LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5

Wow, it feels like forever since I last got on these forums! Hopefully I'm back to stay awhile...

So in recent months I haven't really even tried to lucid dream. If I did try it would fail every time; maybe things just got too routine to be meaningful enough to cause my brain to go lucid. I honestly don't know. But I think now that I have spent a decent amount of time away from lucid dreaming, as long as I have a goal in mind I can get back into it.

That goal came to me last night as I watched Inception for the second time. Of course I realized how much of it isn't true to real life, but a lot of things from the movie could work, with some slight modifications. So I decided that in the coming weeks I'm going to try to take as many concepts from Inception as possible and turn them into a real life, working form. At the same time I will simply be keeping a normal journal of my dreams to aid in recall. For the sake of those that dislike people using Inception for real-life lucid dreaming, I'll be including small sections that explain the reasoning behind each part, to prove I'm not mindlessly following a hollywood story.

Last night, being the first of this quest, I had to start small and simple, with something that could work without a few days' practice beforehand. That narrowed things down to none other than the kick. I went with Non je ne Regrette Rien, the song used in Inception, set to an alarm on my netbook (using Easy MP3 Alarm) so that it would deliver the kick right about 4:00am.

I don't recall a lot about the dream I was having, but I do remember that suddenly everything went black, and I heard the sound of a trumpet as if it had been recorded and then exponentially slowed down. It faded in and out, the blasts increasing in pitch and frequency as time went on. After a few seconds, the trumpet was normal speed, and I could hear Edith Piaf's voice in addition to the trumpets. I was successfully awakened by the song.

Why it works: This is up for debate, but I believe the reason this song in particular is effective at waking people up is because the trumpets function similarly to a beat in an isochronic tone. Because the trumpets sound off at a relatively high frequency, your brain's natural reaction is to adjust to match that frequency, which is too high for sleeping, thus waking you up.

After that, I got up, shut down the netbook so I'd stop wasting electricity (I'm no environmentalist, but that stuff isn't cheap! ), and then got back in bed, hoping I'd remain conscious enough to reach lucidity.

Next time my eyes opened, I was laying on a mattress without sheets, looking up at a roof of blue-tinted steel, and a very bright light. I sat up and walked out of my chamber, finding the whole building to be made of the same blue-ish metal. The architecture was odd--not based on squares and rectangles like normal buildings, but rather everything was based on a hexagonal shape. The hallways were also lined with screens that were embedded into the walls. They were displaying games and programs currently in testing. As I continued walking down the hallway, I passed a room where I could see the people who were actually doing the testing. I got the feeling that I was in the headquarters some software development company, or something of that nature.

When I got outside, I saw a group of my friends, but before I could even say anything to them, they had grabbed me and pulled me behind some weird structure, telling me that I had to be careful not to be seen by the police. Apparently I had accidentally committed some crime in regards to the software company, and false memory caused me to believe it. I also wasn't alone; one dream character had done the same thing as me, and had to hide as well.

After a while of just sneaking around trying to find our way home, I heard loud machine noises coming from behind me and turned to see a train driving along an elevated track. The track was horribly damaged and out of repair, and swayed back and forth as the train sped along, trying to cross the weak section before it gave way. It didn't happen; the tracks began to fall apart shortly ahead of the train, and within a moment the train had driven off the end and landed in a (very realistic) explosion.

Something about that explosion and its realism drew me very strongly into the dream, and everything took on a greater depth and clarity. I really felt like I was there, and perhaps I even had a sense of being in a dream, but it didn't register enough for me to truly be lucid.

At any rate, with the train drawing all the attention of the police, the DC and I no longer had to worry about sneaking around. In fact, we were primary witnesses of what happened, so the police and news reporters all wanted to ask us questions instead of turn us in.

I walked around and talked to some people after that, but the dream was pretty much over from that point; nothing very interesting happened thereafter. What I do find interesting is how my mind translated my desire to really be in the dream--as in, a dream that I'm in deeply enough for it to be clear and have the depth of consciousness to it--in the form of an explosion. Usually I would have thought such a thing would cause me to wake up, but it seems that something surprising and highly realistic does the exact opposite. I'll have to remember that...maybe it could come in handy if I'm ever lucid and the dream is fading! Just make something explode

Well, I'm going to work on a totem today and see if I can apply that principle to reality checking. Wish me luck!