The Hypnogogue

I've always had an interesting relationshiop with sleep. At times I might even go so far as to call it a "Love-Hate" relationship, whatver that means.
When I was a kid, I usffered from insomnia something horrible From the age of six through 18, I spent at least one night a month awake, and the vast majority of hte rest sleeping three to four hours per night. I've neither or hated this circumstance of my earlier years. What would be the point? I can't change it now, and I couldn't change it then, it was just the way my life was. On the few times the family physicain was brought into the mix, the best that could be offered was that I 'probably' had sleep apnia. Probably because my mom never wanted to go the next step of having me put throughthe tests at a hospital or clinic somewhere. I never could understand why not, as I was a military dependant and covered by pretty decent health insurance.
My mom often objected to going to the doctor, or it seemed to me, sending my brother or I to the doctor on religious grounds. My mom was a Christian Scientist, but not a very good one. A good one, would not have gone to the doctor at all. A good one would have taken the time to explain to her own children why they didn't need to go to the doctor instead of giving them a pamphlet provided by the church or having the Sunday School teacher talk to them. Hell, she could have at least been present when one of these 'talks' were occurring. Well, I guess I"ve hit a nerve that I wasn't aware was still so raw, and now I'm full of piss and vinegar. Where is a scream therapist when you need one?

Anyway, when I went off to college, the sleep/no sleep issue got a bit out of hand. It became pretty common, as in weekly, for me to stay up for a couple of days straight and then sleep for like twelve hours, then a couple of nights at maybe five or six hours before starting it over again. Not only was I really fucking up my body's natural rhythms, I was doing a bunch of other shit to myself that I would pay for later. Add a bout of Mono to the mix, stir in some mysticism and shamanism and I developed a sleep disorder.
Hynogogia is a state of being on the cusp of both the conscious and the unconscious/subconscious mind. For an average person, it's never a big deal because they only spend between 15 and 90 seconds in this state. To someone suffering from this sleep disorder, the hypnogogic state extends from seconds to minutes. A hairy guy I once knew quite well told me that he thought I was trying to break down that border between my two levels of consciousness.
I won't get into what I was trying to do, that's a story I would rather tell in person.
By the time I was out of college, four to five nights a week I spent 30 to 40 minutes in a hypnogogic state as I tried to get to sleep. I had spent so long trying to achieve this state, that I couldn't turn it off.
There are two phenomenon of this brain state that are important to note. The most significant is that your body is locked down. No matter how much you want to move, or think you are moving, you can't budge, and I"m told someone trying to move your arm, let's say, can't because your fight against it. The second feature is that your eyes may or may not be open. If they are open, whatever thoughts/dreams you may be having can be superimposed over your field vision as some kind of ultra-real-seeming hallucination. Start thinking about every alien abduction story you've ever heard when filtered through the above information, with a firm base in Jungian psychology and you will come to understand the phenomenon in a more meaningful way.
I think probably some of you would like me to take a stand and dismiss alien abductions at this point, but I would rather think that they are misinterpretations of real phenomena and beyond the ability for anyone to decisively dismiss as false. But, I'm not saying that literally little grey men are coming down and anal-probing people. I think that's probably a load of horse shit.

Recently, I was reading a novel in which the main character talks about hypnogogia and that he's experienced it not only on falling asleep, but upon waking as well. This seemed new to me. How I could only have experienced it one way? The answer is the modern (in)convenience of the alarm clock. If it's doing it's job, it snaps you awake. I've used an alarm clock somewhat religiously since I was 12, I say somewhat in that I do it every day out of force of habit, not for 'religious' reasons.
I discovered a couple of days ago, however, that there are circumstances in which one can use an alarm clock and not be jarred awake, and in fact due to environmental conditions be brought gently enough out of the unconscious state to enter the hypnogogic state. I didn't plan this, nor do I plan on repeating this, but it's very interesting that it happened a couple of days after reading the passages mentioning it.
As an aside, in a book by the same author, there was another moment of synchronicity that slapped me in the face and said, "Hello, Martha!" The author, incidentally, is the late Roger Zelazny and I was reading his series of Amber books - ten books in 14 days.
To set this up, it's important that I often listen to music or NPR while I read or write, though mostly just music when I'm writing. On this particular afternoon, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. The books were told in the first person and the main character begins to compare his current situation to Joyce's Ulysses. Just as I read the word 'Bloom', I hear it on the radio. As I turn my focus away from my eyes to my ears, I realize that they are indeed talking about the same character and that the context of the story is almost identical to the situation that the main character is describing in the book.
Needless to say, aster I read a couple of short stories by Zelazny, I will be cracking out my copy of Ulysses and getting to work.