false awakening

I'm laying in bed next to my girlfriend, just relaxing in the time before I fall asleep. She's already asleep, so I try not to move much and wake her up. Then her pet lion jumps up in bed with us! It's huge, but not very ferocious. But it does step on my solar plexus with a single paw and it's really heavy. I squirm a little, and it steps somewhere else, then lays down next to me. It's still pretty comfortable here, so I close my eyes and let sleep take its sweet time.

Then as I think I fall asleep, I wake up! No lion.

I would really benefit from more RCs...

Ritual: WTB 12:30am, woke 7:30 with first DILD. No techniques, hadn't really intended to get lucid, but I was wearing a Jawbone fitness tracker on my wrist to bed for the first time. It's a bit tight and I think the unfamiliar sensation served as an anchor for consciousness.

DILD (eventually), "Hong Kong Apartment": I am in Hong Kong with my husband, staying in the apartment of someone unknown to me. I'm curious who this guy is and why we're at his place, so I'm attentive to my surroundings. It is a one-bedroom apartment and the layout feels familiar; I figure it must be a common floorplan here. The first thing I remember is being in a small room of unclear function, a study maybe, and looking at a plaque on the wall. It depicts a Chinese character, the archaic version of that character, and the pinyin transliteration: sōng, corresponding to the English word "page"—not the leaf of a book but the job title. From this I suppose that the young man who lives here must be serving as a page in the Hong Kong government, in the same way that there are pages in the US Congress.

My husband is talking to me, and I'm vaguely following his words but not entirely sure what he's going on about. I'm still trying to figure out why we're here: does my husband know the guy who owns this place, or is this some kind of Airbnb arrangement? Meanwhile I'm trying to wrap an enormous porkchop—the size of a prime rib steak—that I have for some reason. It is fully grilled but no one has eaten it yet, and I'm not hungry now so I want to put it away. It had been wrapped in butcher's paper but I'm having trouble re-wrapping it, and this distracts my attention for some time as I end up having to use a piece of foil to supplement the paper where it is torn. As I finally wrap the porkchop successfully and go to put it in the fridge, I see that there is fresh lettuce in the fridge, and I've also noticed dirty plates on the counter. I had assumed the apartment's owner was letting us stay because he was away somewhere, but these details make me think he must be currently living here and could walk in at any moment.

I know my husband needs to leave for some meeting or event, and our conversation is delaying his departure, so finally I say in exasperation, "Get out of here already!" Right after he goes out the door, I worry that he might have misunderstood my tone of voice and thought I was angry, so I opened the door and called after his retreating form, "I didn't mean to speak harshly." Meanwhile a girl with short, curly blonde hair is walking from right to left in front of the apartment, and I think she might be someone he had just been referring to—at the time I even recalled her name, something with the initials "J.S."—so I gaze at her curiously. She looks back at me with the self-conscious but indifferent air of someone wondering why a stranger is staring at them. It seems like it would be awkward to start a conversation so I go back inside.

Alone in the apartment, I look around at the decor. There are a lot of hand-carved wooden animal figures, and they remind me of a set that I bought in a museum shortly before Christmas, but couldn't figure out who to give them to. They seem to match this guy's tastes... maybe I should give them to him, in thanks for the loan of his apartment. It seems like a nice gesture so I plan on it. In the center of the main room, which has an open floor plan connected with the kitchenette, is a wide square column that is hollow inside to serve as storage space. I note with interest that there are a number of oversized books here. One of them is at least four feet tall, and the title on the spine reads Disney as Orientalism, accompanied by some Disney-style graphics. I make a mental note that later I'll want to pull that one out and flip through it. It's so big it won't fit on a table—I'll have to do this on the floor! It is the largest of the books in this closet, but none of them are small. Several others are about three feet tall with matching red covers, and I see that one of them is about Shanghai. Books of this size must have cost a fortune... this guy must be doing well here. I wonder if it would be rude to read his books without asking permission first, but figure there's no harm in it.

I wonder how I'll explain my presence if this guy shows up while I'm here by myself, since I'm still not clear on who he exactly is or why I'm at his apartment. In fact, this question starts to bother me, because it seems like I should have a better explanation. Of course, it's always possible that I'm dreaming, but... I want to discount this at first, since it seems to contradict what I'm experiencing from this environment. It is so detailed, lifelike, and stable, it really doesn't feel like a dream. But I make myself take the time to think this over more carefully: if I am actually dreaming, that would explain a lot, like why I had a porkchop, something I almost never eat, and the difficulty I had wrapping it. It would explain why I am in Hong Kong with no idea why I am here, and why I find myself in the apartment of a guy I don't even know. I don't use any techniques to RC, I just think it over and gradually recognize the illusory nature of my surroundings: indeed I am dreaming!

So now what? Normally I would apply myself to some task or other, but I had specifically made a point not to do so this time, if I got lucid, because I'm facing too much work today to spend hours writing up my report. So my plan was not to do anything specific, but simply to contemplate and enjoy the dream environment. (For some reason I had the idea that this would save me time writing things up later, although that is proving not to be the case!) I walk toward the back wall of the apartment, which is completely transparent, and look outside. It is still night, but there is a well-lit open-air bar just below, with a stream running behind it. There are a surprising number of people down there, and all seem to be relaxed and enjoying themselves, like guests at a resort. I sit down to watch the scene, while thinking back over what I've just experienced. I'm still impressed by how detailed and stable this dream was. For instance, that Chinese character on the wall—it was so clearly articulated, even though I don't think it was one I've ever seen before, and I strongly doubt it's even a real one. I wished I had looked at it more carefully, and focus on reviving the mental image. I think can remember the top elements of the modern version of the character, but I'm vague about what composed the bottom, which was complex, and I had not studied it closely at the time. The archaic version was simpler, and I can remember it much more distinctly. Concentrating on this inadvertently wakes me up.

Interlude: After writing the above account and going back to bed at 8:45am, I certainly didn't intend to get lucid again, given that I've already spent a lot of time writing when I should be working, but I never want to rule it out. I ended up having several FAs, the later ones bringing on a very long bout of lucidity, in which I just wandered around exploring rather than working on specific tasks. There would still be a lot to write up but given time constraints I'll have to keep it brief. Woke for the day at 10:15.

FA: I was in the bathroom thinking that I should make a more consistent effort to recognize those little discrepancies that might make me notice I'm dreaming, like I did in the last dream, without realizing that I was actually dreaming at that very moment.

FA/DILD, "Trail of Smoke": I hovered for a long time on the border between sleep and waking and enjoyed observing its ambiguities. For instance, there was a point where I was convinced I was immersed in dream visuals but hearing everything perfectly accurately from waking life (I was probably wrong about this). I caught at least one FA and was pleased after my failure to catch the last one. Then a long dream followed where I was basically lucid the whole time, but also knew I wouldn't have time to write it up in much detail, so only certain episodes that were especially interesting stand out clearly in my memory. I really can't take the time to include them all here, but the last scene was worth mentioning:

I am wandering through a dream environment typical for me, a labyrinthine enclosed public space, and having just seen someone smoking on a magazine cover, I now find myself smoking a cigarette. The smoke doesn't dissipate completely but lingers faintly in the air along the path I have walked, like that memorable scene from Donnie Darko (2001). It looks like I could potentially trace back the smoke and rediscover all the places I have visited in the course of this long dream. This makes me wonder: how big is the dream world? And the answer seems obvious: there are no boundaries, it is as big as mind itself. Standing in that world even as I recognize its boundlessness, I feel a sense of awe.

I gaze at the glimmering smoke trails and murmur, "All the places I've been are like a trail of smoke that follows me."

After a DA:O-based scene about pleasantly passing time with Zevran, I have a false awakening and go lucid in a much less pleasant setting: a college dorm where people are being influenced in their sleep by some sinister mental voice - I could make out his tone but not his words. My initial intent was to investigate this without letting the source of the voice realize I was immune to his influence, mimicking the behavior of his victims, but I approach a stone wall surrounding the building and decide nah, I'd rather just leave. I fly over the wall with some slight resistance which I think of as coming from the source of that voice, unwilling to let any of his prey escape.

This takes me down to a river surrounded by great grey boulders, leading down to the sea; as I follow the river it becomes filled by creatures similar to dolphins or porpoises - but incredibly ugly. I'm still feeling a sort of dragging effect from the scene I'd just left, resistance to moving further away; the water and open air feel refreshing but the animals' ugly appearance reflects some negative feel that's still affecting the dream.

There's a song in my head, and I choose to focus on the song instead of on my surroundings - an upbeat dance song from the 60s. I begin to see a music video that goes with it, though not vividly, more like daydreaming, still firmly aware of my surroundings along that river. I'm thinking this could be an interesting opportunity.

The music video has a wipe transition effect, like a clock hand sweeping around, and I focus on it - and now the music video has changed scenes from a dance hall to a boardwalk, and I've transitioned with it. I'm observing the boardwalk from above, 3rd person, with no more sense of that river with the sea creatures, or of the general feeling of unpleasantness from the past few scenes. I'm surprised that worked. It's unusually unvivid, though, still about the quality of a daydream; I wonder if I'm waking up. I shift my perspective, now standing on that boardwalk in the 60s, with a row of brilliantly colored pinball machines off to my right. That's much better. I drop back to non-lucidity for two more scenes.

My girlfriend turns into an evil demon creature and true to utterly destroy me in every way. She glares at me menacingly with a scary look in her eyes and dares me to do something about it. I tell her that I'm still going to look at the good in her and ignore the bad - and in that way gradually transform the effects she has on me. She develops large fangs, her eyes go black and she lunges at me to bite my face off, but I feel love for everyone, her especially, and just before she bites my face off, she is transformed into a beautify girl again and kisses me. I was expecting to die or be maimed, but this is definitely one of the best outcomes.

Now the two of us are waiting for some demonic, hellish creatures to clear out of the upstairs room. It seems like the more still I am, the more things seem to work out favorably. My girlfriend seems to be affected in some way by these creatures, and we can't just go up there and chase them out.

We lay back down in my hammock as we wait.

I wake up in my hammock and it all seemed SO real. Especially since she was next to me. Kind of eerily creepy how real I seemed. Maybe it was, who knows?

March 05, 2015

---

I was with my parents, and we were talking about the Doctor. I was longing for him, and later got to meet up with him (he was apparently someone we knew?) after babysitting some kids, and he gave me a simple string necklace with an orb on the end. I thought it was just a silly trinket he would give to a child, so I was a little upset about it all. When my mom saw me wearing the necklace, she looked concerned and immediately tried to call him. They either told me, or I had a strong hunch that this necklace was something special after all, and that maybe he had strong feelings for me. This thought excited me, but my parents seemed to be treating it with caution and concern, like a baby tiger or something.

Then, they both told me about a dream people had been having. They said it might be connected with the Doctor somehow, so I decided to try to incubate the dream, whatever it ended up being. Like, they told me a sentence to think about, though I can't remember what it was. I ended up falling asleep in the chair I was sitting in with my parents.

In this dream within a dream, I was a worker or resident of some sort of working commune of sorts. We lived and worked in a long building of maybe five stories. But it was on a cliff face, so on that side, the ground floor was below the cliff wall. That whole side of the building, on all floors, was lined with a large wooden balcony looking out into the canyon. There was a sloped road into the canyon next to the building so I liked to watch cars go by.... except cars never seemed to actually go by. All of us in this commune were basically paid to live there and basically just do small odd-jobs all the time. Like, we'd get paid to move these large picnic table-type tables out to the balcony for dinner, or for indulging our hobbies. Some of us were trained doctors (I was one of them), and we would care for people when they got hurt or sick, though it didn't happen often.

On the other side of the building, in the center, there were a set of double-story glass doors leading into a prairie backyard with a terraced garden at the other end, and horse/sheep/cow stables above the garden terraces. It was so beautiful, but kinda utopian (as in impossible and slightly darker than it seemed). Like, on the surface it looked like a perfect little community... but there were whispers.

On the day this dream took place, we had moved the tables out to the balcony for lunch. It was a special day because it was the day a Canyon Horse spirit did a yearly run down the road into the canyon. But for some reason it started early. It had always been in the evening, when the sun sets, and the windows were always boarded up and fastened, and we fasted for the evening, or something. But this year, it was starting in the middle of our lunch. The sky darkened and men came in to shutter the balcony openings; but I just barely spotted the spirit streaking by through the closing shutters. It was a deeply spiritual moment, and afterwards, I was so excited, so I didn't notice the tension around me. Something was happening.

We found out why the doors and windows were always boarded up for this event; the horses in the stables out over the terraces were going mad. The stable men who had been tending them were being trampled or turned mad themselves. One horse was on its back, but still somehow galloping, as if it had legs coming out of its back; it was super creepy. They all, men and horses, started charging the building, trampling the gardens and prairie. People in the house panicked and tried to shutter the doors, but it wasn't working. So we started running. I was running along the building in the direction of the end of the canyon, because there was a town in that direction. I stopped at one of the side doors and looked down the country-lane-ish pathway it opened into, to see which way the horses and men would go. I thought they would all just go straight into the house to get people, but they fanned out and changed direction as soon as I could see them. It was now too late to change my mind, and I wished I hadn't waited, and had just run when I got to the door.

I ran through the streets until I reached a small neighborhood and started turning down streets to try to loose the mad people chasing me. I felt like they were after my flesh, wanting to tear my heart out or wear my brains as headdresses....

I came to a small house, but it had a divot of sorts in the layout, with a bush in it. I ducked into the divot, thinking I would be safe there and no one would be able to see me. But you could see me from the other direction, so it the men ran past and turned around, they would see me and I would be cornered... It was a risk, and I took it. Right when I settled there, a man, I assumed the owner of the house, came from the other direction and spotted me. I thought he was going to call out in alarm, but he must have seen the pleading in my eyes, because when he looked ahead of him and saw the madman who was still chasing me, and pretended he didn't see me as he walked to his front door. The madman passed, kept going, and then the new man beckoned me quickly to go inside, while he kept watch for the madman coming back.

I was so grateful I would have cried. but when I got inside, it was MY house. My parents were there, sitting where they had been sitting when I had fallen asleep. I had a moment of lucidity and realized they were themselves, not DCs of themselves. I sat down in the seat in which I had been sitting before, and stared at them, dumbfounded. "Well, that was trippy..." I said. They told me that people who dreamed after thinking that sentence they'd given me all had nearly the exact same dream. They asked me to describe my experience. They were a little surprised, because most people experienced the dream through a man's eyes, even if they were women IWL. I had been a woman, and when I thought about it, most of the people in the building had been women. My parents said this meant something, but I don't remember what that is, or if they even actually told me. I started to feel myself slowly slipping from sleep to wakefullness, but there was no breaking apart of the dream, because I was sitting exactly where my waking body had been. Nothing about my vision or consciousness changed, except that I slowly felt myself waking up.

(this was the weirdest FA I have ever had)

"Whoa," I said to my parents. I asked them if I had just been actually talking to them. I had; they had inserted themselves in my dream or something. It was all very weird, so I stood up and walked around, not really taking in the fact that my house was now a hybrid of my actual house and that building from the dream. There were a series of small moments; One in which one of my best high school friends was visiting, and we were standing on the top of a hill outside this new hybrid house, looking down a stairway path to the bottom. She threw her phone out over the hill, toward a beach at the bottom, and then ran after it giggling like an idiot. River Song came through some double doors at the side of the house (opening to a balcony eerily similar to the one from the dream) and I was suddenly a young girl, and ther ewere sort-of two of me. We ran up to River Song and hugged her, yelling, "MOMMY!!" I was me again, looking through a storehouse of sorts which had been lost to humanity for ages. We were looking at all the priceless objects inside it, and picking which ones to take home with us. I chose pieces that reminded me of figures my Oma has, because I wanted to have some like them. I forget what mom picked.

Then, I was me again, and sitting against a full-body mirror that stood in the middle-ish of a large room. I smiled, because suddenly I knew I was dreaming. I didn't even need to RC, I just knew it was a dream. I was in a very laid back lucid mood, so I took out my phone and looked at it when I touched the on button. There was a 3D-ish sphere on the top right corner, a moving metronome to the left of that, and some lines below them, which waves and wiggled. The DC sitting diagonal to me laughed and commented on my metronome thing, and I said, "Hey, this is MY dream. You're not allowed to see things you can't possibly see. That's MY job." I stood up, and went to find my parents.

I found where the large room connected to the hallway that was actually in my house, and walked to the end of it, looking at my hands to stabilize the dream and just for shiggles really; they were frozen in this spread out position even when I moved my fingers. Like they were glitching. I turned around and, expecting to find my actual living room when I went back, headed back. I did indeed find my real living room when I returned, and my parents were there. I took hold of the trim on the corner of the wall, and slowly floated myself upward so I was horizontal. I slowly floated up to rest on the ceiling; I was chilling on the ceiling as if I were underwater, and gravity was flipped. My parents just smiled up at me. I thought about attempting another ceiling portal, but remembered the Advanced ToTM about pushing yourself through a mirror as a portal. So I instantly turned off this weird gravity and landed on the ground, and went down the hall again, and turning around with the intention of finding that large room with the mirror again. I did find it when I returned, and sat against the mirror again. Everyone was gone from the room now, so I closed my eyes, imagined that I was going on a mystery journey, and just let myself sink into the mirror. I slowly phased through it as I fell backward, and I let myself tumble out into whatever new place I had discovered. A rainbow passed through me, and then it was crazy; I was in a strange cave-like place that wasn't actually a cave. Where ever I looked, my eyes were like lasers that sprouted flowers and rainbows and stars would shoot out and spread around the area. It was fairly dark but where I looked would illuminate to reveal a dark blue rock-face thing. I liked this so far. I found a small star chart on a podium, and investigated it. The first thing that caught my eye was a rubber chicken. WTF, I thought, and then found a telescope next to the podium. I wanted to get a look at this for myself, so I looked through the telescope, pointing it where the rubber chicken would be. I had been assuming it was a constellation made by weirder people than me, but when I spotted it in the viewfinder... it was ACTUALLY a huge rubber chicken in space. Like, I could tell it was light years away, but it was as big as a huge planet. I felt the dream fading, and let it go because I was happy with the results.

Bedtime: 12:20

Well, I guess bedtime doesn't determine everything.

It started off with some dream about driving and walking through an urban area trying to get my cousins to a baseball game.

Somehow or other, I wound up in what felt like the woods behind my neighborhood. It was tropical though, and everything was green. The dream was very clear despite being nonlucid. I was showing them houses that had been overgrown and abandoned many years ago. We were talking about how we would have liked to live in them in their prime.

We came to this one house, a huge four story mansion. (Or the frame of one anyway) A massive tree, about 20 feet in diameter and easily 500 feet tall had cleaved the entire frame in half, leaving only two smaller sections standing. Myself and the party of DCs (there were two or three of us total.) were hypothesizing about how the middle must have once looked.

We made our way around back, climbing over fallen trees. We saw that a river ran along the back of the house. There were waterfalls flowing from the cliff-side into the river.

"How cool would it be to live with 3...4 waterfalls in your backyard?!"

I then made an observation of some of the tropical flora. There were fern trees all around us.

This for one reason or another made me become lucid.

I stabilized briefly. I then decided that I wanted to go and see my subconscious and tell him/her/it that I wanted more lucid dreams. I shouted "I want to see my subconscious right now!"

I saw that there was a small double door between two large boulders on the forest floor. The two DCs that I was with walked through it.

I opened the door after them. It was nothing but blackness. I let myself fall in. I fell for awhile before arriving at this location suspended in the blackness.

There was a throne chair with a small child sitting in it. Built up around us was the back wall of the throne room, made out of castle stones, and the floor, made up of tiles. This crumbled away about a hundred feet from the chair in every direction, as if this one slice of the castle had been removed from the rest and placed into this void.

The child (who I guess was supposed to be my subconscious) was wearing a red king robe, golden crown and had a long scepter. Though none of this quite fit him because he was so small.

There were a couple of guards in strange white armor positioned on either side of his throne. I think Manei and Marcus manifested into the room behind me. I could feel their energies.

SubC "I am your subconscious, and I am very busy! Each time you say something to me, it's gonna cost you [some kind of special money]. You have 1,800 of it. Go!"

Me "How come so many of my efforts to lucid dream fail?"

1,750

SubC "Because you didn't do the work I gave to you. Remember Jonathan? Why is he not dead?"

Me "I did the right thing. He said that he wanted to go peacefully, so me and Manei agreed to let him go."

1,625

SubC "But that wasn't what you were supposed to do!" His tone of voice started to sound a bit whiny at this point.

Manei "If there is one thing [my name was garbled] taught me, it's that you shouldn't let other people decide who you are. You should [follow your own path or something.]

I saw that Manei had some kind of money counter for talking to this guy too. She only had about 600 of it. Marcus had no money and therefore wasn't allowed to speak.

SubC "What? You're taking his side?"

Manei (mad) "I wish I was never on your side to begin with."

SubC "Guards, show of force."

Me "Look at you. You try to control people and [mold them into what you want or something.] And when they start rebelling against you, you threaten them. [If you want people to respect you, you have to earn that respect, not force it out of them or something.]" (My ability to recall dialogue is horrible.)

1,333

SubC "Stop it! Stop it! It's not true! Guards, Seize them!" (He started sounding more and more like a whiny child.)

The two guards began to advance on me. The dream started to fade. I saw my 'money' was starting to tick down.

Me: "The way you choose to remove me from your presence rather than learn from me proves just how weak and immature you really are. When you [grow up a little], you will see that I was right about everything. I see no way we can come to an agreement if you are going to act like this."

545

The dream cut to black here. I had an FA, but somehow still remained semi lucid. I was on the steps of one of the dorm complexes at my college.

Spoiler for Sexy Toys:

There was a huge blue dildo toy. There was a bottle on the back end of it that you could fill with whatever liquid you wanted, then squeeze it and it would squirt out the front. It was also covered in this soft fabric.

I was trying to hide this object because I didn't want anyone to know that I dreamed about it. I was also thinking about how I was going to describe this scene when I woke up and started writing about it in my DJ. Dang partial lucidity.

At one point I tried to throw it away, but it wouldn't fit in the trash can. It seemed to be continually growing. Eventually it started getting so heavy that I couldn't carry it.

There was also a part where I dreamed that I was trying to send one of my cats away in a cardboard box that would float like a boat on a lake. I felt like the lake we were at had taken the place of my old middle school.

Interpretations:

I really don't know what to make of this. I don't know why my subconscious was so childlike and closed-minded. He wanted things done a particular way, his way. He wanted no part of anyone else, and didn't want to earn their respect. (Sure, sounds like a much younger me, but I'm sure a lot of us acted that way as children since we simply didn't know any better.)

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Dream 1
So I think I was on bus and we stopped off at this care centre, I left my bag on the bus since we were supposed to get back on in 10 minutes. I went inside and something happened (forgot this detail) where I couldn't really continue on with everyone else to the next stop, it was related to me not being able to hear (My hearing aids have both just broken in real life). Instead, a lady asks if I want to help out and entertain some of the old people at the care centre, I accept (in a nonchalant manner) but I need to change my clothes first (my clothes got dirty somehow). I head back to the bus as it's preparing to leave, but my lack of hearing makes communicating difficult and I ask my friend Matt to help me out. He kind of just ignores me at first, then it's like he's being a jerk or trying to be funny and the whole thing is out of character. The starts to leave and drive down the road and I start to feel helpless.

Dream 2
In my old high school there was a circular brick wall about 40cm high with a pohutuawa tree in the middle surrounded by a bark surface. I was sitting on the bricks and it seemed to be during lunch time, a friend was next to me too. I noticed two girls who were approaching, they were my close friends mikayla and kashifa. We hugged and said hello and then kissed each other on the forehead for some reason... Next thing I know, the bell has rung and we're all heading off to our next classes. My friend who was sitting next to me is crawling on the ground and now there's a feeling like we're in primary school, and some people around him are saying "Wow that's weird what's he doing".

Possibly a dream but not sure 3
So I had kind of woken up, I'm currently sick with a head cold and I got really disorientated. I was drifting sleepily and kind of falling back asleep but waking up, and I must have dozed off for a few minutes... I thought that my gf and daughter were in the house and that I had forgotten where my daughter was, and I got really panicky since I don't think she was in the her cot. It was dark and I tried to get up to turn the light on, and then I woke up and opened my eyes -.- so false awakening?

I had a great lucid dream this morning. I had awakened at 3:30 and was having trouble going back to sleep. I thought about trying to do a WILD, and I even starting counting and relaxing, but after a while it seemed obvious that I wasn't tired enough. The last time I looked at the clock was 6:30, and I felt myself start to drift off to sleep (this is one of the few mornings I can sleep in like this).

Dream:

I found myself looking into a mirror. I wasn't happy with what I was seeing. My stomach was all deformed and hanging really weird (it looked a lot like the stomachs of people who have lost huge amounts of weight and the skin just flops and hangs). I was trying to figure out what could have happened for my stomach to look like this. Then suddenly it hits me. The mirror. I always look different in dream mirrors. I must be dreaming.

Yes! I was finally lucid dreaming again.

I already knew what I wanted to do. So much to do...

The first thing I decided to do was to practice being Poet Anderson. I found that I was upstairs in a house that was supposed to be mine, but in retrospect, I am totally unfamiliar with it. It has never been in my dreams before. I ran out of the bedroom and saw Jeff who was just coming in. I shouted out, "Can't talk now...I'm dreaming!" I leapt down the staircase without touching a single step, and out the front door.

I was Poet Anderson. I ran until I came to a high retaining wall and flew over it and down to the street below. I jumped up again and landed one knee, pulling my gun. I totally had this. I was feeling one with Poet.

Then, the unthinkable happened. I felt myself wake up. I couldn't believe the dream was over when it had barely just begun.

I found myself talking to Daniel. I was telling him about my lucid dream. I lamented with him because he had told me how in recent lucid dreams he had been having he had been walking up too soon as well....only to find out later that it was only a false awakening. I had told him (in a recent real life conversation) that he just needed to get into the habit of always doing a reality check each time he thought he woke up.

Somewhere in the middle of this conversation with him. I realized that there was a good chance that I had just had a FA. And as soon as I thought that I knew I was still dreaming. I was excited and told Daniel that we were lucid dreaming. I said, "Let's do finger lasers." There was a poster on the wall, and we pointed our fingers at the posters. I expected to see a laser light come out of my finger. But I didn't see anything. I concentrated harder. I felt like I could hear a faint hum. I looked again at the poster we were pointing at. I could see little lines starting to burn across the paper. I felt satisfied. Even though I could never see the laser, I knew we had been able to create them because I could see the damage they were doing.

At this point I remembered I wasn't done being Poet. I ran outside again and practiced leaping about and drawing my gun. I noticed at one point that I didn't actually have a gun. But I figured it was okay. I would work on that detail later. Right now I wanted to be comfortable with the moves. I also tired to practice making myself transform, like he does in the film, when the Night Terror comes and the black wraps around his body. I couldn't quite get that right. The best I could do was turn my arms a black color. I wasn't too worried about that either. There was time for special effects later. Right now I wanted to make sure I was fast and agile.

After doing this for some time, I decided that my dream was going to last long enough to do a Task of the Month. I thought I would start with the easiest one--walk into a random house and sescribe what was inside.

I now found myself next to some apartments. I saw a door near me on the ground floor. For a second I felt a little timid. But I told myself that it was just a dream and that it didn't matter. So I turned the doorknob and boldly walked through the door. I found myself in a small living room. There were several couches that were full of people....several older Navajo women and quite a few children. One of the ladies saw me and good naturedly joked how surprised I must be about walking into a house full of brown children. But I decided to act like it was no mistake at all. I smiled and , "Hi, how are all of you doing.?" And I smiled down at one of the children that was standing near me and asked her a question. I was able to put everyone at ease. We talked a few minutes. I don't remember details of the conversation. But by the time I left, we all felt happy.

I then found myself in what looked like an alley. There were more doors in a building next to me. I decided to do this again. This time as I opened the door I found myself in an old motel room. in front of me sitting on the edge of a bed was woman who looked to be in her 60s and was either Navajo or Mexican. She was smoking something. I tried to talk to her, but I soon saw that she was totally out of it. She never made eye contact or responded to me in any way. She looked quite messed up. I also noticed that there was some kind of white plastic thing in one of her nostrils.

I kind of got the creeps just being with her, and I knew that we wouldn't be having any sort of conversation, so I left.

This time I saw that I was walking through storage units. I kept walking and found myself in what looked like an outdoor mall. I suddenly remembered that I wanted to find a radio so I could listen to new Angels and Airwaves music. There was junk laying about everywhere, but I couldn't find a radio. I could see people walking around, so I shouted, "Will somebody please turn on a radio!"

And at that I heard a radio go on. But I was just hearing voices. I figured that after the talking they would play a song. I walked on.

I then found myself inside of a very large sports store. There were bikes hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling was 3-4 stories high, so there were a lot of bikes hanging. I jumped up and hung from one of the lower bikes. While I was hanging I looked over and saw this black guy who looked to be in his late 20's. He looked at me with a little smile and said, "Let me show you how this is done." and he jumped up and grabbed a bike and then proceeded to start climbing the bikes. I got quite excited at this little challenge. I knew he had no idea who I was, and that I was going to beat him miserably. Haha...this was going to be great. I then pulled myself up with ease to the next bike. I looked over and he was slowly but quite steadily moving his way up. I was impressed. SO I picked up my pace. I started moving up the bikes so fast that I was barely gripping them. I was mostly just gliding my way up. The ceiling, I noticed was higher and there was further to climb than I had originally thought. I continued to climb. I then looked over and the guy had almost been able to keep up with me. I was only a little faster. Finally I got to the top and grinned at the guy just below me. Now I was going to show him who I was. At that, I let go and jumped all the way down (at least 5 stories). I landed confidently and took off running out of the store.

I remembered that I hadn't heard the radio. I saw that I was still in what looked like a cluttered outdoor mall. I still couldn't find a radio. So I shouted, "Does anyone here have a radio with them?"

I suddenly saw Emily, she was pulling a small radio out of her pocket. I said, "Yes, Emily!" And promptly woke up. And this time I really was awake.

It was 7:03.

Ritual: WTB 12:30am, woke ~6am and set vibrating alarm for 40 minutes. I don't have a clear memory of it going off the first time (~6:40). The second time it went off (~7:20) I seem to have experienced it entirely within the dream state. My lucidity lapsed shortly thereafter but came back when I noticed that the circumstances were suitable for one of the TOTMs. I must have dreamed for about ten minutes after the alarm went off the second time, waking at ~7:30 with 29 minutes left on the alarm going into its third 40 minute cycle.

NLD: I was on a bus traveling through a desert. Looking out the window, I saw an enormous lizard resembling an early-model godzilla. [DR: an image of a similar godzilla was shown briefly John Oliver's show on Sunday night.] It didn't look real, because on closer inspection its "skin" was wrinkled and rippling like that of inflatable parade float rather than a living creature. I concluded that it must be a world boss and looked away. Even though it was so much larger than me and very far off, I was afraid that my scrutiny might draw its attention, and I was not equipped to battle it without a raid.

Our destination was a cave, which was pleasantly cool and dark after the burning light and heat of the desert outside. I passed through the large front cavern through a door labeled "Imagemakers" that led into a back room. These "imagemakers" were literally cave painters, a studio full of artists each doing individual murals on the walls, but in a modern, Asian-inspired style. [DR: One painting seemed reminiscent of Toshio Aoki's Thunder Kami (1900), which I was looking at yesterday.]

I comment to one of the artists how pleasantly cool it is here in the back room. She replies, "It's only 25, if you're not careful you might freeze." [DR? I had reviewed the TOTMs before bed and my notes used the word "freeze," which also ended up being the task I attempted later in the same dream.] I assume she means Celsius because it's not that cold in here, and try to remember what that would be in Fahrenheit—72 or so? I point out to her that when I start to feel cold I can just put on more clothes. Outside in the heat, there was nothing I could do, so this is preferable.

EILD-FA: I feel the vibrating alarm and "wake up," or so I believe, though it retrospect it was obviously an FA because I was in a room with no resemblance to WL. I am sitting in bed reading a book, and after I feel the vibration I remember not to move at first, lest I break REMA. As I start to feel more confident in my dream senses, I venture to turn the page of the book. Slowly I expand my range of motion until I'm sure that I'm not going to disrupt the dream. The plot of the previous dream continues (insofar as it has any continuity, which isn't much) and I soon lose what little lucidity the alarm had prompted.

NLD: Now everyone's talking about a bride who is coming, also on a bus, and someone instructs me to go to a counter to buy a present for her, "a small dog." I had envisioned a tiny dog that was only a few inches long, but the two available at the counter aren't small by any reckoning; they must weigh 40 or 50 pounds. The clerk asks me what I want the dog to be able to do. I think this over, rationalizing that it is a gift to someone who might not be expecting it, so it would be best if it isn't too high maintenance. "Ummm.... sleep a lot?" is my first suggestion. I try to think of other possibilities. "Stand up? Lick? Can they do that?" The clerk looks at me and answers in a tone that suggests he thinks I am an idiot, "Yeah, they can all do that."

While I'm deliberating someone has come up and bought one of the two dogs, so I'm stuck with the one that is left. I think it's really ugly, with shaggy beige fur, and I hope the bride likes it or I'll be stuck with it. At least the dog has a good personality, friendly and responsive, nuzzling up to me like it wants to be liked. I go to another room and start talking with two girls. Suddenly the dog starts humping the floor, which embarrasses me. "I hope he doesn't do that around her," I say, meaning the bride. One of the girls laughts comments that the way she's been carrying on with her new husband, she probably won't be offended.

DILD: As the conversation continues, I suddenly notice: hey, I'm in a room with DCs, this would be a perfect opportunity to try the "freeze" TOTM. I mean, okay, there's only two of them, but we are in a room, so that should qualify as a "roomful."

"Freeze!" I say suddenly, interrupting whatever else we were talking about. The girls stare at me with looks that say "WTF." They're still moving normally, so I issue the command again, attempting to focus my will by tensing my body. That doesn't work either, and I realize that I have the wrong approach. I need to be focusing my mind, not my body. "Freeeeeze," I say cajolingly, drawing out the word. At this point they do stop moving, but I have the impression that they're just playing along. I decide to try the narration technique. "Your body feels so heavy, you can't move. You're paralyzed, like when you sleep." That reminds me, of course we're not completely paralyzed when we sleep, and I'd better not kill them by overdoing it. I hastily add, "You can breathe, of course, just like when you're sleeping."

The girls seem to be complying now, so I study them closely to be sure. I also remember that I should take conscious note of their names, which I had instinctively known earlier in the dream but had almost forgotten on going lucid. The smaller one on the left, with the dark hair... I think back and all I can come up with is "Calm." It sounds odd, but that's the only name that I remember for her. The plumper girl on the right, a blonde, I know for sure is called "Amy."

The smaller girl seems completely comatose now. I lift her arm and drop it, and it falls with satisfying limpness. The larger girl is also lying still, but I get the impression she's just pretending: one of her arms is in a position that could only be maintained by exerting muscle control. I lift it and it is stiff in my grasp.

Then I realize I'm going about this all wrong. I try to remember the specifics of the TOTM. Was I just supposed to freeze them in place, or was there something about actually stopping time? I can't clearly remember the wording. I decide I'd better try the latter in any case, it might work better—and I won't have to worry about the girls accidentally suffocating if time itself has stopped.

"Freeze!" I shout, now indicating not only the two of them but the whole environment, with only myself as an exception. I find that the logical impossibility of this trouble me: if I continue moving normally, then in what sense can time itself be said to have stopped? It doesn't make any sense. I remind myself that this is a dream, and I'm not obliged to work out the physics of it. I look at Amy to see if my new strategy has resulted in any improvement. No, although she is lying quite still, and her arm looks properly limp now, she's actually tapping the fingers of one hand.

"Freeze!" I shout again, looking directly at her hand. Still tapping. "Freeze!" I yell, glaring at the hand. Tap... tap... tap. "Freeze!" I insist, mustering all my intent. The hand finally goes limp. It occurs to me that at some point I'm going to need to write all this up, and the thought wakes me.

Notes: I never did remember the second part of the TOTM, not just in the dream but even after waking up, recording my notes, and going about my day... but I had the feeling that there might have been more to it, that I left something out, and on coming home from work and checking the forum, I see that there was a whole second part of the task that I skipped!

Two kids were in my living room, bugging me, and I decided to ask them what they represented. One of their responses? "I dunno, your genitals?"

I remember then eating something. (??)

I then remember leaving a house, and going to find my girlfriend, as we were doing a shared dreaming experiment. Instead, I wound up in this odd town, with two people bothering me, one was a woman who asked if I would like a cookie. I said no the first time (for some reason, I friggin' love cookies), but the second time she asked, I said yes and tried it. It was just an average chocolate chip cookie, not much to note. I didn't find my girlfriend to do the experiment, unfortunately.

There was later a false awakening, although I forget what it was.

EDIT: I remember the FA! I was essentially looking through magazines and came across pokemon stickers. My dad said not to take any stickers because we were giving those magazines away, but I took a Mime Jr and Mr. Mime sticker. I can't make this up even if I wanted to.

I'm at a crowded party in a large sloped room with two girls. Everyone is lying casually on the floor. One girl starts kissing me. I go along with it! Is quite pleasant. The other girl is like 'my turn now!' And takes over This is less pleasant, as she is going a bit mental with her tongue. Was pretty gross actually...

The party ends, and as I am leaving I find myself staring at a girl standing on the exit stairs. She looks a bit unreal and her image seems unstable. I move my hand across my view of her and notice that she's disappearing every so often. 'Cool!' I think. I tell her something like, "wow! do you know you're disappearing?"

I then realise I'm dreaming. I look at my right hand to try and stabalize the dream. This wasn't working so well and I almost blacked out, but I managed to bring it back. I walk outside into what looks like the historical centre of a fancy town, with large open paved spaces and a Cathedral. I pay careful attention to my surroundings until all becomes vivid.

I then remember my dream plan: to summon and embrace my shadow! I recall my planned words, 'I wish to meet my shadow, the part of me in conflict'. I then look at the sky and shout out, "shadow, now!" My voice echoes dramatically, and the sky turns a bit darker. Ominous! I then look around to see if anything has changed, reminding myself that this is a dream and I now have an opportunity to practice fearlessness. I try to fly onto the roof of the Cathedral, but a force pulls me back down to the ground after a brief lift off.

I see an unnaturally tall dark and slightly bent figure down the street. 'Aha!' I think, 'this must be it!'. I walk towards it, preparing myself to face whatever it is with love and acceptance. But to my surprise, it's my dad! "Dad!" I say smiling, and put my hand on his shoulder. We walk and talk. He tells me about what he's doing with Mum at the moment in the waking world, and that all is well. I entertain wondering if any of this is actually true. Unfortunately I can't remember what he said to test it out!

Dad leads me through tight corridors and crawl spaces, like we're in the bowels of a submarine. There's an almighty force pulling me back, making it very difficult to move. I remind myself this is a dream, and that recognition makes my walking a little easier. I then suddenly find myself blacking out.

I feel around to see where I am, and realise I'm back in bed. I do a nose pinch test just in case I'm still dreaming. And I am! I feel chuffed with myself for remembering to RC It's dark and I try to turn the bedside lamp on. Doesn't work, and I remember that that's normal in dreams. I get up and go to the door. 'This is it' I think, 'my shadow is through this door'. I feel both excited and nervous.

I open the door, and a goblin like creature jumps at me! This gives me a shock, but I'm soon smiling and giving the creature a hug. "It's okay" I say, "I love you!". Looking down, the goblin has now turned into what looks like a giant microbe with a big mouth and many tiny razor sharp teeth. He's munching down on my hand, which is completely in his mouth. This feels quite uncomfortable, like intense pins and needles. But I keep smiling, reminding myself this is just a dream and this hand muncher is a part of me. "No fear", I say to it, and hold it close to me as it keeps munching away. The thought 'well I guess it's a part of me now' comes to mind, as it has now become a physical extension of my arm. I wake up wondering what it will be like to have an arm munching microbe for a hand from now on...

A nightmare where I was looking into the mirror in my bathroom. The skin on my chest/stomach peeled off and my internal organs started to fall out. I remember my heart looked artificial and had some kind of gauge or pressure meter on it. I screamed and woke up.

wtf I haven't had a nightmare of any sort in like two years...

After that, I wanted to go back to sleep to see if I could snag some lucidity before morning. Some disjointed fragments led into a couple of congruent LDs.

-Something to do with my college dormitory. For some reason I was wearing golden earrings in the dream, somebody commented on them, saying that they looked good. I asked myself when I got piercings and could not recall. I didn't become lucid though.

-Something to do with drawing and a tin of colored pencils.

-I was playing LBP3. I was designing this level where you would run across all of these little white platforms that were moving and stuff was firing on you. There was also this big metal bridge that would unfold when you got close to it. A was there, commenting on how he liked the game-play aspect of it.

I was at the community pool in my cousin's hometown, though almost nobody was there except me and someone else. I was just chilling in the shallow end of the pool when this bully character approached the two of us. He picked us both out of the water and said he wanted to try and drown us in the deep end.

I tried to punch him but it didn't do much.

I elbowed him in the face and managed to swim away. He followed me out of the pool. I turned around to fight him. He was buff and had long blonde hair and short thick facial hair and blue eyes. It was also at this moment that I noticed that I was still wearing gold earrings. I thought this might put me at a disadvantage because he could grab them.

I ran in and kicked him in the stomach. He reeled back. He was almost at the edge of the pool. He came back and tried to punch me. I ducked under it and put my leg behind his. From there it was easy to just push him into the water.

He looked at me angrily. I thought he was going to just get out of the water and attack me again, but he seemed to just be waiting there. But this other DC showed up. He looked like Santa Claus except his outfit was all white.

He said something about learning to be submissive and recognize your own inferiority. He said that this was meant to be some kind of dream test and that I had failed it.

For some reason, I was just boiling mad at this Santa/Guide character. I started screaming at him that people shouldn't be taught to be inferior and submissive, and that you can't mold people into what you want. They will do their own things and form their own identities and moral codes and there is nothing that you can do about it.

I got so mad at him that I FA'd in my living room. But it felt smaller. All of the furniture had been pushed into one end of the room an there was a small Christmas tree in the room with some presents under it.

This seemed strange to me. I did a nose pinch RC. Lucid dreamin' baby. I had almost become fully lucid in the last section, but now I could think clearly. I still wanted to see Manei. I started calling her name, expecting her to simply be upstairs or something. No reply. I thought to go outside, but saw that it was very, very dark. The kind of darkness that would make me lose the dream.

I then realized that stabilizing would probably be a smart idea. I rubbed my hands together.

"I will not lose the dream until I have accomplished one of my goals!"

I then thought to try teleporting to the beach location. In the past my teleportation efforts have failed miserably, so I was gonna have to really commit. I closed my eyes and started visualizing the beach in Puerto Rico that my family goes to every year.

I started to see it in the center of my vision. I thought that I should start engaging my other senses. I tried to picture the sound of waves crashing on the shore, the smell of saltwater and the sun on my face.

However when I opened my eyes I was still in my home, but things were different. I saw that it had gotten considerably lighter outside. It still appeared to be foggy and gray, but I could make out the street and plants. The entire backyard had been taken over by a massive jungle/forest. There was a huge vine with massive mango-like fruit growing on it. (When I say massive Mango-Fruit, I am talking 3-4 feet across.

I made my way out the front door to get a better look at what was outside. The dream's clarity started revving up to very high levels here. I saw that half the neighborhood had been overtaken with these huge gnarled branches. There seemed to be pieces of a structure in there, as if it were made of I-beams.

I followed the gnarled branches up to see a huge tree, literally miles tall. It seemed as though as it got farther away, it looked less and less like it was made of wood. It seemed to be made of stone or metal, and had complex designs of overlapping circles and rune symbols on it. It was supporting the sky, that appeared to be solid, made of high-technology structures (like the surface of the death star). There were windows or some kind of white lights scattered about on the surface. There seemed to be places where it had rusted through though and real vegetation was growing through it, both on the tree and the sky.

The sky had to be 50 or 100 miles up. There were layers upon layers of thin, misty clouds surrounding the tree trunk. The thing that I remember the most was the temperature. It was sooo hot and humid in this dream.

I couldn't believe the enormity of these metal trees, and I had to check them out for myself. I started flying, but for some reason moved backwards very quickly. I stopped and stumbled.

"No, I want to go UP!"

I started flying again, but I still went backwards. I lost control of the ability to fly and got pulled out of the scene. Everything started shrinking and getting darker. I saw more of the trees supporting the sky ceiling for a moment. It looked like some of them were just tree stumps.

Somebody told me that this was a forest that had been cut down by giant cosmic beings from the seventh dimension, millions of years ago, but it was growing back now. I saw my town on a remove section of earth, like a SimCity tile, floating in nothing.

I was in a black void. White cubes were scattered about. I was still pulling backwards at increasingly fast speeds. I thought I might hit one of the cubes, not being able to see where I was flying.

I woke up.

Interpretations: I really have to come back to these after I've had some proper time to think about it.

Ritual: WTB 2:30am, after a little over four hours of sleep I strap the vibrating alarm to my wrist, set for 35 minutes. When it goes off it wakes me very definitely. I lay still and try to DEILD but can feel that REMA is broken. Turn down vibration strength to minimum, note time at 7:20am, and try again... same result. Remove alarm and go to sleep normally. Next time I wake up, try again with better success... at the time thought it was DEILD but realize now it must have actually been a DILD because I was not in my WL bed, so it must have been FA rather than real waking.

DILD-DEILD: I wake up and remember not to move. I am lying on my right side, but I am in a bed in my grandmother's house. Momentarily I wonder why I am there, but "remember" that I am visiting her. Oddly, in retrospect it feels like my lengthwise orientation—the directions my head and feet were respectively pointing—was also the opposite from how I sleep WL, and that the bed was on the opposite wall, sort of like the whole room was a mirror image of my WL bedroom. But since everything was in the same relative position to everything else, I'm not sure where that feeling came from.

I try to DEILD and at first I'm convinced I'm physically moving but REMA seems intact so I relax and explore my sensory awareness. Finally I just start to rock back and forth, until I feel confident enough in my dream body to get out of bed. The door to the hall is open, and on the other side I can see the living room, lit up by a Christmas tree with beautiful golden lights. I know it is my grandmother's house in Texas and don't realize that she hasn't lived there for years.

My awareness is fairly low all around and I don't recall my tasks either. Aimlessly I go outside and spontaneously a magnificent chestnut horse canters up to me, already saddled. I used to ride a lot in Texas so it is probably the result of mental association. I caress the shoulder of the horse and put my left foot in the stirrup, barely able to reach that high as the animal is quite tall. I start to pull myself up and into the saddle but I lose my balance and get "stuck" with my right leg halfway over. I waver there with my left leg in the stirrup and my right in mid-air, somehow unable to complete the movement. Finally I force it with an act of will and get astride the horse, but it doesn't feel right, the proportions are all wrong. The mental dissonance wakes me (although I am now convinced this too was an FA).

FA(?): On waking, I review the dream and recognize my mental error in thinking that I had been visiting my grandmother's old house and that it was Christmas-time, but I thought I was at least correct in the position of the tree, and remembered seeing in that spot one year. Now that I am fully awake, I have my doubts even about this: my "remembered" layout of the house was all wrong, and I don't think I ever even visited at Christmas time.

DILD-DEILD: I didn't think REMA had broken yet so I tried to DEILD again, and there were some ambiguous successes that I don't recall well (I still suspect the whole thing was a DILD, and that even most of the "transitions" occurred entirely within the dream state).

At some point I am back in my WL house, and I open the front door to go outside. After the stunt on the horse I wonder if the door will impede my progress and, probably in response to my thought, I discover that after I open the first door panel there is still a second one to go through, but I try not to cause unnecessary obstacles for myself and go through the second door easily.

It is very foggy in the front yard, and it is also a wide grassy area with scattered trees rather than a busy suburban street. The fog is making everything vague so I go for the tried and true, "Clarity now!" I shout it a few times and the dream responds, a bit sarcastically overdoing it. Now everything is too sharp, almost pixellated. I can see white and black birds with incredible definition in their pattern and plumage, but the focus is too sharp to look comfortably real. This is preferable to the earlier fogginess, however, so I go along with it.

As so often, I start instinctively singing as I explore the landscape. My voice is somewhat annoying this time, high-pitched and overly sweet, and there's nothing especially beautiful or memorable about the melodies I'm coming up with. It sounds like the sort of singing you'd hear in a mediocre mid-century musical. But I stick with it, hoping I can use it to influence the dream.

The landscape is pleasantly pastoral in all directions now. I am walking in an open meadow, and there are scattered trees here and there. I can't see any other figures, and I decide things would be more interesting if I could interact with a DC, so I decide to request one. I sing something about the "view," and then in the next line ask the dream to "send someone to talk to..." — and hesitate, having botched the lyrics. If I could end the with line "to you," it would have proper meter and rhyme, but obviously I wanted the DC to come talk "to me," so I tack the word "me" awkwardly onto the end of the line. It sounds so stupid that I break character and laugh at myself.

I give up on the singing and make my request again with a simple act of will. This works much better, and at once I can see a woman—of a sort—approaching me. She has a human torso but the lower part of her body is that of a large serpent, like a naga, and she resembles Medusa in having snake-like strands instead of hair. While I contemplate her unusual appearance, a second such creature shows up at her side. The face of the second one is thinner, with high cheekbones, attractive even, and her snake-hair is asymmetrically coiffed like elaborate dreadlocks. I find her appearance so striking that I want to complement her.

"I like your... arrangement." It comes out awkwardly because I realized mid-sentence that "hair" wasn't the right word and had to choose another one, but I'm not sure if she'll understand. "I mean your snakes," I explain hurriedly, hoping I'm not inadvertently being offensive by naming them as such. The naga I'm addressing studies me with a twisted expression, like she's not sure whether to be flattered or irritated.

I converse with them for a few minutes but unfortunately I can't recall what we discussed. Then they ask me for a favor: will I go up that hill nearby and tell their father that they're working on the project? It sounds like an innocent request, but I sense that there is something sinister behind it. I suspect that this is a ploy to lure me into their encampment, where I will be taken captive. As I hesitate, pondering their motivations, I can actually feel the pressure of their minds against mine, like they are attempting to work a subtle enchantment to compel me to go. I lash back mentally, and they both recoil.

Now the veneer of friendliness drops, and the two nagas become openly hostile. I don't feel like getting dragged into a fight, so I instinctively put an end to the situation. At the top of my voice I shout wordless syllables that sound like a whiplash or thunderclap—"Kuk-KAH!"—and clap my hands together at the same instant. The two nagas vanish into thin air. I am satisfied with how well that worked, but feel a faint pang of concern... I hope I didn't destroy them; I only meant to remove them from my presence!

The dream ends at this point. I wake up and start report around 8:45am.

I woke up in sleep paralysis and felt something furry sitting on the side of my bed. I had my eyes closed because I didn't want to be more scared than I already was. This furry creature was talking to me about myself. He pointed at different areas of my body using his claws. I was hoping he wouldn't stab me with one of them. I got to feel its hand even though the rest of my body was trapped from moving. I think it was a giant bear. I imagined it white.

I tried to imagine a new dream scene my picturing my self escaping my dream body out towards the exit door in front of me. Often times it wouldn't work because I kept losing my train of thought. I even pictured myself sinking in to the bed and popping up in to a new dream scene. None of that work. One positive thing did come out of this, though. I never yelled out for help. However, I did wake up mad.

When I woke up, or I thought I did, I found myself in my parents room. I was confused. I got up from bed and immediately walked over to the living room to ask her why she laid me in her room. I was angry with her. I didn't get her exact answer. It wasn't until I woke up again when I realized I had a false awakening. I woke up upset really about it(for not reality testing) and tried going back to sleep but couldn't because both my sisters and nieces started making noise.

NOT A DREAM | NON-LUCID | SEMI-LUCID | LUCID

December 31, 2014 - LUCID #3: Portal to Another Planet
I 'wake up' in my very dimly lit room, and somehow I just know I am dreaming; I'm excited but I keep myself calm. I try a little dream control by turning on the lights using the wall switch. Nothing happens. I try flicking my fingers. Nothing. I throw my arms in the direction of the light bulb while shouting, "Let there be light!" Still nothing; I give up trying to turn on the dream light. I want to go to a peaceful planet, so I expect a portal behind the door. I open the door and the portal appears behind the window across the hall. Close enough . But, from the master's bedroom comes Razor from Dota 2, seemingly on its way to fry my ass with his electric whip! Out of reflex, I immediately jump to the window, flying through it as the glass breaks around me. I zoom through the purple portal; it feels very similar to the respawn transition from Borderlands 2.

I exit the portal into some grass fields on what feels like another planet. I was attacked by some weird monkey-like creature that moves as if held by strings by a puppeteer above. I fend it off by slashing with an energy sword I made by swinging my arm in front of me. It doesn't seem hurt, yet it scurries away. I notice some friendly dwarves roaming around the fields; I approach one of them and he said something about a "pony pair," and then the dream starts destabilizing and I am not able to salvage it.

January 4, 2015 - LUCID #4: Firebat and Zombie Attack!
I 'wake up' in my room, and it is somehow tinted with orange-ish light. I notice that my bed is in the wrong orientation. This must be a dream! I do a palm-push reality check to make sure; and I'm amazed as my index and middle finger pass through my palm! I closely examine my hands; the realism is stunning; I can really see the oiliness and the creases on my palms, even moreso than in waking life. I take an M&M figurine from my desk; the way the light shone on it amazes me.

Suddenly, outside my window I notice some bats on fire, seemingly on my way to enter my room! I kneel on my bed which is next to the window, face the firebats outside, and I blast them with a freezing spell, and one-by-one they fall out of the sky! I keep blasting them until they are no more; there were about 7-10 of them. Then, my door slams open as two Walking Dead zombies march toward me, albeit at an incredibly slow speed (like a centimeter per second). I fire an energy blast at them; nothing. My sister and some dude arrive from outside my room, they try to attack the zombies with their own magical spells, but nothing works. I don't remember how, but they managed to get trapped along with me in the room... *facepalm* I do an epic OmniSlash using an energy blade I will into existence, but the zombies are completely unaffected; one of them even mocks me with an unenthusiastic "Eh." I make a plan to ghostwalk through the walls so the three of us can attack the zombies from opposite directions, but unfortunately those plans never come to fruition as I wake up for real.

This is probably my most memorable dream so far, in large part because of the amount of control I was able to exert over it. I would love to have another action-packed dream like this in the future!

February 10, 2015 - LUCID #8: Shadow Figure and Life Secrets
I 'start to wake up' in my bed but I feel like it's a dream. I try to 'open my eyes' but I could only open them halfway. Through my little vision, I see some shadowy figure across the room; sorta reminds me of Slenderman. I am filled with terror, but I somehow manage to keep myself calm. Through the power of my mind, I blast it with a heap of light energy; nothing. I try unleashing an omnidirectional wave of dark energy. It works; the apparition is gone! I am now able to open my dream eyes completely, and they even give off a feint light similar to a flashlight. I get off my bed and examine my face in the mirror. It looks normal, but the realism still amazes me.

I exit my room, and its position in the house is swapped with the master's bedroom. I push a button on the wall near me (which doesn't exist IWL), expecting it to open the lights, but nothing happens. I just continue my trek through the dream in the dark as I enter my sister's room. My whole family is sleeping there; I look at each of them and they awaken for a few seconds before going back to sleep, looking annoyed by the sudden lighting from my eyes. I look at the shelf across the bed, and I see a really thick blue book (like 3/4 feet thick!). The book is laid upside-down but I am still able to read its title written on the spine: "Life Secrets." I feel like if I throw this book at the floor, a portal will open up, so I pull it out but as I do so my alarm sounds off.

Man, that dream ending abruptly was SUCH a shame! I felt like my subconscious was about to tell me something important, but life has other plans, I suppose. I want to get my dream hands on that Life Secrets book sometime in the future...