lucid

02/24/11

"When can I schedule an appointment for you?"

Needing a doctor's appointment, but I don't have a day free for a while. I'm working every day this week.

"Why are we walking to the train station?" I ask the nurse.

"I need a light. You don't carry a lighter."

"Only if I'm dreaming," I say, amused, and I snap my fingers. A sliver of bright red flame flares up over my closed fist.

Zippo. Scare Factor: 1.

Dream - Lucid - AP

I'm not exactly sure where I was, but I'm pretty positive it was the roof of a building in a city. There was a very attractive young Indian man there, about my age with dark hair that went down to his ears. He was wearing very bright, colorful clothing. His name was Ramien. His parents were there too, standing away from us. There had been some sort of conflict between us all before we were on the roof, but I can't remember what it was.

But now, I was hugging Ramien. We hugged and looked into each other's eyes. He had Ryan's hazel eyes. Then, I figured out I was dreaming. I floated up a bit. Then, I looked at Ramien and asked
"Are you my dream guide?"
He turned his head away from me and said "No...". He seemed sad and disappointed. I reassured him that it was ok that he wasn't my dream guide, and I looked into his eyes again. I took his hand to feel the vividness of it. I then started to feel like I was going to lose the dream, so I started touching everything around me, feeling for the vividness. I then voiced "Increase vividness!", but I ended up having a false awakening.

I was in some sort of room somewhere, it didn't look familiar to me at all, and I started filling out this dream journal sheet. I kept writing 'Ramien' on it in different blanks provided on the sheet. Then, Ramien was there again, and we kept hugging and looking into each others' eyes. There's more, but I can't remember it.

~

I was sitting on my family's living room couch with Ryan. I knew I was dreaming almost immediately. I turned and looked at Ryan, and he was wearing sunglasses.
"Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes," I said.
I took them off for him, and looked into his beautiful hazel eyes. They were very vivid.
"Ryan," I said, as I took his face in my hands, "I love you more than words will ever say." My voice sounded so vivid and clear.
Then, I laid back on the couch, and I was wearing lingerie. We started to talk.

Then, I had another false awakening. This time, it was in my room. I looked at my phone. 8:28 it said. I fumbled around with it trying to turn my alarm off before it went off at 8:30. 8:30 came quickly, and it started to go off, so I turned it off. I got up to get in the shower, but not without first turning on my N64 to play Yoshi's Story. I did that for a bit, then got in the shower. On the way to the bathroom, I heard my brother playing Mario Kart Wii downstairs.

Finally, somewhere more exciting than Word 2010 to keep this log! You'll probably want to read this through; the title doesn't make sense until the end.

So, this is not exactly a "journal," but rather a log book for a project I am conducting involving lucid dreams. I have been doing mini-projects, but I am officially starting tonight. (This log is mostly for my own personal reference, but I figured I would post it here as well just incase someone wanted to read it!)

I have had countless questions involving lucid dreams that I've always wanted answers to. Some of these questions may have already been answered, but I'm the kind of person who wants to be able to tell people that I know something because I've experienced it first hand. If I have a question involving dreams, I will do an experiment, and write a log about it here. And eventually, I am hoping that others can give me ideas so I can keep this log going at a steady rate.

Enough chatter, time for the first experiment.

I've lately been wanting to know what would happen if I was to, in a lucid dream, play board games with my subconscious. This will probably be interesting considering your logic center is partly off when you're dreaming - so I want to know how advanced of a board game my subconscious can handle, if any at all. I have heard strange stories of people trying to do this, but I want to see for myself. As I said before, I will be documenting all of my progress on this experiment in here. I will be starting with Tic-Tac-Toe, moving on to Checkers, and then if all before is successful; Chess. This experiment will be done using the WILD method. I will write another log once I get some progress.

Game on!

In the meantime, here's one of my dream journal entries from last night:


DREAM JOURNAL ENTRY 2/23/2011 6:35PM

I had two dreams. One of them was lucid. The time they occured was most likely the morning of 2/23/2011; before 7:00AM.

#1: The first dream randomly turned into a lucid, not sure how. I was standing on a bridge with two Dream Characters. I was in the same setting as the second dream that I would have after this. This one, unfortunately, turned out to be a fading lucid, and it is hard for me to remember every detail, but I do know that it was pretty cool when I realized I was dreaming.

The bridge was big; going over some sort of dry lake. It was made of copper and iron, and me and the DCs seemed to be climbing over it. The sun was out. Then, out of the blue, I suddenly realized I was dreaming. I decided to go and try to convince one of the DCs that he was in a dream just to see his reaction. This DC had dark brown anime-like hair, and was wearing brown too. I don't remember his reaction because I started slipping out of lucidity even though I tried my best not to. Then I became slightly awake, then went off to have another non-lucid (normal) dream.

#2: Dream 2 was weird. The entire thing was based on me preparing for a giant pre-apocalypse battle in another dimension. I forgot exactly what we were fighting, but I think it was an army of demon-like creatures, led by some she-villain. I remember gathering practically every monster/being/soldier from every time period, dimension, universe, everything. I also remember giving war-tactics to some people who were working with me. I also remember some of our creatures dying. There were dragons, HUGE mecha robots, aliens I had never seen before, future-soldiers, etc. I was the human, and I was also a wizard - apparently, magic would be the skill that I would use in battle. The DC I tried to convince was in a dream was there too; he was an elf.

I was out on some random residential street. It was nighttime it seemed. Suddenly a large squad of police was there, roaming around the neighborhood. Apparently someone around there had been smoking crack or something (don't ask O.o), and they were searching for the person. They had multiple brown and black hounds that were sniffing up the ground and barking. There were also some policemen in these weird netted suits. I could smell this "crack"; there was a slight burned scent in the air.

Eventually I got away from this. There was something about some building and KR and some others. The last I remember was I was in some room with lots of food. I was lucid. I knew I was dreaming, but I didn't take that much notice or control over it. I remember thinking something about how I was dreaming and i could do anything, and that meant eating off of this random table of sweets. I particularly remember sipping from a mug of hot chocolate, but can't remember much else other than that.

DELETED

This dream is another one that happened many years ago:

I dreamed that I got out of bed and went to the loo, it was only in the loo when I tried to turn on the lights and it remained dark that I realised I was dreaming, at which point I woke up. I needed the toilet anyway so once again the same thing played out and again when the light stayed off I realised that I was still dreaming and woke up. This time I got out of bed, and instead went downstairs in the dark and into the kitchen, I could feel the carpet under my feet and see the room, furniture and everything as I normally do when I walk about with no lights on. I went into the kitchen and tried the lights there, again there was no change. I was just about to go outside and wondering if I should put some shoes on when I woke up for real.

I briefly see myself walking in a grocery store when suddenly an evil presence quickly takes over the dreamworld. I think of Freddy Krueger and realize this is why I felt that evil aura, OH LORD HE MUST BE NEAR.

Then I think, wait I never really found his movies scary to begin with... YO IM DREAMIN. LOLYAY.

A small burst of vividness takes over my field of vision and I speed to the front of the store to take flight outside. I thank Freddy whilst I run, even though I never saw him, for helping me become lucid as I arrive the automatic opening doors. But luckily I stop and remember to stabilize right before take off. I look at the ground and focus on the small details and little spots on the glossy tile of the grocery store floor, I step outside and feel the cool breeze of the night on my skin, I tried to listen to sounds that might enhance lucidity but nothing noticeable except small street noises are heard.

I decide that's enough for now and was really excited to fly when I remembered to do at least one of the two tasks of the month. I couldn't at the moment fathom doing the advanced one but I figured I could go ahead and get a kiss from a DC, so I look for the nearest victim. I see two shadowy characters walking a few feet from me so I rush over to see who my subconscious wanted to set me up with. Surprise! Oh god I hate that guy. I remember cursing my subconscious and then laughing as if I knew it was playing a joke on me. So I use my will to transform the DC into someone moderately more attractive and well, I was pretty satisfied to say the least.

I kiss him for a moment and realize in other LD's I usually skip this part and cut to the chase, but this was oddly more pleasurable. I stopped and gently pushed him away, and said OKAY THANKS BRO LOLOL, because I really couldn't wait to fly again so I jetted off and saw him shrug and go back to his friend that was waiting for him.


I remember feeling huge bursts of speed in the sky and the chilly air on my skin. I remember at parts flying became a bit difficult and I would flap my arms and laugh at myself for how terrible I was at flying.

I googled flying at night and this showed up, so I'm now a bird.

I knew the dream was already losing stabilization but I couldn't be arsed to go back to the ground, I was enjoying just being there in that moment way too much. I slowly drifted down and remember hovering over the ground upside down and even feeling blood rush to my head, it was startlingly realistic, though I knew it couldn't have been because I was floating upside down. After a few more minutes I decided to just calmly close my eyes and meditate and as I did the dream began to fade. I knew I was in a good spot to start up a new dream if I focused enough on relaxing, but I figured that was enough for one day and wanted to write in my DJ.

Finally, an end to a very long dryspell. Thanks Freddy.

The Glowing Forest and a Coaster Ride



I am in a really junky part of Maine, although like always, it’s beautiful. This time its exceptionally pretty: the car I’m in is traveling through a dark forested area on an old road. The moss on the great redwood trees illuminates our way enough so we don’t have to use our lights. Little glowing worms and luminescent animals scurry around. I see a moose with glowing green antlers in between the giant trees. In the car, my mom and I are discussing how much money the houses here cost.

“About the same price as living in the library,” my mom says. I nod as if this makes sense. It does in dream world I suppose.
Our friend Alice Louise is taking us to appraise a house for a guy and his daughter. Along the way she points out some noticeably pretty houses. Most of them have been built into the surrounding landscape; some are carved into trees, some are half sunken into muddy swamplands. One that she points out she’d like to live in seems too small, perhaps the size of a fairy house but a fairy mansion.

We turn into the driveway of a pretty normal trailer; one of the only normal houses in the area. It’s unfortunate that this is what we came to see, not one of the prettier houses. We meet the father and the daughter. The daughter is Abby (an acquaintance in waking life). All of us step into the sunroom which is attached to the side of the trailer. Suddenly it moves, detaching itself from the trailer, and rotates all around it to the other side. This was the “appraisal” that we came here for with Alice Louise. We’re ready to go.

Strangely, when we leave, it’s just Alice and I. She’s driving and I’m in the passenger seat. We’re in the country now, surrounded by low green fields and a big blue sky. The occasional farm passes by my window and there are silos on the horizon. In front of us there’s a guy running manically. He has long scraggly black hair and barely anything on except skin tight white running shorts. If he had a shirt on, I don’t remember. He seems to be running for fitness comically. We kind of catch up to him and slow down for some reason. He comes to the window.

“This is still Washington even though it’s not snowing,” he says, leaning into the window on Alice Louise’s side. She nods and they keep talking about how we are in the very middle of Washington where there is never snow or rain. He gets a little aggressive when he speaks, as if we aren’t particularly welcome right now. We drive off and he begins to run again.
Now the country road we were on has a four lane high-way coming the other way.

“See, we’re not even in the country anymore. We’ll be home soon,” Alice says.

The scraggly-haired man is ahead of us again. We see that he’s throwing sandbags on the road! That will definitely stop the Jeep we’re in. We dodge one but the next is in the center of the road and our front right wheel hits it dead on and we come to a stop. Now the only way home is to use…the roller coaster that is running along the road on the shoulder.

We each get into one of our own coaster cars on the ride. They are cartoon dinosaur heads; you step into its mouth, with the eyes and the nose above you as a roof. Mine’s blue, Alice’s is red. They not only run forward on the roller coaster track, but turn 360 degrees with inertia. I don’t like this. There’s a big hill that we are going up. In front of me, I see other coaster cars. They are jumping from track to track; we are on a similar four lane high-way but this side of the road is a roller coaster. I want to jump tracks like those cars, so I do. It’s easy with intent. When I jump, the coaster car does a flip mid-air and lands on the next track. Sometimes, the cars jump over other cars. It’s kind of a nice sight.

I realize we are going uphill faster than I expected and I don’t want to feel the fall. Although I like roller coasters, this hill is steep: twice Superman, if you will. I close my eyes and forget the dream. I become aware of my sleeping body. Yes, still asleep, not on a roller coaster, not about to fall…

I become aware of my dream body again once I am at the bottom. Alice Louise is gone from my dream. I am now in a gift store: the final destination of the coaster cars. There are a few wooden racks of hand-knitted things. I look at a pair of mukluks that my brother Holden had (dream memory, not in waking life) and remind myself to ask him to buy them for me. A girl comes over and looks at a rack of facial creams. They all have a certain element to them, but I forgot what it was specifically. She debates if one of the creams has that common element with the store clerk.

Kayla (a girl I know in waking life) is buying a pretty unique pair of gloves. They have the fingers cut off hobo-style and are black with Nightmare Before Christmas things sewn onto each finger. The back of the hand part of the gloves have a big skull sewn onto them. She is dressed all gothic-esque and has an air of “I don’t give a shit if I’m retreating back into this style.” (She dressed the same way years and years ago). I lose the dream.



Lucid Beach

I am on a beach with Heather. There’s a ton of people all taking up the shore space, but we find a little sand-muddy area. It’s not particularly nice, but it is the beach (and its winter in Maine, so its pleasant to dream of). Heather starts having an anxiety attack because of the people so we go to the “next” beach, a few feet from this one. They are distinctly not the same beach, but are very close. On this one, there are no people. We have sex, but it doesn’t really work out and we end up laughing and leaving.
There’s a sign on the beach that says there’s a sale going on at “B♠N”. What a weird name for a store I say to myself! We look up and B♠N is right in front of us. In the parking lot area of the store, which is all sandy and car-less because of how close it is to the beach, my mom’s kind of disembodied voice begins to talk about Zelda. Heather responds by saying she’s played all of them, which she has (in dream life, not waking life). I feel weird because I introduced her to the series and still haven’t played all of them (I have in waking life). I become lucid thinking of the name of the store. Jack and someone else are with Heather and I now and we all go into the store. I retain my lucidity but simply watch the events and notice the surroundings. In the store Heather says something about dreaming.

“This IS a dream actually!” I try to convince her and she laughs and kind of “knows” that it is, and I keep pestering her about it. I touch her and really feel her skin.

“It’s weird how I can actually feel your skin,” I say. I’m not amazed about the act of feeling it, but at this point I’m thinking of how my mind is either creating the feeling of her skin, which is an exact representation of the feeling in waking life, or I really am feeling it…on the dream plane. My cat jumps onto my sleeping body and I wake up.


An Anonymous Gift

I’m in my high school. For some reason I take my pants off and put them on the janitor’s cart. I have my white long johns under them though, so I don’t look too strange. I begin walking to my class. Someone in the rotunda says my mom is embarrassed in her classroom (she doesn’t work here in waking life) so I go see her first. Her room is where my 11th grade English class was. It’s set up the same way. She tells me I have a package in the office and I should get it soon. I don’t remember to ask why she was so embarrassed.

I go into the bathroom. Heather is here. Somehow, she ends up out the window, trying to crawl back inside from two stories below on one of those fair game ladders that twist and turn as you climb them (usually horizontally). She’s crying manically and saying the ladder is slippery and she’s going to fall. I somehow manage to take all her limbs and with the help of the janitor who comes in to clean, we get her inside. She’s really distraught.

I leave the bathroom and Heather is now Autumn. We go into our classroom. My 5th grade teacher is our teacher now. Lynn, a friend of ours, laughs when we enter the class an hour late. The teacher is really upset with me in particular and tells me to go get a late pass if I have a good excuse for my tardiness. I leave but have no excuse; I just want to be gone from the room.
I walk downstairs and take a drink at the fountain. My teacher had been following me to see if I was going to the office to get a late pass or not. I casually stroll into the office. I don’t like being in trouble, so I intend it to be the end of the day so I can get off the hook. The bell rings and all the kids scurry out of their classrooms. I sneak into the back area of the office and call UPS from the office phone and tell them not to deliver my package if it’s going to be late. I don’t know why I do this, since my package is already here. It’s nicely wrapped and has a stamp with my name on it.

I bring it upstairs to the benches and open it. It’s a pair of goggles, like steampunk-esque but modernized. They’re red with orange accents. I close the box and leave the school.

My mom picks me up and we begin to drive on back country roads. It’s raining pretty hard, but I’m having a nice conversation with my mom and we don’t mind it. I show her my goggles and she likes them. Neither of us know who got them for me or where they came from. We arrive at this old trailer that I used to know in waking life. In my dream, it’s where Heather lives. Without getting out of the car, my mom somehow knocks but no one comes to the door. I know Heather is home. We just leave.

I was probably up too late last night. My dream recall is bad, and the one lucid I remember was very short. I seem to remember being lucid a secondd time during the night, but I remember nothing else.

Not Fooled by a FA

I wake up, and leave my bedroom. At the top of the stairs, I remember to do a reality check. I realize that I am dreaming. As soon as I realize this, the dream fades to blackness, so quickly that I don't have time to do anything about it. Now in the Void, I decide to hang on until the dream starts again. Then I think perhaps I may be awake. I'm not sure which it is, but I decide if I'm awake to try to WILD or do a DEILD. However, while attempting this I lose lucidity.

I'm now dreaming that I am attempting to WILD. I remember something about "vibrations" occuring while doing this, and I think that I am supposed to shake around a lot. I am sitting in the basement now, trying this. Some other people are there coaching me...

... The fake WILD must be successful, as I find myself in a dream about war. We are fighting a battle on a snow bank. I am cracking jokes with my superior officers. There is more to it than this, but I'm having a hard time remembering. A girl is there, and we are fighting over her (?)...

Shopping for Camping Equipment

I am in the local outdoor sports store with my family. They have added two staircases that go up to a new floor. There is one in the clothing wing to the right, and another in the camping and fishing wing to my left. My father has bought a giant tent (in real life he just bought a fancy new boat) and I am going to check out camping supplies to go with it. Upon entering the camping section, I see that things have been moved around. I then see that things have been moved to make room for the new stairs. I decide to explore, and climb the stairs.

The staircase is really narrow, and people are bumping into each other. Towards the top, it is so small you have to turn sideways to get up. Another guy is on the stairs, and we remark about the narrowness of the steps to each other. I say something like "I hope no fat person tries to get up here". At the top is another part of the store, with more outdoor supplies.

23/02/11 I am travelling on trains. Lots of times. we encounter policemen and guards who are supposed to control tickets. We climb to the roofs of the trains in motion to avoid detection. At a certain train station I get left going out of the train to take a breather, twice. I am not a happy bunny. I throw a litter bin onto the tracks in hopes that it gets destroyed as a train will run past it. My ticket is still valid for the next train though.

…

I am half asleep. I think about train tracks as I have dreamt of these. Slowly a blurred image of me moving in a vehicle besides train tracks appears. it stabilises. I don't dare take my eyes of the window yet. I need the dream to stabilise a bit more. I finally get a crystal clear image and take a look around. I am in something best described as a very short bus. Except there is no driver. I see that the weather is still grey. I fly out through the window, not breaking the glass. I fly a little upwards and start overtaking cars that break as they see come flying past them. The wind is strong, and I stop up mid air. I get blown back heavily and I get a passing anxiety of falling over and hurting myself until I think otherwise. I think this is going to be cool demonstrating how you can go from heavy momentum to a slow walking speed without any problems, so I do just that. there are now people on the streets and it is sunny. I see a lady walking by n a yellow top with massive breasts. She turns me on a bit and reminds me of the monthly task. I keep walking and ask the first woman I see “hey lady, could I borrow you for a second?” she gets a bit shocked when I kiss her. She asks why I did that and my reply is something as lame as “happy new year”. She decides to follow me and asks if I ever had sex with random travellers, to which I reply that I haven't. She says she has and although she is a bit plumb and I don't really find her attractive I decide why not. We head towards a house and as she is turning slightly around I place my hand on her stomach and slims her down a bit.. I guess she really is a DC then. We try having sex, but I have some blocking and can't get in. I keep trying to focus on her eyes, but soon the dream destabilise.

This was at least a week ago. It's a somewhat memorable dream from the last few weeks of my being lazy about journaling. Anyway, let's get on with it.

Calling SO
Method DILD (spontaneous)
Lucidity C
Vividness C
Control D
I become lucid somehow, I don't recall. I think I'm in my living room. I'm waiting for someone? I'm impatiently pacing back and forth across the room. Maybe I'm not really lucid. It's hard to remember. It's was vivid enough to be memorable and what I do next is something I've done at least twice in past lucids.

I don't want to be kept waiting so I decide to call someone. Who? SO. I pull out my cell phone from my pocket. It's brightly colored with small icons that I can't make out. I confidently smash the keypad to hit a few random buttons. It's funny that I would expect that to work, but it does. Then I listen as it rings and rings with no answer.

So, what's interesting about this dream is that I've tried to call SO before in lucid dreams and she never answers. But oddly, I had an experience in real life when I was sleepwalking and called her and she did answer. Apparently, she and I had a conversation that I have no memory of. The next day, I pieced together most of what happened with her help but I have no direct memory of it. That experience often bothers me, so I suspect it's coming through in my dreams. I wonder if have those memories in my unconscious.

After WBTB.

Flashing Light
Method DILD (absurdity)
Lucidity C
Vividness B
Control B
I'm sitting at my computer desk in my bedroom. I'm looking at the monitor, which is an old CRT monitor instead of a flat screen. I'm looking at a folder browser. It has a bunch of zip files. I navigate through some other similar folders. I stop in one that has only one file. This surprises me for some reason. Then I look at the folder options and it shows that it's only showing recently created files. There's a button to show all files. Wait, this is weird. I don't think Windows has this feature.

I become lucid but the scene shifts abruptly. I am still at my desk in my room. But the monitor is off and am I suddenly aware of the rest of the room. It's completely dark except for a flashing white light outside. Maybe it's raining. The light barely slips in through the vertical blinds but I can tell it is bright. It's intense like lightning but it's pulsing about every two seconds. As the light flashes, the room is briefly illuminated but there's no color. It's like a black and white movie.

I see my hands in front of me. My vision seems blurry and two-dimensional. I concentrate. Stabilize! I rub my hands and I see them move but I can't feel them touch each other. Gradually the picture sharpens and seems more three-dimensional. The flashing light becomes steady and it seems calm.

Now what? I haven't been lucid it about a week and I am unprepared. I look to my left toward my bed. The sheets are grayish-white and the pillow is out of place in the middle of the bed. I suddenly wake up.

I was attempting a WILD and got a scene where someone had come to deliver something. I was Lucid from start. As I took the delivery paperwork, I tried to control the dream, but the physical body was too awake, and I ended up feeling both the dream self and normal self and this was very disorienting. The paperwork had K.H.A.N.S written on it as the company name. I tried reading the paperwork further and also stabilizing the dream but the disorientation caught up to me. And I woke up.

Been a while. This was from a few days ago, not sure exactly which day.

The Construct and Summoning
Method DILD (absurdity)
Lucidity C
Vividness C
Control B
I have a vague sense that there was more action before. But my recollection begins with me in total darkness. I sense that I am hovering weightless. This is weird. I become lucid. I've never been lucid like this before, in complete sensory deprivation. I look down toward where my hands would be but it's completely dark. I want it to be light so I can see. By willpower, the void of blackness gradually turns into a void of white, like "the construct" from The Matrix. Now I can see my dreambody.

I feel like I have some control now. I float down slowly until my feet touch solid ground. But everything is still pure white and the ground is indistinguishable from the void. Hmm, now what? What else? Summon SA. This isn't one of my tasks. It seems to be the thing I impulsively do when my lucidity is less that perfect. Anyway, I psyche myself up with some affirmations. Then I use the turn-around-expectation method of summoning. And there she is. She's about a foot too tall and dressed like a belly dancer. She looks like an Amazonian but in a comical and silly way. I'm not sure what to do. She approaches me and we talk, but I forget about what. Lucidity fades.

This entry is being made 1 day late, It should have been made on 22nd Feb 2011.
I was retrying to get an LD and found out about this certain WILD technique. I tried it and every time the dream scene started I woke up. About 4 times of this, I finally got a short LD recorded below.

I was with 2 of my employees, I was telling them to put a certain item in the trunk of a car. Now in real life the trunk of that car was almost full, as we had already placed some items in there. As I opened the trunk I found it empty. I said to one of my employees "I told you to put the items here, but not to take them out." Suddenly realization hit me: I must be dreaming. I got too exited at having an LD after such a long time and woke up.