second attempt to interrupt my supposed stage of sleep 4.  It seems to me that the part of my mind involved in my inner world – thoughts, inner voice, imagination, etc.. – and the part of my mind involved in the interaction with the outer world – language, perception, cognition, awareness, etc… – follow  a very peculiar and specific dynamics during sleep.

Both the most intimate part and the outward part of my mind seem to completely converge (or diverge…) during deep sleep, while during less deep sleep stages, they become more parallel but with very low interaction between them (I cannot speak a lot about my thoughts, even about the ongoing thoughts…). My outward part of mind is aware of my intimate part but cannot grasp it, cannot analyse it, cannot explain it… unlike as usually happens when I am awake…
But I still know who and where I am and even what I am doing… turning on and off the recorder.

While my outward mind can access neither my inner flow of thoughts, nor my inner voice,  nor my visual images… it seems my inner mind have some access to my outward mind (I can complete my sentences by inner voice, I can easily include what I was talking about in my inner flow of thoughts…). Actually my inner dimension is now the leader of all the dynamics of my mind: there is no consciousness power, there is no willingness power that can divert its path, its speed, its track/sense of the time…

There is almost not ongoing memorization, there is almost not recalling ability. There is at the same time both everything and nothing, both no space and infinite, both now and ever. A single detail of a thought can immediately become a context and a context could immediately become the detail of an higher thought. And my consciousness – like my memory - is more limited and more rich at the same time…

Dream: I was inside an email!

Content: My visual field consisting in the act of reading an email was completely the same visual field of my dream. The email was sent to me by my grandfather (*who died many years ago); there was a picture in the bottom of the email and I scrolled down the scroll bar to see it, but I only saw our previous emails before I wake up.
I don’t remember the contents of our emails.

Feelings: Even the title of the email took much of my visual field of my dream but trying to read the email – with its white background that soon completely took my visual field – it made me feel as if I were inside the email!

A little bit of my inner voice commented the fact to have received that email and wondering about its content. After I tried to read – or maybe I was just guessing a meaning from the groups and lines of characters –  my attention finally went toward the large white background surrounding the text of the email.

And just in that moment I realized there was nothing between me and the “object”/(email), there was no “mental room” between my visual perception and my inner mind – probably because the dream itself represent in the same time both my visual perception/(imagination) and my inner mind.
And in that large white space, among the small and black characters, the feeling of myself just emerged…I purely felt my Self within that empty whiteness, and suddenly I woke up.  Amazed.

3h 20minutes after falling asleep – (Supposed 2nd stage of sleep, 6th ascending interval) – 08/10/2011

08/10/2011

Bedtime: 1.00

alarm: 3.23

audio-recording duration: 13.11 minutes

Inner voice.
5 seconds
I don’t remember any more about what…
10 seconds
No sensation of block of my body. 
35 sec
I need to go to the toilet…
10 sec
… I need to go to the toilet…
5 sec
But.. there is no block of my body but…
15 sec
…I am fairly immobile.
37 sec
I can’t…
5 sec
…I have difficulty to construct a sentence…
…and to use the short-term memory; 
I immediately forget everything.
I don’t know what to say…
22 sec
In this moment rumour has it …
4 sec
… that …
5 sec
oh my! I cannot articulate even a sentence, I immediately forget what I was saying  (yawn);
I have too much difficulty in talking…
18 sec
(yawn)
5 sec
… because my thoughts change quickly;
more quickly than language.
28 sec
My thoughts change quickly, and my mind…
5 sec
more quickly than images…
8 sec
(yawn) more quickly than images.
40 sec
My thoughts change quickly…
4 sec
…without a memory.
5 sec
They just change and I do not even remember which they are…
6 sec
(yawn)… these thoughts.
25 sec
I am not able to describe what I am thinking about
5 sec
… because everything is too fast.
8 sec
(yawn)
30 sec
It is difficult…
8 sec
…to talk. 
12 sec
(yawn) My body is still
6 sec
… but no feeling of stillness.
23 sec
There is no continuity between my thoughts, my inner voice…and my language;
they are isolated things.
4 sec
Some image is isolated too… 
and all my thoughts disconnected with each other…
or very few connected,
and they mutate… mutate…
44 sec
I am a passive spectator of my thoughts…
30 sec
everything changes quickly in my thoughts.
17 sec
… We were scared…
3 sec
… we were… oh my! I am not able to talk about what I am thinking, 
it is impossible
5 sec
it is disconnected… 
… from any ability of expression; 
I cannot speak about that.
25 sec
I am hardly repeating in my mind what I just said
and it is…
7 sec
…completely disconnected 
4 sec
I cannot think about what I said and what I am about to say, 
it is too difficult, there is no power to…
3 sec
…a power to… predict, anticipate… 
…in my mind, about what I am going to say, because my thoughts follow as a river, a stream
4 sec
and talking about that …
5 sec
… and talking means to interrupt this stream. 
14 sec
I need to go to the toilet 

Comments of the day after:  This stage should be the end of the 2nd stage of sleep, really close the beginning of the 3rd interval of REM sleep (…”we were scared” could be the begin of a dream…).

Yawns, repetitions, a different kind of pauses: even if pauses were longer I was more able to follow a thread in my reasoning, even after the longest pause. Still there is a lot of difficulty in talking about my thoughts.

I notice in listening and reading what I recorded that in my speech I was using some degree of control about my thoughts, a degree of “monitoring” and judging that I think it was inhibiting my inner flow of thoughts in emerging through my language: I immediately noticed disconnected thoughts, with no link with what I was saying and thus I immediately inhibited them. This mechanism I think was apart the degree of difficulties in talking about what I was thinking during a sleep state of mind, thereby increasing such difficulties and creating a greater split between what I was really thinking about and what I was saying – or wanted to say. Next time I hope to let my flow of disconnected thoughts emerge more in my speech…

I remember I tried to repeat through my inner speech what I was talking about through language, to create a bridge between language and inner speech and trying to connect the flow of thoughts… but with few results!

4h after falling asleep – (Supposed 2nd stage of sleep early in the morning)

07/10/2011

Bedtime: 23.00

alarm: 3.03am

audio-recording duration: 2.46 minutes

I was thinking…
3 seconds
most voice than visual images
7 seconds
the “dream” was less deep 
5 sec
no paralysis of my body
5 sec
but still inner voice
4 sec
and my emotions
7 sec
few
5 sec
few “concepts”
22 sec
to be in scarce (*incomprehensible) the speech.
10 sec
and memorizing better
11 sec
than before.
11 sec
but I cannot remember my dreams
2 sec
I immediately forget them
2 sec
what I was doing using my inner voice
4 sec
immediately.
14 sec – movement
I cannot remember
2 seconds
it’s vague.

Comments of the day after: It seems that despite some hours later I just continue what I was talking about some hours ago during my first audio-recording, so my speech did not start over but keeps some degree of continuity. The same happens during awake when I resume a suspended speech/reasoning even after years with people I have not meet for a lot of time. Sleep does not change these dynamics of my mind.

Based on my experience, during pauses in audio-recording I am not organizing my thoughts relating what I’m about to say: it is a kind of “dance” between my will to stay awake to record my thoughts, and the sleep that try to dominate me, to dominate all my mind.

During the pauses I actually continue my previous inner voice, completely forgetting what I was talking about even 1 seconds before… Until my will has the upper hand over so I can continue the other reasoning I was involved in audio-recording, completely forgetting what I was thinking about through my inner voice even 1 seconds ago. After few seconds sleep has the upper hand over again and I can continue my previous reasoning through inner voice – and so on, until my will has enough motivation and strength to separate itself from sleep, to emerge and diversify from it.

An alternate suspension and resuming of mental streams having different thoughts/contents; parallel streams that difficultly meet each other, with memory ability only within each stream – still able to memorize for short time their own contents and resuming them even after interruption – but with no information exchange between these 2 streams of reasoning. These 2 stream of reasoning alternate each other in the measure of the duration of my pauses and of the length of my audio-recorded speech. It seems to me that 1 stream belongs to the sleep/inner voice state and 1 stream belongs to what is more similar to a waking state during night: they cannot converge so much at this stage of sleep.

1h 05 after falling asleep – (Supposed 3rd stage of sleep, 2nd descending interval)

06/10/2011

Bedtime: 23.00

alarm: 0.05

audio-recording duration: 6 minutes
I was thinking…
4seconds
by inner voice… I was thinking…
4 seconds
oh my, I do not remember anymore! …I was also thinking a little bit in English and a little bit in Italian…
9 sec
my body…
4sec
is as powerless…
9 sec (movement)
it is as powerless…
4sec
I was thinking but without images…
10sec
and I feel… and I feel…
5sec
as hypnotized.
14sec
This is not a paralysis…
9 sec
because I know I can move…
5 sec
it’s that I don’t care…
20 sec
I don’t care…
17 sec
I don’t want…
10 sec
I do not want more than this…
10 sec
I do not want nothing but to do this: don’t move myself.
3sec
And I don’t remember anything…
2sec
not even what I said 1 minutes ago.
17sec
The direction of my thoughts is opposite… everything is swallowed inside me… and I cannot say anything about what I feel…
3 sec
because…
3sec
I have difficulty…
3sec
in following the thread, a line of reasoning.
7sec
My words,
3sec
my sentences are very short…
3sec
without memory…
6sec
without will.
3sec
Yet they are there around the corner … my memory and my will, but they don’t…
17sec
I quickly lose them.
5sec
Everything remains… everything goes inward,
5sec
expressing outwardly makes no sense.
10sec
Useless saying, moving,
10sec
useless talking,
4sec
moving, recalling:
3 sec
it is useless.
3sec
My thoughts have not the direction from inward toward (/*inward, mistake) toward outward…but from inward to even more inward.

Comment of the day after: I did not remember I said many of these things. I remember more about what I was thinking during the pauses, ie I remember better my feelings and inner voice/thoughts than what I said in aloud: almost the opposite of what happens to me during waking state, when it is easier for me to remember what I was talking about in aloud. I had the impression to continue the sentences in my mind, I did not understand the difference between speaking and thinking … for me there was no difference at this stage.

15/May/2011 10.37am from Audio-recording

I feel a strange warmth on my skin surface as if my skin had thrown away all the slags and wastes during sleep and now it is clean.  As if sleep had cleaned all my body and my brain.

I feel this warmth on my hands… as if my nerves had been de-memorized and now they are ready for new memorizations. I also feel my posture quite de-memorized. But not enough.  I feel that I could sleep again, and clean my body and my mind even more. Even deeply.

But what does “clean my mind” means?

About the body is more understandable: I feel a sense of cleanliness inside and outside of my body, evenwhen the outside of my skin is more greasier than before falling asleep. And I can perceive the smell of the sleep on my skin – not so common by last years, a distant memory from my childhood when I woke up surrounded by this smell of the sleep.

But what about my mind? The cleanliness of my mind is not a sweeping away the memories, but a compression, a synthesis, an integration of them. And this could be possible not working on contents but on emotions related to them.

I feel the contents of my memories are not so changed: what is really changed is my emotions about them, compressed, synthesised, integrated up to make me believe that many levels of my emotions are disappeared, levelled off in my emotive general flow.

And thus the contents of my memory – while remaining the same as usual – they get a great benefit from this process. They get just a new look.

About the cleanliness of my mind by sleep I am also thinking of CO2 and O2…

Sleep has given new life to my whole body and all my mind, taking away the dross of CO2 and who knows of what other substances…

I am thinking about how my breath is irregular when I am awake, how irregular are the CO2 and O2 inhaled and exhaled, according to the succession of external stimuli and the emotive nature of internal ones.

Among a thought, an emotion, a mental effort my breath skips some stages, it becomes irregular, apnoea often arise for seconds and I get less O2, and sometimes I could exhaled less CO2. Or I could get more O2 than CO2 exhaled and vice versa.

As if these irregular breathing and respiratory pauses were important for my mind during awake, as if this could mark my brain metabolically, and thus my memory. But during sleep my mind is free to follow just its need… and this freedom mark my brain metabolically too in a positive way that I can exploit during awake.

The sleep I am loosing, I feel I cannot recover it anymore as the time passes or it is more difficult to recover it if I do not sleep longer. The sleep I am loosing is staying there, as an emotional weight both in my mind and in my body… not yet “slept”. And this weight lies in my Self – or my Self lies in this weight.

I feel all the weight of my lost sleep even in my posture. My lost sleep: my emotional baggage that is increasing more and more.

25/February/2011

I am very tired, physically and mentally tired but it is not yet my usual bedtime and my strength in refusing sleep is still powerful.

My breathing is very slow and superficial: so little air inhaled and even less CO2 exhaled.

I have the impression to directly breathe from my head: as if all the inspired air came directly to my brain without passing through the lungs. A thin breathe which directly goes into the most active areas of my brain, which are keeping me awake. And my body is not benefiting too much from my breathing, it seems to me its activity is as frozen, suspended, timeless.

My brain now is like a black hole at the end of my breathe; it is absorbing air in a non-uniform way: the most powerful part of this black hole takes the most of my inhaled air, while the same most powerful part is dynamically changing both in intensity and in size. Continuously.

And through this non-uniformity of my black hole/brain and its dynamic changes, my consciousness survives.

My breathe instantly follows all these changes… and my mind with them: the chemistry of my brain always gets new balances from the changes of my mind.

But now stimuli has no more power in nourish the dynamics of my black hole, in nourish my consciousness:  only the changing flow of my thoughts keeps the dynamics of my black hole alive, keeps my consciousness alive.

In am using the language of my breathe to keep me awake. Few air inhaled and even less CO2 exhaled: the accumulation of CO2 in both my body and especially in my mind is preventing me from falling asleep; it holds me up.

I need to maintain this rate of breathing if I want to stay awake.  And for what purpose?

A part of me wants to remain lucid, awake… and at the same time, the same part of me would like to fall asleep.

Sleep, my enemy and my friend. Why enemy? It seems to me it turns me off… I don’t know where my Self goes or in what it turns immediately after I fall asleep; and when the night comes, I never like this thing.

Yet I never would wake up in the morning, and I would like lo leave my Self there,where it lies in my mind – fairly traceable by myself during the early morning sleep.

It is the non-traceability of my Self, immediately after falling asleep, that frightens me.

19 February 2011 – 1.53

My eyes are half open but actually they are looking almost exclusively at my mind.  I do not see the objects my eyes fix for few seconds but I “see” just meanings:  a shoelace on the floor is a snake, the picture in front of me is already the scenery of my dream.

And I do not see the walls in my room and I’m not alone - a distant chatter becomes a wrapping sound for a while, and then it becomes the background of my mind. Changing places and dimensions depending on where my eyes lay even for one second.

Only my emotional feelings do not easily change: they direct my mental images tickled by stimuli.

Now 10% of my mind is here in this room and 90% is for otherworlds, all my possible worlds. My will wants to vanish in these worlds, it wants to be dominated by them. And my attention does not select anything anymore about my external world but a mental power tries to spread it as uniformly as possible until I fall asleep. Only mental images are emerging and my attention is trying to connect all them.

My will agrees to explore all the possibilities of my mind, trying not to influence.

I want to dream about places I have never seen; contexts that probably I will never live, and perceive the same sensations I would perceive if all were true.

Yet even a step from the dream, even inside a dream, a small part of me knows the way to the outside world, the way to awakening, the way to the “other” Me  -  the Me I use to interact to the world.

That small part of my mind also knows where I am, “who” I am and it knows that tomorrow morning I am waking up. And this small part of me is now writing this diary even if I am too sleepy.

This night my mind could mix my past with my present time and making them into a “new present time”… or one more possible future.

I could talk to people who I have not seen anymore, I could go back to places now so far, with the feelings and cognition of now … and change something. Changing my past perceptions, my past feelings… thus changing – a little bit every night – the emotions I carry out  in my waking life.

I cannot decide which place to visit, with time to mix, which context to choose: I let now my brain play with my mind.

18/February/2011 1.54

My mind is floating  in a sea of ​​carbon dioxide. It seems to me that the CO2 I breathe out is never enough to clear both my mind and my body.

My will is not enough. My breath knows how to lighten my load of CO2:  it would sink into different rhythms and deepth, compared to those of wakefulness. But my will and external stimuli hold up my breathe.

When I close my eyes my breath is going down, as if a special gravitational force attract it there.  And my mind now is completely immersed in that dense sea of CO2 – like a thick fog.  I do not know if it is this special sea that swallows up my mind or it is my mind -  that abandoning itself to it – digests it, makes changes.

And then I open my eyes and I find my mind a little more clean – and clear… but again – like under some kind of gravitational force, more and more powerful – my breath try to sink and my mind is almost crushed, compressed under the pressure of sleep.

Under this effect my present is frozen, my past – as an integral part of this compelling force – attract my mind, and it does not matter if it is a past about 5 minutes ago or about 20 years ago.

My eyes open up and I remember that there is still a “here”.  Now my present is my modified past – modified by all the following events, and by that hypnotic, magnetic force to which my breath is subjected  -  and my future is my most ancient past.

My will – along with my mind – is abducted by this powerful and silent whirlwind, whose storm centre is my Self: and my Self stands still and loses control in front of the mad game of a Memory – my Memory – with no temporal rules.