The dormant seed of a soul, neither dead nor alive, is destined for an eternal journey; neither nourished nor deprived, lost in the hopeless melancholy of existence!!

Jubi Jia

This post represents an abstract black-and-white painting using traditional art techniques to express Sleep Paralysis, incorporating the contemporary “chiaroscuro” effect. If you want to learn more about it, you can also check out my other posts on chiaroscuro art techniques and paintings. However, we will focus today on this canvas painting that may not be my best work, but it illustrates a dream, a sleep paralysis.

Now, to begin with, what does Sleep Paralysis exactly mean? And what inspired this piece of art?

Sleep Paralysis is generally defined as a temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking. Typically, it occurs in people with narcolepsy or sleep apnoea, but it can affect anyone without such chronic disorders. Being awake while also asleep is an experience of pure horror. When suffering from sleep paralysis, most people hallucinate vivid wake-up dreams, which generally result in high levels of anxiety and feelings of fear.

According to most religious beliefs, you feel almost held captive by a black shadow or demonic spirit, an experience I can confirm. You feel like your soul is drained dry as the black shadow. It is like demonic spirits pass through you without letting you breathe or move. There is scientific evidence that this sense of feeling lasts for one or two minutes. Although sometimes, it can feel like you are sleeping or dreaming for an hour or more during Sleep Paralysis.

Well, frequent acts of Sleep Paralysis can also cause sleep loss. “Sleep deprivation” or “sleep loss” is both physically miserable and creatively cathartic, for it awakens internal subconscious horizons. You see, my life has been full of such encounters. And once your only comfort, sleep, begins to haunt you, your daily routine becomes a nightmare. Then again, this art piece, “Dormant,” adds a new dynamic to my usual sleep paralysis. Typically for me, the hallucinations include sightings of ghostly intruders, shadows of dark figures, distant noises, and voices in foreign languages. Recently, however, I experienced a completely different form of sleep paralysis than those I often suffer in my sleep, which inspired me to paint “Dormant.”

This time, before the paralysis began, I strongly remember a dream. It started with my brother and me packing our luggage into the car just before sunset. I had no idea where we were, but we were looking forward to an adventurous road trip. After all that loading, I unintentionally fell asleep in a random motel room, like how it happens in the movies The Matrix or Inception, where you fall asleep inside a dream. While my body was still sleeping in that dream, an earthquake struck, and the surrounding buildings collapsed. It felt frighteningly real to hear people scream and run down that unknown street as I trembled in bed. Chaos reigned everywhere. During that traumatic dream of an earthquake, I opened one eye and saw myself awakened into reality.

And I suddenly had two visions of the night. There was a buzz of movement and chaos with traffic lights and people running on the street. And on the other side, I saw stars outside my bedroom window and felt the silence of the night. And all of a sudden, I found myself in a dilemma. It was either waking up in the real world or waking up inside the dream and joining the crowd in a bid for survival. I felt my soul jumping from one place to another, yet my body was motionless and dormant.

Some people may have had similar experiences. But it was a strange and new experience, especially during sleep paralysis. The following day, there was a moderate earthquake in and around my home state in real life. Despite living in one of the most seismically active regions on the planet, earthquakes aren’t an everyday occurrence here. But after a night such as that, I was unsure how to interpret the significance of the dream.

Nevertheless, despite how traumatizing it was at the time, I would like to view this experience with optimism. Instead of feeling the presence of dark shadows, I felt the mind playing tricks on me during the transition from waking up, which in scientific terms resembles cycling between REM and non-REM while experiencing Sleep Paralysis.

As Eric Hoffer once said, “Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.” What he wrote does not necessarily seem to sit well with my experience. But I contend that the dream or sleep paralysis made me see two pictures, one opposing the other.
And I chose to take comfort in the silence of the starry night.