The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid dream, Lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

I see a beautiful, blue sky with lots of puffy, white clouds in it. I realize that this is a dream [I'm not quite certain, but I believe I became lucid by first realizing that I didn't recall how I had gotten outdoors where I could look up at the sky], and ground my awareness in the dream by focusing on the clouds in the sky. The sky expands to fill my field of vision, covering up and washing out the gray nothing behind it.

I realize I'm in the backyard of the house I lived in as a child, and I'm with two girls I knew in elementary school. I walk around the neighborhood with them for a bit, exploring the yards of the houses. They are fenced in, and many of them are on very steep hills [which was not the case in real life]. At one point, a man who lives in one of the houses sees us. Eventually, I stop following them and start following two DCs who are young women closer to my own age now, a blonde one and an Asian one. [I typically prefer to spend my lucid-dreaming time exploring my dream world on my own, but this time, I thought I could maintain a longer, more stable lucid dream if I focused my attention on following two dream characters around, instead. It seems to have worked.]

We end up wandering from the suburban neighborhood we're in to a well-lit, wood-paneled mall. We end up in front of a hair salon, where the salon owner stops us and presents the Asian DC with an award for her hairdressing skills. I notice that she is suddenly wearing a pretty, fancy dress appropriate for accepting an award at an awards ceremony. After she accepts it, we continue wandering around and exploring. The next time I notice the Asian DC, I see that she's wearing casual, comfortable clothes again. I exclaim in disappointment, "Aw, man! I wanted to do the finger-snap thing!" [Meaning, I wanted to consciously and actively change her from one outfit to another by snapping my fingers, Q-style. I was disappointed that she had performed the transformation on her own. ]

Our wanderings continue to take us through indoor environments, and we eventually end up in a spacious church where the service is just about to start. A greeter hands me a service bulletin, which is a single large sheet of paper that you have to fold up yourself. I wander through the sanctuary, from front to back, just as the procession is starting.

As I wander outside again, I remember that the next time I found myself lucid dreaming, I had wanted to do the 'pinch your nose shut and try to breathe through it' reality check, so I do so. It still works the same as ever - I can still feel myself breathing even while pinching my nose, which I still think is the coolest sensation. However, this time, my dream-sense of touch tells me that I'm missing part of the tip of my nose. [I thought, "Maybe I've been reading too many A Song of Ice and Fire books?"]

I see the aforementioned blonde dream character again, and for the first time, we actually stop to talk. When I ask, she tells me that her name is Julia, and it turns out that she knows that I'm the dreamer. She refers to me as the "universe goddess." [There's a gap in my memory here; I don't recall how we got from just talking to this next part, but:]

Julia is now mostly submerged in a tank of water, and I lay one hand on the crown of her head, which is sticking up above the water, and say: "I, [my full, legal IRL name], do hereby name you Julia." As she climbs out of the tank, I add, " [Nickname] is short for [my full first name]." [I often explain that to people when meeting them for the first time IRL.] After Julia is out of the tank, I ask her if I can do that again, because I didn't use both hands. I ask her what her middle and last names are, and she says "Tilly El-Haz[something, I don't remember exactly]." We stand facing each other, and I lay both hands on the top of her head and name her with her full name. [She looked like she could have been Supergirl, or otherwise related to those Els.]

[Hmm. Fascinating. I've only met one or two other dream characters who exhibited any awareness that we were in a dream, and this is the first time one has referred to me in terms like "the universe goddess." This dream put me in a great mood, as my lucid dreams always do.]

Awake, Non-lucid dream, Lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Sorry this post is so fragmented. Lately, I seem to be able to recall individual dream scenes, but not the transitions between them. I don't remember specifically when or how I became lucid last night, either.]

I'm in a shop filled with soft slippers, which are all hung on a giant, high white wall display as well as family formal wear in the section furthest back. I see a pair of soft, purple thong slippers that I really want, but I have to ask the store clerk to get them down from the wall for me.

I'm at the Matterhorn in Disneyland. I look up and see people emerging from a hole in it, and standing on the terraced stage built into the south side. There are stairs leading down from the and into the mountain. There are a whole bunch of people up there; they're all part of a wedding party and are posing for a picture. [I think I may have become lucid at this point, or maybe it was at the beginning of this scene, I don't remember.] I come closer and see that there is an open space in the bottom of the mountain, which is set up as a wedding chapel. I look up from it into the hollow, rocky interior of the mountain, thinking that the roller coaster track must spiral around the outside. There's someone kneeling down at the front of the chapel space to pray; I feel like I ought to do the same, but I decide to keep on walking out of the chapel and keep exploring.

I enter another building of some kind, where there is a woman sitting behind a desk. She talks to me at length about something [I don't recall what]. Fully lucid by this point, I say in a rather rude and snippy tone, "I'm leaving to find something more interesting to do." I turn and walk out the door. [I work in tech support; I have to be nice to people I talk to on the phone. I'm not surprised that I was inclined to be snippy toward one of my DCs; it's a good way to release stress and frustration without hurting a real person's feelings.]

I wander around outside in a city. I look at a handheld GPS device, and it shows me that I am at the edge of one of many irregularly-shaped city blocks, separated by streets that go in all different directions with no pattern. I observe aloud, "GPS works in a dream because I expect it to." Two adjacent blocks are labeled "Omaha" and "Paris," yet when I turn around and look up, I see what is clearly the tallest tower from the LA skyline. I smile at this juxtaposition and say, "I love the dream world."

At this point, the dream begins to fade, and I begin to be aware of my real body again. I think, "I don't want to wake up yet!" I try to visualize the dream environment I was just in. The mental image becomes clearer, and I successfully get back into the dream without having woken up fully. [Amazing! I've never had a dream re-entry that smooth or elegant before. I didn't know I could do that!]

I'm exploring the entrance to a long, narrow storage room in another house. The room extends off to the left of the narrow door. While trying to get something out, I accidentally cause the two layers of freestanding shelves that run the length of the room to collapse sideways and to the left. I step back and try to restore the shelves by snapping my fingers, like a Q from Star Trek. It doesn't work the first two times. I try to concentrate and focus my intentions more clearly and specifically on what I am trying to do, and then snap my fingers again. It still doesn't work.

My real-life friend JB and I are in a house that belongs to some intelligent dragons. He talks to the dragons for a bit, and then he leaves to continue the quest he's on. As he leaves the house, icons appear in the air around him, representing his current quest statistics (money, inventory, life points, goals achieved, and so on), like in a computer RPG.

Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Note: This DJ entry contains discussion of my personal religious beliefs, which are Christian. If, for any reason, you do not want to read about them, please skip over this entry.]

I'm trying to get from one place to another by bicycle. It's right at or just after sunset on a cloudy, overcast day, so it's somewhat dark outside. I'm bicycling along sidewalks that run between buildings that are each about four or five stories tall and have lots of windows. [It actually bears a strong resemblance to some of the private college campuses I used to walk around when I was a kid.] When I try to turn a corner, a guy on a larger bike passes by really fast right in front of me, and I shout out in surprise and fear. After he has passed by, I turn the corner and go on my way. I'm carrying a large plastic bag hanging from my left handlebar. It is filled with other, crumpled-up plastic bags, as well as a heavy, black, U-shaped metal bike lock.

I'm in the sacristy [back room where robes and other special equipment are stored] at my old church. I've arrived there to meet up with a bunch of my friends from my old college Christian fellowship, who are all crowded into the room. [I think this might have been the place I was trying to get to on my bike, but I'm not absolutely sure; I don't remember the transition from one dream scene to another. Or they may have been two entirely separate dreams.] We're all there for a special church service in which all of us young adults will be honored. All my friends already have their choir robes on, and I hurry to take mine out of the closet and put it on over my clothes.

As I'm doing this, everyone starts to file out of the room, because it's time for the service to start. I'm still hunting through the shelves in the back of the closet for my shoes, saying aloud to myself, “I'm not sure if I have black shoes in here....” I came into the room wearing white shoes, which wouldn't go with my dark-purple choir robe. [They were the same kind of choir robe I used to wear at the church I attended immediately before my current one.] I find a pair of black, slip-on sandals [a pair I own in real life] on a shelf and start putting on, but I'm already being hurried out the exterior door of the sacristy, along with the rest of the procession of young adults. When we get outside, I cross the sunlit courtyard by shuffling and sliding my feet forward, still working on getting them all the way into the sandals.

Although this church building is in a different place and has a very different layout than it does in reality, I recognize it as the one I went to as a child. The sacristy door opens onto a courtyard paved with red ceramic tile and enclosed with white walls, and it's a beautiful, sunny day. We walk in a procession along the outside wall of the sanctuary, then turn left and then left again to enter the church through its large, wooden double doors. I'm still finishing up fastening the front of my choir robe as we enter.

As we enter, there is modern, rock-instrumentation-based worship music playing, the kind we used to have in fellowship meetings. Most of the pews are facing forward, except for the section nearest the front, where they are facing inward toward the center aisle. Beyond those seats is the altar area. The sanctuary is full of people, including my mom, who is sitting in an aisle seat that I pass on my right as I walk up the aisle with the procession. I'm aware that the families of my friends from the fellowship are there, too. We all process up the center aisle and take seats in the center-facing pews.

The music continues until we are all sitting down. When it ends, one of the leaders of the fellowship starts welcoming everyone to the service and talking about how its purpose is to honor the young adults of the congregation. During this speech, I realize that I accidentally dropped my knitted bag of choir books [again, something I had in real life at my previous church] in the aisle, right where my mom is sitting. I stand up and go to retrieve it, but a tall, old black lady beats me to it. She picks it up and brings it back to me.

The leader who's speaking says that we're going to start things off by playing a team-building game. [This was typically how we started off conferences in that fellowship in real life.] I smile; this is going to be fun. I look at the service bulletin and see that just about everything the leader will say is printed on it, like a script. There are even photos of the young adults who are being honored, and a list of the supplies we'll need for the team-building game. As I continue to look through the bulletin, I see that after we play this game, we'll proceed to have a regular church service, the more traditional kind we've always had at this church. I'm also aware that although some of the people in the congregation are from my Episcopal tradition, and others are from my friends' evangelical tradition, absolutely everyone present is not only okay with the idea of having a service that blends elements of both traditions, but is actually happy about it and looking forward to the rest of the service. I am, too. The whole gathering is suffused with a sense of love, peace, joy, and unity.

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Side notes:
This dream was significant for me because it made me feel better about the past. It made me feel less conflicted and less torn, and gave me hope that reconciliation between those two areas of my experience is possible.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of December 24-27, 2011. Adult content warning for the one from December 25-26.]

Night of December 24-25

I'm at church, with my choir, accompanying our performance of “What Child is This?” on my clarinet. My clarinet keeps misfiring; some of the notes here and there refuse to play. I'm embarrassed. [This was definitely an anxiety dream. Exactly that actually happened during our choir rehearsal on Thursday, December 22, and I was afraid it was going to happen during the performance, which was the morning after I had this dream, on Christmas Day. Thankfully, it didn't happen; my clarinet worked fine.]

Night of December 25-26

I'm at this place that's kind of like a spa. It's a place for people to rest, relax, and renew. I'm in an outdoor area of this place, and it's a beautiful, warm, sunny day. I'm lying around on the ground, wearing only panties, along with several other women who are doing exactly the same. Other people are walking around the grounds, and the thought crosses my mind: Maybe I should go and put on some slightly more modest panties.

All of a sudden, I'm being molested by a group of two or three men. I manage to fight them off and struggle out of their grasp. All the while, I'm shouting at them, forcefully telling them to stop, and that I don't like or appreciate what they're doing. I end my tirade by telling another man, who's just sitting on the ground watching the proceedings, that he's a despicable jerk, too [or something to that effect; I don't remember my exact words here]. I tell him this because I know that he's being paid to be there as a witness to the scene that just unfolded. I also know that the molesters were also hired to do what they did. The men who hired them are also in the scene, standing around, watching it all happen. I know exactly what they're doing: They're lawyers, and they have a racket going on where they hire people to rape beautiful girls in establishments like the one I'm at, and then get the girls to sue those establishments for a lot of money, of which they get a percentage because they act as the girls' representation.

Night of December 26-27

I'm at work, but I'm participating in a dramatization of the work we do at my workplace for TV. The part of my boss [who I've mentioned in this DJ before] is being played by Tim Allen. I reflect that this was a strange casting choice, since he doesn't look at all like my boss, nor does he act much like him.

I'm watching a movie about a big, tall castle, a white one that looks like it came straight out of a fairy tale. I'm immersed in the movie, and I'm flying in circles around the top of the castle's high, central tower. There is a song playing on the movie soundtrack that I find kind of annoying, so I want to change the channel on the movie. Awww, man, the remote's all the way down there, I think to myself when I look down at the ground and see the TV remote control lying there. Then I think, Maybe I can get it by telekinesis. Wait a second. If I'm thinking about getting the remote by telekinesis, and flying around, I must be dreaming.

I stretch out my hand toward the remote control and concentrate on it, trying to use the force of my will to pull it into my hand. It doesn't work. Then, my mind calls up the primary example in my schema for what pulling an object into your hand with your mind looks like: the wampa cave scene from The Empire Strikes Back [starting at 2:20]. I think, It's kind of like the object is attached to a bungee cord that snaps it back into your hand. I try again, keeping that analogy in mind and focusing on it. This time, it works. The remote control flies up into my hand, just as if it were attached to a bungee cord.

At this point, I abruptly realize that during the time I've been concentrating on drawing the remote control into my hand, I haven't been concentrating on flying, so I've been gradually descending without noticing it. I'm now only a yard or two above the ground. I quickly correct for this and start climbing again. As I do so, I think, “And hurry! We're losing altitude fast!” And yes, “altitude” is the correct term in this instance, because this is a planet I'm flying over, not a moon. Even if it is just a dream planet. [This is a reference to the original version of the “Star Tours” ride from the Disney theme parks.] The remote control has transformed into a deodorant stick, which I use on myself. [? I don't even know.]

I woke up very pleased with myself, knowing that I could finally cross “Move an object with my mind” off my master list of lucid goals!

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm driving through the parking lot of a shopping center, at night. There is a violent physical altercation going on in the parking lot, and it turns into a gunfight.

I'm now riding my bicycle through a nearby residential neighborhood, where there is more violence going on. It's still nighttime. As I ride, I pray that I won't get hit by a stray bullet. I also reflect that I could be driving to my destination, which is my old church, but I like bicycling better than driving. [This is true.] I miss the turn to get to St. Mark's.

I'm no longer riding my bicycle; I'm now standing in a black nothing. [I suspect that I might have DEILDed here, but I'm not positive.] I think of the destination I was just trying to get to, the parish hall at my old church, and cause a knife from the parish hall's silverware drawer to appear in my hand. A second later, the parish hall appears around me.

I walk through the room, appreciating the dream environment, as usual. A lot of people are there, including my parents. My dad comes up to me and offers to give me a hug, and I accept it and hug back. All the people are there for a big reception, with a lot of food laid out on tables.

After the reception, when everyone has left except me, my parents, and two or three other people, there is still a huge platter of thinly-sliced roast beef left over. I try to give it away to those two or three other people.

I wake up in my current bedroom, very pleased to have just had a lucid dream. I remember to grab my phone, which is running Ev's Lucid Dreaming App for Android, and draw a star on the screen with my finger to indicate that I just had a lucid dream. I draw the star, but very sloppily, with one point much bigger and longer than the other points. I'm concerned that the program won't recognize the gesture, but it does. It displays the gesture I just drew with the caption “lucidity!” underneath it, in the same font it always uses for those captions.

When I woke up for real, I thought to myself, You know, I bet I didn't actually record that lucid dream. The app wouldn't recognize the star if I drew it that poorly, and the caption always just says "lucid dream." I checked my actual phone and, sure enough, no "lucid dream" mark on my graph. That had, indeed, been a false awakening. I felt slightly frustrated, as well as highly amused that the app had shown up in one of my FAs.

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Side notes:

Wow. I'm pretty pleased with this DEILD, if that is indeed what it was, and with my sudden mastery of changing the dream scene. To be fair, though, I did change it to the destination I had been trying to reach in my non-lucid nightmare.

I didn't realize until after I woke up that the part where my dad hugged me was day residue. On the evening before I had this dream, I hadn't bothered to get up and hug my dad when he left the house, and I had regretted it. I thought it was awfully nice of my subconscious to give me a second chance to do that.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in my family's house [it doesn't look anything like any of our real houses]. P. has a terrible secret that she can't stand to tell our parents, so she's making me tell them for her. She actually cries when she tries to talk about it, because she feels so bad about it. Information about the secret is hidden on the computer in a file called “Sisters.nxt,” which is the type of file that contains programming instructions for the toy robots we use at my teaching job.

Our parents come in, and I gather my courage and tell Mom the terrible secret. Everyone is upset, including me.

When I woke up, I was quite stunned that it had just been a dream. It had been incredibly vivid and realistic. I actually made mental notes to call my sister and ask her if she was okay, and to to check my real computer later for a file named “Sisters.nxt.” [There was none, of course.]

I'm in my car [my new-to-me one], on my driveway. It rolls backward down the driveway, even though the parking brake is set. [Anxiety. I am afraid of this happening.] As I turn around to look behind me, I see JM backing a big truck up to our driveway. I smile and wave at him.

I'm back in the same house from earlier, with my parents. My mom's hair has suddenly turned gray, and is short and fluffy. It has two parts that come to a point on the top of her head, which she is feeling with her fingertips to find out how they go. My dad's hair is also turning gray. I realize that I'm back in the unfamiliar house that appeared in my previous dream, and therefore, that I'm dreaming.

I turn away from my parents and walk around the house, observing. The rooms are spacious and empty in the middle. Thoughts about how all this is a dream and not real just won't leave me alone, even though I try to ignore them, for fear that thinking about it too much will cause the dream to fade and me to wake up. I remember that I should try to stabilize and ground myself in the dream by engaging more of my senses, so I go looking for something to eat.

One of the rooms of the house is a kitchen. I open the refrigerator and get out one of those little plastic, single-serving cups of applesauce. I open it up and eat it directly out of the cup, by sticking my tongue into it. It tastes just like applesauce, but the flavor isn't as strong as it would be in reality. I also find that my lips are all tingly and semi-numb, as if I'd had a Novacaine shot that was wearing off. I think, That's happening because these sensations of eating aren't real.

[Dreamskip.] I'm outside, and I remember that I wanted to fly in this dream. I try to take off twice, and both times, I succeed only in jumping about six or eight feet and then falling back down to the ground. The first time, I end up on my butt. After the second time, I think, Wait, don't I usually do this just by thinking about flying? So I do, and it works. I fly around the beautiful scenery of a bunch of ocean harbors and inlets with towns on them. At one point, I fly through some power lines [?] intangibly. [I don't feel any sensation associated with it, though.] As I fly, I go, “Wheeee!”

I'm outside a big church building at night, still flying around.

I'm inside a shop full of shoes and other fashion items. It is owned by Yusuf, who is minding it. I fly through the shop and out the front entrance, into a street.

I'm now outside that same big church building during daylight. I say to myself, “It's daytime now because my real body says so.” I say this because I know it must be light outside by now, and I'm sure my body clock knows that. I decide to just walk across the grass to get to the entrance of the church, but then I use a small burst of my flight powers to get up all six steps in one leap.

There is some big event going on on an outdoor lawn, with tents or shade covers set up. [I don't really remember this part very well.]

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Side notes:

Last night was the one-year anniversary of the night I had my first substantial lucid dream. That fact made me really motivated to have another cool lucid dream, and I succeeded in having one. I was really pleased and proud of myself that I had. I wasn't quite as euphoric about it as I was that first night, but I was pretty happy. I'm really happy with what I've experienced in my dream life this year, but, of course, there's much more I want to do and learn. Here's to many more years of lucid dreams!

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of June 9-10, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm walking around the downtown area of a city. Every block is covered with tall buildings. Most of one block is covered with a three-or-four-story building with signs that identify it as “Jews' World.” It's their community center and place of worship; it is built around a narrow, rectangular courtyard/entryway with doors to various rooms leading off of it. I look at it and think, Wow, that's pretty cool, having a community center like that.

Directly across the street from this center is a similar, five-or-six-story community center and place of worship for the LDS church. A woman walks out of that complex and walks down the street. We pass each other in the street between the two centers, walking in opposite directions. The woman recognizes me and calls me “Pie [$RealFirstName].” I know that “Pie” is a nickname for [$OfficeBoss] [yes, he is LDS in real life], and that the use of that nickname as a title before my name indicates that I am a member of the in-group associated with [$OfficeBoss]. I'm rather disturbed that the woman both knew who I was and associated me with [$OfficeBoss] in such an intimate and familiar way.

Having realized I was dreaming at some point during this sequence of events [again, I'm not sure when], I decide to start flying. I take off and get pulled in a random direction, backward and sort of sideways. I try to control my flying and start flying forward by concentrating on details of the scenery I can see in front of me and trying to examine them more closely, as I did in my previous lucid [on the night of June 5], but it doesn't work. I attempt this method of control several times. When it stubbornly refuses to work, I just give up. I think, Fine. I'm just going to let myself get pulled along to wherever.

Then that dream faded to black, yet I remained consciously self-aware. I'm not sure if I was actually awake [more likely] or still asleep and self-aware during the gap between two dreams. At any rate, I remember that I knew that I was still asleep [however that works; I really don't even know what was going on here] and that if I just waited patiently, another dream would begin. I did, and it did.

I'm in the central courtyard of a big, old church made of yellow-tan stone. On one side of the courtyard, there is a large, windowlike opening in the wall with no glass, and on the other side of it are rolling vineyards. I briefly think of going flying over the vineyards, but I decide not to. Instead, I explore the building I'm in, and find a large kitchen knife. I pick it up and look at it, reflecting upon it: What's this doing here? We don't do sacrifices of living creatures in my church. We don't have to.

I go into the building, find the kitchen, and put the knife away. To get to the kitchen, I have to go through the parish hall. There are other people in there. I continue to explore more of the building, concentrating on just what a wonderful gift it is to be here in a dream and be lucid. [That's the last I remember.]

[Later, I had another nonlucid.] A whole bunch of the important businesspeople I know in real life, including [$OfficeBoss], have come over to House #2 for an early-morning presentation that I'm supposed to be giving, and they've all crowded into my bedroom. I wake up late for the presentation. In order to get into my closet, I have to ask [$OfficeBoss] and another man to move aside. I'm embarrassed to be seen by all these people while wearing only my black nightgown. [It was the same one I was wearing in real life that night.] I take too long to get ready, and all my guests wander off.

I go out into the rest of the house and see that my mom has put up all the Christmas decorations, even though it's June. I run the vacuum cleaner in the study; P. is there. I get a second shot at doing the presentation, and this time, it works out. I'm grateful that the first attempt, where I got up late for it and everyone left, was just a dream. [LOL!]

[Fragment] I'm in a house or hotel somewhere with MLT [a real-life friend]. I demonstrate to her the fold-out bed that's built into the wall, and she declares it to be too opulent. The building is cylindrical.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of May 20-21

I'm in the upstairs bedroom of a house. Built into one wall is the entrance to a long slide, which I go down. The first part of the slide is plastic, tubular, and constantly curves back and forth in random directions. After a bit, the plastic tube slide connects smoothly to another section of slide, this one made of polished, light-colored wood. The wooden portion of the slide turns through 90-degree corners in between straight runs, and it goes through a series of spacious rooms that are made of the same light wood.

Later, I'm back in the upstairs bedroom again, with some other people who want to go down the slide. I describe to them what the slide is like.

Night of May 21-22

I'm in the main hallway that runs through the middle of my church. There are tables lined up in the hallway, and I'm sitting behind one of them. Other people from my church are sitting behind the other tables. We're all talking to each other about the church activities we do. [This was all day residue. This dream was essentially a replay of what I had just done that day in real life at our church's spring talent festival. I count this dream as further evidence in favor of the hypothesis that dreams are produced when your brain is recording the day's experiences in long-term memory.]

[I had a lucid dream in the next cycle, but I've forgotten a lot of the details. The following paragraphs contain what I do remember of that dream.]

I realize I'm dreaming and think, Oh, cool. I'm dreaming. That means I can do anything I want to. I find myself in a rectangular room in which all the walls are full-length mirrors. I look at my reflection and notice that I have my long hair and bangs again [which was the hairstyle I had for most of my life until last October], and that my bangs are chopped off all unevenly, with little sections that end in different lengths. I either exercise, or just think about, two or more of the dream abilities I've already learned [I'm not really sure, because I don't remember this part very well], and then I decide to try an ability I've never tried before: changing my appearance.

I close my eyes and visualize what I want my reflection in the mirror to look like when I open them: I want to see myself as an old woman, with my hair gray, but still long. I open my eyes, only to find that it didn't work. My reflection still looks the same as it did before. The thought of trying to shapeshift into some kind of animal crosses my mind, but I decide not to because no animal that I particularly want to turn into comes to mind.

[Different dream, later in the night.] I'm visiting my boss's house, which is huge and very nice. My boss gives me a very kind, generous compliment about my after-school teaching. He says something along the lines of, “You're a great teacher. You treat them like people.” [“Them” meaning the students.] I'm very flattered.

I go outside my boss's house. There is a small, private jet parked outside. A group of people I know and I are about to leave on a trip somewhere in the jet. Before we leave, I decide to go and use the portable restrooms that are located on the opposite side of the grassy field I'm in. One of them is a standard portable restroom, and the other is bigger and wider; it was removed from a commercial airplane, I know. [It made sense in the dream.] I can't get into either of them, though, because my mom is blocking the entrance to them. She tells me that I can't come in because P. is in the restroom right now.

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Side notes:

In real life, I have two jobs, each with a different boss. The boss who appeared in my dream was not the one from my after-school teaching job; he was the one from my office job. It makes sense, though, in a sideways kind of way, that Office Boss would compliment me on my teaching in a dream. Two things that I know I really, deeply want are for my teaching efforts to be appreciated and for Office Boss to like me. I think my mind just combined the two desires and had Office Boss express appreciation of my teaching. (Office Boss has seen me teach in real life, but only once.) This dream, and the one I had on March 26 about being hired for that one job (which I did not get hired for in real life, by the way), lead me to this observation: Sometimes, when you really, really want something to happen in real life, your mind will grant you your desire in a dream.

Cool, my first attempt at forging. It was unsuccessful, but I'm not really surprised. I'm looking forward to continuing to work on that skill.

I begin to understand why we have a thread devoted to pictures “for daily lucid inspiration.” Lucid dreaming is beginning to feel routine and unremarkable, even when I'm in a lucid dream. It felt that way in this one. My initial excitement about the phenomenon has worn off. Now I see why one would want a source of daily lucid inspiration.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at my new church. The sanctuary is big and sort of round [more so than it is in reality]. I'm sitting on a pew near the front of the room, from which I can see both the altar and the center of the room. In the center of the room is an elevated circle with six thick, round columns spaced evenly around its outer edge. Beyond the outer edge of the circle, centered in the back of the room just in front of the main doors, is a lectern. I recognize it as our regular lectern, even though it and all the columns are festooned with decorative constructs made out of LEGO toys. A sort of mesh made of bright orange axles and connectors from a LEGO set hangs down a little way over the sides of the top of the lectern. The columns are all similarly decorated. The woman standing at the back of the room places a LEGO construct that she refers to as her “crown of thorns” on top of one of the columns. This causes all the columns to start moving vertically, changing their relative heights. I think about how cool all this is, especially the hydraulic-powered columns.

The sanctuary is filled with people. We're there for the Children's Stations of the Cross [an event that actually is coming up in just a few weeks]. There are lots of kids there, going through the stations in small groups. A group of kids walks by in front of my pew, and I hear one of the girls in it complain that there aren't enough girls in her group. I decide to join the group so that there will be more girls in it. [I was my adult self in this dream, but no one took any particular notice of me.]

I follow the group to the back of the room, out the main doors, and into the narthex. We stop at the location of the plaque designating the first station, which is hanging on the wall between the narthex and the sanctuary, just to the right of the main doors to the sanctuary. Another adult woman is operating this first station. She's ready for us with a toy that someone at the church put together to make Stations of the Cross more interactive and engaging: a pretend PASIV device. Inside the case, I see a piece of equipment from Verizon's network, a white metal rectangular box with the Verizon logo on top. I know that the box contains telephone cables on coils that allow them to be pulled out and then retracted. You can pull out the cables through holes in the side of the box, and that's what the woman does. The plastic jacks on the ends of the cables plug into matching ports on the bracelets that the kids and I are all wearing. The jacks and ports are the same size and shape as the ones used for the LEGO NXT robots and their sensors, I note. [The cables, however, are satiny silver-gray in color, not black like in real life.]

When all of us are plugged in by our bracelets and the device is turned on, the bracelets start pulsating, contracting and expanding in a way meant to simulate the sensation of an increasing heart rate. The experience is intended to help us identify and empathize with someone who is in mortal terror. While doing this, we all lie down on the tile floor and pretend to be asleep, because we know that this is what we're supposed to do when playing with a pretend dream-sharing device. [When I woke up and recalled all this, I thought it was hilarious both that my brain had created this scenario directly inspired by Inception, and that I had never realized that I was dreaming.]

After this, I walk through the parish hall [both the narthex and the parish hall are exactly like the ones at St. Mark's in Upland] and pick up some snacks. There seems to be some kind of meeting going on in one part of the room.

[Next cycle.] I'm walking on a wet, slippery stone-and-concrete courtyard in the middle of some old buildings with lots of dark-brown wood. The ground is wet because it has been raining; it's a gray, overcast day. I recognize this as an unfamiliar place and realize that I'm dreaming. This no longer shocks or startles me. I immediately start touching all the walls and handrails I pass, even crouching down at one point to lick up some of the water in one of the rain puddles. All of these actions evoke the corresponding sensations accurately.

I see a flight of wooden stairs leading up from the ground, attached to the outside of one of the buildings. I think, I wonder if I can turn these into an infinite loop. So I start climbing them, keeping track of how many segments of stairs separated by 90-degree turns I've climbed, counting them aloud. “One... two... three... now, when I get to the end of the next one, I should be back where I started from, right?” I say. When I get to the end of the fourth segment, though, I'm not back where I started from. The stairway just ends in a level, wooden, elevated walkway leading off to the right. “Damn you, astrophysics!” I exclaim aloud, expressing my disappointment that the normal laws of reality have prevailed despite this being a dream. [Why “astrophysics,” I have no idea.] I quickly shrug it off and continue exploring, walking along the walkway.

The walkway leads to the top of some steep, grassy hills. I crouch down near the top of one of them. I'm a little cold, so I try to summon a blanket to wrap around myself by thinking about one. Then I remember, No, just consciously, deliberately concentrating on it like that doesn't work. You have to know and expect that it will be there. I don't proceed to do this, though.

On top of one of the hills [the same one? A different one? I'm not sure], there is a concert stage with an amplifier sitting in the grass in front of it, to stage right. There's supposed to be a concert going on, but it's just beginning the process of being canceled. A rock band is on stage, but they aren't playing; they seem to be telling the audience at the bottom of the hill that there's no show to see, and some of the audience is beginning to wander away. They're canceling the show because the amplifier isn't working. I open up the top of the amplifier and find an AAA battery sitting half out of its battery cradle, which is itself only partially wired up to the rest of the amp. I reconnect all the wires and push the battery back into the cradle, and then the amp works. The band un-cancels the show and starts playing, and the audience stays and watches. I walk down the hill to join the audience. I notice that I'm now wearing the same two layers of coats that I often wear in real life. The dream starts to fade. Then I woke up.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of January 4-5, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm flying around a large, elaborate, indoor shopping mall that has an upstairs and a downstairs level. [I don't remember how I became lucid, but I did.] Like real malls I've been to with upstairs and downstairs levels, there are lots of open spaces connecting the two. I fly down through one of them to get into the lower level and explore it. Some of the people who are in the mall see me flying, and I talk to some of them.

The lower level is completely enclosed with no windows. It's all painted off-white and appears to be mostly offices, rather than shops. When I get into this enclosed area, I start walking. I encounter a female DC and we start talking. At one point, I actually tell her, “You're a dream character!” She either ignores this or doesn't hear me, I don't know which.

While exploring the corridors and passageways of this enclosed lower level, I find a door that is an entrance to the Arlington Theater. [Although I identified it as such, it didn't quite look like that in the dream. It looked like a big theater for live performances, but without the decorative, themed walls, and even bigger and wider than the real one.] When I enter the theater, I exclaim, “I was looking for this place!” Then it occurs to me, Couldn't you have used an ability to get here faster, rather than just searching for it? I go to take an empty seat next to some of my high school friends. The performance we're watching is a live-action version of Jaws. At the end, I walk up to the very front of the theater and take a picture of the audience.

Then, I feel a need to start floating upward, just like a helium balloon, so I allow myself to. The ceiling of the theater is made up of several layers of pieces of canvas stretched out with ropes. I make my way between the pieces of canvas, sometimes detaching a corner and folding it back, until I float out of the building and into the sky.

The next thing I remember is being on a street corner. My dad and sister bicycle past me and tell me to stop at the corner before crossing the street, to be safe. I say yes, I will. I walk along the road I'm on. I think vaguely of trying to do something else cool, like run really fast, but I don't do it. I look at a photo [presumably the one I took of the audience in the theater; I'm working off brief handwritten notes here] in what I at first think is reality before I figure out that it must still be in my head, because I know that I was dreaming when I took that picture.

While still outside on the street [I think; not sure of the specifics of the transition here], I suddenly find that I'm lying down, and my entire body is vibrating. When I look up and to my left, I see a sleep paralysis monitor. It's measuring how much I'm vibrating. It looks like an oscilloscope, kind of like this one, only in the dream, the screen is all black and there's only one bright-green line across it, that grows thicker and takes up more of the screen as the SP intensifies. Below that line is a numeric readout, also bright-green, that jumps from 40% to 88% as I watch. Below the numbers, I see the words “You did it!” appear on the screen.

So this is what sleep paralysis feels like, I think. I know what it is, but I'm still just a little freaked out by the all-over, shaking, vibrating sensation. I realized that I had to be waking up and thought, No! I don't want to wake up yet! Go back! I tried to DEILD, but I couldn't think of a scene to visualize, nor could I calm myself down enough to visualize one. Eventually, the feeling went away, and I was awake and back to normal. [First time I've ever woken up into SP. Very interesting.]

When I went back to sleep after that, I had another non-lucid dream. This time, I'm in my church. The room seems to be the same size and shape as it is in reality, but lots of things about it are different. The piano is front and center [rather than off to the side], and I'm sitting a few feet behind the piano bench, with my chair up against the windows that form the front wall of the room. I'm watching Wendi play the piano. We talk to each other about something. We're attending Betty's memorial service [which was held the Saturday after I had this dream, and I knew that both Wendi and I were planning to attend].

Later, when we're at the burial service, I look down into the box that forms the underground enclosure for the coffin, and I can see furniture inside it.

After the service, I leave the church building. Outside it is a big, complex interchange of road overpasses and underpasses that spans across a straight main road. Airplanes are using this main road as a makeshift runway. I walk across one of the overpasses with my family to get to the overpass on the other side.

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Side notes:
This was the second night that I wrote down a goal before going to bed. This time, I wrote: “Goal: become lucid, look around at scene, make sure it's stable, then see what other verbal commands I can use.” This time, I accomplished the first two, but forgot about the second two. So far, based on two nights of experience, my working hypothesis is that writing down my goals is definitely helping me to achieve them, but that in the future, my goals should only consist of one or two actions at most, not three or four, because I don't seem to be remembering more than two.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[I dreamed for a subjectively really long time last night, but my recall is a bit fragmented. I don't really remember the transitions between most of the scenes, which is reflected in the absence of flowing transitions between paragraphs in this entry.]

I'm lying in a bed that I'm sharing with a man I know. It's not sexual; he's asleep. He rolls over onto me, apparently completely unaware of my presence. I struggle to get out from underneath him, and succeed, standing up.

I'm now in a long, wide, rectangular space with white walls that serves as the entryway to our church's offices, which are within a really big building. A long, straight hallway leading to other offices on the floor forms one of the long sides of the rectangle, and the doors into our offices are on the other side. The center of the rectangle is filled with a row of wide, square, dark-colored, upholstered seats. I'm lying on one of them, with my knees bent over the front edge of it and my feet on the floor. Several people from my church walk by, coming in and out of the doors. They see me, and I say, “Hi.”

I'm in another room in the same really big building. It's being remodeled. There's a couch that's completely wrapped in newsprint, because someone is going to paint this room. I'm standing near the doorway, and I see L.M. [a teacher from my real high school, whose class I was never in] walking by out in the hall. I introduce one of the other people who's in the room with me to her: “This is L.M. She teaches biology.” L.M. is wearing a name tag that says “Sakura Lily [Something-or-other beginning with M],” in Roman characters. I think, I didn't know that was her real name.

I'm looking out the wall of the really big building that's make up of one really big window, at a sky filled with pink and orange clouds. I realize that it's already 3:00 in the afternoon, and I've already wasted most of the day. I'd better hurry up if I want to do the studying I still need to do for my final. [In the dream, I actually remembered having experienced most of an entire day in that really big building, including lunchtime.]

I'm in another living-room-like room, similar to the one that was being remodeled, except that this one isn't. At this point, it hits me: This isn't a real place. I'm dreaming. That explains why I wasn't really hungry for lunch earlier: my real body is asleep, and I had a big dinner before I went to bed. Oh! Since I'm dreaming, it's not really 3:00. The day hasn't even started yet! I still have time to study! Strangely, thinking about the fact that I'm dreaming causes me to feel woozy, dizzy, and sick, and the whole world to tilt. [Probably because I was rereading parts of the Inception shooting script again, in which telling someone that they're dreaming causes the dream to destabilize. Dang it! I know it doesn't have to be like that.] I think, No. I have to keep the dream stable. I kneel down to feel the carpet, which, this time, is a little like the carpet in my real room, except lighter (more yellow than brown) and slightly shaggier. The dizzy, tilting feeling goes away. Standing up, I put my hands under running water. At first, I can't feel it at all, but then I feel the warm water running over my hands. Then, I reach into a fish tank on a nearby table to touch the goldfish in it with my fingers. I've done this before, I think. What did it feel like? This. It does feel pretty much like I remember it feeling when I had my own goldfish tank in reality.

I return to the room that was being remodeled, to find that they're done remodeling it. The couch has been unwrapped and all the other furniture has been returned to the room. This room will be serving as the first-aid station for some kind of event; there's a handwritten paper sign on the door saying so. I feel the need to leave this room clean and neat before this dream ends (I sense that it will soon), so I pick up all the trash and used tissues that are lying all over the middle of the floor.

I'm outside, at night, looking at a couple of brightly-lit city blocks. I think, Oh, cool! Those are the blocks just to the south of home! [What home, I don't have the slightest idea.] I start flying, this time taking off with more of an effort of will and belief than by jumping (it also helps that I'm feeling happy and excited), and go straight up, so as to admire the view better. When I get up high, I start being pulled backward again [see this DJ entry and this one], but this time, it doesn't frighten me. I think, Oh, I must be going back to my real body now.

It turns out that I'm wrong. I find myself in another unfamiliar place [I don't remember where it was]. I pinch my nose and can still breathe through it, which is a pretty neat feeling. I'm still dreaming. [I remember doing this on two different occasions, but I'm not sure when the other one was.]

I'm entering my family's house [but it's none of our real houses]. P. is waiting for me inside, and expresses frustration that I've been gone so long. I'm still aware that this is a dream, but I decide to play along with the dream plot. I enter the kitchen, and my parents are there. I look at the whiteboard/calendar attached to the side of the fridge and see that something I wrote there before has been erased, and the magnets on it have been moved around. I follow my family up the stairs in the house, and we end up in a room filled with barrels of wine.

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Side notes:

This dream seemed to go on for a really long time, especially considering that I remembered being in the dream building for most of a day. I only wrote down the most memorable moments. I think this is because time dilation was the topic I was reading the most about here on DV before I went to bed last night. I am pleased with this development, and now I'm even more motivated to learn better control, so that I can really take advantage of the time and stability I now seem to have in lucid dreams.

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of December 5-6

I'm attending a service at an unfamiliar church. I'm in the choir. The bishop is there, and he shushes the choir, ending the song we're singing early. Two other famous people are there: Arnold Schwarzenegger and H. [a writer who is on the Internet and likely to search for himself]. The two of them and the bishop pose for a group picture. H. is wearing a big, floppy USC baseball cap. We all tell him to turn it around and wear it so that the logo is showing, or else there's no point in having it on at all. He actually looks more like my real-life friend Victor K. than he looks like H.

The service also involves honoring some military people. There is a man in a very highly decorated, green military dress uniform there.

Night of December 6-7

[This was a long, fun, interesting dream with a really cool setting and particularly good recall, especially for dialog.]

This dream is set within the world of a TV show called “Cruiser Island.” Cruiser Island is one of a small group of small, tropical islands, very close together, located just off the coast of Florida and connected to each other and to the mainland by bridges. One of its neighboring islands is called Alo Island. There is a large, single-story building there that says “Alo Island Public Hospital” on the sign on the front.

House #1 is located on Cruiser Island. My family is hosting a sort of sleepover there. I'm in my bedroom, in the top bunk (which is mine), wearing pajamas, ready to go to bed. A boy who's maybe 8 or 9 years old climbs up the end of the bunk bed to get into the top bunk, and we talk. He says he's afraid of some kind of wild animal, and I reassure him by saying that we're in the middle of downtown, and no wild animals are coming here. The rest of the conversation goes something like this:

Me: What's your name?
Boy: Thomas.
Me: Yeah, I thought you kinda looked like a Thomas. I'm (Emiko). (we shake hands)
Thomas: You know that guy who sings with the Parish girls... I'm his younger brother.
Me: Oh, you're Dom's brother!

I decide I enjoy spending time with kids.

[Note: In the dream, when Thomas mentioned his older brother, I knew who we were talking about and knew that he shared a first name with, but wasn't, the protagonist from Inception. In real life, both brothers sang with the Parish girls, but only once, two days ago. They also have different first names in real life.]

I'm standing on the floor next to the foot end of the bunk bed. There are two Vietnamese women, a mom and a grandma, who are sleeping on the lower bunk. Two more Vietnamese moms are standing around in the room and in the hallway, along with a whole bunch of their kids. One of the moms says something about how she doesn't have magical Japanese eyes [I don't even know.] and then sternly commands all the boys to go and brush their hair, now, so that they can go to bed. All the girls have their hair in braids or pigtails, so they'll need their moms' help to comb it out. I think, With all these people in the house for the sleepover and all this excitement, my sleep cycle is getting completely thrown off. I'm not going to get a chance to try to lucid dream tonight. That's too bad. [And yet, I still somehow managed not to realize that I was dreaming at this point. I laughed when I remembered this thought upon waking up.]

I go into the bathroom to toss a few of my stray hairs into the trash can. I don't just toss them on the floor because of all the guests we have in the house. While I'm in the bathroom, I see that my gold cross necklace has fallen into the toilet. Also, I find some bedbugs somewhere in the house, crawling all over some white paper thing. I take it outside, showing it to my mom and explaining to her, as we walk along a sidewalk outside, what they are and what it's like to have them in the house. I say that I'm pretty sure I just got rid of all of them.

My mom and I continue walking through Cruiser Island's downtown, which looks a lot like San Luis Obispo's downtown, until we reach a small light rail station on the street. We look at the big, dark-blue metal signboard there to find out what its schedule is. We continue walking along the streets, turning at least one corner and passing one more light rail station. The street signs are white on blue like in L.A. [not white on brown like in the real SLO]. I talk to someone I pass on the street about which of the streets will be closed for the parade that's going to start soon.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from November 19-22.]

Night of November 19-20

I've just taken some sort of computer certification exam (A+? Cisco?) along with a large group of my peers. We're all looking at the exam results, which are printed on a strip of the kind of paper most store receipts are printed on. On the strip of paper, the students in the group are ranked in order of how high they scored on the test; I'm ranked third.

We go into another room to receive our rewards for completing the exam: students whose ranks were odd numbers get a red bottle of soda (red Fanta or Dr. Pepper), and students whose ranks were even numbers get a purple bottle of soda (grape Fanta). The sodas are in a room that resembles the social gathering room at my church.

I also remember walking across a wide, beautiful, gray flagstone courtyard in the sunshine.

Night of November 20-21 (or possibly 21-22, I'm not sure because I wrote it down too long after the fact)

I'm on an amusement park ride with over-the-shoulder restraints. I think the trains are suspended from an overhead track. It takes me up an upward-sloping section of track that goes through a tunnel. The ride simulates reduced gravity, which I think is pretty cool.