Date: 22/05/2022 Bedtime: 2am Awakening: 5.53am Return to bed: 6.10am Method of entry: dream consciousness Attempt: successful Awakening: 8.15am Phase experience: The Guitar Experiment DREAM STATE I'm walking towards a nighttime wilderness in England with my former schoolmate Javed and a Sri Lankan punter from my former days as a bookie; both men are willing to have a friendly fight and I'm the umpire reminding them to play by the rules and that they are not to get seriously injured as both are family men. We jump over a brick wall and the fight is about to commence when I spot what look like a couple of Kodiak bears approaching from a distance and hurtling towards the men. Eventually, the ferocious beasts catch up to them and both faint; I hide behind a tree as I believe the would-be fighters are about to be devoured. The animals are not bears at all seen as they possess a larger and quite uncanny presence—they remind me of a cross between a lion and a rhinoceros but overall redolent of the demonic hounds in Ghostbusters. I am petrified and in awe of such creatures which are not officially known to exist. I hear fingers clicking and the beasts freeze next to the unconscious men. Not far, I see Judi Dench (the actress who plays 'M' in 007 films) standing in front of a building that wasn't there before which I take to be a top secret facility. I immediately get the impression that she controls the hellish hounds and, approaching, she snaps her fingers again. Huge mandibles grip the men's limbs and a jerk accompanied by a crunch rouses them back to consciousness. I am taken aback by this nifty trick as the men scram in a panic. It isn't Javed running alongside the Sri Lankan punter; it is now Bob Hoskins. I furtively get away and encounter my friend Lizzie Bowman in the wilderness who also witnessed Judi Dench's hounds. We run together and there is an impression that we must know where to tread because England is now swarming with lions and there is the added challenge that they move around. It feels like a precarious memory game. WAKING STATE I record what I can remember and note potential dream cues such as the social contradiction of Javed and my former customer, stark elements from my past, the unlikely situation of being the referee of an agreed upon fight in the wilderness, seeing celebrities, shapeshifting, impossible monstrous animals and the threat of lions. I also identify schematic associations by my dreaming mind, e.g., the night before I dreamt of a giant Venus flytrap similar to the one in the film Little Shop of Horrors which happens to star Rick Moranis who is also in Ghostbusters. I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream and fall asleep. DREAM STATE Me and a group of people are sat around a table. It is my understanding that this is a therapy group session and it is peculiar that every male—myself included—is topless and we have to present the females with instances of child abuse and domestic violence. A male psychotherapist interrupts the session to announce that there's been a mix-up and some of us are in the wrong group—I happen to be one of the misplaced ones. I am invited to leave the room for a break before embarking upon finding the right room. One side of the room is missing a wall and I use this wide gap to jump down to a dark underground sewage system resembling what I encountered under a bridge in a recent lucid dream. This is somewhat familiar! What am I doing here? I'm dreaming! PHASE STATE I tell myself I no longer need to re-enter the building behind me in order to look for the new therapy room. Everything is a very elaborate illusion. (Realism: 90% gradually making progress towards 100% as I rub my hands.) It feels like a nighttime environment but I am now in a tunnel and see light at the end. I glide towards the arched opening revealing a daytime, urban environment where I come upon a river—beyond it, near the horizon, I see a pillar-shaped mountain that reaches all the way to the clouds, making for an odd panorama. I struggle to recall the experiment I'm supposed to execute and believe I'm waking when the surroundings fail even though I strenuously rub my hands in order to heighten tactility. I'm in bed, apparently having woken up, and tell my wife I just had a brief lucid dream but failed to remember the experiment. 'Next time!' she says. I look at my hands and they look normal but decide to do a reality test nonetheless by pushing my right index finger through my left palm; the digit goes through my hand at a push! I'm shocked to discover I just had a false awakening and start deepening the phase by rubbing my hands as the realism is now only 35% that of the real world and the bedroom replica got darker since I falsely awoke. I reach for my electric guitar in the corner of the room and realise it is a lot smaller than it's supposed to be when I pick it up. The instrument is still in its case, which I struggle to unzip, so I decide to play it by pressing the strings over the nylon fabric. As I feel the strings through the gigbag, I hear the electric wailing sound of the guitar even though it's unplugged. I start randomly shredding on the fretboard (which is something I struggle with in real life) to produce a surprising classical rock sound in the style of a musical prodigy like Yngwie Malmsteen. My experience is more tactile and auditory than visual at this point. (Realism: 70%) I revel in the elaborate solo I'm producing until the environment fades and the sound peters out. I believe I have woken up. I get out of bed and walk towards the balcony door to part the curtains and check what the weather is like. It looks dismal outside: the sky is grey and overcast. Beyond the neighborhood, I make out a strange cloud formation. The more I peer at it, the more the sky turns pink and the more a fiery cloud manifests in the shape of a wide column with a cauliflower-like top. That is weird! This mushroom-shaped phenomenon looks like an atomic bomb has gone off! Could it be that I just had another false awakening? My index goes through my palm again, confirming I'm still dreaming and I open the balcony door. (Realism: 100%) I want to play guitar again but the corner of the room where the instrument is supposed to be, to my left, is out of reach. I don't want to waste time so I reach behind the curtain, to my right, expecting to find a guitar there. To my surprise, I find my old V-shaped guitar, which I sold years ago, leaning against the wall. I start playing a melody similar to the first solo in the song 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica. Curiously, each note I play simultaneously causes the now fiery sky to reverberate. I'm awed by the beauty of the sounds and the colours before me and subsequently all my senses fade, leading to wakefulness. WAKING STATE It is worth mentioning that I have some experience with music as an amateur piano and guitar but I must say that in the phase I played more confidently and easily reached the level of a virtuoso. This experience won't turn me into a great guitarist overnight, but it has, at least, inspired me greatly.
Date: 22/05/2022 Bedtime: 2am Awakening: 5.53am Return to bed: 6.10am Method of entry: dream consciousness Attempt: successful Awakening: 8.15am DILD: The Guitar Experiment DREAMING I'm walking towards a nighttime wilderness in England with my former schoolmate Javed and a Sri Lankan punter from my former days as a bookie; both men are willing to have a friendly fight and I'm the umpire reminding them to play by the rules and that they are not to get seriously injured as they are both family men. We jump over a brick wall and the fight is about to commence when I spot what look like a couple of Kodiak bears approaching from a distance towards the men. Eventually, the ferocious beasts catch up to them and both faint; I hide behind a tree as I believe the would-be fighters are about to be devoured. The animals are not bears at all as I see that they have a larger and quite uncanny presence—they remind me of a cross between a lion and a rhinoceros but overall redolent of the demonic hounds in Ghostbusters. I am petrified and in awe of such creatures which are not officially known to exist. I hear fingers clicking and the beasts freeze next to the unconscious men. Not far, I see Judi Dench (the actress who plays 'M' in 007 films) standing in front of a building that wasn't there before which I take to be a top secret facility. I immediately get the impression that she controls the hellish hounds and, approaching, she snaps her fingers again. Huge mandibles grip the men's limbs and a jerk accompanied by crunch rouses them back to consciousness. I am taken aback by this nifty trick as the men scram in panic. It isn't Javed running alongside the Sri Lankan punter; it is now Bob Hopkins. I furtively get away and encounter my friend Lizzie Bowman in the wilderness who also witnessed Judi Dench's hounds. We run together and there is an impression that we must know where to tread because England is now swarming with lions and there is the added challenge that they move around. It feels like a precarious memory game. WAKING I record what I can remember and note potential dream cues such as the social contradiction of Javed and my former customer, stark elements from my past, the unlikely situation of being the referee of an agreed upon fight in the wilderness, seeing celebrities, shapeshifting, impossible monstrous animals and the threat of lions. I also identify schematic associations by my dreaming mind, e.g., the night before I dreamt of a giant Venus flytrap similar to the one in the film Little Shop of Horrors which happens to star Rick Moranis who is also in Ghostbusters. I return to bed with the intention to enter the phase state and fall asleep. DREAMING Me and a group of people are sat around a table. It is my understanding that this is a therapy group session and it is peculiar that every male—myself included—is topless and we have to present the females with instances of child abuse and domestic violence. A male psychotherapist interrupts the session to announce that there's been a mix-up and some of us are in the wrong group—I happen to me one of the misplaced ones. I am invited to leave the room for a break before embarking upon finding the right room. One side of the room is missing a wall and I use this wide gap to jump down to a dark underground sewage system resembling one I encountered under a bridge in a recent lucid dream. This is somewhat familiar! What am I doing here? I'm dreaming! LUCID DREAMING I tell myself I no longer need to re-enter the building behind me in order to look for the new therapy room. Everything is a very elaborate illusion. (Realism: 90% gradually making progress towards 100% as I rub my hands.) It feels like a nighttime environment but I am now in a tunnel and I see light at the end. I glide towards the arched opening revealing a daytime, urban environment where I come upon a river—beyond it, near the horizon, I see a pillar-shaped mountain that reaches all the way to the clouds, making for an odd panorama. I struggle to recall the experiment I'm supposed to execute and believe I'm waking when the surroundings fade even though I strenuously rub my hands in order to heighten tactility. FALSE AWAKENING I'm in bed, apparently having woken up, and tell my wife that I just had a brief lucid dream but failed to remember the experiment. 'Next time!' she says. I look at my hands and they look normal but I decide to do a reality test nonetheless by pushing my right index finger through my left palm; the digit goes through my hand at a push! LUCID DREAMING I'm shocked to discover I just had a false awakening and start deepening the environment by rubbing my hands as the realism is now only 35% that of the real world and the bedroom replica got darker since I falsely awoke. I reach for my electric guitar in the corner of the room and realise it is a lot smaller than it's supposed to when I pick it up. The instrument is still in its case, which I struggle to unzip, so I decide to play it by pressing the strings over the nylon fabric. As I feel the strings through the gigbag, I hear the electric wailing sound of the guitar even though it's unplugged. I start randomly shredding on the fretboard (which is something I struggle with in real life) to produce a surprising classical rock sound in the style of a musical prodigy like Yngwie Malmsteen. My experience is more tactile and auditory than visual at this point. (Realism: 70%) I revel in the elaborate solo I'm producing until the environment fades and the sound peters out. FALSE AWAKENING I believe I have woken up. I get out of bed and walk towards the balcony door to part the curtains and check what the whether is like. It looks dismal outside: the sky is grey and overcast. Beyond the neighborhood, I make out a strange cloud formation. The more I peer at it, the more the sky turns pink and the more a fiery cloud manifests in the shape of a wide column with a cauliflower-like top. That is weird! This mushroom-shaped phenomenon looks like an atomic bomb has gone off! Could it be that I just had another false awakening? LUCID DREAMING My index goes through my palm again, confirming that I am still dreaming and I open the balcony door. (Realism: 100%) I want to play guitar again but the corner of the room where the instrument is supposed to be, to my left, is too far from me. I don't want to waste time so I reach behind the curtain to my right expecting to find a guitar there. To my surprise, I find my old V-shaped guitar, which I sold years ago, leaning against the wall. I start playing a melody similar to the first solo in the song 'Master of Puppets' by Metallica. Curiously, each note I play simultaneously causes the now fiery sky to reverberate. I'm awed by the beauty of the sounds and the colours before me before all my senses fade and I wake up for real. WAKING STATE It is worth mentioning that I have some experience with music as an amateur piano and guitar but I must say that in the lucid dream I played more confidently and easily reached the level of a virtuoso. This experience won't turn me into a great guitarist overnight, but it has, at least, inspired me greatly.
Boat on a Stormy Sea I’m at an event taking place in a large, white tent, with people sitting at long tables in rows. I can’t remember the earlier part of the dream any longer, but at some point, a man on some sort of machine, kind of like a large tractor/open tank, bursts in and starts threatening people while riding up and down the aisles. He doesn’t actually seem to be trying to hurt anyone – yet – but it’s clearly a dangerous situation, so I head off to prepare properly before taking care of it. I go some distance away to a much smaller tent, where my own things are, and start by tying my hair back since that thing has exposed moving parts on it, and I want to be able to get close to it without having my neck snapped. While I’m getting ready, I plan, although I don’t think this will be very complicated. I figure I’ll just jump on and start messing with levers. But I’ll want to take out his grapply thingies first so he can’t just move them back. When I’m done, I go back a different way, past some fairly large buildings. The area is reminiscent of a university campus, and life seems to be going on normally here. A woman holding a number of small cards approaches me, wanting me to draw one. I do, knowing that she’s trying to help in some way. The cards are made of cardboard and are of varying sizes, as if they’re from multiple decks. I draw one which turns out to have a picture showing a boat on a stormy sea.* There’s accompanying text – I’m aware of having to focus more than usual in order to not instantly forget it (although, unfortunately, I did forget it between then and awakening). I take this as a positive sign. It also somehow suggests to me that it might be a good idea to see if I can get some of the other people in the tent to help out regarding the grapply things. * Note: this is the symbol for chords with dominant function in the app I use to practice improvising, which is something I was doing the night before this dream. 13.5.22 Cemetery Campsite I seem to be camping in a cemetery. Another tent is staked a few plots down – a mother and a young boy, who's three-ish, are staying there. I wonder whether I should tell them they’re camped on one of the graves that’s supposed to be haunted. We eventually do meet up somehow, and I show them the way to a local bank at her request. She meets with a couple of her relatives there, including an older woman who reminds me of somebody I know, who is looking after the child (who I now know is called Eliot) while she does something there. Eliot suddenly runs out of the building, and the woman follows, chasing him. I think she may need some help though, and so I wait around the opposite corner of the building and catch Eliot as he rounds it. He immediately starts crying. Sometime after that – back at the campsite – the woman has given me a bone with some meat on it to cook over a small fire. However, as I hold it over the flame, I notice there’s hardly any meat there at all – just a couple little scraps. Upon awakening, I also remembered a piano ostinato playing – not as a background of the dream, but as if it had somehow been going through my mind at the same time, apart from it. I didn’t check the pitches soon enough after the dream to be able to put it in a definite key, but this is what it sounded like: -15.5.22 Lots of interesting dreams lately. I'm not going to copy them all here, but highlights include: -Preparing for a chess match against a guy who likes to send his bishop in for a sacrifice on the f-pawn early in the game. I find this annoying and intend to make sure, through my own choice of moves, that this is not going to be an appealing option for him. -Lots of hostels and hotels. -Attending a concert on a campus but leaving after my rowdy friends got kicked out since it’s not really worth being there without them. -A lucid dream mostly consisting of talking to people and exploring.
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Updated 09-02-2024 at 02:38 AM by 99032
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