WanderingGhost

So last night I had a brief awakening around 3am and as I was falling back asleep I was able to stay conscious.

The dream formed and I was lying in my bed as I always am with DEILDs. My room looked off of course and I knew I wanted to get outside. I went to my window and opened the blinds and fazed through the window itself to get outside. Once outside I knew I wanted to fly on a dragon because it was the theme for the Summer Competition and I had been thinking about wanting to incorporate it if I became lucid earlier in the week. I tried to summon a dragon to fly on top off and all of a sudden I was flying over my neighborhood on one, but when I looked down it wasn't there. It felt like I was on top of one and I could feel it's movements, the beating of its wings, etc. all as if I were on top of a large flying dragon, it was just invisible. After flying for a bit I believe I lost lucidity. I woke up a few moments later and didn't remember the dream right away, but after thinking for a minute or two I suddenly remembered I had become lucid and rushed to write it all down.

Good thing I didn't just go right back to sleep! It just goes to show that we all may have lucids we end up forgetting about.

I was in a mall driving for some reason. I realized I was dreaming and then the walls began to close in on me as I drove around the mall. Then everything went dark and I began to feel myself waking up. I attempted to stabilize for around 10 seconds before I suddenly awoke.

(I'm not sure if this has enough substance to count as a DILD for the competition or not, but either way I figured I'd write it down.)

So I woke up around 6:30 this morning and fell in and out of sleep for an hour or so.

As I was falling back asleep around 7:30 or so I felt myself falling into a dream and began starting to stabilize. As I was stabilizing I heard strange noises like shouts in the distance and a weird buzzing noise. At one point I also saw a nighttime sky with thousands of stars in it. I felt like I was pressing into my bed and it kept pulsing. Eventually I saw a light form out of the darkness, but then it went away. I kept stabilizing and then suddenly I was in my room. At first it felt like I was groggy and I had just woken up and it was a little hard to move. My room obviously looked weird as it always does in a dream, but a part of me still wondered if I was actually dreaming because it felt so real, even though I was very sure I wasn’t. I got out of bed, falling on the ground as I did so, and then slowly my movements got easier. I went to my window and opened the curtains and the window itself and looked outside. It wasn’t my backyard like in real life but a mixture of my back and front yard with a gravel path instead of my driveway. I smiled to myself and thought “yep, I’m definitely dreaming” when I saw this because I knew it wasn’t what my backyard looked like. I sat there leaning on my window for a moment, just taking it all in and basking in the fact that I was in a dream right now. I decided I wanted to go outside so I fazed through my window’s screen and ran down the gravel path. As I was running down the path these two birds came into my vision and landed in the air. It looked like they were one of those cheap animations that you can add over videos with a phone app and since the “camera” was facing up they “landed” in the air. I reached out and grabbed one and threw it on the ground and then did the same to the other. This was the most vivid lucid I’ve had to date and I kept thinking to myself that it was so vivid and stable. I began running down my neighborhood street which was a gravel path for some reason and looked up at the sky. It was morning and the sky was a pale blue with some cloud coverage. Then I think I heard my lizard eating his greens in real life and this woke me up.

This is the first lucid I've had in awhile (except for one other very short MILD where I failed to stabilize once I realized I was dreaming) so it's very exciting! It was definitely the most vivid and stable lucid I've ever had, as I said, but I think I still need to work on stabilization. I was just running down the street one moment and the next I was awake. I am pretty happy with my initial stabilization though because I had to stay focused for around 1-2 minutes before I actually entered the dream and I did it! I guess that means I am improving, even if it is slowly. Anyway, I'm glad to be "back in the game" so to speak.

So this morning my girlfriend called me around 5 am and woke me up. After talking for a few minutes she hung up and I went back to sleep. About 20 minutes later I had a natural awakening from a pretty vivid dream. I shifted in my bed some and began to fall back asleep. I could feel myself falling asleep very quickly so I decided to try to stay conscious while doing so. I could feel myself slowly losing touch with reality, I could no longer feel myself lying in my bed or hear my fan running. I repeated my mantra "this dream stabilizes" over and over and a dream scene began to form.

I was in my bedroom lying in my bed. I looked over and for some reason there was a mirror on my door and when I looked in the mirror I could see myself and it looked like there was a TV on the wall behind me. I looked over to the wall but there was no TV there and when I looked back at the door the mirror was gone. I tried to push my finger through my palm but it didn't work so I then tried to pinch my nose and breathe which I could. I got out of bed and went to my bedroom door and opened it. I was hoping it would open into something cool but it was just my normal hallway. I then walked over to my garage door and could see the light was on out there so I knew someone was out there. I opened the door and my dad was in the garage. I went out and said good morning or something similar to him and went up behind him. He began to turn around and I thought that he would probably look weird when he did since this was a dream and I was right. When he turned around he had a really thin long neck that hooked into a very tiny head. It was a little freaky but I knew I was dreaming so I wasn't really scared; in fact I found it kind of funny. Then I decided to go outside. It was morning and the sun was just beginning to rise so there were still stars in the sky. I tried to fly but couldn't get too far off the ground (just like the last time I tried), so I tried the superman method and was able to fly high into the sky. I flew for a few seconds before I woke up.

I'm not really sure if this technically counts as a WILD or not but this was the first time I've ever entered a dream directly. I have had to stabilize dreams before which brought on a new dream scene, but this was a little different. Also it was pretty weird feeling myself lose touch with reality as I fell asleep, but I'm glad I had this experience so I know (partially at least) what a WILD feels like.

So last night after waking up for a while and then going back to sleep I had another "natural" moment of lucidity. I was on a cruise ship for some reason and it had a concrete children's playground on it that looked a lot like a skate park. I thought to myself that it looked a lot like a liminal space and remembered I wanted to visit a liminal space in my dreams and wished I was dreaming so I could explore it. Then I realized I was dreaming. Everything went dark as it often does in these situations and I began to try stabilizing the dream by repeating "this dream stabilizes" which has worked for me multiple times before. I started feel a strong wind blowing me as I was lying in my bed and I thought I was about to get sucked out of my bed like the last time I did this but I got distracted because when I tried to swallow I couldn't. I was able to stay focused, but then I began to hear a noise which I thought was from my dream, but I soon realized was the music I had put on to try and help me sleep last night. This pushed me over the edge and I got too distracted and just woke up.

I am very disappointment, if the music hadn't been playing I may have finally had another lucid after weeks of trying for the competition, but whatever it happens. At least it's progress. I just now need to figure out how to properly harness this to do it more often instead of only once a month or so.

So I decided to try having some Mugwort tea last night and had a bizarre lucid as a result.

I was in a dream, I don't remember the details of it, when suddenly I realized I was dreaming. I began to feel myself waking up so I repeated "this dream stabilizes" until suddenly an eye formed out of the darkness. It scared me but I stayed calm and continued repeating the phrase until a full scene materialized. I was looking at myself laying in the bed in the darkness like there was a giant mirror right in front of me. Both of my eyes were scarily wide. The suddenly I felt like I got sucked out of my bed into a vortex and then I was flying. What followed was a fast paced barrage of changing scenes, many of which I don't quite remember. I remember one where I wanted to go underwater and suddenly I was. A group of mermaids swam past and for some reason I decided the last one should become evil. She did and turned around and attacked me. I also remember a scene on a treetop with three giant frogs and me eating one, thinking it would taste like "meat" (whatever that means) but it tasted like nothing.

Oddly enough, despite most peoples' reports on Mugwort, this lucid actually felt less vivid than some of my previous ones. It felt like some of my actions weren't my own and I remember wanting to wake up at one point because my dream-logic mind thought "this is boring, lucid dreaming isn't as interesting as I thought it was". It almost felt like it was someone else's thoughts and actions, even though I was lucid. Part of the haziness could potentially be contributed to the fact that I had this dream only 1 1/2 hours after I went to bed, which is the first time I've ever had a lucid that early into the night. Maybe because the REM cycle was shorter than the morning ones it made for a less vivid dream.

I think I would try Mugwort again, but next time I think I might try it with WBTB so I can see how it affects my early morning REM cycles. Hopefully next time it will allow for a longer and more vivid lucid, rather than one where I don't feel like myself.