Recent DJ Posts

I'm disembodied, following a man as he walks out of a stone fortress through a side door. He's upset. I'm trying to mentally push him into making a choice that he doesn't see yet - there's a group of people staying at this fortress, and when they leave, I want him to leave with them. I need him working with them, and he'll be much happier as well. It only hasn't occurred to him yet because that would be desertion, which I think of as a minor nuisance. He's in a position of command in this semi-military, semi-religious order, a position he'd never wanted, and I've been mentally pushing him to focus on all the ways he feels trapped here.

The fortress is surrounded by an evergreen forest, and there's a little snow here and there. He stops right outside the door, believing that he's just getting some air. He's thinking about that group traveling through that I want him to leave with, and thinking about how his order can't show emotion, contrasting it with that group. He's looking at something on the ground that I can't see, and he's thinking that he'd be crying right now if he was capable of it.

I push him to walk further from the door - he thinks of it as walking aimlessly, but I have a direction in mind. There's several tables set up from something going on here during the day, mostly empty now. He looks over the devices assembled on one of them - he doesn't understand how any of them work, but he feels like he's spent all day protecting this stuff from overly curious onlookers, and managing the nobility, and running errands for the great and the good - it seems completely ridiculous to him that this is his life. It's the opposite of where he ever expected to be.

He keeps walking. I make sure he focuses on the little pool of blood on the stone ground here, a dozen or so dead crows around it, deliberately placed in a certain formation. One of his men had called it "a battlefield for crows" earlier. He has absolutely no idea what this disgusting thing is for, it's just one more thing he's had to keep people away from today. As he's looking at it, he sees someone standing at the edge of the woods. He's startled; at first glance, it looks like the man who used to be in command here, who'd moved on a few months ago and left him in charge. He feels relieved - and by feeling the extent of that relief, he's just now become really aware of just how much weight's been on his shoulders since that man left. But then the person moves and breaks the illusion. It's not him.

Ritual: WTB 1am, WBTB 6-7am recording NLDs, woke 7:45am with DILD + FA.

NLD, "Sparked": Walking home at night. Someone drives past in a dark vehicle and I say, "Turn on your lights!" Then I feel embarrassed when I notice she is actually walking. She enters the apartment two doors ahead of mine. The door next to her place is open, and there are people just inside it who give the impression that they are workers, not residents. My bed is the first thing I see when I open the door of my apartment, and I'm pleased to see a large box on it. Oh good, that thing I ordered has arrived.

After looking through the first box and strewing its contents, plastic wrap and styrofoam all over my bed, I open a smaller box that has also arrived. It contains a speaker that I ordered. When I first pull it out of the packaging I am disappointed: the surface is surprisingly dirty. Is it just shelfworn, or did I get a refurbished one by mistake? I'll be annoyed in the latter case, since I thought I was ordering a new one. There is some molded styrofoam that seems like the original packaging, if that's any clue.

The speaker weighs almost nothing, and I remember that this is a special lightweight system. It's portability is limited by its size, however, at about 8x10 inches. The back of it consists of flaps are supposed to fold together in a clever way. As I go to remove the last of the styrofoam supports, something unusual happens inside my head, like an electrical disruption.

I remain calm and think I'd better tell my roommates about this in case it incapacitates me and I end up needing medical attention, so I say aloud: "Hey guys, something weird just happened to me. I felt a "pop," saw a flash of white light, and now in the back of my head I hear a tone that is steadily increasing in frequency."

"You need more sleep," someone suggested. He could be right, but I didn't see the relevance. I do want to go back to bed but I'll have to clear all the box mess off it first.

What was happening to me? I had a contextual clue, at least: "It happened when I touched the speaker for the first time." Perhaps the device had built up some kind of strange electrical charge that I had triggered?

All this time the tone was whining to higher and higher pitches, and I waited with curiosity and slight anxiety to see what would happen next. When it seemed like it had become so shrill that it would soon pass beyond my auditory range, all that happened was that I woke up.

Note: The other day I read about "exploding head syndrome." This might have been a minor instance of it! The "popping" sound and flash of light are apparently classic symptoms. This is only the second time I've experienced something like this.

DILD, "Victorian Gentleman": I'm at a computer trying to order something online. I don't recall what it was, but the cost was over $200. There were some complicated webforms to navigate, and then after some difficulty finding my wallet, my credit card was missing. Meanwhile my stepmother-in-law comes over and offers to let me run her card instead. "No, no, no, no," I say quickly, trying to deter her, having just spotted mine on the table. Too late, she has already run her card and made the purchase. Well, that was nice of her, even if it wasn't what I would have asked for. I should show appreciation. I hug her and say, "Thank you."

Walking outside afterward, I have second thoughts. Was I rude to simply thank her? Maybe she hadn't intended the action as a gift. But even if she had, perhaps it would have been more polite of me to ask when she wanted me to pay her back, and that would give her the option to be magnanimous and say it wasn't necessary. But if she had assumed I would pay her back, wouldn't it be rude of her to create an extra hassle for me that I hadn't asked for? I had told her "no" and she did it anyway. I conclude that under the circumstances, my response was adequate and I should let it go.

As I walk back in the house, behind me I hear a man's voice, distinctively low and gravelly. It is really familiar. Who is that guy? I think he must live next door; I'm always hearing that voice. I sneak a look back before going in and spot him: he is older, gaunt, with straggly grey hair. I think he looks like an aging biker or a math professor (they can look more similar than you might think!)

I continue in the house and decide to repack my suitcase, which is in disarray, when it occurs to me... wait. I have the impression that I hear that man's voice all the time, but I suddenly suspect that I only hear it in dreams. Could this be a dream, then? I realize that it is. This gives me the confidence to go back outside and approach the guy, intending to find out who he is. I would not want to so brazenly walk up to a stranger in WL, but this is my dream so there is no reason to hesitate. As I step back through the door I find myself with handful of silver rings in my right hand that I am putting on the fingers of the left. Why did I grab so many? I'm going to have to put multiple rings on each finger to make them all fit.

Only one person is in sight now, a dapper gentleman in Victorian dress walking by from left to right. He has a neatly trimmed beard, a black frock coat, and a top hat. I've always been fascinated by that era, but in dreams I've never been successful in my attempts to meet historical figures. I wonder if he'll really acknowledge being from that time period. Maybe he's just dressing up?

I get his attention and ask, "Are you from the Victorian era?" He confirms it. I'm interested now so I start walking alongside him, suggesting, "Tell me about yourself." As he begins to reply, I look more closely at his face and realize that he is strikingly good-looking. On a whim I seize his arm and pull him off the road, then push him against the door of a nearby house and start kissing him, thinking meanwhile that in waking life I would never do this with a stranger. Though taken by surprise he responds willingly. The only thing marring the pleasure of the kiss is a little piece of fingernail in my mouth—I must have been biting them—and I try to move it with my tongue so it won't come into contact with his mouth, which would be awkward. During a break in the kissing I manage to swallow the bit of nail, and the gentleman never seems to notice.

After that interlude we continue together down the street. It's odd that I so quickly lost interest in my more intellectual inquiries and succumbed to mere erotic instinct... and annoying, in that I never did get to hear the DC's account of himself. My lucidity apparently faded quite a bit in the process (it was never very keen in this dream), because it doesn't occur to me to ask again, and instead I just walk along with little further thought.

We stop at a shop whose front opens right onto the street, and the gentleman wants to buy an unusual kind of candy that I've never seen before. It is some highly-processed, artificially flavored substance that comes in brightly colored plastic packages. The package can be activated in such a way that its contents will burst out like a foam snake. This is marketed to kids as a toy as well as a snack: they can have mock battles trying to hit one another with the candy snakes, then eat them afterwad. The girl minding the shop explains this to me while showing her a green stain spot on her T-shirt from where one of the candies had landed on her. So they stain clothes, too? I look down and am glad to see that I'm wearing something casual.

FA, "Let the Right One In": I wake up and get out of bed to record the dream. I don't notice anything unusual as I'm walking across the house, but pause in confusion as I go to sit down at my computer. Where's my chair? Why would my chair be gone? Surely I'm not dreaming? At first it feels improbable but gradually I realize that I am. Interesting... well, I want to explore this, but I don't want to lose my memory of the previous dream. It is still clear in mind, so I review the events and even recite a list of key words aloud to help fix my impressions. Then I look around to see what this new dream has to offer.

In contrast to the relative normality of the house, correct in layout but more sparsely furnished than normal, the view outside is catastrophic and extraordinary. A wide frozen river of swelling ice is flowing motionlessly where my patio should be, and cascading down toward the city in the distance. Just beyond it looms a mountain of pure white ice, with a matte, knobbly texture like that reminds me of spray-on styrofoam. Craning my head up, I can just see the narrow peak glittering in the sun. Everything looks incredibly clear and vivid, beautiful and frozen but apocalyptic.

The landscape is packed with people, whose clothes provide little patches of bright color. Bodies are frozen into the river and wander in groups along its banks. The only place free of people is the slopes of the ice mountain, steep and white and pristine. As I turn my gaze from the east, where I saw the river and mountain, to the south, the view becomes more grim. A whole crowd of people outside presses right up against the glass wall of my house, looking longingly inside, their bodies almost grey with cold and frost. I feel compassion for their plight, but I'm not sure what to do about it. My house is not big enough to accommodate even a fraction of the throngs who want to get in.

The people on the left, closer to the river, were all standing very still, but as I continue along the wall to the right, the people on this side are becoming more restless, with a few actively trying to break in. Some are attempting to cut holes in the glass. I wonder how long before they'll get through, and realize that I might need to start warding the walls against them. Then I see a segment of glass fall in, and realize that one woman has just succeeded in making a hole. It is about three feet high and a foot or so wide, in the shape of a narrow heart or mitten. Before she can slip through, I aim my flat palms toward the gap and begin to refreeze the glass (I don't seem to be distinguishing between ice and glass here). After a thin layer of glass or ice manifests over the hole, I pick up the piece that was removed and put it back in place, willing the gaps to fill in.

As I continue along the wall, the situation is getting even worse. There are already more holes. In fact, one woman has just crawled inside. I pick her up like a manniquin to remove her. The crowd is too think to restore her to ground level, so I toss her on top of the others... she can crowd-surf.

I come face to face with another woman who has made a hole in the glass. "You're not real, you're not real," I protest against her attempted incursion. It occurs to me that I should respond to her vaguely threatening presence with kindness. I embrace her and kiss her on the mouth, but she is oddly inert. It's like kissing a doll. I have nothing but a faint impression of staring blue eyes... blank eyes. "You're not real. Do you understand that? The reality of you is that you're not real."

She remains stiff and unresponsive, but doesn't back down, so I try an alternate tack. If she wants to get in the house so badly, then I will welcome her. I grab her arm and start tugging her inside. At this she actually resists, telling a woman standing near her outside, "Don't let go of my arm."

This is an interesting development. "Don't you want to come in?" I taunt. "A minute ago you were clamoring to come in." The dream ends.

The beginning of this dream was fairly foggy, but I eventually became lucid somewhere in my house. I decided to try to portal to Vi, much like I did during my last quality lucid. I used the same technique as last time, pointing to the wall and drawing a circle with my finger. I then tried to pull the portal up to size, but after I got it to the size of my hand, it became kind of stiff and wouldn’t open any more. I put all my energy into trying to open it, but then eventually gave up.

I walked back to my room and decided to try something different. Instead of a wall portal, why not a floor one? I tried the same technique, and this time it was much easier - in fact, the portal appeared just by thinking about it, instead of having to draw it. I had some false memory about someone telling me that floor portals were dangerous, and you had to have something prepared on the other side to catch you. I didn’t think too much about it, and dove in. I fell through and found myself in a purple void, falling with no end in sight. I felt a slight tingling in my body, which then turned into some strong vibrations. I stopped falling, and was now just floating. I stopped to take moment to realize how pleasant this sensation felt. The purple void was replaced for a bit with an orange and green sort of checkerboard pattern everywhere I looked. These soon faded however, but the vibrations continued for a bit.

I now found myself back in my bed, but I was facing the wrong way, so I knew I was still dreaming. The vibrations wore off, so I stood back up, eager to try the portals again. However, I passed by two mirrors and remembered the mirror TotM. I was a little confused on the description at first, I just thought I had to interact with it and describe the effects. I grabbed the smaller of the two mirrors off the wall, and tried to push my hand through it. It went through with relative easy, and I could see my hand stretching through the back of the mirror. It stretched almost like spandex, and felt kind of funny in a good way.

I then started to grab the other mirror, but my mom barged in my room and started yelling at me again (she does this a lot in my dreams as of late, but to be fair she has been nagging me almost the whole time I’ve been back for spring break). I don’t even remember what she was yelling at me for this time. I grabbed the second mirror and tried to stick my body through it, starting with my head. However, as I stuck body parts through the mirror, they turned invisible! I had a little trouble fitting all the way through, but eventually turned my entire body invisible. This caused my mom to finally leave.

I somehow reappeared, and decided to go back to trying for the portals. I found a clear spot on the wall, but instead of the pointing and drawing, I just decided to point until a small hole appeared on the wall, and then I tried to pull it apart. Instead, I managed to pull the drywall off. Inside the wall were the wooden studs, which had little termites running all over them. I thought that was kind of disgusting, so I moved to another section of wall and tried two more times, with much the same result. Finally, I tried changing it up one more time. I pointed at the wall with one hand, and then drew a circle around it with the other hand. This actually worked surprisingly well, as the outline of the circle I drew even showed up on the wall. When I completed the circle, it suddenly changed into a large circular mirror. This one was large enough for me to actually get into, so I ran a full speed into it. It offered little resistance except a little tingling, but then the scene went white, instead of the black that it usually fades to.

I had a false memory of someone on the forum saying that running through mirrors takes you to the spirit world. As I kind of waited for the scene to reappear, I wondered if that was what had actually happened. But then the scene started to appear, and I noticed it was a 16-bit video game of some sort. It mainly showed a map of “the spirit world”, which looked a lot like a map from Final Fantasy or something. At the bottom, a dialog box appeared, and actually showed my thoughts on the screen. I was kind of weirded out by this, and decided it probably wasn’t worth it, so when the box asked me if I wanted to enter the dream world, I “clicked” no. The scene now faded to a 16-bit version of my room in 3rd person. I could see my avatar in my bed. A little health bar over him showed that he was about to wake up, but a strange lady walked over and sat on his chest. This led to a somewhat humorous Game Over screen, with the big words “Sleep Paralysis” flashing on the screen. I thought this was more funny than scary, so I laughed until the scene went black again.

I found myself in bed one more time, but everything seemed somewhat normal. I wondered if I was still dreaming, so I walked over to the mirror again and tried to push my hand through it. The mirror gave way almost like liquid, so I knew I was still dreaming. I walked out of my room and found myself in one of my old classrooms from Junior High. I became just semi-lucid at this point. There were computers on tables all over the room. The teacher was there, talking about some evil plan he had to use the computers for. I was more interested by this one girl (who, in retrospect, may have been Vi) playing a Sonic game on one of the computers. I walked over and asked her about it.

“Yeah, I just love how fast he runs everywhere.”
“You think that’s super speed? Check this out.”

I took off into a hard sprint around the room. I felt the wind whipping through my hair, even though it didn’t actually look like I was moving that quick. I somehow managed to run “fast” enough that I ran up the wall, and continued to run around the entire room on the wall. However, just before I finished the first lap, I tripped over a wire from the computers and fell flat on my face. She still though this was amazing, however. “Wow. You’ll probably be better at this game than me.” She hands me the controller.

Apparently this was the newest Sonic game, which (as expected) got horrible reviews. Somehow I knew the plot already - that Sonic and friends got stuck in the spirit world, and as such they had taken completely different forms. For example, I was playing as Shadow, who for some reason had long, Ozzy Osbourne-like hair that was dyed purple, as well as purple sunglasses like Ozzy’s. The internet had nicknamed him “Hippie Shadow”, which I thought was pretty hilarious. The level I was playing was somewhat difficult, especially since the controls were some weird combination of the keyboard and mouse, but I managed to complete it. The cutscenes were even weirder, including Tails being in a romantic relationship with a female version of himself. I found this so weird and hilarious that I woke up.

A poorly photoshopped rendering of Hippie Shadow, just for the lulz:

Wictches

Three witches tried to torture me and my brother. Even though the witches desired the males more. But we managed to escape.I heard the sound of an eagle as i arrived in he bushes of the forest. A witch yelled far out in the distance that even though i escaped she would find me soon.

Zombies

I was in a supermarket shopping for groceries with my family. When we got home there was a girl complaining about how a woman ate almost all the ice cream. I went up to the woman and told her if she could not eat so much ice cream because she almost finished it half way and because i just bought it. The woman apologized and said she wouldn't do it anymore.

-The next thing I recall is appearing inside a school that appeared to be a office too after playing Yu-gi-oh cards with my brothers at home..
Inside the place i became lucid and wanted to go outside. But when i looked outside there was a whole army of zombies standing in a field. I closed the door and ran but they started to break in. It started to look like a flood of zombie people was trying to drown me. But a few dream characters helped me out and we manged to get the scene into control.

I than left the place with a old friend and another dream character that wanted to take me somewhere. The old friend went into a store and i was about to follow him but the dc told me not to. So I let the dc walk me through the city. But than i appeared in my brother's room looking at a red clock with a fake bouquet on it.

I was semi lucid thinking about dream things as i lay on the bed. Weird things popped up as i was thinking and than i woke up for real.

2015-03-12

Turns out it was a pretty epic night of dreaming. LD #104 is definitely the best of 2015
and perhaps rivals my September 2014 TOTM LD in awesomeness.

01:30 bedtime (WTF!? come on, 2.5 hours late)

visualization of lotus flower w/flame in throat chakra for a while wall falling asleep

Unknown dream times, mental only recall (no recordings until 09:13 after LD) multiple wakings up to WBTB time

+ I almost mess up a stakeout with repeated offers to give the bad guys more cash after the initial contact

In an outdoors area with parked cars, I'm one of the good-guys in a stakeout against bad guys: I hand cash in entrapment scenario to bad guys, they take it. Comes a question should I give more: I walk forwards offering more money to the bad guys, but my colleague quickly motions/says "no" and I realize that, having already taken the initial money, if I offer more and they accept then by law the bust would be nullified.

+ (f) people in an outside park-like area with a tall tower?

+ wife drives off the edge of the highway, I go DO, the car rolls, she's OK, inside a mechanic's shop?

Driving in car with wife (wife is at the wheel) on highways, I see that we're approaching a large turn to the left and there is no barrier off the right edge of the road, there's an abrupt drop to a long sloping hill doing down to the right. I say to wife "Careful! Look out for the edge!" Instantly the car veers and the right wheels go over the edge. I'm now DO flying behind and above the car following it as it leaves the road, heads down the hill, rolling over several times. I'm in a panic about my wife, screaming and zooming to the car to see if she's OK.

i'm in some internal location (mechanic shop?) we're talking about (our?) car(s).

+ picking up (wife?) at airport on crowded holiday in foreign country, taxi guy gives me advice, walk with him, path turns dark and woodsy, he pees in the dark off to the side, Americans are camping up on hillside starting a campfire & I hear them practicing <foreign language> words.

I'm heading to the airport to pick up (my wife?) It's incredibly crowded with tons of people coming and going, because this is the beginning of <this foreign country's> vacation period. I meet a taxi driver who is telling me about how to use a taxi to (fool the traffic?) to be able to approach the airport.

We're walking down a road, it's night time, there are dark woods with leafless trees/tall shrubs off to the right, the guy goes off into the dark trees to pee, I keep walking, I wonder if he'll rejoin me or not. The road ahead is dark and uninviting going off in to the forest. I notice up the high, fairly steep hill to the left about 15 feet off someone's starting a small campfire, and I hear children's voices, they're American tourists practicing some local <foreign language> words.

06:45 WBTB
1x 4mg galantamine (Galantamind)
Back to sleep
Takes about 5x "20 down to 1" counting of relaxing breaths to fall back asleep
Major success: focused only on relaxation, rejected thoughts of waking/work/life concerns, made it back to sleep fairly quickly! Could it be I'm finally mastering BTS?

09:13

+ (LD #104) I'm lying in bed on my stomach [same WL position I think] with ex-GF SB. I'm looking at, modifying with my finger a picture of people we were in grad school together with, "Oh, I've erased T.A." I notice/say at one point. We're lying close to each other she's on my left, we're falling asleep, I lift my head up and kiss her right cheek near her right eye, this annoys her a bit because it wakes her up. I lift my right hand up and place it under her left cheek, this also annoys her a little. Just continuing to lie there, she drapes her right leg across my butt, it's a lightly erotic sensation, I like it a lot.

Her foot approaches my face from the right side, bottom first. I think about "having sex with her toes" and insert my finger between her very tightly packed toes. I then notice that the entire bottom of her foot is covered in a white fungus. "Oh! You have athlete's foot just like I do! You need to scrape that stuff off with a scraping stick, and get a pedicure." I'm standing up now next to the bed and she's looking at me blankly like she doesn't want to acknowledge this. I head to the bathroom, then walk back to the bed, SB has pulled the covers up over her head. "Dang" I think, I was hoping for some sexy time, but she's going to sleep.

I notice in her mouth is some sort of tooth tray/mouthpiece. I think this holds the teeth in the proper position for sleep. Looking again at her I notice she now has a transparent horseshoe-shaped brace supporter running down both sides of her face. I mention that this reminds me of a childhood toy, the magnetic yoyo that so fascinated me as a kid:



All of a sudden her braces structure appears on the bed: clear plastic trays on each side, and in the middle a number of metal wire pinball-chutes with metal pinballs moving along on them. Some other object also appears suddenly on the bed (forgot).

This jolts my awareness, and I say s.l. "OK thats odd/dreamlike" and I do a nose pinch. It's inconclusive [I'm lying on my stomach in WL perhaps, nose pinches are less clear then] I say, "OK, if I'm dreaming, I'll levitate now" and lie down on the floor of the room on my stomach. I look down and see that my upper body is hovering over the ground by about 1/2 inch. I'm now fully lucid. I stand up and whip out my (ahem), which is pleasantly dream super-sized, in order to present it to SB for attention, but she is gone, the bed is empty. I think about looking for her/summoning her, but abandon this idea quickly. I look and see the door to the room [it's like a small motel room], see the doorknob, and decide to head outside.

I open the door and head outside, it's night outside and I'm in just my underwear. I move my attention to feel for the temperature and detect nothing, so I'm completely comfortable. I think of goals and notice that the building here is like a two-story motel in a "U" shape. Some of the rooms have open doors, I decide to enter one for TOTM basic (II).

On my way in to the room I remember my rehearsed LD acronym: BE STRONG [Breathe, Enjoy/Engage, Stabilize, T[private, the name of my LD "mascot"], Remember, O[private], Narrate, Goals]. I start with B[reathe] and I take several breaths, perhaps the first time I've ever consciously breathed in a LD other than for nose pinch, it felt completely natural.

I enter and open room, and it's half-lit and entirely empty: not a single piece of furniture and the walls are entirely bare, no decoration. It's sort of run-down looking. It's a small two-roomed area, a front room with a short narrow corridor leading to the back room. I enter the room and head to the back room. As I'm walking I remember "S[tabilize] and I start rubbing my hands. I really feel the warmth and rub them for a little while. In the back room, I remember "T" and briefly visualize my mascot appearing but nothing happens.

I leave this room and outside it is now daylight, the area has opened up and there are small buildings in the distance and a gently sloping hill before me heading down and to the right. I remember TOTM basic (I) and reach into my right pocket with my right hand and feel for a capsule, I feel one and bring it out, it looks like a small white tic tac. I swallow it and call out "REVEAL TO ME THE TRUTHS OF THE UNIVERSE!" with arms upraised to the skies. I wait for a few seconds, nothing comes to me and I move on.

As I head down the hill to the right a guy drives up in a 70's muscle car and gets out, he's sort of threatening looking. I decide to take charge of the dream narrative and call out to him in a firm, demanding voice, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY GIRL, 'GILDA'!?". He's a bit shocked and looks at me with a puzzled expression.

There's a TV screen/painting on the ground to our left, in it are depicted 3 bad guys. (Two males, one female?). They have deteriorated/painted faces. "Man," I say, "they look terrible." I decide we must fight them, this guy and I. We dive into the TV and emerge in their place [too bad it wasn't a mirror….hmm….no, don't think it was, dangit!]. I immediately reach for my lightsabre with my left hand, and ignite it. The beam is weak/highly transparent, but I wave it around and get very accurate sound, I'm pleased with the sound. Not much of a fight, I just wave the lightsaber around a bit, things are getting vague, I decide to leave, and turn off the lightsaber.

Leaving the building I immediately remember my long-term goal of facing Sensei in a lightsaber duel. I ignite my saber again. I start calling out "Sensei! <Sensei's name!>, come on!" I'm walking towards a garden, I hold my hand behind my back and expect to feel Sensei taking my hand, but he doesn't. I call him several times but he never appears.

I'm marveling at the quality of the dream environment. I'm trying to detect dream-like artifacts and cannot detect any. It is an entirely convincing rendering of waking existence. The green grass on the lawn, the textures of the dirt and the ground.

At some point in this sequence I see an open field and think of TOTM bonus, but I don't want to mess with zombies so quickly move on.

I see beyond the grass some people on horses. The dream slowly fades to grey, I try to hold it but it ends.

Back in a dream, similar woodsy environment, I see two girls sitting down on a bench, one is "Lucy" and has short dark black hair, looks boyish, but I know it's a girl. Two boys approach from the woods and say they've found <some guy's name>.

I bit in the distance I see a (picture?) of a doll-sized girl. I'm interested and go to her. I command her to become real and to grow to real size. She becomes 3D and a bit larger, I give her a quick kiss. . Around this time I'm fully lucid & realize whas going on and I say "be larger, more real!" and she gets a bit larger and more realistic, I give her a longer kiss, but her lips are still cartoony & not waking realistic. I say again "larger! More real!" and I think she gets a bit more life-sized and realistic, I decide to stop and just make out with it/her because her lips feel good, and do so for a few seconds before waking up.

+ parking meters, ethnic banquet, cruising food table, not much food left, "my friend" recommends his ham rolls which are excellent

Outside on a street, we're trying to figure out where to park. Parking meters line this area of the street. I look at them and you can only use them for 2 24-minute periods, this is not long enough for us.

Inside a building there is a <ethnic> banquet. I walk along the long table, there is not a lot of food left and what is left looks not all that appetizing. Down towards the far end there are some little triangular cabbage pies that look not half bad but a middle-aged guy comes up (I "recognize"/"remember" [false memory] him), and he directs my hands to his meat rolls which I try and they are indeed quite good.

+ spying into neighbor houses with telescope, enter and see the two ladies there in the kitchen

I'm sitting outside on the left side back steps of my childhood home. I have a small spyglass and I'm looking down the hill with it. I'm also looking left into the neighbor's house. I see a woman come to the window and don't want her to see me looking so I put down the glass. Suddenly I'm inside their kitchen and see two young blonde women sitting at a table, some adult is milling around them.

+ throw something down on to my friend MR who's sleeping down in the garden in the dark [he signals me?], woman asks me to teach her son soccer, I decline and want to go back to sleep

I'm on some high balcony, several levels down below me on the back lawn my friend MR is sleeping in a sleeping bag. I can't see him well, it's too dark/foggy. I think at one point he's moved to the left. I throw something down as a prank to land on top of him (a small pebble). I'm looking and looking to try to see him but don't. At one point I think I see two small lights (like animal eyes reflecting in the dark) but I'm not sure.

A mother comes to me with a small blonde curly-haired young boy and wants me to train him in soccer. I don't want to. I say come back later and roll over in bed.

+(f) more people, places, situations….forgot

I was in home. It was cold, summer morning. I went from the bathroom into my room, and saw my younger sister lying in my bed. I took my clothes and went outside. The sun was low in the eastern sky. I felt cold breeze over my skin. I took a bus to school. After a while I was in my classroom. I was discussing something with my teacher. I can't recall what we were talking about, but I felt that it's the matter of great importance. After our conversation ended, I went through the door, and found myself back in my home. I entered my room, and wanted to lie in my bed. Suddenly my younger sister awaken, and we were arguing about who's going to sleep in this bed. In the end, there was enough place for me and her.

I was at my friend S's birthday party. I became lucid here and was trying to accomplish tasks.

S's dad was modeling the weapons that his comic characters use in his comic. He was really happy. Some of them even worked though.

I don't remember much of what I did though. I remember I was eating a lot of popcorn and pizza to stabilize. I ended up not accomplishing any tasks and having a false awakening.

I think my dad was there and he got mad for one reason or another.

I was playing chess with a DC for one reason or another. (Or at the very least setting the board up.)

...

Dang messed up recall. This is the next portion that I can remember and this is the end.

I manifest in the parking lot of my middle school, and I am already at a very high level of lucidity. I didn't have a car, but I found a metal ruler in the parking lot. I picked it up and felt it to stabilize.

I felt something calling me inside of my middle school. I generally have a very negative connotation with the place, and figured that the ruler might be useful as a weapon if I encounter some unfriendly characters in there.

I walk in. The front room looks like a diner with a big line. I have the inkling Manei might be around here somewhere. I look around and try to find her. I don't see her but I am approached by an old woman. She tells me to forgive her for it being so crowded in here, but that things have been busy lately.

I follow her into another room that looks like the school cafeteria where she asks me to sit down.

"Do you know what this place is? Do you know what goes on here?"

"Looks like an underfunded middle school, just like it always has..."

"This is a little more important. Do you know what happened in your past...

She talked for a little bit. She wasn't really making a lot of sense to me, it was all this spiritual stuff again. I remember still having the ruler on me at that point and feeling it to keep the dream going.

At one point, she got out a white binder and opened to a page. There was a sheet with 5 symbols in four rows next to blank boxes. She asked me to remember the very last symbol as it was important somehow to getting into another dream that I needed to have with the woman.

"Okay, Let me draw that so I can remember it."

I get a pen and paper and get ready to draw it (also perfect set-up for Bloblularwindmil's dare if I were thinking clearly.) But then I sneezed in the dream and woke up. I forgot the symbol.

Interpretations: More cryptic spiritual stuff. Great.

Ritual: Too tired to work late so WTB 12am, woke 4am to finish work. WBTB at 6:15, woke 7:15am with first DILD.

DILD, "Mirror Lake": Woke up with fragile recall... as I was getting down notes from the end of the dream, ended up forgetting much of what came before. Thought about it and some scenes came back, but there might be gaps.

I recall an NLD at my grandma's house involving lots of cats and kittens of all sizes and personalities. I was trying to negotiate conflicts between them and protect the kittens from dogs who seemed on the verge of trying to eat them. I woke at one point (though I now suspect this was an FA) and reflected, oh, those were such obvious dream signs (grandma's house & cats), I should be more attentive.

Not sure exactly when I became lucid; it might have happened around this point. I recall lying in bed, thinking it was just like my real bed but instinctively aware that I was dreaming. (In retrospect, typically, room and bed were nothing like WL.) I lay on my back staring at the complex patterns that were playing across the ceiling in black and white, complex and shifting geometric abstractions.

From there the scene changed. I recall the transition clearly, because I found it interesting how I went from lying flat on my back to sitting in a partially reclining chair in a movie theater without ever feeling as though my body had changed position. Corresponding with my new angle of vision, the patterns on the ceiling have now reoriented to become the images on the movie screen, and transformed from abstract to representational. When I was lying in bed I had the impression that my husband was sleeping to my right (odd because in WL he sleeps on my left); now he is sitting on my right in the movie theatre. The rest of the room was empty in the earlier scene, even lacking furniture apart from the bed: the movie theatre, by contrast, is packed with people.

Having experienced all this so distinctively, especially the odd ambivalence of change/no change in my position, I become curious about my dream body and feel it with my hands. How lifelike is it? I'm impressed with its solidity and the distinct way I can feel the muscles moving under my skin as I twist in my seat. (In retrospect, the muscular movement may have been exaggerated.)

Even though I'm only touching my side and hip, the attention to my body makes me feel slightly aroused, and I am reminded of the recent forum thread where the OP asked if it was possible to maintain lucidity through orgasm. Certainly, I had replied. Though I've done it before, some years ago, eventually I decided not to get distracted by dream sex so it's been a while. It now occurred to me to see if I could still do it, if only as an exercise in maintaining stability. I hesitated momentarily since I was in such a public place, but shrugged off those concerns—this is my dream, how much more private can you get?—and indeed no one around me notices or reacts as I move my hand discreetly downward.

All it takes is a few minutes of pressure with my fingers to get myself off. I watch the images on the movie screen to make sure I don't lose focus on the dream. The intensity passes and the dream remains stable. I once again marvel at how easy it is to orgasm in dream compared to the cumbersome efforts required of the physical body. After the movie ends—I don't recall the story at all—I leave the theater. I remember being impressed at how long the dream lasts and how continuous the spaces feel, though in retrospect I don't clearly remember all the ground I covered.

The next thing I remember is a scene inspired by day residue from work. I talk briefly with colleagues, mostly people that I observe have no correspondence to WL. When I get bored with this and turn to leave, a woman asks, "You're leaving already?" I go out the door carrying a large textbook in one hand. I briefly consider discarding it, but decide to keep it with me for now.

Beyond the doorway I find myself in the hallway of a university building. It's hard to say if it is dorms or classrooms, but there are lots of flyers and decorations all over the walls. I note the peculiarities of my vision: the environment is really stable, with lots of detail, but everything is a bit dim and out of focus. I'm deciding what to do next and recall the mirror TOTM. There are always public restrooms in hallways like this, and there will undoubtedly be a mirror in the restroom, so I walk down the hallway and look for a likely door.

I reach a corner where the corridor takes a right turn to the left, so I continue in that direction. After turning the corner, I encounter something unexpected: the hall is much darker here, as if the lights have gone out, and the way forward is block with big stacks of boxes. Interesting... why is the dream trying to stop me from going down this hall? Curious, I levitate and cross the barrier easily—the boxes were only stacked high enough to be an obstacle to someone on foot.

A voice calls out from the darkness behind the boxes, apparently a guy stationed at a desk there to make sure no one gets past. "You can't go back there," he warns me.

"Why?" I ask, genuinely wanting to know the answer. The barriers the dream is throwing in my way are becoming more and more intriguing!

His excuse is really lame and boring: "There are books being deposited."

"Okay," I respond indifferently. I ignore him and continue to levitate down the hallway. Halfway down I encounter a door on my right. Will the guard pursue me? I have the the impression that he starts to get up from his desk, but I've moved so quickly that I have a big lead already. To further distract and delay him, I throw the big textbook I've been carrying in his direction. Helpfully, this frees up my hands so that I can open the door.

I have the impression that the door was supposed to be locked, but I bypass it effortlessly. As I twist the knob and push the door open, I can feel the distinct tickle of thick cobwebs brushing my right hand. This gives me a creepy thrill... is there actually some peril here? Why would the dream try to keep me out of this room? Just past the door is a pair of light switches on the wall to my right. I flip them but nothing happens. Typical.

Although the room is darker than the hall outside, I can still vaguely see. It is unremarkable: just a storeroom with a few boxes stacked here and there. However, one detail draws my attention: it is very thing I was looking for, a mirror! The mirror is large, at least 3x8 feet, and lying flat on the floor in an arbitrary position as though it is merely being stored here. This is great, I can try the TOTM! I've used mirrors as portals before, but they were always vertically aligned. The fact that this mirror is flat on the floor suggests a new way of using it: instead of pushing or walking through, as is natural with vertical mirrors, I should just run over and jump in as though it were a pool of water. I figure it will work as long as I can avoid any doubts or second thoughts.

I take a running jump and fall into the mirror's surface. My alignment isn't perfect—I end up on my back sinking half into the mirror, half into the floor, but I don't let this bother me. There is a momentary disorientation of unconstructed dream space, then I watch curiously as a new environment begins to coalesce, wondering where I'll find myself.

It was predictable, really: after thinking about the mirror-portal as a pool of water, that is exactly where I end up. I am floating on my back on the surface of a very calm body of water, like a pond, and I can hear a stream bubbling somewhere nearby. This is actually quite peaceful and relaxing, and I think how nice it would be to float here for a while... but I'm already waking up.

FA: There is a brief FA where I hear my husband's breathing on my right—still the inverse of our actual positions in WL—and then I wake up for real.

Interlude: From 7:15 to 8am I wake and write the notes from the last dream, then return to bed. It is hard to fall asleep, taking about half an hour. Everytime I get close to sleep, some unexpected noise wakes me: my husband's alarm clock; a text message; and finally an unrelenting sequence of pounding and clattering at the house next door, as though someone is alternately assembling and destroying a pile of scrap metal.

Spoiler for Sexual content:

DILD, "Coitus Interruptus": I find myself at home with my husband, but fully aware that I'm dreaming. I decide to expand on my sexual experimentation in the last dream, and see if I can maintain the same stability with a partner. "Do you want to have sex?" I ask, and at his affirmation, I begin taking off my clothes. The disrobing becomes tedious and seems to be taking an excessive degree of time and effort—it's a dream, can't I just will them away? But I feel like it is important to take my time and do this properly (I was probably wrong about that). Moreover, the dream is not cooperating: after getting my shirt and socks off I start to struggle with my pants, but even as I do so, I can feel myself wearing a shirt and socks again! Nevermind, I tell myself, only the pants really need to come off. I lose patience with how much effort this is taking and try to will them off, but the frustration wakes me up—

—or so I think. Getting out of bed, I have to ask... am I really awake? I can't be sure (only in retrospect does it become clear that the layout of the room was all wrong). Looking around for dream signs, I see a ceramic catfood bowl stacked within a metal one (catfood bowls shouldn't be in the bedroom at all but I fail to realize that!) What has caught my eye is the fact that the ceramic bowl is cracked. I don't remember the bowl being cracked... is this really happening? (Actually, I noticed yesterday an unexpected crack in a WL wooden bowl, so this must be DR.) I go over to the bowl and tug on the cracked area. Pieces fall to the floor, everything acting very natural and lifelike. If I'm going to figure out whether this is a dream, I have to try something more drastic. I point my finger at one of the shards and will it to levitate. Sure enough, it promptly rises into the air and floats wherever my finger directs it. Awesome! So I really am dreaming! Suspicions confirmed, I walk straight to my husband's office: "Want to try again?" Clothes are no obstacle this time since I am still nude from getting out of bed, but at the moment of penetration I wake up—

—or so I think. I'm lying in bed, but I can tell I'm not completely awake, because I'm seeing some random page of text in front of my eyes. I must still be dreaming. I'm enjoying the facility with which I've been able to detect and maintain FAs in this dream. I return to my husband's office to continue the experiment. This time he isn't there. I try to imagine us having sex in the absence of his DC, but it is not the least bit convincing, no different from "imagining" in WL. I find this odd. DCs are mental projections, so shouldn't I be able to compensate with my mind alone? Apparently it is more complicated than that.

I go back to the bedroom and find my husband there. I propose sex but he claims he is spent, apparently from our last encounters. I insist, and he goes along. This time we manage full penetration, and oddly, at the same moment I feel a corresponding sensation of fullness in my mouth. I figure the act must be triggering an association with oral sex. At the moment it feels distracting and uncomfortable, and since it doesn't go away on its own, I reach into my mouth to try to manually pluck out the sensation. This is even worse: it feels like I am tugging on my own esophagus, so I stop. I wake up—

—but did I? After that chain of FAs I wait and try to be sure. This feels more like real wakefulness, and I can feel the weight and warmth of the cat lying on me, in the position he took as I was falling asleep. I decide I'm truly awake this time, review the memories briefly, and get up to write at 9:30am. This time I notice a physical sensation of sexual arousal, which was lacking after the earlier dream. I wonder if it is because I woke up in mid-experiment or because it was not successfully resolved this time.

tonight
having
a
DILD

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Dream 1 - Thought I was awake
I decide to get up and go toilet, everything is completely normal, I'm in my flat and the locations are all correct. I notice that my flatmates door is open (in retrospect I realized that it was the wrong flatmate) and that he must be in the toilet, so I wander down and he just gets out, I then proceed in. I take a leak but cannot aim at all >_< I just get it everywhere, I want to clean it up but then my other flatmate turns up knocking on the door, I say that I'm in there but he still comes in! He just reaches in and grabs some object and then leaves. The door is still kind of open and I hurriedly clean up the mess... I then wake up in my bed thinking thank god I didn't wet the bed O_O

Dream 2 - Lucid and then evil lanterns
I'm lying in bed after having a cup of mugwort tea, deciding to give it a try once more to see if it actually does anything. I close my eyes and roll through my SSILD cycles trying to pump up my awareness. Once finished I imagine the feeling of running, I was just lying there and then I actually started to FEEL it... Surprised but calm, I went with the flow, a few seconds later I was running down a road... I immediately decided that I wanted to complete a dream task for once instead of mucking around (saying this out loud in the dream too, a bit curious to whether I was talking out loud IRL), I had already previously decided to drink a potion that revealed the ultimate truth. I see a man cycling uphill on the road I'm on and he has a potion in his jacket, I try to get him but he's too fast. I then use my dream powers to force-smash him off the bike like a Jedi, then force-pull him towards me. I loot the potion and read it, it's some kind of olive oil, delicious . I seem to be in a different area now too, it's kind of dark and in the distance there are these bobbing lights, I'm standing in the shadow of a building and I think I destroy a couple skeletons. I consume the 'potion of ultimate truth', lo and behold I realize... that the skeletons are the helping me, it's those bobbing lights which are evil sentient floating lanterns trying to take over my dream world. I don't remember too well what happens next, but I beat up some more skeletons, kind of forgetting the 'ultimate truth'. I think I kind of follow the dream and lose a bit of lucidity, but my brother approaches me, he is a skeleton too. He tells me to do something, but I can't remember that either, I end up in the area where I first spotted those bobbing lights, there's a girl on a bridge where zombies are trying to get her. She's a beautiful redhead and no one that I recognize, I smash through the zombies and take her with me, running past zombies which are now strangely sessile and passive. Maybe the zombies were risen by the lanterns?

I felt like a lot happened and I assumed I'd be able to remember most of it, but I think I forgot heaps after losing a bit of my lucidity.

Dream 3 - Lucid and god damnit chucky x2
After the last dream, I found it easy to slip straight into lucidity the same way. It's extremely low level, like I knew it was a dream but I didn't really try to do anything. I'm at someones flat, the girl wants me to crash there and the other guys don't. I get sneaked into her room or something after a long disagreement in their hallway. I wasn't trying to get laid either, it was purely friendship, we started reading a book and I saw a house, it was moving and I could see Chucky the evil doll... I don't want to see him so I try dismiss him, I don't think I had much success because as I looked out the girls window I saw several Chuckys climbing out the window of a neighbouring house. I do a wave of my hands (this has been pretty much the most common way for me to dismiss or interact with the dream world) and try to make him disappear, but it's hard because I keep thinking about him >_<.

I wake up after the dream and after cementing it to memory I slip straight back into the dream, I end up in a similar scenario and pissed off with it I just wake myself up and get up for the day.

I was looking at Pokemon like creatures. It was inside a building. We were having a battle. There's also one powerful turkey-looking creature. I used an experience multiplier to level it up. There's one that has the ability to use thunder, water and wind elements (saw it in some sort of computer/screen). Legendary type?

I was riding a jeep going one way. For some reason, I went down and walked back the way I came from. I saw a hole on the street supposedly being fixed but I didn't see anyone fixing it.

I was walking on the street. It was daytime. I don't know where I was headed, but then I decided to go back. I saw some skaters. One was topless and even had his pants lower than his waist, showing his penis. The other skater pointed it out.

I was inside a building with some people. Familiar? Not sure what we were doing. An ice cream vendor stopped by. They bought some weird-flavored ice cream. There was one that seems more like iced chili and banana peels. I bought the classic chocolate ice cream, but I also got (for free?) a cream-colored ice cream.

---

Notes:

- Slept at around 10:30 - 11:00 p.m.
- Woke up sometime in the middle of the night. Wrote keywords of the dream.
- Woke up around 8-9 a.m. Wrote keywords.
- Did breathing and entering into sleep with memory of previous dreams

03/10/15 Having a wonderful long LD when I decide to get naughty with a sexy DC I have summoned. No matter what we did the dream started to destabilize. I would stop and try to bring it back and that would work. The second I started to get busy again, the cycle would repeat. Finally I stopped and expressed that we may as well stop as it seemed like I was being punished or something.

03/10/15 I was dreaming about the old house on Warm Springs and assumed it was a dream. I remembered that a good dream sign was the entire back yard being entirely flooded. It used to have ponds, but in dreams they cover three properties. I looked towards the back and saw a large body of water. Not only should I not be able to see the backyard from here, but now my memory is returning. The back yard was filled in and no onger has any ponds. Fine, it is a dream. I love dreaming of that garden, so much of my memories are there.

I floated into the air and back into the pond. It was steaming and full of hot mineral water, like the giant hot tub used to. I land in the water and am now skinny dipping in a 3 acre hot tub. It feels wonderful and so very real. I go underwater and look around. It is pretty dark, but I can see the surface and it is realistic.

I hear singing. It is my wife. I thought she was gone to work. Wait, not work, school. I become aware of the bed. No wait stabilize. I summon a couple pvc pipes crossing the surface and grasp them. The singing is from a neighbors radio. I focus on the feeling of gripping the pvc. The water now has a strong current. Gads, her voice is breaking on the high notes. No, it is a radio in the dream (sure it is, man stop it!). I focus on the feeling of the current and try to stay in the dream. Darn it! Awake.

I’m somewhere looking through books. I pick up some and look through them, but don’t end up picking any to buy because of the prices. I’m frugal, and I mention this to someone to my left. I’m shocked when I see that one of the books is $8.

I poke through the top of a box but it was children’s books. I saw an Aladdin book with a guy with some scruff and a woman. I wondered who they were.

When I was looking at some eastward facing shelves, I saw something with Ed (from Fullmetal Alchemist) on it. I picked up this box and it had tortilla chips in the bottom and I snort at the ridiculousness of a ‘movie entertainment kit’ like that. They might be stale anyway, who knows when it was brought in.

Someone calls out ‘Nice to see you again, Keitorin!’. I look around as I try to find the source before my eyes land on an older woman. I don’t recognize her at all but she knows me?

Jump.

I’m over by a mirror back around where I was originally looking at books. I have really long hair again and I’m trying to put it up in a ponytail, but when I gather it all up and go to get the ponytail ready, some falls and I have to try scraping it back up. I’m getting frustrated.

A woman who seems to be in my blind spot the whole time comes up and is supposed to be helping me, but she’s doing something off to my right that I can’t figure out. All of a sudden, she does something that startles me and makes me jerk back.

She says something. It’s blurry here, but she had pierced my cheek with a post earring! I was pretty freaked out.

I ended up at home telling mom about it. I keep gingerly touching the outside of it with my hands. I’m having a hard time swallowing properly because it’s awkward.

Mom doesn’t even seem that bothered! She even talks about how she and dad were thinking about getting something to eat, though we really didn’t have much money, but they were getting hungry.

I say, “I can’t even eat because of the piercing!”. I touched the back of the earring with my tongue and jerk back, because it hurts and saliva is gathered up in my mouth.

Inspirations: Aladdin thing from a fanart I saw of characters from The Book of Life. Chips from me having some recently. I wonder if the two dreams with mirrors in them I've had are because I've been reading people's TOTM dreams with them? Piercing might be because I tried to put my ear piercings back in but it messed my ears up.

1. Me and mom are in the ‘kitchen’, Jazzy is acting weird and we start to laugh, until mom realizes that she’s choking on her collar! Oh no! She rushes down to try and help her as I watch. I don’t remember her wearing a collar, and it seems to be taking too long to fix it. Then even as she fixes it, Jazzy still seems to be choking – was her air cut off for too long?!

2. There was some activity going on in a room, and a blind guy at a small, round, wooden table had asked ‘Did anybody hear that?’. Later, I find scraps of white paper on the floor behind the table, and think that they had been on it and been blown off by the fan and made noise.

I show him, but he says that wasn’t it, it had been more like a ‘thump’ and as he says it, he drops his fist down on the table, producing the sound.

Jump.

I’m talking to my sister at the same table. It seems that she is an outcast from the family; she and mom don’t get along anymore. We talk about that for a while. There was a bit more too it but I don’t remember.

3. I also remember something about a guy and reading some writing.