"A Lesson in Na'vi Pain Management" - 12/30/2010

"A Lesson in Na'vi Pain Management"
12/30/2010

(Tried a little dream incubation, this morning, and paid for it. I had turned on Avatar, focusing on my intention to draw myself into the movie, through DILD. Unfortunately, it worked. Quite possibly the most painful dream I have ever had in my life. I wasn't even on B6, but I did have a good liquor buzz when I went to bed. It was just as intense, though.)

I was Jake, from the movie Avatar, standing high in one of the mighty, cloud-scraping trees of the life-harboring moon, Pandora. The war with Colonel Quaritch was soon coming, and the rest of the Na'vi were off somewhere else, preparing themselves for the impending battle. Upon a single, gargantuan branch of this tree, I was being trained by a man who identified himself as an old arch-enemy of mine. He looked human, but this dude was enormous; bigger than I was, even at Na'vi size. (He kind of looked like this picture of Heihachi Mishima, but thicker; with longer limbs, and completely bald.) According to this guy, I wasn't quite 'ready' to face Colonel Quaritch and his battalion. I was still "just Jake," and - as this guy would tell it - I was not accustomed to my Na'vi form enough to maximize its potential. So, he was about to teach me about how to manage my perception of pain, as experienced through this neuro-linked clone of a Na'vi body, that my human mind was inhabiting.. Apparently, I had somehow already known that this powerful man was renown for his skills - on an interstellar level - and my best move would be to listen to everything he said. I braced myself, knowing I was going to be in for a tough trial.

Suddenly, I was rocked in the stomach with a fist that might have caused a human being to explode on impact. Another one followed, with yet another close behind. Before I knew it, I was on my knees, in agony; my ribs feeling like they were being beaten in with a baseball bat. He didn't stop, though, screaming at me to get up, just before slamming me with another devastating body shot. This man was definitely not human - as if his size didn't immediately give that away. His strength was something straight out of a video game, and I could swear I was able to sense the shock waves jetting off of each punch to my midsection. I honestly don't know of many times I've ever felt pain like this - if any. The blows drove in on me...almost rhythmically. He was in no rush...just punching away, at his leisure. Completely unprepared for this, I tried desperately to drag myself away from him; helpless.

At this point, I didn't know if he was supposed to be teaching me or was actually trying to kill me. That was until he began to explain how I had the potential to block all of the pain out of my mind, and maintain focus and endurance for battle. He said that it was something that all warriors were able to do, and that I would be able to tap into the Na'vi's ability to do it at an accelerated rate (which was never explained as having been an actual ability of the Na'vi, in the movie. I think this DC just made it up on the spot, which is interesting). He wasn't exactly nice about it, though... Each punch would hurl itself into my gut, and I would yell out in pain - this man's only response being to yell back at me for not taking it 'like a warrior'.

...I definitely didn't feel like a warrior, at the time...

The cadence of punches continued, and I was now in too much collective pain to fight back, even if I wanted to.  Still, I dragged myself along the beast of a tree branch beneath us, which easily supported our bodies without wavering. He was all over me, though, and just would not fucking let up. He jumped from one side of me to the other, anytime I would start trying to scramble away a little more quickly. Each punch was now starting to bring me closer to tears, already having me openly screaming out with each torturous thud - and he could see it. He picked me up to my feet, my body practically limp, and glared at me sternly. Holding me up with one hand and barking at me to 'stop crying', he slammed more punches into me with his free hand, and each one was no less crushing than the last. I was being brutally beaten, and it was more than I could bear.

The gnarled look of torment in my face was slowly turning into a snarl of determination. I knew I couldn't just sit there and let him beat me to a meat-sack of pulverized bone. My eyes locked on his, and my fists tightened - every muscle in my body soon following suit. Immediately, he picked up on this and sneered, growling "WHAT?! ARE YOU ANGRY?! HUH??" through his teeth. His eyes were on fire with the a show of malice that just couldn't have been false. This was becoming a life or death situation. I felt my legs strengthen beneath me, beginning to stand up straight, slowly, but almost involuntarily. The pain was sequentially residing as the fist continued to pound away. I was getting stronger with each blow, able to sense that each punch would still have left a crater upon the trunk of the enormous tree we were in, yet I was becoming increasingly unable to feel them.

After a few more seconds of the onslaught, I was standing up tall, glaring at him with a scowl. Finally, he stopped punching, glaring back at me, still looking at me like a mortal enemy, but no doubt gauging my stoicism after such a merciless attack. From what I could tell, he had decided that I must have been successful in my ascension. My torso still burned from all angles, but my entire muscular structure felt tightened and invigorated. The pain was still there, and it was damn intense....but I just didn't care. He told me that I was now ready for battle...

My recollection of the dream skipped ahead, and I was then running and jumping through the towering trees with a female Na'vi. She swung across a gap between branches, on a vine, and I did the same, right behind her. The two of us landed on another branch, this one just barely big enough for us to fit upon. When we landed, I took a sweeping glance down toward the ground - hundreds of yards below us - and I felt my stomach turn. It was the first time that I realized just how high up we really were. I found myself thinking "what the hell am I doing way up here?" and I think this could have eventually led to lucid dream. However, all chance of that soon disappeared, when our attention got drawn to the sight of the Colonel's aerial gunships flying in over the landscape, toward our village. What might have been our last run through the trees together was now over, and it was time to go to war.

(I woke up here, and the movie was actually just getting to the final battle, practically in sync with the content of my dream, leading me to believe that some of the audio might have been seeping into my dream, when I was beginning to awaken - which happens every now and then I was hungover, and it seemed to take some time for the sensation of pain in my stomach to fade. Instead, it seemed to go to my head, which was now throbbing. Even some time after all of this, while sitting at the computer, I had to hug my stomach, just because it seemed like the faintest - probably just mentally projected - trace of that horrible pain still lingered.

Not the best sleep I've ever had...)