Alyzarin

I had a dream before and after this one, but I was too lazy to write them down. They're not important, anyway.... I spent like eight hours helping a friend do yard work immediately after getting up so I don't remember much of this dream other than what I wrote down, but what's really important to me is what happened at the end....

Vividness Is An Illusion [DILD]

So first, the part of the dream I just barely remember. It was another high school dream, and there was some plot going on about some girl who wanted to kill us all and expected me to play along with it. (I don't remember this in the slightest, it's just from the notes). There was lots of really trippy stuff going on though, like when I was in a hallway and couldn't figure out which way to go, I looked at a wall and saw this guy J's face attached to the wall smiling this creepy smile and tilted sideways in the correct direction, so I smiled back and walked that way. Also, I remember being in a class and seeing my cat walking around, and people wanted me to follow them so I told them to hold up while I put my cat away. I picked up my backpack and unzipped the center area to put him in, but when I looked inside there was another cat already in there, and he looked like he was starving. I said "Oh shit! I must have put this other cat in here already and forgot about him, my bad.", then just left them both there and walked off. Anyway, so the girl that was trying to kill us wanted me to do something, but I didn't fall for her trap this time. I became very mildly lucid and just flew up, phasing through the higher floors, until I was over the building. I was just trying to get away from the girl and didn't really have any goals in mind, so from high up I just watched some kids playing soccer in the distance until I woke up.

This is where it got interesting for me. I'm no longer confused about the last time I woke up and was still dreaming but everything was SO real, including detail I hadn't actually seen before, and I even was pretty sure I was awake at first but then lost focus, in a way that false awakenings don't. That and this were hypnopompic hallucinations. So I woke up in bed, facing the wall. It was pretty dark still, but then suddenly I heard a guy talking extremely clearly and there was sounds of cheering on a TV. I didn't see either one, but I immediately got mental images, the voice was coming from a heavyset black man and the TV (which was not actually on) was showing some soccer game. Unlike the last time where I was asked by a hallucinated M if I was up and I responded "I think I'm awake....", but then forgot about it when I started listening to her, this time I knew exactly what was going on. I started mentally repeating to myself "It's a hallucination, it's a hallucination...." I got a very clear image of what was going on in the soccer game too, there were no players at all, just several soccer balls of different sizes. They were moving in strange trajectories one at a time until they hit the next one and caused it to roll, sort of like dominoes causing each other to fall over. The man was talking about the game, though I can't remember what he was saying now, it was all rather startling and I wasn't paying much attention, not to mention my short-term memory was still pretty terrible. Eventually though he started just saying complete gibberish words, and I knew the hallucination was falling apart. I took a leap of faith and quickly turned over to see if he was there, but the room was empty. All the sounds vanished, and I felt very dissociated for a second, and then I returned to full waking consciousness. There was no feeling of waking up because I was already awake, just sort of a transitional blip.

Basically what I can say about this is... it made me realize how much we fool ourselves into thinking that regular lucid dreams are vivid. I'm sure they can be made extremely vivid like this, but they're still nowhere near as vivid as waking life. My most realistic dream, which I previously would have said was possibly even more vivid than reality, now just seems like a hallucination compared to this. Senses like hearing and sight can definitely be waaay up there in dreams, the amount of detail in specific objects can definitely match reality, but there's so much more that just isn't present in dreams. In waking life your brain constantly monitors your heart rate, breathing rate, the position of each of your limbs and how comfortable they are, what temperature you are in various parts of your body, whether you have any itches, if you're hungry, thirsty, bloated, sweaty, physically nervous.... All five of your senses are constantly at work at full vividness, your brain knows that it has to keep itself aware of EVERYTHING in your line of sight and peripherals, not just what you're focusing on, it has stay aware of even the slightest sounds or changes in taste or smell or feeling. Basically, in waking life, your brain knows it can't just let loose like it can in dreams. Together these make for soooo much detail missing in dreams unless you're specifically focused on it, it's ridiculous. The reason we can feel like dreams are so vivid is because we don't normally consciously think about this stuff, and in dreams it's hard to remember what it's like to be in the waking world anyway, but this vividness is an illusion. Even when you're on drugs and awake and hallucinating in reality, they have a dreamy feeling to them and you often lose track of some of these sensations. This was different. I was in reality, totally hallucinating, and totally lucid. This feeling of knowing you're in a dream while being in the waking world was mind-blowing, at least to me. This is something I won't soon be forgetting. I wonder how much work it could take, what level of awareness would be required, to recreate sensations this powerful in dreams....

Urgh, I'm so fried right now. -.-;; I ended up drinking again last night with my friend M, I really need to take a break now.... But anyway, I had one dream, and it ended with what may be a false awakening, but honestly I'm starting to think I may have actually woken up but just been hallucinating for a minute before my brain fully woke up. Before I went back to sleep again after that (though I don't remember any more dreams) I was able to make myself hallucinate some things by focusing on them so I'm pretty sure this was the case, actually.

#1 - King Of The Jungle [Non-Lucid]

The first thing I remember is trying to follow M to some strip mall restaurant, but on the way there there was a large space between the two of us and a bunch of old guys kept walking in my way really slowly and annoyingly. But I finally got there and ran into C, a kid I haven't seen since right after high school, but who I've known since the day care I went to before I started elementary school. I think I got caught up with him a little while we were standing in line waiting for food, but then it jumped forward to me being in the jungle. I got stuck in some kind of loop here.... I would wander through the jungle a bit until I ran into King Kong () And there would be some big smoke explosion or something (it's really hard to remember) that would make it hard to see him, and I'd walk off on some path extending directly outward in the direction he was facing. After a while the path would curve to the right and I'd just continue down it. Then it would start over again, and it happened at least three or four times, possibly more. I remember telling myself that this was just part of my daily routine, it was what I did every day before lunch. So on the last time I exit the foresty area and end up in a big open meadow. And I get a text from Linkzelda41! I don't remember the exact wording of the first couple texts, but he invites me to go to lunch with him and OpheliaBlue. I think to myself that I just came from eating with OpheliaBlue, but I could eat again. I ask him what they're getting and he responds with "It's a Mediterranean cuisine." I text back "Mmm. Where at?", but after that the dream ended.

Here's where the false awakening/hallucinations thing happened.... I woke up in M's apartment, sleeping on the couch. This was all EXTREMELY vivid. Way more vivid than any false awakening I've ever had, it was basically exactly like real life. Every single detail was correct, despite the fact that it was only my second time ever being there and my first time ever being there in the morning. When I actually fully woke up, the lighting coming in through the windows and everything was still exactly the same, and there was no lapse in consciousness between this part and when I was awake, it just switched. So I'm pretty sure I just physically woke up but was still dreaming.... Anyway, so I woke up. M was walking around the apartment holding a Gatorade bottle filled with what looked like marinara or pizza sauce. She looked at me and said "Hey, you up?" to which I looked around slowly and then responded with "I think I'm awake...." Though, this is also a sign for me because I've never noticed anything was up in a false awakening before, even the incredibly bizarre ones. So she holds out the bottle to me and says "At least we've got mozzarella wine! " I looked at her confused and she started talking about how she'd gone to a class already (she had class in a few hours) and some guy kept farting the whole time, and the other people in the class were picking on him and calling him some mean nickname, though I don't remember what it was. I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes while saying "That's rude." :< M hesitates for a second and then says "What?" and I open my eyes ready to say that I was talking about how they were making fun of the guy, but when I do she's not there. Everything else is the same. And I realize that I'm awake. o_o