JonahB

Whats up! I'm new to this site but I'm really enjoying some of the stuff I've been reading. I've had a handful of lucid dreams, but I'm still a noob compared to some of you guys! I'm gonna introduce myself by posting a few of my lucid dreams. I'll start by recalling some of my older ones first. My first lucid dreams came at a particularly busy period in my life. I had so many obligations that I often had to split my sleep in half. I began to theorize that my lack of sleep was the cause of my lucidity. I later confirmed that when I began reading online about oneironauts purposefully splitting their sleep to encourage these dreams. Without further ado I bring you my first lucid dream, which I've entitled...

The Case of the Missing Birthday Cake

I must forewarn you all, my dreams are incredibly wacky. Read at your own risk. Me and an old friend, we'll call him Steve, went to pickup a birthday cake for my girlfriend. For some odd reason, Texas Roadhouse (a nearby steak house) happens to sell birthday cakes in my dreams. After picking up the cake and enjoying some of their deep fried grease lard, we headed out. Most of the details here are pretty fuzzy, but somehow we lost the cake and ended up in a strange house that I had never been in before. We believed the cake was buried somewhere in this mysterious house and set out to find it. Now, somewhere along this point I made the shocking discovery that I was dreaming! Its pretty startling when you discover that the world you perceive to be reality is in fact just a figment of your imagination. Most of the time its enough to jar you out of sleep. My dream started to fade and I realized immediately that I was waking up.

Now, I had read about lucid dreams before. I always thought they sounded really cool, but I was too damn lazy to go through the rigorous self-training required to have them. One thing that I had read about lucid dreams stuck out in my head though. Spinning in circles when you feel yourself waking up. I gave it a shot and it worked beautifully. Withing seconds I was back in the strange house, but this time, and for the first time, I was lucid. I looked around in amazement. I told Steve that I was pretty sure I was dreaming, and that we didn't really loose a birthday cake. I don't recall his response though. I don't know if he believed me or not. I decided that I had to do something reality-defying quick before I woke up. There was a large staircase nearby. "Dude, check this out!" I yelled as I made a flying leap all the way from the top of the steps to the bottom. Steve was very impressed. He tried it himself, but his was a little more flashy, complete with crazy flipping acrobatics. We took turns bouncing up and down these steps in different ridiculous gravity defying fashions. I ended up waking up during one particularly daring jump. From that moment on I was addicted to lucid dreaming.


First Time Flier and The Barn

This one stands out as my favorite. It wasn't particularly eventful, but I recall it being so vivid and clear. I was alone in the thick woods behind my parent's house on a cold winter day. Snow covered the ground and most of the trees had lost their leaves. Something made me realize I was dreaming. I decided I was going to fly. Never tried to fly in a dream before so it took a few failed attempts, but finally I figured out that I had to flap my arms like a bird. I took off like I rocket. I flew over the forest and admired the scenery. When I would stop flapping my arms I would fall to the ground with a thump, but it didn't hurt. I flew over the familiar pond where I had spent many of my childhood days fishing, only in my dream world it looked more like I giant lake complete with a waterfall. There was an island in the middle that I landed on and rested for a bit.

After flying for awhile longer I found a clearing in the woods and landed again. In this clearing was a barn with a farmhouse and all of the typical things you would find on a farm. I entered the barn and climbed to the top. I sat down on a bail of hay and looked out the window. The scenery was indescribable. It was almost as if I was in some kind of surreal scenic painting. I was in awe at the fact that my mind was creating all of this. I also remember thinking about how convincing it was. It really felt like I was seeing it. It was indistinguishable from the real world sensation of actually seeing something. Amazing, I thought. I awoke shortly after. That dream put me in a particularly good mood that followed me throughout the remainder of that day.


Writing Music and Sounds From Real Life

Music is a major part of my life. I've been playing musical instruments from and early age, and over the last couple years I've began to take composing seriously. Obviously since I stumbled onto this whole lucid dream thing I was going to try to incorporate it into my art. My dream attempts at playing a musical instrument weren't going so well though. I find it difficult to operate a cell phone in a dream, let alone a guitar or a piano. I decided to try writing without an instrument. I simply sat down and composed in my head. I remember hearing the music pretty vividly. It was what I would generally think of as well-written music, but it wasn't a style I was into listening too or writing. For some odd reason I think it was closer to marching band music than anything. I didn't get to experiment much with changing style though.

As I was listening to this music I heard a very familiar noise cut through. The sound of someone sticking a key into a lock and opening a door. Now, in reality I was napping on a couch in an apartment I used to live in. I was positive that the sounds were coming from reality. My girlfriend was home. My first thought was "Crap. She's gonna wake me up!" I heard her open the door and walk in quietly. Our pet parrot whistled at her and she gave him a stern "Shhh!" and I heard her set her keys on the table and walk into the other room. I was relieved to find out that she was gonna let me sleep. I don't really recall the rest of the dream, but I don't think it lasted much longer anyway. I found it fascinating that I could hear real world sounds in my dream world. I'm curious as to rather or not anyone else has had such an experience...


The Mirror and The Impenetrable Ceiling

This is my most recent one. After sleeping most of the night and waking up for a bit, I headed back to bed. I laid there thinking about lucid dreaming in an attempt to get my mind focused on it. It must not have worked because after I fell asleep I began having a non-lucid dream where I was stuck in some kind of giant maze with a bunch of people I work with. I woke up again up for a brief period and focused my mind on being lucid while going to sleep. This time it was as if I could feel my body going to sleep. Perhaps that was just a dream too? Who knows. I felt some kind of crazy vibrating sensation akin to what people describe with wake initiated dreams. My thought was cloudy but I was still conscious and thinking about lucid dreaming. After a bit I opened my eyes and began doing dream checks. My hand appeared to be farther away than normal. I was also unable to read my digital clock. Only two digits appeared on it, one was a two and the other was morphing and changing shapes.

At this point I decided that I was dreaming, so I climbed out of bed and had a look around. I was still in my house, right where I went to sleep. I immediately noticed that my balance was way off. I stumbled around like a drunk. After I mastered my balance I noticed a mirror directly in front of my bed, which is not where my mirror is typically placed. At first I didn't think much of it, but then I remembered something I had read recently about mirrors in dreams. Supposedly looking into a mirror in a dream often gives you really strange results. Some people get a distorted image, others see frightening demons, and some even see an entirely different person. I took a closer look at my reflection, but didn't notice anything too strange about it. It looked like me. Not too distorted. Just my usual good-lookin self. I said something along the lines of "That looks like me. Nothing weird about it." and then noticed that my mouth movements and facial expressions were all delayed by quiet a bit. It was as if my brain couldn't make the words and the image of myself saying the words at the same time, so it did one after the other. It was sort of disorienting to watch.

I moved on. This time I was on a mission I had recently decided to try. You see, all of my previous flying dreams had been across landscapes with no real destination. If I had tried to keep flying up I wouldn't have went anywhere. My intention with this dream was to go outside and look into the sky, locate something up there (like the moon) and try to fly to it. That's right, I was gonna fly to the moon. Then a thought popped into my head. What if I'm not actually dreaming? There was still for some reason a slight bit of doubt in the back of my head. I certainly didn't want my girlfriend or my crack-head neighbors to see me standing in my front yard trying to fly to the moon. I wanted to be absolutely positive first. I decided to do a test flight in my house. Better yet, I was just gonna fly through the ceiling. Never gone through solid objects in a dream, but its worth a try I thought. At this point I was in my son's toy room. I looked up at the ceiling and prepared to fly. I took off just fine, but when I hit the ceiling I bounced right off like Mario trying to break a block after loosing his mushroom power. Fail. I tried again. This time when I hit the ceiling I woke up. I made sure to do a dream test just to make sure. Crap. Still haven't mastered going through solid objects I guess. It wasn't a very long lucid dream, but I do recall it being quiet vivid and convincing. Maybe next time I'll get around to flying to the moon.

When I've been here long enough to post URLs I'll share some of my music in the art forum.