• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




    View RSS Feed

    Asherem

    1. Exploration 01: Before I Was a Lucid Dreamer

      by , 10-02-2011 at 04:11 AM
      Dream journals make me uncomfortable. Anytime I've ever tried to write down my dreams, and I've tried a lot, it always seems to diminish the true importance of the dream. I'm sure everyone here has experienced this. So, until I get comfortable enough to start putting my dreams on here, I'm going to write a few entries about my experience with lucid dreaming. This is kind of important anyway, because in order to understand any dreams I post, you kind of have to know my dreams have evolved.

      Before I could lucid dream, I had a lot of nightmares. The very first dream I remember having (I think I was about four) was a nightmare:

      I walked into a dark cave. In its belly was a massive snake with glowing red eyes, who (of course) could talk.

      From then on, my dreams mainly consisted of nightmares. Some of them are slightly hilarious looking back:

      A group of teenage boys with tattoos watched and laughed as a fried chicken leg chased me down and tried to eat me.

      And some of them are still seriously disturbing:

      I was laying in my bed (I was probably five at this point) playing with my favorite Lamb Chop doll. (This doll existed in real life.) It was one of those toys that had the pull-string on the back which you could pull and it would say something like "I love you!" or "Let's be friends!". In the dream, I was pulling on this string, giggling with delight when the doll said "There's a man at your window". I looked up and there was the dark silhouette of a man standing right outside.

      But this was nothing compared to what would come later. When I was about six, my parents got me some bunk beds. I didn't have any siblings, so I got to have the bunk bed all to myself. (I would like to clarify, because I definitely don't want anyone to get the wrong impression, that my parents were very poor and I was definitely not given everything I wanted. This was just one of those special presents my parents saved up for.) Being a kid, I was excited to sleep on the top bunk. So I did, for several weeks. Until one day I finally decided to sleep on the bottom bunk. That night I had a dream that topped them all:

      I was in a field of burning debris. Looking back, it resembled what we suspect a nuclear fallout would look like. I am running for my life, because I am being chased by a panther. I always instinctively knew it was a panther, even though I was too afraid to stop running or to look back.

      Being a superstitious child, I refused to sleep on the bottom bunk again for a long time. Sometimes I would try to be brave (at the behest of my parents) and I would sleep on the bottom bunk again, only to have the same exact dream as before. I was convinced that there was something unlucky about sleeping on the bottom bunk. I realize now that I was actually beginning to control my dreams without realizing it. I had convinced myself that sleeping on the bottom bunk would give me this dream, and it did.

      Then one day I overheard my dad telling my mother that he heard something interesting on the radio. If you are having a dream that you are being chased by something, you should simply turn around and ask the thing that is chasing you why it is chasing you in the first place! My parents laughed about this and said something along the lines of "What idiots! You can't just do that in a dream!". But that night, I crept into the bottom bunk without telling my parents (I didn't want to make a big deal of it) and this is what I dreamt:

      I was back in the field of debris being chased by the panther. But this time I stopped running immediately and turned around to face the panther. She was beautiful. She stopped immediately and sat down, looking at me curiously. I asked her why she was chasing me. She smiled and said "Ah, you listened to your parents. Good," and sleekly ran away.

      I immediately woke up. I can't even begin to explain my excitement. I'm sure I told my parents what happened, but I'm pretty sure they just patted me on the head and told me to go play outside or something. But everything about my life changed from that night. I had a secret super power.