Journey Into the Space Between “Awake” and “Asleep”

Liminal Dreaming, Lucid Dreaming, Solar Sailing, and The Infection of Desire

Mission

Published in

Mission.org

Sent as a

Newsletter

5 min readJun 25, 2019

Happy Tuesday! Welcome to the June 25, 2019 edition of the Mission Daily Newsletter.

Yesterday our CEO, Chad Grills, took over the newsletter; what’d you think? Stay tuned for more newsletters like this to come (ETA for the next one is Monday the 1st). We’re ready to take you into our next wormhole of musings. 🕳

“Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

Surfing The Edge

Owning Your Dreams

“If you think of the subconscious, dreams, and sleep as the ocean, and you think of the waking, rational mind as the land, then the place where water crashes into land is super chaotic. That’s where all the waves are. And that’s where you surf. So liminal dreaming is surfing the edge of conscious and unconscious.” –Jennifer Dumpert

When we say it’s time to chase your dreams, usually we’re being inspirational. Today? It’s literal. That’s because we’ve been inspired by Jennifer Dumpert’s research (more here) — a sleep expert who specializes in liminal dreaming.💭

What is liminal dreaming? According to Jennifer, “Liminal Dreaming is the space between awake and asleep — hypnagogia when you’re falling asleep, and hypnopompia when you’re waking up.”

And, according to sleep experts around the world, this in-between space might be the key to some of your most interesting subconscious insights. From artists to innovators to scientists, some of the smartest, most creative minds in history have used liminal dreaming as a tool for self-discovery. People like Thomas Edison, August Kekulé, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allen Poe have all indulged in the practice of traversing the space between sleep and wakefulness.

So, if you’re feeling brave (and sleepy), you can try it today:

Liminal Dreaming How-To Guide:

🛋When you’re sleepy, lie down on the couch or in your bed, and breathe really deeply.

🌬Exhale. As you exhale, exhale out all of your waking energy and any tension that’s in your body. Soften your mind. Exhale your daily to-dos, your thought processes, and just wait for whatever shows up.

“It might be a little visual glimmer, might be points of light. It might be a sound. It might even just be something that you’re imagining, like you’re daydreaming. And then let that come into your consciousness.”

😌Exhale again. Exhale your waking energy out. Exhale any mental wordings that you have, everything. Let that animate the beginning of the hypnagogic dream, and let there be a feedback loop. Keep breathing deeply and continue to slow down your own mind and body, loosening your mental grip and letting all of the energy that you’re exhaling bring to life this hypnagogic dream.

“Then you’ll just start to slide into the hypnagogic dream space. It’s really a balance between not falling asleep, giving yourself enough mental juice to stay in the space, but not waking up. It might be easier to find [that line] when you’re falling asleep at night, but then once you’ve learned to find it, you can always find it.”

Ready to try it? Go grab a blanket, settle in, and give it a shot. Let us know what you find. 😉

Catch Some Sheep

Feelin’ Sleeping?

Sleep is one of the most basic processes humans are capable of. Today, people brag about how little sleep they “need” to function. But functioning is not thriving, and getting quality sleep is what it takes for you to thrive all day, every day. Help us shift the narrative about sleep 👉 Tune in to our Sleep Week Series. 😴

#QuickHits

Water Cooler Talk

🚗 Boring Company is back with a new video of a Tesla Model 3 zipping through an underground tunnel at a stomach-lurching 116 mph.

🌝 One small step for man, one giant leap for readers everywhere… From launch day to splashdown, here is a full oral history of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

“In all of science fiction — Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others — no writer had ever envisaged that lunar explorers would be in communication with people on Earth or, even more surprisingly, be able to transmit still pictures or moving images back to Earth. So we understood that was an important component of our flight objectives.” -Neil Armstrong

⛵️ ‘Solar sailing’ is the concept that a craft can capture the momentum of light and use it to propel itself through space. Just a theory now, but soon to be tested by this small, solar-powered spacecraft.

📈 For an interesting visualization of how brands and consumership have changed over the last decade, check out this mesmerizing video.

🤔 Do you really want to do yoga with goats, Susan? Or do you just want to try it because your coworker is posting about it on Instagram?

“We often get infected by the desires of people around us. This should not surprise anyone. We also often start yawning when people around us yawn. And we get infected by the emotions of others — a film can seem much funnier if everyone in the audience is laughing out loud. Our emotions are influenced by the emotions of others. And our desires are influenced by the desires of others.” — Catching Desires

Can we stop this infection? Short answer: Not really — so make sure you are around people whose desires you are okay with catching.

Sign Off 🥂

It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere…

Yoga with goats might not be your thing, but what about the Misfit Vapor 2? The Vapor is a sleek touchscreen smartwatch that puts everything you need to stay on top of your day right on your wrist. 😎⌚️

In partnership with b8ta, we are giving away two for free ַ👉 Enter for a chance to win!

That’s it for today’s edition — what’d you think? Share your thoughts by responding to this email or hitting us up on Twitter @TheMissionHQ. Over the next few weeks, we are going to experiment with the newsletter design and we need your feedback to settle on our final product! Help us, help you, by sending your thoughts and suggestions!