CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #231: Fedoras and Flatulence

I wake up feeling disappointed that I didn’t manage to have a lucid dream. Well, too late for that -- Wife and the kids are up and getting ready and my folks are here too. I feel grumpy and sorry for myself, but I get started with the day. Lots of mundane stuff happens and eventually we all wind up sitting at a cafeteria table across from a pedestal.

The pedestal fascinates me. It has the vague outline of a statue on it, which will fade from looking fully physical to almost completely invisible. It’s a statue of Artemis, and I know that nobody can see it but me because I’m the only lucid dreamer in this whole place. As I’m staring at this statue, a brown-haired woman in her early 20s sits down in the chair next to me, a little closer than appropriate. She touches me on the shoulder flirtatiously and leans in. “Hi! What are we looking at?”

I feel uneasy about how close she’s getting but also attracted and flattered. I feel like I don’t know how much information I should reveal about being a lucid dreamer, so my answer is guarded: “That’s supposed to be a statue there.”

“Well, what do you see?” she asks.

The truth: “It’s a statue of Artemis. I can see it because I’m a lucid dreamer.”

“That’s amazing!” she says. She makes a few more comments about lucid dreaming and then stands up. Her inner thigh brushes my left hand as she gets up and I again get that mix of attraction and discomfort. She smiles. “You should call me if you ever want to talk to me about it.”

I think that I’d have no way to call her because I don’t have her phone number. I’m about to ask her what it is but stop when I realize how bad that would sound. This all feels strange to me now. I look to my right and my family isn’t here with me. It’s just me. I take the nose pinch reality check and I blow right through, becoming semi-lucid but just not completely convinced. .This feels so real, am I sure? I hit a second nose pinch and now I’m fully lucid.

I get up from the table and move into an adjacent room, remembering my intent to summon Dreamer. My go-to method has been transforming an existing DC into her, so I look around at the few dream characters wandering this scene and confidently grab the nearest one. It’s a short, pudgy Asian male, overall a really abysmal candidate for this transform into Dreamer. I want to be confident though so I go right ahead with trying to transform this dude.

I press my hands along his scalp, spreading Dreamer’s purple hair color along his scalp. He’s smiling and kind of chuckling at this, seeming to find it funny. The purple is coming out but whatever paint is coming out of my hands feels really clump and uneven. The guy’s scalp is kind of sweaty, too, and the purple paint even starts running down his face. His hair isn’t even half purpled before I get frustrated after a long time trying. Okay, maybe he looks too different, try changing the face. I start mashing on his face with my hands, trying to change his look into Dreamer. He seems to be getting kind of pissed at me for this and the whole thing just becomes awkward.

Okay, move on. I leave and walk into another room with a strange, gently wavy floor. I try the behind-the-back summon, narrating that “I feel Dreamer’s hand over here,” but I feel this doubt like I’m not doing things properly. I call out “[Dreamer]!” (using her real name) and vaguely hear a response, and I decide that she must be up ahead in some nearby room. I decide to use my old trick of demanding that the dream show me the way, and now when I call for Dreamer, a doorway glows with bright yellow light.

I continue moving through another series of 3-4 doors this way, demanding to be shown the way and the dream complying. I wind up in a large, cavernous room filled with DCs. There is a group of nuns near one side of the room that are dressed in unusual red habits. A large number of adults wander the room (more women than men) and close to the center of the room there’s a shallow pit where a large group of children are playing together. I ask the dream to show me where Dreamer is, but the glow effect always seems to be slightly out of view, frustrating me. I demand out loud that “Everybody point to where [Dreamer] is in this room.”

Every character in the scene turns toward a young, blond girl that’s playing in the pit. She’s about 6, her hair much shorter and lighter than I would have imagined, but I feel like this is her. I walk up to the child, who looks up at me with a goofy, slightly crooked-toothed smile. I place my hands on the sides of her head and say, “This is you, you’re [Dreamer].” As I say this, she grows to full height and now she looks completely like herself, apart from the fact that she has the little girl’s short, blond hair.

“Thank you for finding me!” she says. Dreamer puts her arms around my neck and we briefly hug. Almost immediately, all of the DCs in the room move toward, all of them smiling at her, greeting her, and wanting to interact with her. Some of them congratulate her. I stand by a few feet to the side, interested and amused. As each of the DCs greet her in turn, at one point a man comes up with a tiny fedora and placed it onto her head as if he’s crowning her.

The happy throng of DCs congregate around Dreamer as they all walk toward one of the room’s exits. I feel sad to see her leave the dream scene so early but all of this feels very natural to me, so I don’t resist it.

Once I find myself alone, I walk through another exit into an office scene with lots of people working at desks. It looks like we’re high up in a skyscraper. I make some mischief in here with telekinesis, throwing a plastic sign, tossing a desk, picking up one poor guy who’s just trying to get his work done. The office workers start seeming uncomfortable with my presence, so I look for an exit.

Off to the side is a platform with a waiting helicopter, so I climb aboard. Another DC tries to get on with us, and there’s a brief argument about who should get to come aboard. The pilot says (referring to me) “He can do whatever he wants,” and we take off. We fly over the city for a good while and I spy a few buildings that look reminiscent from spots in Breaking Bad. Eventually the helicopter hovers over a forest clearing near a building and I jump out. The helicopter flies off and I’m alone again.

I remember that I have a lucid dare from Dreamer that requires me to perform a Super Advanced Fart (one which is “very long, loud, and powerful”). At first I feel like this will be impossible. My body isn’t giving me “the signal” that anything can be conjured up. I know that this is a dream, though, so I convince myself that a bubble of pressure is forming in my stomach. Once that’s there, a good push sends me into a full eruption. The emerging fart is ultra loud and super powerful, lifting me gently into the air. It feels like there’s a hand or a platform under my butt lifting me upward. I wobble around unsteadily in the air, leaning left and right and bobbing a bit. It feels like I have a jet pack on.

I’d hoped to have enough propulsion to reach lower earth orbit, but I never get more than 15-20 feet off the ground. As the “event” ends, I settle back down to the ground. Dare achieved!

I’ve still got some dream left, so I decide to find Dreamer again. I ask the dream to show me where she is, and a door glows on a nearby building. I head for the door but before I reach it, I have a false awakening at the foot of a bed. Wife is lying on the bed, completely unclothed, writing on a notepad. I feel extreme sexual attraction and I curl up next to her. The moment that I kiss her neck, though, her clothes reappear. Then she shows me that she’s making a list of personality quirks that makes her good at Jeopardy questions. I’m still trying to figure out how to turn things frisky when my dad walks by on the way to the kitchen. The mood is officially ruined, so I get up for the day before waking up for real.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #229: The Note

I’m sitting in a restaurant and something feels off to me. I stand up to find Wife standing here beside me and I realize that a lucid dream has started. “Do you want to come along?” I ask Wife.

“Sure, okay!” she responds rather happily. This is a nice change because she’s normally more involved in the dream plot and not as cooperative.

I walk outside of the restaurant with Wife, opening the glass door to walk through. Oops, I’d meant to do a phase for the competition! I try to quickly phase through it while it’s open. I phase my arm through the door and then start moving the rest of my body through, Wife giving me a very strange look. The door becomes flimsy in the middle of the attempt and starts folding in on itself. I gyrate my hips, trying to hurry through before it collapses, and I’m very conscious that it totally looks like I’m humping it.

The door becomes completely unmanageable and the scene comes apart as I fall into the void. I hand-rub for a bit to wait this out but sense that something is close to my face, something that I can chew on. I bite down on it and it tastes like a soft, very mild licorice. I usually hate licorice but there’s something about this that makes it a little more bearable, sort of like it’s been crossed with bubble gum somehow.

I keep chewing and chewing, walking forward through the void. I eat fast, consuming yards of the stuff as I walk forward. After a while, it just feels like it’s been too long in the void and that I need to do something about it. For some reason I raise both of my arms over my head before calling out, “Dreamer, pull me out!” I don’t feel any physical contact, but almost immediately find myself standing in my darkened master bedroom, no longer in the void.

There’s a piece of paper stuck on the opposite wall covered with large, handwritten letters. I interpret this as being a note that Dreamer has left for me. It looks like gibberish, so I move forward, trying to get a better look. It rearranges itself, but it’s still unreadable. Then the letters rearrange into:

“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”

I interpret this as meaning there’s something I’m meant to read, but I don’t know what. This is relevant for later… see the end of this entry!

I wander out into the hall, which is lit up like it’s morning. I remember my intent to phase and try to phase through my youngest child R’s door. Unfortunately the door just comes open instead of letting me phase and I see R beginning to stir around in bed. This sounds like a good way to get wrapped up in a dream plot, so I back away into the hall.

I fly down the stairs to the kitchen area to see that the breakfast table has been moved far to the side and that almost the entire area is covered with Lego pieces. The coolest part is that most of them have been assembled into these amazing, moving models of roads, freeways, machines, amusement park carousels, and all kinds of other things. It’s really vivid, so much so that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m viewing a scene from waking life. I think that in this scenario, Wife must have stayed up all night building this.

I leave through the back door, finding myself in a park walking along a red dirt path dotted with autumn leaves. I follow the path into a building with large plate glass windows all around its walls. I look back at the park through the window, marveling at how realistic it looks when I shift my perspective. I feel excited and happy to see this, saying, “I can’t believe my mind generated all of this.”

I remember again that I’d meant to phase, so I walk toward one of the plate glass windows, anticipating an easy phase. Unfortunately, before I get there, the dream ends.

Notes: Here’s something cool. Immediately upon waking up, I removed my sleep mask and looked over at the clock. Just as I was looking at it, my iPod’s screen came on with a notification. I popped it open and just at that moment I’d received a Skype message from Dreamer.

This was really exciting to me because of what the note had said earlier (“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”), and the timing was perfect. I guess that the end of the message would have been “check the iPod”. Pretty cool!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #228: The Fall from Orbit

I’m lying in bed when I sense a shift and suspect that a WILD has begun. Something feels not quite real about the situation. I rub my hands together. It’s close, but it feels like I’m dreaming this rather than experiencing it in the waking world. I feel Wife stir next to me and wonder if she can sense me moving around.

I try to speak but all that comes out is a strange, reluctant croak. There’s no doubt that it’s a dream now. The sense of being in bed becomes less and less clear and I feel like I’ve at least partially entered the void.

I wait for a while, relying on hand-rubbing to keep me in the dream but finally call out: “Dreamer, pull me out of here!” I feel the sensation of a hand grabbing my right arm and pulling me down toward where the “bed” would have been, and I get the sense that I’m rotating. When I’ve turned about 180 degrees I suddenly feel massive acceleration ahead of me and slightly downward, like something attached a rocket to me!

The acceleration halts and a new scene comes into view. I’m flying high above the Earth in lower earth orbit! The clouds look slightly pixelated but convincing enough that the effect is very dramatic.



I remember that all of my goals are on the surface of the planet, so I point myself downward and imagine myself shooting forward at top speed. I take off like a rocket, the ground rising dizzyingly fast to meet me. I’m shooting toward a bunch of buildings, headed directly for a house!

I’m prepare to plow into this house, but my fall stops short, my feet rotate back under me and I’m now standing gently on the ground next to a miniature house and a cluster of miniature buildings. What looked like a city seconds ago now looks like a bunch of little model buildings. The room is fully enclosed and dimly-lit but I can still see well enough to do what I want.

I want to summon Dreamer but there aren’t any DCs around to use. I remember my behind the back summoning tech, but I’m not feeling sure about how I executed it. It fizzles. I walk to another corner of the room and try it there. Still nothing.

I approach another part of the room where there’s a bar and a broad mirror above it. When I look into the mirror, I see myself standing there but in a completely different scene. My reflection is on some cobblestoned street, outdoors and it’s daytime. I strafe back and forth to test the reflection and he reacts as expected.

Now I spy the building’s glass front door and through it I see the cobblestoned scene I’d just viewed in the mirror. There’s a guy trying to get into the room, an Asian guy in his mid-twenties wearing glasses. Not the easiest DC to transform to Dreamer, maybe, but nothing I can’t handle!

I go up to the door to let him in and start messing with the lock. Then I realize what a waste of time this is. Why not just phase instead? I start the phase, my right arm passing straight through the glass but as I’m about to go the rest of the way, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #217: Jazz Hands

I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, droning on and on to Wife about lucid dreaming. “Remember!” I tell her. “You have to let me summon you.”

“Okay, fine, fine!” she says, seemingly in a hurry and darts away into the kitchen. I’m confused for a moment -- wasn’t I intending to summon Dreamer for the challenge? I realize that I’m dreaming and head for the front door, phasing out onto the front walk.

It’s a clear morning outside and I walk out to the sidewalk and then start running to the east, ready to attempt the summon. I reach my right hand out, slightly behind me and out of sight and say, “[Dreamer], I know you’re here!” I feel a hand and then two sharp tugs and when I look to my right, Dreamer is running/floating along beside me. She beams and starts floating while doing a silly “jazz hands” move with her right hand.

I decide to fly as well and wind up soaring into the air. Dreamer seems to be sticking at a lower altitude, though, and now dangles calmly from my right hand. I can see trees going by far below her feet.

I haul her up and she wraps her arms around my shoulders while still dangling underneath. She seems very relaxed about the whole thing but I start having trouble controlling my altitude and feel like I’m going to nosedive back into the earth. The scene collapses into the void but I still feel like we're flying. The fear of crashing is still there, though, and after a few more seconds I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/11/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #208: Carnival Chain

I have a false awakening where Wife is bustling about the room getting ready for something. I’m groggy and not seeing anything too well, but I follow her as she heads out the door. There’s some kind of event that we’re supposed to be getting ready for, but I have no memory of what it is. I do remember wanting to have a lucid dream, though, so I feel frustrated that I’m expected to get up.

I follow Wife for a bit and suddenly we’re outside by some docks. She’s dressed in a white sundress that I’ve never seen her in before, holding hands with our two children “E” and “R”. She looks beautiful. I wish that I could go with them but I’m almost too tired to move.

I tell her that I’m going back to bed, which she seems to accept. Somehow I stagger back to the bed and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I attempt to WILD. Right away I get the sense of motion and I can’t believe how quickly it’s working. I go with the momentum and experience a moment of massive acceleration before emerging in a mid-morning carnival scene that I know is a dream.

I’m not pleased with the vividness of the scene, so I rub my hands together and then stare at them, trying to draw out as much detail as I can. It takes a few frustrating moments but finally fine details start to emerge. One oddity is that my hands are covered with cuts and scrapes like I’ve been fighting or working with something sharp.

As the scene comes into better focus, I see that Wife is walking here with me at the carnival. We pass a sandwich vendor who stops us and begins an emphatic explanation of what it takes to make the turkey sandwich. He says that the “traditional” sandwich of “turkey on a donut” is outdated and that rye bread is the wave of the future. It sounds crazy to me, but I try to grasp the details, hoping for some flash of insight. It never comes, though, and the dream fades.

I hold on for DEILD, and in a few seconds I’m back in the carnival scene. I take a few steps but something seems to be stuck in my throat. I try to sort of gag and clear my throat, but it’s still there. I feel like there’s some kind of waking life problem and remember that I’m sleeping on my stomach. I have this vision of the pillow pressing on my throat and in a few seconds, I’m out of the dream.

I flop onto my side, get ready for DEILD, and re-enter the carnival scene a few seconds later. Wife’s here with me again, and says something flirtatious. I’m feeling very interested, so we make out for a bit before getting down to some sexytime. I’ll spare the details here, but it's interesting that after the "festivities" the dream continues long enough for us to wander around the carnival a bit more.

Finally the dream breaks, and I DEILD in one last time to the same carnival scene. Wife and I pass by a carnival barker who’s inviting passerby to try out the “lucidity machine”, a large, boxy contraption that he says is guaranteed to make you have a lucid dream for only “4 quarters”.

I encourage Wife to try this out. “But you’re already having a lucid dream,” she replies.

“Yeah, but you’re not.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Four quarters seems kind of expensive.”

“It’s not real money,” I tell her. “Please just try it.”

I’m exasperated by all of this. Wife shakes her head and continues to skeptically study the device as the dream ends.

Finally on the board for Task of the Year 2014!!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #206: The Giant Killer

I sense a transition into the dream state, but just as it begins I hear our dogs start barking downstairs. Wife stirs in the bed next to me and I wonder how much of this is pure dream and how much of it might be sounds and sensations from waking life bleeding over.

I will myself to roll out of bed OBE-style and I decide to phase downstairs to see what the dogs are on about. I pass through walls and the floor like a ghost and I think to myself that “I’m spirit walking.”

I pass through one last set of walls and the geometry gets weird for a moment and I wonder if I’m losing this dream. I rake my fingers across the floor but I pass right through. Still, it seems to bring me back into the experience and there in front of me are our 2 dogs laying on the floor panting.

Their food and water bowls both lay empty and I figure that’s what they were making a fuss about. Even though I’m still floating like a ghost, I’m able to grab the water bowl and sling it across the room and it clangs realistically against the floor. I consider asking Wife the next morning if she heard any of this commotion.

I head out into the garage, walking like normal now. Rather than phase, for some reason I lift the garage door manually and walk out into the night. I move past the circular driveway to the grass, thinking of the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I dig a quick hole and everything’s feeling very vivid now. I do a behind-the-back summon of a seed which feels very half-hearted but fortunately still does yield a tiny seed. I quickly cover it over with dirt.

For water I move my hands in a little sprinkling motion over the little mound and a few drops of “rain” fall. The plant immediately springs up through the ground and stretches skyward. It looks like a normal vine at first but as it continues up it looks more like a twisting rope bridge that goes all the way up into the clouds.



I grab the lower rung and start hauling myself up but I feel like I’m getting nowhere and won’t ever be able to tackle all that distance. I decide that the planks are being reeled in from above and are pulling me up toward the clouds. It works! In a couple of spots the planks twist and turn oddly as if they’re trying to throw me off, but I ignore this and before long I’m at the top! I float up over the edge into what looks like a restaurant that’s being prepared for a party.

Two women standing nearby appear to be in charge of the scurrying wait staff. One of the women, an attractive lady in her early 40s, looks up at me as I walk nearby. She has a streak of her short brown hair bleached almost white. My task is the defeat the giant that lives up here, so I ask, “Where’s the giant?” She points behind me and to my left.

When I turn, there’s a guy roughly 9-10 feet tall walking through the door of the restaurant. He’s mid-40s with dark hair and a thick, barrel-chested build. “So you’re the giant?” I ask leadingly.



“That’s right,” he says and immediately takes a swing at me. His punch catches me square in the face but I decide that it will have no effect. I wind up not feeling anything or even falling back and it kind of feels like cheating. I strike at the man, trying what I for some reason think is a “kidney punch” but actually hit him in the side of the gut. He winces a bit but doesn’t move much.

I follow this up with a kick to the body and the giant clutches at his chest. I feel like this is working but I become paranoid about losing the dream, so I leap up and grab onto the giant’s face. I try to do this thing where I burn him with my hands but it completely fails. The failure makes me kind of vicious and desperate, so I gouge at his left eye with my right thumb and then strike him on the neck with my forearm. He collapses hard to the ground and I go with him. As I’m picking myself up to see what’s next, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #198: The Egg

I’m standing in a sparse building that looks like a cleared-out convenience store. Wife’s standing about fifteen feet away, singing expressively to the room. I’m behind a high countertop staring with little comprehension at a strange deck of cards, wondering how I’m supposed to play with them. The thought of dreaming crosses my mind and I become lucid.

Slightly taken aback at the plunge into lucidity, I try to remember April’s Task of the Month. The actual task is to look inside an Easter egg, but I remember it as “give an egg to a DC”.

I walk up to Wife, reach behind my back, and say, “Hey, [Wife]! Here’s an egg.” I produce a plain white egg and place it into her left hand, feeling smugly satisfied at this “flawless execution”. Wife stops singing and glares at me, slightly shaking her head. She looks pissed and her expression seems to ask me What the hell are you doing?

Then with one swift motion, she smashes the egg all over her right shoulder. A gush of yolk and snotty-looking egg white flows down her arm. After another couple seconds of staring daggers at me, she turns her attention away, smiles, and returns to singing.

I return to my spot behind the counter, curious again about the playing cards. They’re now face down in three separate piles. I turn a few over, but the symbols are indecipherable to me.

Giving up on this, I wander into an adjacent room. It looks like a small basement with one high window along the wall. There’s also a wide hole near the top of one wall that looks like I could crawl through. I begin hoisting myself up to explore it, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #196: Wonderful Distractions

I’m lying on my side anticipating a lucid dream. I sense the transition into a dream, but my dream body is lying on its side in the same position as my waking life body. I approach this in an OBE style and will myself to roll out of bed onto the floor. I ooze off of the edge of the bed and drift gently to the floor.

My vision is dark at this point, so I spend a moment chilling out and digging my hands into the carpet to build up my physical sensations of the scene. After everything feels right, I stand up and look out over the bed. Wife has completely buried herself under the comforter. I throw the covers back and she sits up, blinking in the daylight which streams in through the window.

I’m struck by the clarity of the scene. There’s a slight haze at the edges of my vision, but even though there’s a dreaminess to everything I see, it all looks incredibly realistic. She gets out of bed and I follow her toward our walk-in closet while I try to remember my goals.

The structure of our closet looks the same as waking life except for the fact that it’s grown much larger. There are two attractive women standing there, an Asian woman and a shorter lady with brown hair, just sort of hanging around and talking to each other. Hanging around three cute DCs makes me forget all other goals and (somewhat complex) sexytime commences.

After a few moments Wife says, “We forgot to close the bedroom door!” as if she’s afraid that the kids will barge in. I reluctantly leave the closet to go check on this, but find that the door’s already shut tight.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, and when I turn back to the closet, the other two women have vanished. I’m also surprised to see that it’s night outside now. I look out through the window and see that there’s a tow truck out front hauling off a cute little car that’s shaped like a phone booth. “Hey check this out!” I tell Wife.

“That’s a shame,” she says. We watch as the tow truck drives off.

When I turn back toward the bed, I see a freckled woman in her early 20s laying on our bed. She’s wearing shorts and flopped on her stomach, reading some kind of pamphlet. I’m too far gone to think of goals at this point, so this leads to some additional sexytime with Wife and this newest DC.

Afterward, I get up from the bed and feel the scene darkening. I look at my hands and I can see the light fading from the dream fast. I dig my hands into the carpet, but before long I have a false awakening where I hear my father-in-law shout, “3 AM faaaaail!” I'm confused for a moment and then “remember” that a bunch of us are staying at some vacation house and needed to wake up at 3 AM for some reason.

I walk out of the room, feeling sleepy, and see my cousin SU. “Hey, did you hear? JP Morgan is going under.” I’m astonished to hear this.

My brother-in-law Muppet says, “This pisses me off so much.”

“That we’ll wind up bailing out a huge bank?” I ask.

“No,” Muppet says, and launches into a long, disjointed speech about finance. After a while I realize that this person isn’t even Muppet anymore but some guy I don’t recognize. I wonder how I got so confused and eventually pull myself away from the conversation shortly before the dream ends.

This lucid is from the morning of 3/24/2014. Still going for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #195: Indoor Gardening

I’m working in a busy office setting with my friend “Leroy”. The very popular manager of the office has just been fired and everyone’s gathered to hear a speech from some stuffed shirt corporate guy explaining why this was done.

“Losing a beloved manager is like losing a friend,” says the generic corporate guy.

Leroy farts loudly. I laugh, then turn to him and say, “I’m not sure how many friends you’ll have if you keep doing that.” He doesn’t seem to realize I’m joking and looks hurt. Now I feel sort of bad. I assume he’s sensitive because we just lost our manager.

As the corporate guy drones on and on, I start feeling very stressed. I realize that I’m late for an orchestra concert I’m supposed to be performing in. I sneak out of the meeting, looking for the auditorium. I walk down a long, carpeted hallway and find the auditorium doors on my left. When I step inside, I see that it looks more like a movie theater. I get a sense of how odd this all is and I’m enormously relieved when I realize that I’m dreaming.

The scene rapidly begins to fade, so I rub my hands together and run back and forth across the front of the theater. It takes a moment, but after maybe 3 or 4 trips from one end of the theater to the other, the visuals all come back.

The theater is large but there are only five seats right next to each other. I recognize one of the theatergoers as my friend “SKR”, but hers is the only familiar face. SKR seems to be looking for something under her seat so I decide not to just focus on tasks rather than trying to communicate.

I start going for Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I perform a behind-the-back summon of seeds, and my hand comes back with little nuggets attached to long wisps of cotton. I just go ahead like this is good enough and start digging into the floor. The concrete floor scoops easily aside, leaving a nice, shallow hole for the seeds. I stuff them into the dirt, cover it back over, and start looking for my beanstalk to grow.

The shoots start emerging, but when they get to be about 4-5 inches long, they flop over onto their side on the floor. I tug at them a bit but they just feel like limp, frayed green carpet. I give them a tug and try to imagine them shooting skyward, but I’m not able to get tons of energy behind this thought.

Now I see Wife walking in through the doors of the theater. There’s a sensation that’s sort of like waking up and then I find myself in my in-laws’ house. I “realize” that all of what I just experienced took place inside Unreal Engine 4 and I’ve now returned to the real world.

Wife gives me a stern look. “Do you have anything you should be telling me?”

I sheepishly admit that I skipped out on playing in my orchestra concert so that I could have a lucid dream. She gives a serious nod and walks away. I’m glad she’s not too pissed off about this. The dream ends...

Interestingly, this was my second lucid in a row that hit very close to the onset of sleep. I woke up to write this down around 1:15 or so in the morning after being late to bed. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely encouraging me to continue my pre-bed MILD work!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #192: The Shadow of the Pagoda

I’m sitting at a table with some random people, working on something with pen and paper. My mind’s wandering and as I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, I almost immediately pass into one.

From here, I fall quickly into the void. I rub my hands together, expecting a new scene. Before long I emerge into a false awakening in early morning, sort of seated at the edge of my bed. Some kind of suction is drawing me away from the bed and toward our closet. This worries me for some reason and I ask Wife to “Pull me back in…” in this thin, weak voice.

She kneels on the bed and strains forward to reach for me, whimpering and fretting like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. I recognize that I’m starting to get caught up in this sense of powerlessness, and I let go, falling into the void again.

I make my way forward and emerge in a fancy-looking house, facing a set of glass doors that open to a veranda. For reasons I can’t recall, I decided to head deeper into the house and wandered through a series of rooms. The house is attractive but large and confusing and I start regretting my decision to stay inside.

I wind up in a bedroom with a simple but comfortable-looking bed that has a large stuffed teddy bear laying on top of it. Wife is standing off to the side near one corner and I remember to ask her for her middle name (for Task of the Month.)

When I ask for her middle name, she responds, “Ba ba!”

“Your middle name is ‘Ba ba’?”

She laughs. “Oh, sorry! I actually meant ‘Ba ba ba ba’.” I’m amused but I consider asking her a third time. The teddy bear catches my eye for a moment and when I turn back Wife has vanished. I think about asking the teddy bear for its middle name but decide instead that it’s time to move on.

I leave and walk through a dining hall where my son “E” joins me and starts to follow. I say something to him that I can no longer recall and we walk through more confusing rooms. At one point I’m in a dimly-lit kitchen and notice that my vision has gone blurry. I stare at my hands to draw out the detail and it works pretty well, though not as completely as I might have hoped.

I walk through another dining hall with E and as we’re exiting, the door shuts automatically behind me, cutting me off from him. I see him through the door as it closes and I feel a moment of concern that I’ve left him behind. No, let it go. I continue to a series of glass-panelled doors at the rear of the room and phase through, with some minor difficulty.

I emerge from the phase in a shady courtyard. Towering above me is an immense pagoda, stretching far away into the sky. Even in a dream I’m amazed by how tall and broad it is, far out of scale with everything else surrounding it. It’s at least 500 feet tall and dominates the landscape.



Two women walk by at the other end of the courtyard, casually chatting. They look like they’re from the 1900s, each wearing a large hat and carrying a parasol. I contemplate taking off for some flying and exploration, but the dream ends.

One notable thing about this dream was that I had it very close to the beginning of my sleep. Burke's MIT article gave me the idea to do a really determined MILD before bed and it certainly paid off here!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #191: Enjoy the Silence

I’m sitting in an airport terminal, waiting for a flight. A few seats over I spot Kurt Klimanski, a guy who did some lucid dreaming youtube videos several years ago. I think hey, great opportunity to talk about lucid dreaming with someone while I pass the time.

As I’m getting out of my seat to approach him, I notice the dreamlike way that I glide out of my chair and question whether I’m having a lucid dream right now. Hey, turns out that I am!

I move toward him but the chairs are all in my way. Mildly annoyed, I float past the chairs and land next to him. “Hey, the guy from the video, right?” I say. Kurt Klimanski looks up. “I’m actually having a lucid dream right now.”

“Oh, okay… cool, man,” he responds, bobbing his head up and down.

He starts talking about something LD-related but I feel myself slipping into the void. I grab for his hand but miss and wind up scrabbling at the carpet. He’s still talking, seemingly oblivious to how hard I’m trying to hang onto the scene. This goes on for a bit but eventually I fall into the void.

I’m relaxed here, though, and adopt a swimming motion to move silently through the darkness. I get the sense of motion and catch imagery that looks like I’m swimming past a series of huge, slowly turning pages in a book.

Then I’m pulled into a false awakening. It’s super realistic, but I have a strong sense that I’m still dreaming. I open my eyes and even feel the sensation of them opening, but I still know it’s all an illusion. I should still have my sleep mask on but I have relatively clear vision of the darkened room around me. Wife sleeps silently beside me.

I look up at the ceiling and see two large, projected circles filled with stars there. The two star circles slowly rotate in opposite directions. The effect is hypnotic and beautiful.

I watch for a good while, surprised that I’m able to maintain this much stillness without the dream falling apart. I almost feel like I’m getting away with something by just sitting here watching. I feel like my dreaming brain still believes that it has me fooled. I lay there for a while enjoying the experience until the dream ends. This time my eyes open to the pitch blackness of my sleep mask.