Draeger's Dream Journal and Documentation

Failed dream stabilization in DILD
I am on my way home, carrying groceries on the sidewalk of the quiet street passing by the house I live in on a cloudy day with a darker lighting of the environment suggesting that the time of day is soon to be or already is dusk. I'm not sure if my mother is with me, but she could be. Suddenly, I become lucid. It might have been a random thought about lucidity which triggered this. But I immediately start slipping out of the dream but try to rub my hands and to look at them to stabilize the dream, but I am already on the threshold of waking up, strangely controlling both my dream and real body at once, but apparently my stabilization attempt soon failed and I find myself having waken up.

---

I got too stressed to journal again. I'll probably continue for real once summer holidays come around in nearly exactly a month.

I actually chanted a mantra and used a special thought technique I can't really explain to kind of bypass the way you'd usually have this only incubate a fake lucid dream instead of actually causing awareness, and I guess it worked. It's like I went "behind" the normal thought? Only I really know what I'm talking about with that, I guess, at least I hope at least I will if I rediscover this some time. Nobody ever understood the way I explained how my brain worked. People tend to think these are metaphors, but I feel like I physically navigate my thoughts. While that's not what happens, of course, that's the input I'm getting and doing the same "movement" produces consistent results. It's weird like that. Also, I'm tired so I'm rambling about this, probably mostly as a big note to self so that I can reproduce this, since this is the first time a technique just straight up worked first try to that extent.

I do wonder why the stabilization didn't work, though. And I tend to always find myself kind of "blind" in dreams, I've noticed that here as well. It's like my whole vision is covered by a blind spot, like how your thumb disappears if you move it into the right location, it makes it hard to stay in a dream. I feel like I only know some of the visual information because I just kind of know without seeing it, and that's annoying me. But I can't say reality is a whole lot different, honestly. My perception is always weirdly "blind" like that, like a very insidious form of tunnel vision. Enough rambling now. I still think this was probably the closest I've ever gotten to stabilize a lucid dream, so overall, this was a success. Good.

Talking fragment
In the dream I seem to have woken up and am lying in my bed and my mother sitting close beside me and I start talking about some private important topic and she's surprised.

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Once again I forgot to do my mantra... sort of. I made progress. I was about to do my mantra but I forgot what it was and then forgot and fell asleep.

LEGEND:
Black = non-lucid
Grey = awake
Blue = lucid

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Lucid fragment
I reality check and get lucid, but either don't remember what came after it or the dream faded.

Great false awakening lucid!
Discouraged from my failed lucid that I just woke up from, I decide to do an especially aware reality check and then go to sleep with the mantra "When I see my hands I will remember I am dreaming and I will remember my body isn't real." The last part of the mantra is to make me more lucid and aware, so that I'm not just a zombie.

I then heard a noise my father made (maybe be dropped something) and got startled by it, and was disappointed. But I did a reality check, and, to my surprise, I breathed right through my plugged nose and was in a lucid dream. I immediately stood up and decided to leave my home. I tried looking away and back, imagining there'd be a door. I wanted to go to a specific place, but I ended up going into a mall. For some reason I suddenly had a VR headset on my head and my lucidity slipped a bit and things started getting unclear, both since that's something that happens if you don't have your VR headset on correctly and because the dream was fading, but as I took it off it caught itself. For a few seconds, I was somewhere else, but returned to the mall without really noticing. The place might have been full of brownish sand and sort of boxed in somehow.

Now, back in the mall, I run around and explore, excited, although not as aware as in the beginning anymore, but still better than any other lucid dream I've had. I see a small (100ml volume?) box of sodium iodide and think about trying to blow something up (that's hard with sodium iodide, but, again, I had lost awareness in the VR headset segment), but I ended up not trying, both because I didn't know if they'd have any chemical that'd work out with it (forgot that you could summon things since my awareness was shit) and because I didn't want to anymore. As I thought about it, I had actually tried to grab the box of it, but I only had the lid in my hands since it slipped off, and somebody was mad at me since I grabbed it (I had a small fear that someone would notice, but I didn't really care since I was sure I could just flee). And thus, I fled.

I then decided to try some shapeshifting again. I looked at my hands and saw that I had way too many fingers than normal (about 14 on my right hand), so I tried to touch things with the hand to see how having more fingers feels like, and it felt like normal, just slightly different. It's hard to describe. But I didn't want to continue to do something else that is more personal.

I went to a sort of computer terminal and input commands and hoped for them to appear in the dream, but it didn't quite work out. At some point I did a stabilization attempt by inspecting my hands, but still nearly woke up, but ended up back at a sort of bodyless distant view that was even less aware of the terminal, which now looked like a piano/organ, and apparently dracula was playing on it. It sort of was like a comedic variation of some sort of area in a video game. I then sort of had to click on the piano to go to the terminal again to continue typing, and it still didn't work, and then I woke up.

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That awareness drop after the vr segment was annoying, but being that aware at all was progress, at least. I think I will add something to get more aware of dream control in my dreams.

Also, the first lucid fragment resulted from an extra aware reality check yesterday before I went to bed, since I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't reality check all that much because of school eating my time and stressing me.

Mantra
I only remember that I recalled my mantra and was planning to do what I said in my mantra. I knew I was at the end of the dream at that point. I don't remember anything before that part of the dream.

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I know that my dream self was not really going to do my mantra, but rather act it out as part of the dream's storyline.

Ominous night
I walk around my local area at night. A lot of the areas are way different from real life, though. It sort of resembles a dream from long ago where the same sort of jumbling happened.
As I walk, I feel excited, while also feeling like I shouldn't be doing this. I decided to continue on. I kept walking across roads, leading to densely populated areas, then to less densely populated areas, while also coming across some landmarks.
After a while, I come across a field behind a sort of village. There are hills around and I see a funnel cloud touching down in the distance. I think that I should simply walk away, but I remember my father saying (this didn't actually happen) that tornadoes can be avoided by walking to the side. I knew that I couldn't do that as I would be too slow. So I go into a house, then into a sort of basement, I think, hoping I was doing it right. But not entirely, just on the stairs. I expect tornado noises to happen all around me soon, but I wake up before it could happen.

---

I again used a mantra and it worked out unexpectedly well. I will use this every day now.

FNaF + school + Doctor Who + ...¹
²I remember being in my old primary school, about first or second grade. I am one of the children, seemingly coming from another class because I had to be assigned a new place to sit, a kid changing seats to the one next to him to let me sit there. I place down my bag at my new sitting place and listen to the female teacher.
It seems we will go to visit.. something having to do with the Five Nights at Freddy's animatronic 'Circus Baby', according to what she says. Can't exactly remember what she says, though.

The dream is skipping to our teacher going down to check on the animatronic, opening a chamber with a hissing noise as a sort of white smoke came out of it and it revealed the chamber to be a metallic, dark and blue tube with Circus Baby standing in the middle, the tube just large enough to fit her in. Upon looking into the chamber, the teacher started to scream as Circus Baby activated.

Scene change to a bar, restaurant or some sort of store standing in a forest, the teacher laying motionless in front of it. I know that she fell from a hole in the sky. I am suddenly inside the store and an unfriendly man, possibly some sort of elve or dwarf seems to have something to do with the death of the teacher. Then either I turn into the doctor or the doctor appears, in his eleventh regeneration. He suddenly begins a speech about that the man can't just "play with lives". I don't remember the rest of the conversation.

Now I am again somewhere having to do with a storm, but I don't remember anything except that.

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¹: The school came from the fact that I am constantly stressed out about it, Doctor Who came from my excitement of it coming on One (A German TV channel) every Tuesday, FNaF came from me watching an entire series of Five Nights at Freddy's: Help Wanted on YouTube and the storm came from me looking at stormchasing videos again.

²: I had chanted a mantra for a second before drifting off. Seemed to have helped with recall a lot, even when chanting it such a low amount. I will retry this next night.