The Lab Notebook

[This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of November 20-21, 2012. The title of this dream is in Japanese, and is read "Sora ni Tondeiru Yumebito-Tai." It literally means "Flying in the Sky Dream Person Team (or Corps)." The dream felt a lot like being in an episode of an anime series, so I gave it a title that would be suitable for an anime series.]

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

I'm outside somewhere, lying in the warm sun. The sun's rays are making me too hot in my flannel pajamas. I'm wearing dark-colored plaid pajama bottoms [the same ones I'm wearing in real life], and a white flannel pajama top with red roses on it [the same pattern as on a bedspread my mom has at her house].

I'm in a large department store, filled with racks of cold-weather accessories and other clothes. I'm wandering through the racks by hopping up off the floor, hovering above it for a few seconds as I float forward, and then sinking back down. After several repetitions of this, I think, Hmm, this is longer than I should be able to float like this. Oh - that's because I'm dreaming.

I fly out of the room with the clothes and winter accessories and into a larger room. It's still part of the same store, but it has a higher ceiling and has a skylight. I stop to ground myself in the dream by landing on the ground and touching things with my hands, including some packages of batteries that are hanging up on a rack. It works.

I join up with a a group of kid DCs that includes Merida from Brave and a curly-haired blond boy. We all set off from the department store together to battle some evil force. We run out of the store and come to a hilltop that overlooks an ocean bay. Some of us, including Merida and myself, jump off the top of the hill and start flying over the bay. I shout “Woohoo!” as I jump off. I notice that some of the others in the group are simply running down the hill, rather than flying. [For the first time, it seems perfectly natural to me that some DCs can fly, too, and I don't feel any need to hide the fact that I can fly, as I usually do when I'm around DCs.]

All of us, those who ran and those who flew, reassemble at our destination, which is a small house on the cliff overlooking the ocean. We realize we're being pursued by some kind of monster that will kill us and eat us. There is a newspaper article about the monster in the house. The kids all seem to be sure that the monsters have found us, that they're coming, and that we're all doomed. For a second, I'm genuinely afraid, but then I remember: Oh, yeah, this is a dream. I know what this most likely means. I roll my eyes and announce to the group: “They aren't really monsters, they're just tasks that I haven't done and that I feel bad about.” [Or words to that effect.] I think about it for a moment and come up with what that task must be - paying a bill [among other things that I don't remember now]. Everyone in the group seems to relax, and no monsters ever actually appear at the house.

One of the DCs in the group says to another, “See about adopting her [meaning me] into the practice.” They are both young men, about 17-19 years old. The second one looks at me and says, “You're [Emiko].... Roboto.” [He used my real-life first name.] I reply, “Yes, that's a name I've used here before. I don't really like it, though.” [Huh? That's definitely not my real-life last name, and I certainly don't remember using it in a dream before. It was a big part of my childhood, though.] I say something about how grateful I am to have been accepted into this group of people, even with my mismatched pajamas. I'm still wearing the same dark pajama pants and light pajama top from the very beginning of the dream, while most of the other people in the group are wearing neat, matching, school-uniform-like outfits. [This isn't surprising; I was an anime fan for a long time, and a lot of the characters in the shows I liked were high school students who wore school uniforms.]

The group of DCs and I all feel a general sense that that is the end of this adventure, but that there will be more in the future. We start flying off over the landscape, looking back at the buildings where we've just been: the big store with the skylight, and a motel [?]. There is an upbeat, exciting rock song playing in the background. It feels exactly like I'm experiencing the end credits of an anime show.

I'm now traveling along in some kind of vehicle with the two young men, watching the scenery pass by from a tree-lined road that runs along the crest of a ridge opposite those buildings. I say to them, “Also, your ending theme song kicks ass.” [I think the context for this was that they thanked me for sticking with them so long at the end of the adventure, and I replied that of course, I wanted to prolong the experience as long as possible and have as much fun as I could. I don't remember the beginning of the conversation very well, though. The song I heard reminded me a little bit of this one, except it was at a faster tempo.]

I have a false awakening in the bed I'm actually in [I was sleeping on a futon because I had family in town that week], where I can see my bare legs, before waking up for real.

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Side notes:
THIS DREAM WAS SO COOL!!!! I hadn't had a really long, fun, clear lucid like this in a while before I had this dream. I was so happy to have it!

Awake/SP, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in an elaborate, fantasy landscape. I fall over the side of a cliff and start falling down the side of a mountain, which has terraces in it and lots of trees, but the trees are all growing out of the side of the mountain. As I fall, I think, I could expect there to be a soft, grassy field below me for me to land on, and there would be one. I try to do exactly that, but it doesn't work. Eventually, I remember that I can fly, and fly back up to the top of the cliff/mountain.

[That's all I can remember now of an awesome, detailed, elaborate lucid dream that was remarkably long for my first sleep cycle of the night. I was really, really determined to have a lucid dream last night, and my determination and MILDing worked. I also remember choosing to stay in and prolong the dream at least twice, but I don't remember any more details. I really should have taken a moment to write them down in my paper dream journal after I woke up.]

[Later, different part of the night.] I feel, more clearly and with more awareness than I ever have before, all my major muscles transitioning into their paralyzed state. After a moment, a dream begins to form. Some Viking-warrior-looking guys who look like they came straight out of a movie by Aardman Animations are standing over me, watching me wake up. We're all in a big wooden hall. The dream is very weak, fuzzy, and indistinct, though, and although I try to focus on it, it fades away before I can get into it fully. This can be partially blamed on the fact that I'm completely fascinated by the experience I've just had, and this novel feeling of being “stuck” in my sleeping body while still being consciously aware.

Welcome to SP, I think. That wasn't so bad, was it? I lie still and observe the experience. Although I'm conscious, in a way I never am in waking life, of my breathing happening automatically, I feel like I'm not getting enough air. I realize that that's because I have my forearms crossed over my chest so that their dead weight is resting right on top of my ribcage. I can feel my left-hand fingertips touching the skin of my right arm, but I feel removed from the sensation. I hope for another dream to start, but it doesn't. I attempt to visualize a scene, but it's a very halfhearted effort and doesn't go anywhere. Also, I have my head tilted to my right at an awkward angle, which makes me think, I'm going to feel that in the morning. After a few minutes, I get bored and decide to get up and use the restroom. I have no problem getting back to normal wakefulness.

Side notes:
I've always been afraid to try WILDing because I'd never experienced sleep paralysis, and I was afraid that I might experience hypnagogic hallucinations or sensations that would frighten me. This was the first time I'd ever really experienced SP. It was cool and weird, but not frightening at all, and I didn't experience any hypnagogic hallucinations. Getting over your fear of something is always nice.

[Now I'm all caught up. This one is from last night.]

I'm in a [completely unfamiliar] house where my family is staying. My mom is temporarily adopting a baby named Ana from some woman. Inside the house, I pick up P., who is maybe 5 or 6 years old (small enough for me to pick up and carry around) but still thinks and talks like the 19-year-old she currently is in reality. I'm supposed to call her Ana in front of our mother, but I accidentally slip up and call her P. [I don't even know.] There is an actual baby Ana somewhere in the house; I see her there. While walking around outside the house, I pass by the baby's mother as she's leaving.

Our family has also gotten a small, fluffy white dog. While I'm lying in bed in my room in the aforementioned house, the dog comes and jumps into bed with me, and I pet him and snuggle him. He's warm and soft, and I decide I like having a dog. [I've never had one in reality.]

My family and I are walking around on a street outside, at dusk. The neighborhood we're in looks rundown and old, all one-story houses and vacant lots. A bigger dog runs up to me and jumps up onto my clothes. I'm scared and try to tell him to go away [just as I would in real life], but he doesn't knock me over with his paws, and I decide the experience isn't actually as scary as I had thought it was. [Hmm. That's the second time I've encountered and overcome a longtime fear while dreaming, although I wasn't lucid this time. I hope this trend continues!]

We continue walking through the neighborhood. I recognize a lot of the people living in it as students from my ESOL classes at DePorres, which I know is also in the neighborhood. I say to my family, “If I randomly say hello to people, they're my students.” After a short while, there's a crowd of at least 20-25 people accompanying me on my walk through the neighborhood, and I recognize at least two-thirds of them as my students. I say aloud, “This is the best neighborhood ever!” [Not only were my students much more spread out across the area than that, but the neighborhood around DePorres isn't quite as rundown as it was in this dream. Also, I notice that when I dream about Florida, sometimes it's bright and sunny, and sometimes it's darker and grittier than it actually is (well, darker and grittier than the part of Florida where I lived actually is, anyway).]

We come upon a vacant lot that is all dug up because people are in the process of building a playground there. Standing on top of one of the piles of dug-up dirt, I say, “This wasn't here two years ago.” It makes me happy that something is getting built there.

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

I woke up just before 5:00 A.M. last night and was disappointed that I'd slept through most of the night, couldn't remember any dreams, and wasn't going to have time for another full sleep cycle before the rest of the house started getting up at 5:30. I decided to try to go back to sleep anyway, focusing once again on MILD affirmations and visualizations. It worked.

At some point between 5:00 and 6:40 [when I woke up for real], I have a false awakening where I'm in my current room and my bed is parallel to the closet doors [not perpendicular to them, as it is in reality]. I'm lying on the floor between the bed and the closet, all tangled up in my blankets. [I'm not sure when this happened relative to my other dreams, so I'm just sticking it here at the beginning.]

I'm looking at the results of a Google Image Search for something involving the terms “japan” and [I think] “front.” Almost all the photos that are coming up are of cherry blossoms, but one of them is of autumn leaves. I say something along the lines of, “There are about ten hundred billion pictures of cherry blossoms, but almost no pictures of the leaves.”

The next thing I know, I'm lying on my back in a wide expanse of grass. Several big, flat leaves in bright red, yellow, and green gently float down onto me from the nearest tree. The sky is blue and the weather is sunny, clear, and calm. There are trees spread out all over this grassy area, all with leaves that are turning autumn colors. Somewhere in here, I recognize that I'm dreaming, but there's no specific moment that triggers this realization. Saito is there with me, and I want to show him a seed pod from a magnolia tree. So, one comes rolling down the hill toward me, and I catch it. It's bigger than it would be in real life, and I say so when I show it to him. He says to me, “It's your mind.” Indeed; by now I'm not only aware that I'm dreaming, but I've caught on to the fact that this is my mind's rendering of what autumn is. I look around for an acorn, but find none. I say, “Of course there aren't any acorns – all my trees are are liquid-ambers.” [That's because that's what most of the trees in the neighborhood where I grew up were.]

This big, tall, flying guy in a blue costume with matching blue makeup, who looks like he came straight from a Cirque du Soleil production, comes and lifts me up in his arms and flies away with me. As I'm being lifted off the ground, the thought of hot-air balloons crosses my mind, and [for some inexplicable reason], I ask myself, “Which city in Canada is the balloon city?” The blue flying guy flies us through a series of very large, rectangular rooms with movie projection screens on all the walls and the ceiling. At first, the screens are showing immersive views of natural vistas in Canada, accompanied by some appropriately dramatic and inspiring music that I don't recognize. I'm not afraid, because I recognize that the movie screens and the guy flying me through them are all part of the Disney theme park attraction I'm now on. The attraction is kind of like Soarin' meets the CircleVision movie at Canada's pavilion in Epcot. The film footage is filmed in a style very much like that of Soarin'; it's obviously intended to make it look like you're flying, except that the shots are designed for the big rectangular screens. The film in the last room of the attraction shows the transition over the border into the U.S., and flies us over Mt. Rushmore and then under a waterfall projected on the back wall. We go under the waterfall by going through an opening in the wall.

Once I'm through the opening, I'm standing on the ground, and the blue flying guy is gone. I recognize the place where I'm standing as the interior of the Snow White's Scary Adventures attraction from Disneyland. There are no ride vehicles anywhere to be seen, though. The Evil Queen is just a little way in front of me. I approach her, and she turns around and says something scary [just like on the real ride]. I scream really loudly and high-pitched. For a few moments, terror completely overtakes all my awareness. While screaming, I think, Wake me up! Wake me up! hoping that the dream will end. [Remarkably,] It doesn't this time. I finish screaming, and observe that the dream hasn't ended, I'm still standing there, and the Evil Queen is also still standing there, turned to face the path where the ride vehicles should be, but is now motionless and silent, as she has finished saying her prerecorded phrase. So I start punching her in the face. I do this repeatedly, but I don't feel anything. While I'm beating her up, I shout at her: “You're an AAT*! I carry more complicated devices than you around on my back every day!” Which is true; she may be computer-controlled, but my laptop is much higher-tech. No longer afraid of her, I walk along the path and into the next scene of the attraction, where there is another AAT figure of the Evil Queen [this is the case in reality, too, but the track layout there is completely different]. This one turns around and starts to shriek something at me to try and scare me, but her words stop and peter out halfway through, because she can see that I'm not afraid of her. I continue walking through the scene. [*My personal shortening of “Audio-Animatronic™,” the robotic technology used to create characters in many attractions at Disney theme parks. I think I shouted more things than this, but this is all I remember shouting now.]

The next thing I know, I'm outside again, but surrounded by buildings this time. I decide to rub my hands together, only to discover that they're really hot. I realize that that's because my real hands are really hot under my blankets. That's the last thing I remember from that dream, but it seemed to take me a little longer to wake up fully. When I did, my face broke into a smile and then a laugh when I remembered the encounter with the Evil Queen. In reality, I had been pretty scared of those moments on that ride when I was a kid, and I still dislike them now. I'm really, really proud of this dream. I think facing something/someone you've been afraid of for a long time and standing up to it is quite an achievement, and a good, worthwhile use of the ability to lucid dream.