• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    The Lab Notebook

    Like many others, I was attracted to lucid dreaming by Inception. Unlike some others, I was very quick to let go of the misconceptions it offers, and to learn and embrace the lingo, the practices, and the understanding of dreaming that are accepted by the community of real people I found here.

    I titled my dream journal "The Lab Notebook" because of the way I'm naturally inclined to write the portions of my dream journal entries that are commentary and side notes on my dreams. I always write with the vocabulary, style, and mindset of a scientist recording the observations she's made during her experiments. That's the framework in which I can best make sense of what I'm learning about dreaming.

    I always write about dreams in the present tense, because I remember reading somewhere that doing so helps the events of the dream seem more immediate and real to you, and helps you recall them.

    The color-coding system I use in my dream journal is:

    Dark red: Things I did while awake
    Teal: Non-lucid portions of the dream
    Deep sky blue: Semi-lucid portions of the dream
    Dark orchid: Lucid portions of the dream (because it's my favorite color)
    [Black within square brackets:] Commentary added by me while I was writing the dream journal entry

    1. Dogs, Dinners, and Hidden Chronicles

      by , 09-23-2012 at 04:41 PM (The Lab Notebook)
      I adopt a large, black dog from a shelter, and take him home to my apartment. I find that the responsibility of taking care of him is more than I can stand, and I don't enjoy it at all. I feel like a horrible, awful person, but I decide take him back to the place I got him from to ask them to find a different home for him. He's too big for me to pick up and put in my truck by myself, though, so two of my neighbors help me.

      I get back to the shopping center where the shelter is located and walk through it, but by the time I get to the shelter, the dog has wandered off on his own, and I don't know where he is. I was such a lousy owner that I didn't even get a leash for him.


      [This dream stemmed from an ad I heard on the radio yesterday for a kennel that really does find new homes for dogs. By the way, I don't even have a truck in real life, just a car.]

      [Different dream, later in the night.] I'm playing Hidden Chronicles and I notice, for the first time, that the river on the main map continues further up than I had thought, and there are all kinds of buildings on the other side - a whole town for me to explore. There's a sailboat dock across the river from my estate - obviously, you're supposed to get to that part of town by sailing across the river - and a second bridge for me to repair.

      Suddenly, I'm standing among the buildings of the town on the far side of the river. When I turn and look back down the river, I gasp - from this ground-level point of view, looking in this direction, I can see that there's a whole city over there to explore, complete with its own skyline of skyscrapers. I'm really excited to explore it, but I think, Looks like I'm going to keep playing this game for the next couple of years.


      [Different dream.] I'm with my parents, and my mom needs me to translate some text from Japanese into English [or vice versa, I don't remember] for her. She needs it right away, and all I have is my phone, but I plug away at it anyway. We're visiting the home of some friends, and we're sitting down to have dinner with their large family around the light-brown, round table that my parents have in their house.