• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    Lucid Dreams

    1. (11/19/10) - Inception

      by , 11-19-2010 at 06:02 PM (LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5)
      So I finally saw Inception last night, and to say the least it has really kind of redirected me in my lucid dreaming and put me back on the right path. That's not to say that everything in Inception regarding lucid dreams is 100% accurate, but it really put the joy back into the act of becoming lucid for me, making it an achievable goal rather than a constant frustration.

      Of course, Inception being the last thing I saw last night, I had a lucid dream, and it was very Inception-themed. In fact, I spent the whole time in the hotel from the movie. I was in there for a few dream hours and did quite a bit, including testing out Cobb's totem (which I found on a table in the hotel hallway) and indeed it did spin indefinitely. Unfortunately, all else is very unclear due to my rude awakening...there was some loud noise outside that jolted me awake and absolutely destroyed my recall. I have only bits and pieces of the dream in my head still, but I know I was lucid.

      Since the totem thing worked for me last night, though, I've started using a real one. It's much different than Cobb's, and has several different details that I can watch for and try to find inaccuracies with in the dream. Let's hope having a physical reminder always with me will get me to do RC's during the day again. I MUST get back into this 100%! I've missed having decent lucid dreams...
      Tags: inception, totem
      Categories
      lucid , dream fragment
    2. Master your lucid world my first post

      by , 11-19-2010 at 02:49 PM
      I entered my dream in the city where I wanted to talking with my brother, we were on top of a high rise waiting for a chopper, I used my gateway to become lucid but to make sure I was I jumped off the building, I dropped fast as I fell I pushed harder to drop faster, before I hit the ground I flew, I flew hard and fast.
      Since I learned how to fly in my dreams I try and push it harder and faster every time, I flew back up to the top of the helipad….lol…..my brother asked what was that?....we walked back down the stairs, I asked him if he were going to come we my friend Luis and I and get some drinks Luis was waiting for us on the 7 floor he said no…..for some reason I was dropping out of lucid so I started spinning to re enforce my surrounding but of course everything changed…..so I said ok let’s have fun I turned it into a military assult….my wife and I had to defend my home, I made it a little too challenging ….lol….my wife was killed…..so I had to defend the house myself…it was very fun I lifted a huge chunk of earth with my mind and eliminated about 60 soldiers……I opened the earth swallowing a huge armored assault ….
      If I continued it would be a book…lol…I did have to spin a few time to re-enforce my lucid dream and this did change my surrounding a bit but more to what I wanted it to look like…and all 3 times that I did the spinning I performed a reality check…..i have been fooled before…lol..

      This is my first dream journal post enjoy
      Categories
      lucid , memorable
    3. Recently

      by , 11-19-2010 at 01:23 PM
      I had a false awakening about an hour ago, I was next to my girlfriend and thought I heard her talking to me and I was trying to tell her to wake me up, but she said I was just laying there mumbling in my sleep and then jerked awake. lol.
      I had a few dream fragments though over the last day or 2. One with with an x, won't go into details , and the other was with an old friend. I seem to feel things in dreams that I can never feel in real life, I feel this kind of peace with my environment. Another one was I was in a huge downtown building like the one in Inception, and I was walking with my girlfriend. The one after that I was swimming in this cold water (I had the window open), and I was trying to navigate around an old ghost ship. I picked a huge tarantula from the water, and realized it might still be alive so I squished it in my hand, and then woke up.
      I have a lot of short dreams at my girlfriends, I can never stay asleep there, i've had 2 false awakenings in the last 2 days there.
    4. #168. Exploding Bridges

      by , 11-19-2010 at 08:55 AM (Things to Run Away From Really Fast)
      ★★★☆☆

      ...because burning them just isn't dramatic enough.

      11/18/10



      A sleek metal bridge extends over the choppy sea. I stand near the center, unable to see the shores on either side, obscured as they are by mist. Rain lashes out in sheets and the wind impedes my movement - block, parry, slash - as I slice through an imperial guard with my lightsaber.

      Something is speeding towards me, about to impact. I catch the missile with Force Grip, send it spinning into an enemy tank. There's a bridge running parallel to this one, and stormtroopers are setting up missile launchers on the edge. They fire -

      A wave of my hand sends them careening back into the shooters.

      A spider-like droid, twice my height, uses the distraction to scuttle towards me, using its legs as blades. I dodge, jump over the droid and land a glancing blow to its head. Its head swivels towards me as it prepares for another run.

      A purge trooper takes a swipe at me. It misses, barely, and I go on the offensive with a flurry of lightsaber strikes. Seconds later, it collapses to the ground, spent.

      I keep a wary eye on the spider droid, but it's smarter to take out the smaller enemies first.

      ...and I'm skating down a barely frozen river. I'm on skis, I'm on a toboggan, I'm holding on to some sort of ski lift as it takes me up, no, down the river.

      And I'm stealing some sort of precious coffee grounds. Or beans. One big pile, holding together only because it doesn't occur to me that they shouldn't.

      And I'm running through a house, up stairs and through hallways and secret passages.

      This room, says a voice, my voice, Was created by my father as a haven for me. No one else can enter it. And I'm laying down behind the couch so that no one can see me through the window in the door.

      And then I'm me, for just a moment. I look at the door and I smirk, knowing that the family that's following me will find me, only because that's what I'm expecting. I don't care. It's a dream, and not a particularly awful one. I just want to rest and not think and play through whatever game my subconscious is dreaming up...

      I wake up to the family pounding on the door, yelling. I pick myself up from the ugly, floral brown couch and pad across the room. I open a closet door methodically, pull a gun from the rack.

      I'm standing in front of the door, holding a crossbow at the ready, pointing through the window. The banging has stopped, and the father asks me if I'm really going to shoot his son.

      Everything's all right. The gun's not even loaded.

      Exploding Bridges. Scare Factor: 2/10

      As an interesting aside, I have not played the game that the picture is from. Before today, I have not seen any pictures or previews, so you can imagine my surprise when I come across an actual spider-like droid from Force Unleashed II, which the dream was based on.

      Granted, mine had more legs.
    5. First Nightmare in 10 Years

      by , 11-19-2010 at 06:21 AM
      I am just starting to experience a more stable state of lucid dreaming, after much practice!
      I also have recently watched the movie Inception, and it fucked with my head. No lie, that night, i had a lucid dream. i woke up sweating a shaking, with my heart beating way too fast for safety.
      but thats not why im here. i wanted to post a dream i had just last night, which i will say is by far my weirdest/scariest dream to date. I will do my best to explain it, but it is kinda foggy, as it is common to forget most of a dream upon awakening. Just know, that was 100x weirder than it sounds.

      so my memory begins with me walking up the stairwell with two female friends, towards their room, where we attend school together(in real life). As expected, this part of the dream felt very much real, making me think i was actually awake. We continued into the room, and this is where the details of what actually happened gets blurry. it seemed to me in the dream that i was still trying to lucid dream, all the while thinking about all the techniques to help this happen. i remembered how i read spinning around in a circle will help a lucid dream stay more stable, so this is exactly what i did. i began spinning, with increasing speed. faster, and faster, until i could feel it in my stomach. almost as if i wanted to stop, but it got out of control. it actually helped though. when i finally stopped spinning, i knew i was at another level. (dream inside a dream?) it was still dark inside the room, as i was in the corner holding onto the bedpost, trying to stand up and enjoy what i believed to be a lucid dream. i remember thinking i should do an RC(specifically one that i had read about in real life not more than 45 minutes prior). As soon as i said to myself, "this is weird, this has to be lucid dreaming," i felt heavy. as i was trying to stand, i was only being pushed down even more. i felt as though something heavy was on my back. i turned my head with my eyes half open, and saw a large dark figure that represented something like a man. he looked at me with his bright piercing eyes, and his long grimacing smile. i tried to fight against his restraint, but with no luck. i started to feel frightened, as if he were going to kill me, and just then i awoke. shaking, fast beating heart, and goosebumps just from thinking about it.

      I am still not sure what to think about this dream. it was definately not like anything ive experienced in many years, and honestly not sure if i want it to happen again. i am interested though, to see what will happen next time so i may continue to lucid dream once i have fully recovered from this one... just hopefully it wont be so messed up.
      Categories
      lucid , nightmare
    6. Love Makes Things Less Scary

      by , 11-18-2010 at 11:02 PM
      Non-lucid Lucid

      I am in my bedroom with Libby. We have the door closed and the curtains drawn because we are waiting in fear of a witch that will come and buy my house. I am especially afraid that this witch will break through the window and come into the room. Libby and I hear the witch slowly walking down the stairs outside my room. The witch shouts, "I'm here!" and I respond, "Are you nice?". She says she is so I go out of my room and to the stairs to greet her. She is horribly disfigured and very disturbing-looking, but I have an attitude of unconditional love towards her, so she transforms into a cute old grandma that has white curly hair and an accent similar to my grandma's in real life. I become lucid after watching her transform in front of my eyes. Then Libby, the grandma and I time-jump to a courtyard. There is a building that wraps around three sides of this rectangular courtyard, and the remaining side opens up to a blue ocean with a white seashore. The courtyard has many plants and a marble floor, and there are lots of children running around. The grandma, Libby and I sit down on some stone benches and talk about the house-selling situation. After talking to them for a few minutes, I get up and walk to the other end of the courtyard to think about something, and when I come back, the grandma has transformed into a beautiful 25-year-old brunette. I walk up to her and say, "Do you want to go flying with me?" and she responds, "That is exactly what I was about to ask you!". I tell her to remind me that I'm dreaming if I forget and make sure that I don't wake up. She agrees, and then we grasp eachothers hands and shoot up into the air. We fly over the ocean, and the ocean turns into a field full of various shades of green moss. We then reach some sort of lake that has very clear water, and we are flying so low to it that our ankles downward are in the water as we skim over the surface. I say to this woman, "We got to get up higher!" because I see some strange-looking fish and I don't want them to start chomping on my feet. For some reason we are not able to get up higher. Fortunately, we reach the other side of the lake, and on the top of a bluff near the shoreline is a very large, colorful, inflatible castle with many rooms, hallways, waterslides, pools, and spigots shooting water everywhere. I fly up and land on one of the walkways of this water castle, and I notice that in place of that hot woman, there is now an Asian dude with glasses who is following me around. This Asian dude kind of looks like Tim Lim. We walk down one of the hallways of this colorful water castle and go down a water slide. This water slide drops us into a deep pool. Dan and a few other friends are in this pool also. For some reason the water is not wet. I try to use mind powers to make it wet but I do not succeed.
      Categories
      lucid
    7. Cobblestone Path

      by , 11-18-2010 at 09:29 PM (Dreaming on my feet)
      11.16.10
      Type: Lucid, DS
      Vividness: 6/10
      Lucidity: 6/10

      Hide and Seek
      Walking along a cobblestone path, the same on that I was walking on in one of my first lucids, this time walking with a girl I don't recognize.. I do a nose RC because of the surreal landscape, and perhaps because I just came out of a nightmare I think.. anyways noseplug RC succeeds and I affirm that I am dreaming to myself. I remember how last time I was occupied trying to fix my fading vision and thus woke myself up, and recalled that in fact touch is the most prominent stabilizing factor in dreams, so I directed my attention toward my body, my posture, the weight of my jeans on my legs, the smell of the grass and forest we are approaching.. the path ends and we enter some woods with trees with rather large trunks, perhaps cedar.. the girl playfully hides behind some trees and I'm trying to find her, and cannot locate her anymore. Vision starts to fade and I focus on my body and remain conscious, and maintained consciousness through the fading dream into waking, awoke feeling incredibly refreshed.


      Well I was happy when waking from this LD because I maintained lucidity for approximately 2min, longest achieved thus far that I can remember. Also, I remembered to stay calm and do what I had intended to do which is also a first, rather than try to immediately jump into the sky without thinking or sex up the lady that I was walking with.

      11.14.10
      Car Nap

      I don't remember what the dream was about, but I remember taking a nap on the drive back from Boston to Detroit.. I suddenly became aware that I had slipped into the dream state while experiencing HI, the first time I've ever accomplished that. I then tried to run and was incredibly excited and immediately woke myself up. ..
      Categories
      lucid , memorable
    8. Shower frag

      by , 11-18-2010 at 09:17 PM (Dreaming on my feet)
      11.11.10
      Type: Lucid, fragment
      Vividness: 2/10
      Lucidity: 5/10
      Nap DILD, napping in the room, get up and get in the shower, washing my hair, very warm in the shower. I go to rinse out my hair and when I feel my head the hair is dry, so I do a noseplug RC and it is successful. I realize that I am dreaming and decide to stabilize the dream so I rub my hands and say "stabilize my dream".. I try to look at the floor, off white tiles, very white/light bathroom. I get out very slowly for some reason, but I cannot open my right eye too well and feel uneasy. I cannot get my vision to adjust properly so I try to force my eyes to open up really wide and wind up opening my eyes and wake up!
      Tags: fragment, lucid
      Categories
      dream fragment , lucid
    9. Forgotten lucid and FA

      by , 11-18-2010 at 09:10 PM (Dreaming on my feet)
      Okay. I'm gonna sit at this computer and record these dreams! I feel like the computer drains me of vital energy, and feel reluctant to stay at it.

      11.04.10
      Type: Lucid, fragment
      Vividness: 10/10
      Lucidity: 7/10

      Had a lucid dream but forgot it once I woke up! first time that has happened to me, and I get the feeling that it was the greatest lucidity I have attained so far in the dream. Near the end I recalled an incredibly vivid scene recall of skateboarding on the roof of a large school building with some other people, brick, sunny day, in some sort of small city scape, one massive tree in the front yard and some sidewalks.. Headed around the roof shaped like a large L and made way to a glass roofed sloped section of the roof, where I heard DC down on the street below talking about gangs in the school, then I feel the dream fading so I spin with my eyes closed, slowly and completely, with the only sensation I was experiencing of my body slowly and powerfully spinning. I think to myself "my bedroom, my bedroom" and opening my eyes find myself lying in my bed!

      I do a nose RC and it is successful, FA! So I go to get up, propped up on my arms, but I focus on the muscular activity of pulling myself up too much and experience and a very intense pain/spasm in my right shoulder, and I remember that my physical body is lying down with my arms back behind my head since it was a WILD attempt/induction, and I can't shake off the pain since my physical body probably used a combination of muscles which put strain on the shoulder trying to imitated the movements of my dream body. Since I couldn't gather the will to get past the sensation I woke myself up and shifted positions and tried to enter back into the dream but couldn't fall back asleep.


      After spending two nights with intense WILD attempts I decided that WILD would be an excellent and direct method for me to develop, and have resolved to schedule a practice regiment for this pursuit.
    10. The void.

      by , 11-18-2010 at 01:56 PM
      The void is empty and dark. How do I get out?
      Categories
      lucid
    11. 1/4 Tue: The Girl Moves Out and Other Tales

      by , 11-18-2010 at 09:38 AM (One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy)
      Decent night. Working on building my recall and discipline back up.

      The Girl Moves Out
      1122: A very emotionally charged and memorable non-lucid. I live in the Daisetta house. My roommate is S, a former coworker girl from real life, with whom I had a very brief and destructive romantic relationship. That experience was about a year ago and we've never spoken since. So in the dream, she lives in my house. Her room is next to mine. It's nighttime. I walk into her room. She is watching TV. There are a a few piles of laundry waiting to be folded. On top of the clothing, a couple of cats are hanging out too. I sit and watch TV with her for a while. Her and I seem to quietly accept each other's company. She doesn't freak out or act upset like I am afraid she will. We are actually having a good time hanging out together.

      Then she leaves the room, I expect her to be right back. Maybe she went to the bathroom or to the kitchen. But time fast-forwards an hour or so and she hasn't returned. I walk out of the room and around the house looking for her. I run in to a strange man who startles me. I ask: "What are you doing here?!" He replies: "I'm one of the movers." Oh. I realize that S is moving all her stuff out. I walk out and find her in the backyard. We have this exchange:

      Me: What's going on?
      S: I'm moving out.
      Me: But I thought things between us were just starting to be okay again.
      S: (shakes her head)
      Me: So you're really leaving? You know I'm sorry....

      She walks away and back to her room. I stand still for a moment. I am crushed. But at the same time I realize this was inevitable. I probably deserve it. I follow her back to her room. She is packing up things. I start to help her. We have this quiet moment where I sense we are both sad but also realize this is for the best. Soon, she's ready to go. I walk with her to the front door. At the last moment, she turns to me, looks me in the eyes and asks: "Why?" I know what she means. All I can say is: "I don't know. I guess... I just really really really liked you. Too much, I suppose."

      She gives me an understanding smile. She lets me kiss her on the cheek. We have one of those I-can't-believe-this-is-really-goodbye-forever moments. Then she turns and walks out to the street where a taxi is waiting. I close the door and reflect on what happened.


      Then I think I wake up for real. But my mind is still really wrapped up in the dream, so I continue in a daydream, which seems obvious because of how the plot changes from something natural to something artificial and movie-like. I'm still standing just inside the front door, reflecting on all that is happened. I miss her. I don't want her to go. But I also feel guilty and ashamed. Then I hear the door bell ring. I open the door and there is S. Her face is full of anticipation, like she's about to burst. She says "I really really really like you too!" And she kisses me passionately. End. I suppose that's how I'd like it to end, but it didn't seem satisfying. It didn't seem genuine.

      fragment
      School field trip to a secluded private park. Trying to watch birds mating. Most people are off playing football. I ask if they are playing a real game but they are just tossing the ball around like 3-flags up. I join and throw a few times. My throw is really weak.

      Umm... Yeah... I think I'm dreaming
      Method DILD (absurdity)
      1237: I'm coming home from work. I'm walking along a bike path. I stop at a public restroom. I walk up to a urinal. I look down and I have two penises, one lined up above the other. Oh, I really must be dreaming. I nose-pinch and I can breath. But I wake up immediately.

      Dysfunctional TV Family
      1346: Watching TV show on VHS tapes, on the big screen TV from the Daisetta house. The show is about a family with 2 daughters and a son. I think the parent is a single mom. The oldest daughter just finished high school. She had to take summer school classes to finish. The son drinks. The youngest daughter is a bratty and rebellious teen. In one scene, I sense I am in the car with the mom. We are in a grocery store parking lot. She backs out and then goes in reverse all the way out to the street. So we're driving down the street in reverse. Then she brakes and turns hard. The car starts to skid around and ends up going straight forward on the street. But it's a one lane street in both directions and we narrowly miss hitting an oncoming car.

      Now I'm back in the house, watching the show again on TV. I am worried that it's getting late and I need to leave soon. I look and see several clocks. On on the TV, one on the VCR, and a couple other alarm clocks on top of the TV. They all show different times. I don't know which one to believe. So I leave the room to find a clock I can trust. End.
    12. how do i find this symbol? more importantly my other half with it.

      by , 11-18-2010 at 04:15 AM
      Ive seen posts about dream designs matching people theyve seen. My"Zeus design", as ive come to find as the meanings of these symbols we randomly see are from when zeus split the human heart claiming it was too powerful. so i guess id be saying, i think my soul mate has the same symbol as a tattoo on her wrist. anyone with more insight, please help?
      doesn't this piss you off..-thm_php2yd1mm.jpgdoesn't this piss you off..-thm_phplebsga.jpg
    13. The boyfriend

      by , 11-18-2010 at 03:27 AM (Serenity's Silver Millennium)
      November 17, 2010

      The boyfriend (DEILD)
      I was dating this DC-guy. I remember trying to cuddle up closer to him in bed because it was cold in the room (RL bleeding through, I was doing the same thing with Jack while I slept).

      I remember getting on well with his family. He had a wayward brother who was kind of creepy. Turns out he's out on bail for murder charges. Yayyy.

      I woke up via lucid weaver alarm and was thinking about the dream, so I accidentally chained back in. Now, the boyfriend and I were at a school field trip. And we were mad at each other for some reason. There was one point where I was walking beside him, looking at him... smiling... trying to get him to soften up. Didn't work. So I gave up and decided to walk back to his house to get my things. He suddenly asked me to wait, but I was so upset, I continued on without stopping.

      Then, as I approached his house, I passed him and said I was collecting my things. "Good," he says. Okay, this isn't really how I wanted this dream to go. Back the trolley up here. This is like, the 3rd time we've passed each other now, and have blown each other off.

      So, the scene jumped back a few beats, and I told him I was collecting my things. He stopped me in the middle of the sidewalk and told me not to go, this is silly. Kiss and make up.

      Woke up to Jack's alarm.
      Categories
      lucid
    14. The Assassin

      by , 11-18-2010 at 03:25 AM (Serenity's Silver Millennium)
      November 16, 2010

      The Assassin (LD)
      I start out watching the dream from 3rd person. There is a white-hooded guy who looks straight out of Assassin's Creed. He is staking out this house, and I know that I'm inside this house with Jack (and for this dream, we are special agents, which is why he's after us). Oh, coincidentally, I saw a commercial for the new assassin's creed game coming out, last night... I thought the hood-guy was creepy and I thought, "I'm probably going to have a dream about him tonight."

      Anyways, the assassin seems that he can't determine if we are in there. The window is dark and blinds are drawn and closed. He pulls out his cell phone, and I know he's dialing my number. He listens for ringing, but doesn't hear it.

      I'm now inside, first person. The lights are on, in this cabin, and I'm lying down on the floor, reading a comic. Jack is lying on the bed. We're both not moving, and keeping low. I shifted positions, but in doing so, I got up too much, which may have caused my shadow to show through the blinds (which Jack pointed out). I flattened down against the floor again, but turned somehow to look at the blinds. They were... open now?

      "Wait, how did the blinds open?" I asked. "Why are they open?"

      I didn't get an answer, but Mr. Creed was staring straight at me, through the window, looking quite happy to have caught his prey. I saw him draw a gun. Jack moved off to my right and I drew my own gun (out of thin air). We started firing at each other, at the same time. The window shattered and he jumped through it. I realized with all the stray bullets flying, we would need shields, so I conjured shields around both Jack and myself.

      The assassin and I went to magic. We threw psi balls at each other, and ended up back outside for our fight. I threw waves of fire at him, but this was proving ineffective.

      Falling back to my old standby, I shouted, "Moon prism power, make-up!" My clothes flashed and I was Sailor Moon. Not wasting a beat, I pulled out my wand (out of thin air) and shouted, "Moon healing escalation!" at Mr. Creed. It also seemed to not work, but the attack didn't cease, either. There was a constant flow of pink and gold energy from my wand, hitting his chest. I put all my strength into my attack and thought, "This will work!" and he exploded.

      I fell backwards, onto the ground, gasping. I could barely see, and felt like I got hit by a truck. Jack ran over to me, and was congratulating me on defeating Mr. Creed.

      I then saw another form appear, wearing a Sailor suit and two long white ponytails. She helped me up, and I regained my energy. She did not wear a tiara, she just had the crescent moon symbol on her forehead. "Queen Serenity?" I asked. She nodded. I threw my arms around her for a hug, and asked, "How are you away from the moon?!"

      She didn't answer (my DC's are usually slow that way). But admittedly, I didn't give her much of a chance, as I immediately said to her, "I must've restored the Silver Millennium in another dream?" She nodded and I made some comment to Jack about my dreams loving continuity and woke up.
      Categories
      lucid
    15. A Hilarious, Epic, and Embarrassing Pair of FAs (Plus a Nightmare and a Very Short Lucid)

      by , 11-18-2010 at 02:02 AM (The Lab Notebook)
      Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

      I'm at the camp I went to as a kid [Not the one mentioned in the catchup post below, another one] with my dad. The lodge is a Marie Callender's [Cool!], and we're going out to dinner there. We get a table and order coffee and cookies. Mom is already there and tells us to come over and join her at her table. She's mad at us for not seeing her when we came in, or looking for her in the crowd. Dad and I get up and move to her table, bringing our coffee and cookies with us.

      While we're in the restaurant
      [I think], I start looking back at old pictures of myself on various camping trips. One of them is of my and several of my Literacy AmeriCorps friends, including Laya, Jen, and Chelisa. The oldest picture is from junior high school. It's a big, panoramic picture with lots and lots of kids and their camp counselors in it. I'm near the far right, next to Erica. [She didn't even go to my junior high.] Those of us who are on that side of the picture are standing near the grassy edge of a cliff; one of the boys on in the picture is pretending to be about to step off.

      I wake up in my current bed. I try several times to turn on the lamp next to it, but the bulb just flickers and sputters every time I try. I turn the knob until the flickering stops, tighten the bulb in its socket, then try again. Still nothing. I go out into the hall to look at the digital clock on one of our cable boxes, to see what time it is. It says 7:39, which disappoints me. Aw, man! It's time to get up, I think. Then I look again and see that I made a mistake: it's only 2:39. So, I get my notepad and start taking notes on the dream I just had.


      ...And then I woke up for real. This time, I remembered to do the nose-pinch RC. I was very annoyed with myself for not doing any RCs before and not catching the FA, especially when I realized that I had missed not one, but two of the classic dream signs, one right after another. My mind is great at giving me clues that I'm dreaming; I'm just oblivious.

      After that, it
      seems to take me a really long time to get back to sleep. While I'm trying to do so, I think, Oh, crap, I can't talk to Cj on the phone tomorrow at 9, because that's when I'm meeting with Frank. I get up, take my laptop into the study, and sleepily start writing her an e-mail explaining that we'll have to postpone our date to talk on the phone because I have a conflicting appointment. I'm working in Yahoo! Mail [which is what I use for my main e-mail account in reality], and press Send. Suddenly, annoying, circus-y music starts to play out of the computer's speakers, and the screen is filled with a weird, old, basic HTML page with a colored background. The page appears to scroll down automatically. One of the first things to appear on it is a single sentence of text that contains my name. This is what makes me realize what's going on: I've stupidly allowed my Yahoo password to get phished by entering it into a fake website, and now my laptop has a virus. I let out a long string of curse words (actually, the same curse word repeated many times). Windows starts scanning my computer, trying to fight the virus.

      Mom and P. are coming home. According to the digital clocks on the cable boxes, it's 12:02 A.M. Leaving my laptop on the floor of the study, I go outside to the street to meet them. They're coming home in a red VW New Beetle (where did they get that? I wonder silently), which they're parking on the curb across the street from our house, because our two regular cars
      [the ones we own in reality] are taking up both spaces in the garage. I come over to greet them as they're getting out of the car. As we walk back toward the house, I look at the side yard and see that there's a bamboo tree that sort of looks like a fountain there. Ooh, that's pretty! I think. P. goes back to put some more CDs in the New Beetle. [Neither it nor the bamboo tree exist in reality, of course, but I didn't realize that anything was strange until after I woke up. :/ ]

      I woke up for real at 5:00 and took down more notes. I realized in hindsight that it hadn't actually taken me as long to fall asleep as I had thought; at least part of the process, and everything after that, had been a dream. I didn't actually have any such appointment with Cj, anyway. I was amazed at how completely and totally this dream had convinced me that I was in reality.

      I'm indoors somewhere, and I'm wearing a cowboy hat. I look behind me and see my friend D.W. there, riding in a wheelchair. I think, Oh, good, she got a wheelchair. I feel the cowboy hat on my head and think, Oh, yeah, this is a dream. I can feel the by-now-familiar sensation of lucid-dream consciousness. I open my dream self's eyes and look very briefly at my hands, which appear normal, then up at my indoor surroundings. To engage more fully with my dream self and its sense of touch, I reach up to touch the brim of the cowboy hat with both hands, then take it off. I'm sitting in something [possibly another wheelchair, but I don't see it, so I'm not sure]. I stand up and try to turn around and talk to D.W., but just then, I heard my mom talking out in the entryway, which took my attention away from the dream, which instantaneously kicked me back into reality.

      ----------------------
      Side notes:
      I should choose my MILD affirmations with more care. The ones I focused on the most this past night were “I am self-aware and in control in my dreams” and “I bring clarity, lucidity, and stability into my dreams.” These backfired rather spectacularly in my second dream of the night. It was perfectly clear and stable, and, as far as I could tell, I was just as self-aware and in control of my own actions as I am in reality. And yet, I never realized that I was dreaming. I focused on that aspect more as I was trying to get back to sleep after 5:00, and it worked, if only briefly.