Eventually, I came to start to notice a peculiar effect in my waking life. A sense of.... I didn't know yet. It was a feeling, just outside of my realm of conscious thought. Like when there's a word on the tip of your tongue, or when you can't quite name something but think you understand what it is. That feeling was a welling sense of familiarity, but I didn't realize it at first. Initially what stood out was the sense of 'importance'. IDK how else to word it,it was like I'd be relaxed and suddenly get this sense of urgent wakefulness. I'd look around and think about what was transpiring around me to see if I could figure out what was causing this, but I couldn't make sense of it for months. Eventually that changed, and I'll never forget the first time I realized it was familiarity.
I was sitting in a basement in Victoria BC, exhaling a bong hit watching the smoke swirl mixing with the dust in the beams of sunlight coming over my shoulder through the blinds, and I remember thinking to myself 'hey that looks familiar... I've seen that exact swirl before..... IN A DREAM!" - and at that moment a few things happened. I suddenly understood the feeling of urgency was accompanied by a sense of familiarity, only my logical mind started doing backflips trying to make sense of it all. On one hand, I had never lived this moment before, but on the other hand I was now clearly remembering the smoke and dust swirling together in front of me. I looked around, desperate to break the chain of cognitive confirmation that was taking place. Everything I looked at just increased the sense of accuracy and affirmed that I had indeed done this before.
