Dreaming on my feet

11.28.10
Type: Lucid, Memorable
Lucidity: 8/10
Vividness: 9/10

I'm just going to write this one as a pretty direct translation from my dream journal.

Library with my Dad.. return to the library later with my friend alex. I'm sitting on the couch with my cousin L and also J.Z., a girl I used to like and respect in highschool, in the same library, playing guitar. I think we are all playing music together and the sound is incredible and everything just flows together like water in a stream, really beautiful. The dream changes and we are exploring a massive basement in a house, supposedly JZ's, concrete floors and generally abandoned. Feels like a warehouse almost. One room we enter has a big worksmiths metal cabinets with boxes of junk and tools, as JZ passes by she laughs and pulls a joke by pulling out in succession boxes with rocks paper and scissors out- very funny and cute. We leave and go to 2 other rooms, one is dilapidated like one of those rotting/falling apart old abandoned houses I saw quite often in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, also massive and completely empty, like a house inside of this basement. The other we enter and close the door, steel push handle pretty classic big heavy door. There's a huge AC/furnace in the room big enough to power a hotel, and there is a massive storage unit which JZ jokes that she might use if only she were tall enough to reach it, and indeed it is about 12 feet tall with no way to access it.
Now here's the really incredible part of this dream - I realize that I'm dreaming when I experience a sort of dream overlap which I haven't ever experienced before, I described it upon waking like this:

Somewhere along the line I realize that I'm dreaming because I feel LIsa's foot moving next to my ear. It is like my view is 50/50 in the dream state, half of my perception is occupied by feeling her foot moving and see the foot/ my head interacting in some sort of architecture rendering mode, all grey and blue lines like a vector model of the scene mapped out - on top of that or simultaneously I see the dream scene, the room and L and JZ on top of that. It's like a ripple in the dream state.

I tell L this and she says that we should wake up since it isn't good to leave out your instruments while we sleep since the temperature change at night could ruin them [lol..s igh] but I insist that it is okay, trying my best to convince her not to wake up, which I do wind up convincing her not to. I feel this sensation of overlapping dreams several times. Lisa jokes that she can't open the door as if we are stuck in this dream room, and JZ and I are like wtf you're joking and she is, we all run out of the room laughing and vault up some big concrete stairs with yellow large painted railings like you see at loading docks at supermarkets. At the top of the stairs we walk into the same library that I have already visited twice tonight, and though I don't realize it we are all sleeping in some corner of that very room [so I believed at the time]. L asks what I want to do now before we wake up, I think about it and recall some hilarious joke images I saw earlier in the night [ or maybe in waking life] that I wanted to enjoy again or recreate.. I feel the dream starting to fade, so I touching things and focusing on their texture- clothes, large leaves on a potted plant nearby, stone of a raised circular sitting area, and finally the carpet on the floor, which has tiny raised squares and is soft with a very pleasant active texture which brings my dream back into full vividness [sweet, first time I've remembered to use this and it as very successful].. at this point though I lose some lucidity and walk over to the library computers and pull up the images which are displayed in some sort of WoW/WC3 program, some of them are funny internet type joke images and just weird, but after going through a few I get bored and feel that L is waiting for me so I log off and find L and tell her we can wake up now, and I actually do wake up : )

SO.. pretty incredible and exciting experience for me. When I woke up I was totally blown away by what had just happened. Becoming lucid in a dream within a dream shared with other dream characters! haha! I realized I was dreaming when my perception was interrupted/expanded [I wrote down this phrase "interruped/expanded" in my DJ and I feel like it describes the sensation perfectly- has anyone else also had this experience?] to the view of the food near my head on the pillow. I wasn't fully fully lucid though I don't think, since I had confused my situation in that the last dream I had exited to be waking life, instead of just being the last dream I had experienced. Also, this lucid had a much different feel to it than all my other lucids.. in those I became totally aware that I was in my head and imagination or whatever, and thought only about my control over the situation and what sort of things that I should do, almost like I'm set in that white loading dock in the Matrix movies where you can summon guns and everything, but with nothing really happening around me.. But in this dream I was aware that I was dream while simultaneously enjoying the freedom of interacting with a fully formed dream scenes and stable dream characters.. I really enjoyed this a lot. In the other lucids I was so focused on my own ability, my own power, that it felt almost crippling, like I was trying to grasp desperately onto what I might be able to do, my lack of capability for control, etc. This dream felt so free and revitalizing in comparison.

I think that perhaps the overlapping perspective may have been an actual awareness of my physical body, my head on the pillow, and the foot may have been a hallucination that my mind used to compensate for a stable world environment.. what tricks the mind plays in order to keep itself afloat! Really beautiful experience though. I hope everyone is waking in their dreams, and having liberating experiences.

Sweet jam I just found, not anything to do with dreaming but fun to write a DJ to hah

11.16.10
Type: Lucid, DS
Vividness: 6/10
Lucidity: 6/10

Hide and Seek
Walking along a cobblestone path, the same on that I was walking on in one of my first lucids, this time walking with a girl I don't recognize.. I do a nose RC because of the surreal landscape, and perhaps because I just came out of a nightmare I think.. anyways noseplug RC succeeds and I affirm that I am dreaming to myself. I remember how last time I was occupied trying to fix my fading vision and thus woke myself up, and recalled that in fact touch is the most prominent stabilizing factor in dreams, so I directed my attention toward my body, my posture, the weight of my jeans on my legs, the smell of the grass and forest we are approaching.. the path ends and we enter some woods with trees with rather large trunks, perhaps cedar.. the girl playfully hides behind some trees and I'm trying to find her, and cannot locate her anymore. Vision starts to fade and I focus on my body and remain conscious, and maintained consciousness through the fading dream into waking, awoke feeling incredibly refreshed.

Well I was happy when waking from this LD because I maintained lucidity for approximately 2min, longest achieved thus far that I can remember. Also, I remembered to stay calm and do what I had intended to do which is also a first, rather than try to immediately jump into the sky without thinking or sex up the lady that I was walking with.

11.14.10
Car Nap

I don't remember what the dream was about, but I remember taking a nap on the drive back from Boston to Detroit.. I suddenly became aware that I had slipped into the dream state while experiencing HI, the first time I've ever accomplished that. I then tried to run and was incredibly excited and immediately woke myself up. ..

11.11.10
Type: Lucid, fragment
Vividness: 2/10
Lucidity: 5/10
Nap DILD, napping in the room, get up and get in the shower, washing my hair, very warm in the shower. I go to rinse out my hair and when I feel my head the hair is dry, so I do a noseplug RC and it is successful. I realize that I am dreaming and decide to stabilize the dream so I rub my hands and say "stabilize my dream".. I try to look at the floor, off white tiles, very white/light bathroom. I get out very slowly for some reason, but I cannot open my right eye too well and feel uneasy. I cannot get my vision to adjust properly so I try to force my eyes to open up really wide and wind up opening my eyes and wake up!

Okay. I'm gonna sit at this computer and record these dreams! I feel like the computer drains me of vital energy, and feel reluctant to stay at it.

11.04.10
Type: Lucid, fragment
Vividness: 10/10
Lucidity: 7/10

Had a lucid dream but forgot it once I woke up! first time that has happened to me, and I get the feeling that it was the greatest lucidity I have attained so far in the dream. Near the end I recalled an incredibly vivid scene recall of skateboarding on the roof of a large school building with some other people, brick, sunny day, in some sort of small city scape, one massive tree in the front yard and some sidewalks.. Headed around the roof shaped like a large L and made way to a glass roofed sloped section of the roof, where I heard DC down on the street below talking about gangs in the school, then I feel the dream fading so I spin with my eyes closed, slowly and completely, with the only sensation I was experiencing of my body slowly and powerfully spinning. I think to myself "my bedroom, my bedroom" and opening my eyes find myself lying in my bed!

I do a nose RC and it is successful, FA! So I go to get up, propped up on my arms, but I focus on the muscular activity of pulling myself up too much and experience and a very intense pain/spasm in my right shoulder, and I remember that my physical body is lying down with my arms back behind my head since it was a WILD attempt/induction, and I can't shake off the pain since my physical body probably used a combination of muscles which put strain on the shoulder trying to imitated the movements of my dream body. Since I couldn't gather the will to get past the sensation I woke myself up and shifted positions and tried to enter back into the dream but couldn't fall back asleep.

After spending two nights with intense WILD attempts I decided that WILD would be an excellent and direct method for me to develop, and have resolved to schedule a practice regiment for this pursuit.

Type: Lucid, quick, Nose-plug RC
Vividness: 7/10
Lucidity: 5/10

I was driving passenger in my friend David's black truck who I live with, down an old country neighborhood road with four or five houses on either side, very open, autumn or late summer, hazel tall grass and a nice breeze. Passes a huge, barn red, 3 or 4 story house with a walk out basement on the left, and I feel that I had passed that house and remember doing some sort of work in it with David [dream frag from earlier]. We get to the bottom of the hill and arrive at a while barn-ish house, and David tells me that a man across the lake bought a big portion of property and is brewing his own spirits this year, "I hope it will be good", and he keeps kind of mumbling on about it while I get a strange intuitive feeling that I've been here before. I peer out the window and there's an old house with just the foundations remaining and some wooden boards, only one part of a wall still standing, I think it's strange that there's another house on this property, so I ask myself "what would this be like if I were dreaming?" and start to become more aware and focus on the details of the situation I'm in.
We pull around and we're infront of a small building, and D is asking his wife who is a doctor [not in RL] for some sort of herb to help me since he thinks I'm going crazy [probably an effect of my increased awareness, mind tricking/distracting me]. Then suddenly I'm in an old one room building with big cobblestone walls and a dirt floor , huge oak 6x6 rafters vaulting above, D sitting with our neighbor at a series of long dark wooden tables discussing how I think that I'm dreaming and they need to do something to help me. At this point I do my nose plug RC and I can breathe in, although my nose is stuffed up and it's kind of hard to tell, but I declare the test successful. I feel nervous about flying [first instinct] so I swing myself up onto the beams and start climbing around like a squirrel on all fours, jumping and hanging off of the beams just having some plain and simple fun, laughing at David and telling him that I'm dreaming.

The lucid stops pretty soon after when my alarm goes off for work.

So yeah, a quick and fun lucid, it felt light and refreshing. I'm still amazed of the feeling of the absolute clarity of my lucid dreams and body. I find it so hard to tell the difference, but this has also inspired me to check my surroundings and RC with more.. well, conviction, since I have the feeling in my bones of what it's like to be in a lucid after having a few this month. It's just like waking life! CRRAAZZZYY.

I need to find another type of reliable RC, I don't like the hands one too much, and while I do the text-turn away-read again RC every day, I don't usually find myself in an area with a clock or text while I'm dreaming. Will investigate/try to create one next time I LD, like see how easy it is for me to do certain things like produce powers or telekenisis. I will also remember my intention to not fly or do anything crazy, and focus my attention on the dream scene and establishing a technique for improving my clarity and awareness.

Also, if you haven't read it juroara wrote a great thread on Dream Affirmations, can help those struggling with MILD and will-power/belief.
http://www.dreamviews.com/f12/dream-...veryone-90212/

Awesome stuff. I'm happy and excited that I had two LD's in a week!

Type: Lucid, quick, Nose-plug RC
Vividness: 5/10
Lucidity: 5/10

Big Friends
I was in a place that looked like a movie theatre, not sure why I was there but I wasn't really thinking about that, I was talking to three of my best friends, S J and M. I ask all of them if they want to go out and do something and they all are acting quite stand-off ish saying "No, we're going to go to Colorado and go snowboarding." I notice that I am having to strain my neck looking upwards to see their faces, and they seem to be about eight or nine feet tall, and my friend M has his arm amputated just above the elbow and it's bandaged in white gauze. This is strange so I do a nose plug RC and breathe in three times successfully, and I'm aware that I'm dreaming.

I don't bother trying to talk to my friends since they have been stand off-ish anyways, so I walk up a slight incline and enter a semicircular shaped restraunt, with big windows and booths against the wall like any classic diner. I focus on all the different people sitting in the booths, and recognize a girl R that I had dated for a little while two years ago, and approached her at the booth. We both just looked at each other and didn't say anything, which is a very nice encounter. At this point I can't think of anything I want to do in this restaurant so I pick her up in my arms, and jump into the air and spin to try to create a new dream scene. The only problem is that I wasn't focusing on maintaining lucidity while changing the scene, or imagining where I want to end up, so I lost R and found myself only semi-lucid in a new dream scene.

I'm in a public place, some vague looking American east coast city, I do a nose plug RC several times and it works, but the dream is fading quickly and I get nervous yelling stabilize! since there are so many people around me [waking residue since I have a room mate next door to me, paper thin walls], I think about doing some different things but the dream keeps fading and a lose lucidity .

MM so that's it! LD 4.
I spent the night before this going over my DJ from the last month, putting together dreamsigns and thinking about the nature, common trends and dimensions of my dreams. I also slept in from 12:30-7:30, then got up and walked around outside for an hour and focused on my senses, very beautiful brisk morning, all the trees bare and the ground frosted, no sounds at all from birds singing or cars passing, even the dogs weren't barking. Really nice. Then I went back to my room feeling refreshed and spent about an hour sitting quietly reading my DJ and doing visualizations. So yeah, I guess you could call this a WBTB/DILD induced?

Anyway, short but sweet. I've tried to transition the scene in 2/4 lucids and failed both times. Got to read up on it more and hang a reminder list next to my bed .

I met my goal of having 2 LDs by Oct 31st, then again met my "extra credit" goal of having 4 !! So I'm happy about that and feeling inspired.

I hope everybody is having fun lucid dreaming and are meeting their own goals and feeling great about it!

Type: Lucid, fragmented, experimental.
Lucidity: [3/10]
Vividness: [2/10]



Well first of all let me say that having another lucid dream is a very reassuring thing to me, and also motivating - shows that my efforts, readings from all of you in the forums and books, are all having some sort of productive, positive effect! I tried for a year before I had my first LD, and was worried it was just random/by chance, but that occured on the 20th of September, so this was only a little more than two weeks apart. My LD goal was to have two lucid dreams by October 31st, and I've already accomplished that so early int he month. Woot.

Anyways, the dreams-

First dream of the night I'm at a house party with people my age or just a little bit younger. Lots of fun, I'm drinking vodka but I really do not like vodka much , so I ask somebody if I can trade for their whiskey but am rejected so I go mix it with something and drink it anways [should've been a DS since I stopped drinking]. Lots of girls , really good time, pretty average sized house a little big, white walls and completely dark outside windows. Suddenly we learn that the cops are coming, and there are underage people there so we clean up remarkably fast and efficiently and there is only food and soda out. The cops pull up and are standing outside the door but don't knock for some reason, so I open the door and ask "How may I help you, officer?" and he responds by asking me why I just opened the door [which was pretty funny]. I"m worried since I don't want to be arresting purchasing for minors but they wind up arresting two other guys for completely unrelated reasons to the party and leave without trouble. I remember one of the guys having a bright orange bandana, plain, that just struck me as odd, possibly another DS.

I have another dream after that with the same cast of DC riding bikes or hanging otu near a lake outside, talking to girls, very summer ish, everything green nice big sky . [it's autumn now, no green to be seen]

So I don't recall precisly how I became lucid or the dream leading up to it but this is what I remember of the first one

I'm walking along a cobblestone path, woods on either side of me, and I decide to RC for a reason I cannot recall. I do the looking at hands technique, and then the pinch-ing nose technique and it passes and I verify that I am dreaming. Last time I got over excited and frantically repeated to myself "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming!" and lost control after about 15 seconds, so this time I was determined to remain calm and gently remind myself, which worked perfectly. I look at the ground, trying to focus my vision and repeat "stabilize" four times, without much effect, at least compared to the effect I expected it to have. Perhaps I just didn't repeat it emphatically enough, will try again in future. I felt a huge sensation of energy and heat flow through my body when I became lucid, and it was very pleasurable. The next part is a bit hazy, I'm kind of jumping around a house, through corridors, checking out rooms, wondering if I'm actually dreaming and keep RCing, worried that I'll hurt myself by flying or something. Almost walk in on my mom in the bathroom but she yells at me [weird but silly], I can't really think of what I want to do, not incredible lucidity or vividness, so I think "oh what the hell, I'll have sex" [since men can always think of that in any situation], so I enter a bathroom, big and plain with shower and big jacuzzi bathtub, ready for sex, and a gay guy is standing in there, and when I walk in he pulls down his pants and bends over, but thankfully his body is kind of plasticy and not incredibly realistic. At first I'm like "meh, it's just a dream, just want to test realness" but don't because.. well.. I'd rather have sex with a gorgeous woman! So I tell him that I want to have sex with the most beautiful woman, somebody I don't know, and he says fine and leaves the room, so I imagine the sexiest woman I can think of and she walks in the room. I must've put too much attention on the woman because when she came in I was viewing it in 3rd person, lucidity wavering but I've never experienced that so I didn't think to stabilize. So she kind of turned plastic-ish and kind of became a doll and the dream faded away

So I woke up from the dream, was about to record it in my DJ but first did a RC just for the hell of itand the nose pinch RC did to for me AGAIN! Awesome, glad I've been practicing that one in RL. False awaking FTW. So I'm lucid in my room, and decide to leave, walk out and I'm in a house different from where my room is, long hallway with windows, so I open the window and think about summoning a bow or sword to act out some Zelda situations [since my alarm is Zelda game boy tunes], but decide I don't really want to do that and fly out of the window to the ground, woods on both sides, dark sky like just after sunset, and a lake infront of me. As I was flying I tried to change the dream scene so I started to spin with my arms out and thought about going to a strip club to try the sex thing again, and closed my eyes, but amazing enough even though my eyes were closed, I guess my "dream eye"[?] wasn't closed with enough resolution and I could still see the scene around me, and the technique failed. So I'm on the ground and remember my intention/ goal to morph into an aquatic creature. So first I attempt running on water, and go across a small section of the lake, and it works, though I'm submerged up past my knees rather than on top, and my legs are burning from running/pedalling so fast. But still cool. So I'm on the other side, and a car drives into the water from around the bend, like on a highway completely natural, and I see the huge headlights under the water, and decide to dive in to get in the car and see what that's like, then try to morph, but at this time my ALARM goes off and I wake up

So yeah, those are my lucids! Not incredibly vivid, but I'm very excited about them anyways. The first one probably lasted five to ten minutes, and the second one only about three minutes due to the alarm.

Notes- In the lucid, my dream body felt SOOO natural it was great! I felt light, and fully in control, I had to keep questioning whether flying was safe since it felt so very real. "can I really do this, will I hurt myself?" The spinning dream scene change technique didn't work, but I can understand how it would, and will try again will definite success the next lucid dream I have. Also, I remember at some point during the first LD a fragment I forgot, I was going to have an orgasm but stopped the sex/activity or whatever was happening, since I remember that most people wake up and I wanted to test other things first. I will remember to try the whole way through[lol] another time to see what the circumstances are for myself, since LaBerge claims it doesn't happen with all people and I don't think it will for me since the lucidity at that point remained very vivid.

I found it difficult to create a new dream scene, and kept getting distracted by thinking "what do I want to do?" I opted against earth bending and sex for the majority of the lucid time because I didn't want to begin a fight unintentionally and turn it into a nightmare, didn't want sex because I didn't want to wake myself up, and didn't try to sit and close my eyes to dream- meditate for the same reason.

I think this was a result of a compulsion/urgency to control the LD because of a fear/ desire not to lose it and forget it, even though in the LD I experienced no loss of control, completely vividness, aside from when I was trying to control it and change things! Though I probably didn't lose my lucidity because I was so single minded on not losing it, but that was also most likely the cause of the bland lack of occurances in the dream. I probably blocked off other potential story lines and experiences because of it, resulting in lots of open spaces and corridors and a lack of other DC's, mostly dark and greyish lighting and color tones.

I need to
A Catagorize more Dream Signs and re evaluate my dream goals, based off of interactions with dream characters for more variety, and also hold off on the sexual and potentially violent/advanced stuff until I'm more comfortable, lots of stuff left to test.

B Read about dream scene changing tactics and focus on visualizing myself stabilizing the dream via techniques like focusing on each individual sense, etc. Will try the "stabilize" thing more since it doesn't take much effort, didn't really lose anything by doing it.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I would really appreciate any advice. What you focus on for incredibly basic aspects of LD DC interaction goals, and simple environment testing things? Trying to control flight more carefully? Trying to start conversation with DC as a way to get a dream cookie? Experiment with time? Change the color of my shirt?

Thanks a ton in advance!