I rub my hands and further investigate the pipe.
I am sad to find out that it isn't loaded. I would have loved to smoke some weed.
I remember that Yuya told me that I should break out of the dream plot when I become lucid.
Oh! And she wanted to teach me about time dilation!
I become very excited and quickly teleport myself to Teraluna.
I end up in a flower garden. Yuya is attending to some flowers right in front of me.
"Yuya Yuya Yuya"
"Hi?"
"Hi! Time dilation and stuff!"
She grins.
"Calm down! You're going to wake up."
Right...
After attempting to get myself into a calmer state I take a look at my surroundings.
The flower garden is beautiful. All of the flowers are very colorful and they smell great.
I touch and smell some of them until I decide that the dream is perfectly stable.
"So... the thing you call time dilation."
"Yes!"
"Well, for starters it isn't really time dilation."
"I guess. I couldn't think of a better word to describe it."
"Right. So, there's quite a few ways to approach this."
"I'm pretty sure I know which way works best for you, but first of all we need to work on something else."
"Oh?"
"Well, it's sort of directly related."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Your awareness in dreams."
"I've noticed that you sometimes are extremely aware when you're here, but only for short periods of time."
"You experience awareness in short bursts rather than continuously"
I quickly realize that she's spot on about that.
"Yeah, now that you mention it, it's pretty bad."
"Good, so first of all I am going to show you a technique to hold a certain level of awareness."
"Great!"
She drops the flowers.
"Let's go for a walk!"
We walk through the flower garden and talk some more about time dilation.
"Alright, stop!"
"Hm?"
"I want you to tell me the color of each flower on the plant we just passed, without looking."
"Err, sure? Let's see... it was green, yellow, blue, yellow..."
"No, you're cheating."
"I am?"
"You're using your sense of global awareness to tell what color they are without looking, what I need you to do is to remember what color they are."
"What? All of them?"
"Yes! I want you to remember every single detail of what you experience."
"Let's keep walking and pay attention."
This is going to be hard... like, really hard.
Is it even possible to do this?
"Sure it is, especially since you're dreaming. Remember when I told you the difference between focusing on something in waking life and in dreams?"
"Oh yeah, that's right."
I focus really hard on everything I see, even the smallest of details, and try to take mental note of them.
We walk past a similar plant, with approximately 50 flowers on it.
"From top to bottom, go!"
I try to remember and surprisingly, accessing my memories feels natural and easy.
"Red, red, yellow, blue, yellow... err, ultraviolet?, red, blue, blue..."
I keep going through about 20 of them until Yuya stops me.
"Hey hey, awareness!"
"What? Was I wrong?"
"No, but you're neglecting your awareness. Have you noted the details of the things we just passed?"
"Oh... oops. Wow, this is hard."
"Haha, see, just memorizing and remembering is easy."
"What I want to teach you is to remain aware of your surroundings, even if you are focusing on something else."
"If you can do that you should be able to continuously remain aware much more easily."
This makes so much sense!
Yuya is so amazing, why haven't I asked her about this before?
We keep doing this. I memorize all the flowers including other details and try to recite them from memory without loosing awareness of the new surroundings I encounter through walking.
It's really hard at first, but then it becomes surprisingly easy.
I feel like a genius, having such amazing memory all of a sudden.
Since I focus so hard on my vision, it becomes more and more intense.
I can see beyond the color spectrum visible to the human eye.
Ultraviolet and infrared, I can see them so clearly.
They aren't red or violet at all, they are entirely different colors.
The now 5 base colors start merging together to form new ones.
Everything is so beautiful.
It is so hard not to get distracted by this beauty. I have to remain aware of everything.
But it works! I can quite literally feel my awareness leveling out and remaining strong as I go along.
Yuya keeps asking me more and more difficult questions.
"How did this plant smell like?"
I can no longer answer these question with words, so I project my memories towards her, showing that I remember clearly.
We go on like this for some more minutes.
I feel like I have just achieved something major.
I have never ever experienced such an amount of focus.
We finally reach the end of the flower garden.
"And stop!"
"Okay?"
"Yep, time to relax, you cannot possibly keep this up much longer."
"Oh, I can't? It started to feel natural some moments ago."
"Still, if you keep that level of focus up for too long your brain will just spontaneously break out of it."
"You'll either loose all your awareness or even wake up."
"So it would be a bad idea to try and do this all the time?"
"Yes. You can do it for a limited period of time, for example during a battle where you need the extra focus."
"What I'm teaching you is to remain at a constant level of awareness."
"The important part here is that it is constant, not that it is on a level where you have surreal perception and memory."
"The goal is to never let it drift below a certain threshold, this way dream stability should remain high."
I understand her so well, her explanations are perfect.
"It's just more efficient for you to learn it this way."
"Not everyone is capable of achieving such a level of focus."
"It's something you often find in dreamers that are experienced with dream battles."
Dream battling has so many uses, how amazing.
"So dream stability is directly related to your level of awareness?"
"Well, yes, sort of. It's complicated."
"It always is."
"Actually, it is really simple... like most things."
"Yeah right."
"It's the painfully simple things the human mind cannot comprehend."
"After all your mind is trained to understand the complexity of the waking world, not the simplicity of the dream world."
Wow. That is deep.
I have never thought of it this way.
Yuya never ceases to amaze me.
She just drops these mind blowing ideas on me, as if they were the most obvious things in existence.
"Should I try to do this awareness technique in waking life?"
"No. At least not right now. You said you have constant headaches."
"Yeah, probably a bad idea."
She smiles and gives me a big hug.
"We'll continue this next time."
"Wake up and write this down so you don't forget it."
"I will! Until next time!"
Wake up... Have I ever tried waking up from a dream that wasn't a nightmare?
Heck, even a nightmare I haven't tried to wake up from in forever.
I close my eyes and command myself to wake up with my inner voice.
I feel a tingling sensation all over my body.
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