lucid

I continue to make my way from the back room. I have all of the artifacts on me that I organized as well as some additional hunting gear. I make my way to the main atrium of a large building, with many side rooms leading to areas with animal exhibits, similar to in a zoo. As I reach the center of the atrium, I suddenly realize I'm in a dream. I consider what to do, but first want to explore the area a bit a and make my way outside. I continue to my left, into a side room. I leave the main atrium through an open walkway and enter a long room with several windows on the outermost section of the building. The wall is filled with booth seating, and several families are in the booths. I look to the booth in front of me and to the left and notice a family of three - there appears to be a a father, a young mother and a very young daughter. I decide to leave this area by simply phasing though the wall to the outside. I'm suddenly hovering over a lush area with quite a bit of foliage, a walkway just ahead of me running longitudinally, as well as a very dark brown lodge style building behind an area of brush. The brush is several feet high and has a reddish hue to it. I however in the air and consider what to do. I think back to heading to a persistent realm that I imagined: Azura. I ignore this goal for now as I still have my hunting gear and artifacts from my previous dream and simply want to have fun and roll with my equipment. I imagine that I'm hunting for a large bear and that it'll be in the foliage. I keep the imagination running, yet don't find one at first. I search for a short while longer and see the wisps resembling the outline of a bear. I grab for a bow behind my back and imagine shooting the bear with an arrow. It is not very vivid, yet successful non-the-less. The dream begins fading a bit and I reflect that mindfulness is a key ingredient for lucid length and stability. As the dream fades I resolve to maintain awareness throughout.
--The imagery reduces to a narrow stone walkway, curving and running slightly uphill. The dream imagery persists for a minute or so, and I consider visualizing to encourage the next scene, but don't begin.--
A scene materializes immediately and I'm suddenly next to a large housing structure, which appears to have many loft style homes on each floor. I make my way off of the blacktop and onto the concrete walkway. I young man who is tall with blond hair and appears to be a groundskeeper of sorts gets my attention. I have the sudden intuition that his name is Ricky and I wonder if I'll see him again in the dreamworld. He insinuates that I owe some money for being on the property, and without giving it a second thought, I reach into my back pocket for some cash. I grab a wad of what appears to be several thousand dollars bound by a rubber-band and toss it in his direction. I turn my gaze to the roughly ten-story structure and decide to fly toward the third level. As I fly I wonder if I could create a persistent realm out of this area by simply imagining that it's a stable area as I enter. I phase through the window and enter a dimly lit area with booth style seating to the left, with roughly three separate booths. In the middle booth, two dark skinned young individuals are sitting across from each other having a conversation. I reflect that this would be a very cool home-base to return to. I see that the loft opens to an area to the right several feet further down, and I walk into this area. It is a bar-style kitchen area, with a counter running around the perimeter of a central area. The central area has a square stove of sorts with a large pot in the center. I get the impression that the large pot is used for ceremonial tea preparations of some sort and it reminds me of what would be found in a monastery. I make my way around the outside of the counter top and see a metal basket filled with bananas on the back right portion of the counter. I don't want any bananas, but think it would be good to have some energy bars. I imagine that they'll be in the cabinets above this section of the counter. I reach very high up and open the counter to find a couple rows with two different types of bars. I grab one from one of the vertically stacked rows and unwrap it. The wrapper has a slight reddish tinge and the bar is very dark. It turns out to be chocolate flavored. I begin eating it and it has a somewhat muted flavor and my mouth begins feeling very strange, like there's some sort of pressure on the gums and my mouth is very sensitive. I take a few bites and continue to chew. I feel my dream body slowly begin to vibrate and the dream begins to fade. I determine that I'm in waking reality a moment later.

I'm standing between the main house and the neighbor's house in The Meadow and I'm instantly lucid. I say something close to "Thank God!" as my period of non-lucidity is finally interrupted. I take in the view and the scene is very vivid. The green of the grass is very intense and the sunlight is pouring through the area by the fences. The scene looks very similar to real life. I immediately think of dream goals and what I'd like to do. I think of finding a dream guide as well as creating a persistent realm, possibly Azuria. I begin flying upward and take in the view of the houses. The speed of the flight begins picking up. It continues to go faster and becomes beyond my control at this point. I ascend above the clouds and figure that this could be where I imagine transitioning to a persistent realm. I feel my dream body vibrating and then realize I'm coming back to my waking body.

I've been aggressively dream journaling off site for a few months, at least since the conclusion of the summer competition. This has been a long-standing dream goal since long before then even, to find out what happened to Jonathan. Supposedly some years back he 'left' my dreams but he still seemed to crop up in odd ways and cause trouble so I made it a goal to track him down and confront him. I would have liked to have been much more prepared, but he appeared in this lucid dream and I seized on the opportunity.

I am watching an episode of Avatar: The last airbender. It seems to be set in the later part of season 2. Katara, Sokka and Toph are trying to find Aang who is running away from his responsibilities. They speak to this botanist guy looking in ba sing se that says he knows about ancient family secrets passed down through the generations and has selectively bred a magic flamingo that can sniff out the avatar’s spiritual energy and be used to find him. He gets a big pot and pours some water and fertilizer on it and the flamingo grows. Its small and skinny and hops around on one leg but it joins the gaang.

Slowly the dream changes from a third person passive experience to a first person active experience.

We are walking around an abandoned portion of ba sing se at night. I can see the large wall in the distance. The location feels like my old childhood neighborhood in layout but the buildings are ancient east asian fantasy styled. I see that Katara, Sokka and Toph all have bags under their eyes and they complain about not being able to sleep and having to find Aang and how they are exhausted. I try to ‘remember’ this story arc and think to myself that they end up being awake for a whole nother day.

In the sky I see two moons, it doesn’t look like anything off Woue. Just two whitish cratery moons, but I recognize this as a dream sign and become properly and fully lucid. I think to myself its the real world earth moon and the avatar world's moon and that's why I see two.

Then Mai, Azula and Ty Lee appear. The flamingo hides behind katara who is taking a leading role here and Azula says she is going to use it to find the avatar and capture him. Azula winds up, charging into battle shooting out big blasts of blue fire. I think to activate my shields and it works. The barrier seems to be at a larger radius than normal, surrounding the other avatar characters. Hexagonal walls appear in front of the fire blasts she is shooting out.

Azula tries to run in to get inside the barrier and capture us that way. I decide I want to manipulate its properties. I move my left and and see a sort of doctor strange style circular rune in purple around my left hand. There is some magical ‘text’ that is very conventional and legible floating above the rune and made of the same sort of energy. I see a number of complicated-looking mathematical formulas with “R=3” at the bottom in a much larger font and intuitively know the barrier is 3 times the normal radius, probably why it is extending around the other friendly avatar characters. The rune around my left hand has a point on it, like a washing machine dial with three settings. Disabled, Automatic and Manual.

I switch to manual and see a sort of wireframe of the hexagonal barrier around me with one pentagonal face directly above me. I rotate the dial to manual, concentrating on the hexagonal faces right between me and azula. I then do a sort of pushing motion with my left hand and the radius increases to 12 very quickly. The barrier plates send azula flying backwards. Quickly and intuitively I turn the barrier to “disabled”, increase the radius to 16 faster than azula is flying backwards, then switch back to “manual” and she smacks against the inside of the same section. She smacks against the plate and falls to the ground.

I then bring up my right hand and create a second barrier rune. The radius defaults to 3. I switch it into manual mode. I do a motion of pulling in my left hand and pulling out my right hand. The outer barrier radius starts to drop and the inner barrier radius starts to increase. I am shown an alternate perspective of azula. She stands upright but her feet are sliding in the dirt as the outer barrier is shrinking. Her eyes go wide when she sees the inner expanding barrier coming up. She starts to charge up lightning and points it at the inner barrier. But is barely not quick enough as I am shown the barrier closing and her fingers get broken, the inner and outer barrier sandwich together with radii of 6 and 5.99 (the rune switches to show two decimal places). An explosion occurs, billowing out from between the inside and outside and she is gone.

There is a very thin black hemispherical arc of ash in the ground where the explosion was.

I turn to Mai and Ty Lee. Ty lee who was in a fighting pose, just goes “nope” and runs away. Mai sighs and annoyedly walks away.

“What kind of bending is that?” Asks Katara.

“AUGH! The cactus juice is kicking in again!” Sokka shouts. I think the scholar botanist guy gave him cactus juice.

“It’s not bending. It’s a compression barrier I made to defend my home star system, but it wasn’t working properly at such a large scale, so I’m retooling it for personal use. Because It was originally a dyson sphere its very powerful.”

The avatar characters leave and the dream scene becomes more like my home neighborhood at night. I think of a previous bad dream where Jonathan was outside my house and see him there. He seems to recognize that I am lucid and gets on a bicycle which has E.T. in the bike basket and starts to fly away into the night sky.

I ignite my fire jets and chase after him. I distinctly remember the fire jets audibly whining like jet engines. I bring up my left arm and shout “barrier one light second!” I can visibly see that the moon is starting to come closer during the chase and I can see the translucent inactive barrier reaches just far enough to partyway clip into the moon. I start to pull the radius in I point to the bicycle and say “Bad Dream Mode! Rusty chain jam!”

I see a close up shot as the bike chain becomes rusty in the space of a few seconds and then comes off the gear. The flying bike lurches and then falls back to earth. Jonathan landed badly with a visible bleeding injury on his leg. He struggles for a minute gets up and tries to run away.

I point to him. “Bad Dream Mode! Nonlucidity! Teeth fall out! Body horror! Nakedness! Awkward Social Situation!”

I see my various commands take effect. Jonathan’s body distorts with a number of large zits appearing on the righthand side of his face. I see his front teeth both fall out and his pants disappear though he is not naked. Then several dream figures spawn and a large tent is now present in the driveway of my house. It seems like a high school graduation party. A tall woman comes over and points and laughs at him. He seems to look around befuddled and panicked.

“Bad Dream Mode! Uncontrolled Car.”

Jonathan looks at me and says “what?” Then his eyes go wide and I realized he has regained lucidity and he tries to run away from me. I bring up the barrier rune again.

“Offset point on Jonathan!”

I see a wireframe of the barrier surround him as he runs into the side yard of my house and I run after him.

“Fixate point! All hexes on!” The entire barrier becomes active at once and stays where it is, no longer. I drop the radius to 0.53. The barrier shrinks around him, enough that the bottom is no longer phased into the ground and he is trapped in a floating sphere. I keep shrinking the barrier as I see him inside pushing against it. He seems to shrink his body in proportion to his head and has taken on a thoroughly inhuman gollum-like appearance. I drop the radius to 0.26 and he is now in a hovering sphere about two feet across. He thrashes around pounding on the barrier making animalistic noises. I think to myself passingly “the radius must be in meters” and recognize that the dream is ending.

“Max power! Seal all dimensional edges! Anti Teleport! Anti Phasing! Anti-Magic Tampering! Anti time travel! Permanentize! Permanentize! Permanentize!” As I give these commands, I see a list of additional things added to the rune and saying ‘seal edges’ makes the lines between each hexagonal face glow brightly and stay that way.“...Yeah. After fifteen years, I finally got you, you little bitch. How’s it feel?”

I stick a paper sign on the barrier that says ‘do not tap on glass’. And knock on one of the hexes. I note that the barrier does sound like glass when struck.

7/9/23
I begin flying low in a horizontal position in a dim room with many students. I Realize I’m dreaming. I say “I’m
dreaming” and I tell all the students that they’re dreaming. I ask if they know how I realized. I explain that I
was flying so I instantly knew. I begin thinking about my dream goals. I think about creating a persistent
dream realm as well as the purple crystal to phase through. I reach behind me to pull out the purple crystal
to phase. A faint wisp of the crystal appears in front of me but it doesn’t appear solidified and vivid enough
to teleport through. I vocalize that I want to go to a persistent dream realm and think of azura. I decide not
to try to go through the crystal. I turn to my right and see that the large room extends into the distance. At
the far end site a black wall unit with a black square TV in the center with an additional device on top. I
decide to try to phase through theTV. I make my way across the room and toward the TV. I bump into it two
times, bouncing off. On the third attempt I’m successful and phase through into blackness. I feel that
sensation of my physical body is vibrating into my awareness and I wake up.

7/1/23
I’m in my room in the monastery and something feels a bit off. I plug my nose and can sweat that I can
breathe. My awareness rises and so look at my hands. I see that I have seven fingers and become lucid. The
scene is very gray and murky, yet I hold my awareness through it. The dream goes to black void which I
remain aware in. I soon begin imagining colors, then visualize the gates leading to the monastery. I see the
visualization of the black and white arch come into my field of views. Soon I find myself on the grass to the
left of a long brick structure. I shout “increase clarity now!” several times, insisting that it works. The scene
becomes much more vivid. It appears to be a recreation of the monastery to my right. It is a single story and
constructed of red brick with a dark roof. I begin floating alongside of the building and want to renter, yet
don’t want to disturb any DCs. I find a window which would be roughly where my room is and I phase
through. I find myself in a classroom of sorts with students and circular desks, working on some drawings
which are in color. I make my way to the center of the room and weave my way between the desks. I notice
that there are a couple teacher/monitor figures supervising the room. I decide that I could find Roshi and
ask for a teaching. I begin making my way to the door, yet have a false awakening.
I plug my nose with my thumbs and can breath very slightly. I rationalize that it’s because they’re not fully
plugged, yet don’t adjust it.

*In a talk later in the week, I found out that the Abbot of the Monastery was an artist before becoming a monastic. She shared that she always wanted her life to be an expression of art.
*Not much total sleep and especially REM for the rest of Sesshin.

Another long lucid! Even if it was split in the middle. And a TON of dreams overall! Though they took forever to type. Slept at 12:30.

Dream #1 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Something about driving and LGBTQ. Woke up at 4:00 and WBTB.


Dream #2 (Non-Lucid):
I was reading about a closeted gay eighth grader, and of course since it was a dream the scenes popped into my head like a TV show. MC was in a warehouse with his friends, goofing around, when he looked in the mirror and said, "You know what, guys? I'm going to go do it, I'm just gonna do it, why am I waiting for high school? It doesn't even make sense."

He was talking about doing the nasty with a girl, but he didn't really want to. He was just trying to prove to himself and everyone else that he wasn't gay. When he headed for the door, my feelings of opposition seemed to affect him. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. I physically typed out the words I wanted him to say: "You're not gonna stop me?!?!"

Then I wrote out his friends' response: "No?"

One laughed in confusion, another scowled. I remember crossing out a comma and replacing it with the question mark, then being sure to emphasize that one of them was scowling.

MC said something about "three men," and the angry friend became even angrier. "Of course not," he snapped.

After that MC was tempted to say the same thing about "four men," but he chickened out because there were four of his friends there and the risk of them catching on was too high. I accepted that, just glad that he'd changed his mind, and he left the warehouse.

The plot changed. I was now actively in the dream, as myself yet not myself. I lived in a big house with my "grandma" and brother Z. He and I were in "our room," and when I gazed out the arched window into the night, I saw a peculiar black cat rummaging around, eating trash. I was fascinated by its strange appearance and wanted to interact with it.

It was past midnight, so I waited for "Grandma" to go to the basement before sneaking downstairs and opening the front door. I whispered for it to come inside and eat something edible. It obeyed, but the granny was coming back upstairs so I fled to my room.

She definitely knew I'd been down there, despite Z trying to cover for me. (He was not himself either.) However, she let it go and sat down with the cat at the table, saying that they had to have a long chat regarding me.

At one point she called sweetly to me from the kitchen and snapped at Z when he spoke up. He was holding a "full" glass of regurgitated yogurt (it reached the fill line, but that line was barely one fourth of the cup). It was not abnormal in the dream, but I was disgusted all the same.

———

Woke up at 5:00 and, after journaling, sat up and really focused on becoming lucid. I explained what it meant, quickly performed MILD, and upped my awareness of myself and my surroundings. Then I went back to sleep, lucidity the last thing on my mind. (As in, the final thing I was thinking about, not something I didn't care about at all... I hate English.)

———

Dream #3 (Lucid):
First thing I remember is tagging along as a man led Harlequin down a flight of stairs. We were in her dream. Once we reached the bottom of the steps, we could see an oasis-like place at the end of the hallway. But when we looked back up, we realized we had descended 2000-feet-worth of stairs, and Harlequin's family was screaming her name at the top of their lungs as if she had died.

Trying to keep things under control, I asked, "Are you going to go to the oasis?"

She frowned and scoffed, "My brain drew that with MS paint." Then she left the dream. [I don't remember what she looked like because I wasn't paying attention.]

What a waste, I thought, and went to check out the oasis myself. It was really just a small room with a pool of water, cabinet, window, and carpet, but I sat down on that carpet and became lucid.

I attempted to increase the vividness and thought it was working, but when I woke up I couldn't remember how it looked so maybe it wasn't. I also believed myself to be more clear-headed than I really was. To my credit, I was able to remember the Task of the Season and decided to complete a basic task: asking a dream character what will happen tomorrow!

I phased through the window and emerged a couple stories above the ground, a tree swaying in the wind below me. Everything was a bit unstable so I grabbed a leaf and tried to focus my attention on it as a stabilization technique (as Oneirin suggested), but it didn't work very well.

Somehow I got out of there and ended up flying down a street, chasing after people in cars and trying to get them to answer the question, but every one of them just flashed weird looks and drove faster. Finally I peered into the passenger window of one car and saw a one-year-old baby strapped into a baby seat in the middle. Next to him, on the far side, was a 12-ish-year-old blond boy.

"Hey!" I yelled to the baby. "What do you think will happen tomorrow?"

He glanced at me and started lifting his arms out of the harness straps. I assumed he wanted to get closer to the window, but if a car struck them from behind and he was unbuckled I knew he'd be dead.

"Uhh, no, no, don't do that," I said, and suddenly a horde of skinny, black-bodied, white-headed, Bendy-like creatures rushed toward the car with their arms outstretched. Altogether they resembled the Wall of Flesh in Terraria. I was kicked out of the dream and replaced by a fourteen-year old anime girl.

She flew through the car and grabbed the twelve-year old, sending them tumbling out the other side into an alleyway. The car was destroyed and the boy watched his baby brother get ripped to shreds, one layer at a time. But he wasn't fazed at all! In fact, when the girl held out a hand to him (third person POV), he blushed and took it!

She was a dream superhero of some sort, and there was the sense that she had saved many people from those creatures many times before. She wore red gloves and a short red skirt, black sweatpants, and a black sweater.

At some point they were hiding in the "|" part of a "T"-shaped alleyway, and the boy was able to keep the creatures out by stretching his body to disturbing proportions. Even as the nonexistent observer I was very confused.

Once the creatures cleared out, the boss of the girl appeared. With a smile they said, "You must be [name]'s reincarnation."

[Name] was a very powerful Dream Hero, the most legendary of them all, but the girl was not her reincarnation. No, that was a different girl, and she was back at the lab undergoing testing. MC reminded me of Akko, and the reincarnated girl reminded me of Diana (though she looked like Neiru from Wonder Egg Priority).

MC was having trouble keeping her face stable (it was actually glitching) and started to deny it, but cut herself off. "Is- is Izzy here?" (Another Dream Hero.)

Don't remember if anyone responded, but somehow it was revealed that the boy had "done this before" and was actually a member of their organization. When she heard that, MC flushed with rage and grabbed his collar.

"Say that sooner!" she shouted. She was embarrassed because she'd been under the impression that she'd saved a helpless civilian, and now felt stupid for being so proud.

She stormed out of the room (the alley had gradually morphed into a hotel room) and I returned to the dream, lucid again. I had very little memory of what had happened and zero awareness of having switched with the girl. But I realized I still hadn't gotten an answer to the TotS question, and ran back to the boy. He was being carried like a sack of potatoes by an invisible person.

"What should I do tomorrow?" I asked. (Phrased it that way because I thought he might not respond to "what will happen tomorrow?")

He glared at me, and the vividness of his voice increased tenfold as he spat, "I think you should die."

I actually got goosebumps from how clear and angry his tone was, but brushed it off. The style of the dream had become cheap and pixelated, and I turned to see Mafuyu lying flat on the ground.

I sat next to her. "Mafuyu, what will happen tomorrow?"

She probably assumed I was asking her out and responded, "Saturday is sad day." (Both she and I were under the impression that tomorrow was Saturday.)

"I see. Sad day, huh." I sat by her a little while longer before standing up.

Each hotel door was themed to match a Project Sekai character. Kanade's was first, light blue and decorated with solid circles and hollow triangles. I cracked it open and found her wrapped up in blankets like a burrito. Sensing that I would wake up soon, I decided it wasn't worth interacting with her her.

I hurriedly moved on to Mizuki's sparkly pink door, but for some reason, I knocked this time. I called her name, excited to hear her response, as she and Mafuyu are my favorite characters.

After a pause, a very accurate voice responded, "Yeah?"

I asked the question, but before she could answer the dream faded and I woke up! Nooo! But at the same time, yesss, to this amazing lucid!

———

I was surprised to find it was only 6:25, but it took me an hour to finish writing, so I didn't get back to sleep till 7:30-ish. I wasn't very tired, so maybe that's why I kept waking up and had all these dreamlets.

———

Dream #4 (Non-Lucid):
This was on the border between a hypnagogic hallucination and a dream. I was in the kitchen and one of my parents dumped milk and acid in my head. Then I was in a dark void, walking down a floating runway and smashing open doors with an axe. I found my dad in one of them. He had murdered my mom. I raised my axe and killed him. Woke around 8:00 and WBTB.


Dream #5 (Non-Lucid):
I was being driven somewhere in the middle of nowhere to tutor a kid my age. I was very confused, saying that A was the tutor, not me. But they didn't listen. We nearly ran over a fallen tree and had to get out of the car. It was foggy outside and there was a lake nearby.

When I demanded answers, my mom grilled me in return about how I got my voice recorder. [Answer: I biked to the store and bought it without her knowledge.]

"I told you, I just found it in my stuff!" I protested, speedwalking away.

I came across my brothers and a group of old friends, the only one I could see properly was a kid named Blake. He was holding a football and I asked if he was copying me, as I was playing catch with a football for two hours a couple days ago.

Don't remember his response, but I took the football and asked if I could punt it. He refused because there was a lake in the distance and he didn't want it going in.

Woke at 8:27 and WBTB.


Dream #6 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Forgot everything when I opened my eyes. Something about flowers. 8:46 WBTB.


Dream #7 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
(Illegible.) 9:06 WBTB.


Dream #8 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
Lifting weights. Later I was in a store and Harlequin was there, asking how to get home. I directed her to a staff member. 9:19 WBTB.


Dream #9 (Non-Lucid):
I was driving to a therapy session, though not doing a very good job. In the end I had to lift it up like a chair and force it into a parking spot within the building. Switched the parking brake on and it finally settled down. A girl next to me was doing the same. Some time later people were watching the dream on a screen, admiring the "perspectives" and skill of my "internal camera." I was a little uncomfortable.

Plot change. Someone had filmed a TikTok of me saying, "Do you want your madlad chicken? -goes off-screen and returns a couple seconds later- Sorry, they aren't allowed in the café but here are some french fries and ketchup."

It had 12K likes and I was wearing a dark blue plaid jacket and mask. It repeated a few times before showing the aftermath. S was grabbing me and pointing to a bundled-up customer.

"Merlin," they said. (Not my real name but that's what they called me in the dream.) "You have to figure out their identity. Once you do, you'll be shocked."

But I could already tell that the twist was that they were gonna be my doppelganger.

At some point I had a false awakening and when I was writing down the dream I added, I was covered in leaves (thank goodness I remembered that!).

Woke at 9:47 and got up for good. Kinda sad that none of them were lucids, but oh well.

Pics of the dream scenes, and a map of the third dream (yes I am totally copying Harlequin):

Jade Green Sparring Match Two (WILD) 07.06.2023

My partner K wakes me up when she is getting out of bed earlier than me and when I fall asleep I feel the dream set in before I lose awareness. I do a RC and confirm I am in a WILD. I get out of bed and summon my robes and put them on in one swoop of my arm. I try pulling up the heads up display with the gesture of swiping up from my left wrist but it doesn't work right away. I wake up but DEILD.

I try again and this time I get the holographic HUD to show up. Instead of being futuristic, this time it looks like Windows 11. I tap the search bar and say "Noma". then I snap my finger and get teleported to a beach. I focus on the details and notice that the plants are exotic and have black leaves. I am indeed on Woue but not in the Noma desert where we can fight without causing damage to the environment. I destabilize and DEILD.

I repeat the teleportation process from our room. This time when I snap my fingers I find myself laying on a red sandy dune. When I stand up and look over the top of the dune I see a red desert with crashed space craft scattered around! I look behind me and see Hade. He looks like he does in JadeGreen's art! Unfortunately Manei and Jay aren't there. Hade ignites his rockets so I guess it's time to fight! I try throwing a rock at him with telekinesis but it is blocked by a purple hexagonal shield that pops up infront of him. I realize I am a little taken off guard and don't have time to remember my strategy. We both fly at eachother and I try a Superman punch but it is blocked by his shield. We then tangle together (because I grab hold of his arm.) and then we spin around eachother midair. I realize being in close is not a good idea because I have had problems with wrestling in dreams so I let go and we both get flung away from eachother by centrifugal force.

When I float from the tumble I feel a pain in the leg from where he hit me with a staff in the last dream we fought in. I wonder if I got hit but I realize it's just a bruise. I learn that I don't have healing factor like Hade and Manei do. Hade pulls out a bow and arrow and I know I have to deflect any arrows he sends with telekinesis or I am done for! Unfortunetly the dream starts to destabilize even with neither of us landing a clear hit.

I DEILD again but this time I don't think I have the energy for another match. I experiment with pulling up the HUD again, trying to study it's buttons, but I keep destabilizing for the rest of the REM cycle.

My sleep-meditation mp3 tracks continue to manifest in my dreams. Last night I listened to a reading of Go Rin No Sho (Book of Five Rings), a text about the Samurai and Japanese Swordsmanship. In a dream I entered a dark space, in a degree of sleep paralysis, then a light appeared and suddenly I could see and move. I would class my consciousness as 90% lucid. The reading I was listening to was coming into the dream as movement and light. After a short time I slipped back into a normal dream-state.
My sleep meditations at night seem to be appearing more often in my dreams. I am excited, as this would mean I am having an effect on my unconscious mind.

All the most interesting dreams from this week involved music in some way. These included:

-Applying a temporary tattoo of the notation for the amen break to my face, apparently for some event I was going to attend.

-Working on a piece of music. As the dream progresses, the different parts become associated with characters, and a story plays out among them. The characters all travel somewhere special, like the moon, a number of times. I think it ended with everything being absorbed back into the composition again. Unfortunately, I can’t remember many of the details as I woke up to one of the cats getting ready to cough up a hairball and had to immediately turn on the lights and make sure she didn’t do it on my bouzouki.

-Programming a couple weather patterns on something that looked suspiciously like a groovebox. I’m doing this at somebody’s request, at the shop he owns. There’s a sense of the machine making the process much simpler than it would be otherwise, just a matter of pressing a few buttons. When I’m done, I make a mental projection of the future to check that my proposed patterns won’t screw up the weather in other places, and since everything looks OK, I confirm them.

At some later point in the dream, I gain lucidity flying over a place that’s a cross between a highway and a waterway, with cars going one way and ships going the other. I decide to go back to the scene from the earlier dream, and I speak with the man to find out if he has anything else I can do there. It strikes me as an interesting thing to do while focusing on maintaining lucidity. I woke up not long after, though, which wasn’t surprising as it was actually getting rather late into the morning.

27.6.23-3.7.23

Yesterday I made nap with WILD intention. As anchor I used history podcast about soviet BTR armored vechicle. I entered in to dream after 30 minutes of lying in bed and for first seconds it wasn't so obvious for me if i'm already in dream or not. I didn't experience hipnagogs nor paralyze. Ofc I felt a little bit different that usual but I would not call this hipnagogs. Anyway when this weird feeling stop then I opened my eyes.

LD
I woke up in my bed. Nothing special for first look so I just stand up and I made positive RC. "Nice" I thought, but what to do? My bad I didn't prepare any plan for LD so my ad-hoc idea was to explore my inner senses. I mean how I'm feeling my own body in dream.
In first part I was changing my haircuts and I checked it in mirror every time. My face looked normal and I felt my new haircut like in real life as well. After few minutes I woke up but it was FA so I made another positive RC.
In second part I was focused how I feel myself with new clothes. My wear was really nice in touching. Despite my experience was similar like in real life I really was enjoyed. Usually I feel pain in my LDs if my touch sense is working.
In entire dream I was in hurry. I tried to do everything as fast as possible. In second part of my dream I told to myself „It is pointless to be hurry because it is stressing me. I have no power to make my dream longer so if my dream will end that’s okay. No more rush, only peace can help me”

Journal from 06/23/2023. This is one of my PR dreams that was especially fun!

Since I haven't been journaling my PR much, I'll include some backstory for what's been going on.

I started this particular dream in my territory, which is a dreamed replica of my childhood home (I really should come up with a name for it). The property spans about 2 acres. It's by the coast just outside of an isolated fishing town.

This place is dreary and full of death, guarded by my zombie hoard and packs of wolves. The whole place is surrounded by towering trees, which is where the zombies and wolves usually creep in from.

The home itself is a small two-story shack. The ground floor is half kitchen (with concrete floor), and half garage (which I'm pretty sure is haunted).

Recently, I've decided to put a portal to hell here. It was originally in the field, but I moved it inside the house to be the kitchen to go with my haunted garage (seems only right to have them be side-by-side).

Specifically, I made this a portal to the Helluva Boss universe hell, because that version of hell is fun. I figured it would help liven up the place.

And boy, it worked! Lots of terrifying entities have been coming through my portal ever since I added it, ranging from spicy to downright malicious.

This has resulted in a few lucid nightmares for me, but that's fine—it was my intention to expose myself to nightmares in a controlled environment like this in order to overcome my fears. I used to have a severe fear of demons, ghosts, and other hellish beings... *cough* This was pretty embarrassing and debilitating, since I live a good portion of my life in dream realms as the supposed Lucid Guardian.
What kind of lucid guardian is afraid of ghosts? Bah!
So this is why I've done this to myself, and I've since made breakthroughs because of it. I'm not easy to scare anymore. I can deal with zombies, ghosts, demons, you name it.

Anyway, I was standing in the kitchen looking at my nifty new hell portal. It's invisible now (used to be more noticeable). I can sense its presence, though. When I walk through it, there's no immediate signs that I've entered hell, but very subtle differences in the atmosphere clue me in. I can feel the emptiness in the air and something ominous.
Everything looks like a mirror image of the same location, but it's not the same.

There was a native mortal human visiting my house in this dream. She unknowingly went through my portal, so I followed her through. I crept behind her as a shadow while she wandered outside.

Human girl noticed the dark clouds rolling in and seemed rightly unsettled by the place. The sky was a mixture of ashen clouds and yellow fog lit by distant fires.
I revealed myself to her, telling her that she had stumbled into another realm. With glee, I warned her that she better turn back.... Unless she wanted to brave the demons and animated dead.
Only a fearless soul will survive in a place like this. So which will it be? I gave her the choice to go back, but I'll be honest that it wasn't without provocation. I was having too much fun!
I asked if she'd cave in to cowardice and flee for her life like scared little mortals do, or dance with me?

I drew flames up out of the ground, engulfing my home in a blaze to demonstrate that this was no joke. I began a musical number (yes, like a Disney supervillain!), dancing and singing to a variation of that "It's Tough To Be a God" song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZKE10BQlXY).
It was fun coming up with lyrics on the spot! This was my favorite part of the dream.
Through my own version of the lyrics (I forget the exact details), I conveyed my identity as a dream deity, revealing that her universe was my lucid dream. Isn't the nature of reality frightening?

Stolas (from Helluva Boss) came through my portal during this, so I pulled him into it without skipping a beat. He passively went along with the number as I used him as part of my demonstration to the human of the kinds of hellish beings she'd find here if she stayed.

Right as I was singing about being a dream god, I woke up because my significant other rolled over in bed and slapped me in the face, mumbling in opposition. lmao
She was half asleep. When I told her what she interrupted, she said (jokingly) that somebody had to put a stop to me because I was getting too cocky, and that's why she did it.

The dream god Achilles heel! One second you're singing about having unlimited dream god powers, and next thing you know you disappear because waking up is all part of the gig. That's so annoyingly hilarious! I love it.

I gotta do more of these.

I woke up and immediately noticed that the light in my room looked kind of dark and bluish like the sun was rising while it was really cloudy. [COLOR="#008000"]I knew I was in a dream because the light coming in through my window never looks like that. I rolled off my mattress and decided to look around my house. I walked to my bathroom and there were feces everywhere. I got some on my shoestrings, even though I know they're not real, they're still gross. So I go down my hall and into my living room, and I see that the Christmas tree is still up. There's a white shoe box under it, so I open it, and there's some gray sneakers in it, so I start replacing my shoes, but my mother sneaks up behind me and stops me from moving.I tell her to let me go but then I wake up.[/COLOR]

I was in the stairwell of some hotel or apartment and I had to go up a couple floors to retrieve some groceries or something. Walking up the stairs was very tiring for some reason, but I eventually reached the room. It was had just some toys, a bay window, and a note where the floor slanted down near the wall. I looked out the window, and I could see a city below like I was as high as an airplane. I went up to the piece of paper in the wall floor ditch, and I turned it over. It said something about burning in hell.I woke up around there.

I don't remember much from this one just that[COLOR="#008000"]I was lucid and my eyes were closed, an I was feeling carpet or something and then I heard a rooster,[/COLOR] because one of my real roosters was crowing.

Another short semi-lucid, this one a bit more fun than the last. It was my third dream of the night, and during WBTB I tried to mentally explain to someone why I wanted to become lucid, as per Harlequin's suggestion. I thought, Well, you see, lucidity is just cool... I mean, you can do so many things that you can't in waking life... why wouldn't you want that? I think I have a good chance of becoming lucid in this next dream, you'll see, I can feel it.

Yeah, I'm not too good at it Did SSILD afterward and went to sleep at 4:30. (Forgot the entire beginning of the dream, but it started out non-lucid, so it wasn't a WILD.)

First thing I remember is walking down a path by the lake with my brothers and mom. All of us have been attempting dream control for a while, and I've failed to fly multiple times.

I run ahead of them and for no real reason flop down in a patch of grass. A specific type of anticipation comes over me, like I need to concentrate, yet at the same time avoid focusing too hard on what's happening. Suddenly a gust of wind pushes me into a sitting position, and with minimal effort, I begin to hover in the air.

A grin spreads across my face and I unsteadily fly higher, cheering and showing off to my familial unit. My brother records me as I spin and flap my arms and make little circles in the air. I land in front of them, and my mom asks how I did it. I tell her about the gust of wind and think to myself that this kind of "external assistance" is typical in dreams.

Later my brothers and I, along with their friends Ethan and Marcus, are lying on a picnic blanket watching the video Z took of me. I apparently do another cool thing at the end, and halfway through Z says impatiently, "Why is it taking so long?"

I wonder why he doesn't just skip ahead, and wake up.

You can tell this wasn't a high level of lucidity by my reaction to the flying. I've done it countless times, and it usually comes naturally to me, even in non-lucids. This was closer to role-playing. But still, it was pretty exciting.

1. Flight To The Clouds (LD)
I'm sitting at a circular table jotting down some notes onto white lined paper. I have a little sketch of what looks like a chair. I write "don't give up on dreaming". I'm suddenly lucid, and I say out loud: "I'm lucid". I stand up and take in my surrounding. I'm in an area in a large structure which connects to many side rooms. I walk forward to begin exploring a bit. I suddenly remember a podcast I heard the previous day with Holocek and ground my vision onto the floor in the dream, which is quite vivid with a dark cream color and dark green speckling. I then look at my hands in shout "Increase clarity now"! Upon looking at my hands again I notice that I have four finger. One of the middle fingers is a bit bent, yet the entire hand is very vivid. I raise my gaze and begin exploring. I peer into the first room and notice a vacant bedroom with white covers which are pulled back. The bed hasn't been made and the covers are a giant jumble. I quickly leave the room and begin exploring a bit more. It appears that I'm in a large house which is connected to a central hub, which is essentially a large kitchen. I head toward a wall and then think of some dream goals. I immediately think of some dream yoga skills, and slowly phase my hand into the wall, and watch it go through easily. I then think of advanced phasing and phase my whole body through. Once through, the dream begins to fade a bit, and I instinctively begin flying up rapidly to preserve the dream. I rise higher and feel that I'm not going fast enough to I decide to try some advanced flying at start traveling at what I perceive to be hundreds of miles and hour. I'm soon in an cloudy area which lacks clear vision. The dream quickly resolves to bringing me back to the large house I was just in. I approach a staircase and peer up, noticing yet another vacant bedroom with the covers pulled back just like the first. I head across the central area and toward a bedroom in the corner area. I think back to my goal of traveling to a persistent realm via The Purple Crystal. I anticipate it being in the immediate left corner when I enter, yet when I turn my head it's not there to my surprise. The room is quite messy with many items on a side cabinet. I leave this area and enter the kitchen. The central kitchen area is beautifully put together with a deep brown colored wood with a tinge of orange as well as a glossy finish. I make my way around the central island area and notice a large hood type structure above the counter top. I explore for a minute or so, then notice a large fruit basket filled with peaches on the center of the island. I consider taking one, then decide I really don't want any fruit. But I figure, why not have some chocolate! I head to the fridge, pull out a sliding drawer, and quickly find the same dark chocolate I have in waking life. I grab two packages and put one in my left pocket. I begin opening one as I continue to walk toward the back of the house. I put some chocoalte in my mouth, yet my gaze is focused on the back of the hosue and my attention doesn't return to the flavor for a moment. When my attention returns, I don't really notice any flavor. I get the sense the dream is fading, and soon wake up.

Back to Sleep

2. Waterfall Skies (LD)
I'm lucid in a dark void and slowly a dream begins to form. I'm in a hallway of sorts with light gray concrete coloring. I stop and shout "Increase clarity now"! I look at my hands and notice the vivid colors and texture of the skin. I approach a concrete wall in front of me which looks quite solid and think of some dream yoga stages. I have the slightest bit of doubt as I stick my hand into the wall to phase through it and my hand bends against the concrete. I ignore fully phasing right now and look at the concrete stairs which descend along with a slanted concrete ceiling above. I decide to phase half my dream body through the concrete and it works perfectly. Upon reaching the lower level, I see that I can continue straight or make a left. I make my way forward, yet get the feeling the dream is going to fade if I continue, so I turn left toward an area that has a warm yellow hue emanating from it, similar to a sunrise. I enter the area to my left, and it naturally curves right into a beautiful area in nature with lush green grass and a pathway extending down to the left along with a body of water to the right which curves around a mountain structure in the middle. The lake area is crescent shaped and situated on a plateau. On the left most portion is a large floating piece of earth with a large waterfall cascading off of it. I begin floating down the lake, and as I progress I notice additional, yet small floating pieces of dark earth with stone embedded in it. Small streams of water are making their way off of the floating structures and into the lake. I begin thinking of a name for the dream and my mind remembers a song named "I can hear the water at the edge of all things". I feel the song doesn't quite fit the feel of the dream however. I continue to float and notice the third floating piece of earth overhead. I additional begin seeing small bronze statute of young lions on pieces of earth that are surfacing form the lake. I curve left around the central mountain and the dream begins to fade. I make my way to the edge and begin circling my arms alternately to maintain the dream. The dream slowly fades and I wake.

Back to Sleep.

3. The Campus Game (LD)
I'm in a parking lot across the street from what appears to be a mix of my current home and my summer home as a child. I'm with my wife and we're trying to find a way home, yet we don't have a car. We ask a lady i the parking lot driving a large white truck if she could give us a lift. I get in the back seat with H. The explains that she's heading north from Tampa. I'm confused and wonder how she's heading from Tampa. I then state that my body is a asleep in New Jersey. Oh! This is a dream! I turn to the two DCs and say "I like you guys a lot, but I'm gonna go fly and shit" - in an enthusiastic comical tone -and proceed to open the the door and zoom into the sky! The dream goes into a black void and I begin visualizing some colors. The dream quickly forms into a very vivid scene of what appears to be a school campus. I'm on a concrete walkway which extends forward to the main structure which is two stories with a triangular adornment above the doors leading inside. A walkway extends to the left a few yards ahead of me, and large basketball court with several baskets as well as games running simultaneously is situated to the right. I decide to just have some fun and fly onto the court to play with the DCs, yet with the ability to fly around. I attempt to use telekinesis to stop a couple of the balls mid-air, yet it doesn't work and they continue to bound very high from the players dribbling. I fly up to a DC, steal the ball, and continue to play. I leave this group and head to another and notice that one DC is my friend N from back in high school. I steal the ball again and try to fly around him to make a shot but am having some difficulty maneuvering around the super tall players. I start cracking up and tell N that even though I can fly, he's still crushing me. The dream soon fades and I wake up.

Date: 26/06/2023
Bedtime: 4am
Awakening: 7.30am
Return to bed: 7.40am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 9.30am
The Recalling Experiment


DREAMING

It's a dark night and I'm part of a brigade searching for an unknown enemy. Next to me, armed and wary of danger lurking in the dark, is the actor Bruce Willis. Suddenly, we observe the infantry being attacked by an invisible agent; petrified soldiers begin to levitate and haemorrhage from every orifice before being dropped from an altitude of fifteen feet by a mysterious force. Me and Bruce look at each other before running for our lives. We hide in a cave-like shelter and keep quiet, hoping that the enemy won't find us. There is a mutual agreement that we are no match for the invisible enemy who wiped out the infantry. We are probably the only two foot soldiers left. We lie down on a mattress on the floor and hide under the covers. I feel hot and sweaty.


WAKING

I feel hot and sweaty as I wake up to the sound of my alarm. I get my son up to get ready for school and, exhausted after having had a bad night, I return to bed. Lying on my back and relaxing, I wonder if I'll be able to have an out-of-body experience. I keep imagining standing at the foot of the bed and looking back at myself lying asleep. After a couple of lapses in consciousness (or so it seems), I succeed in reifying the thought of being out of bed.


LUCID DREAMING

It feels like I am actually standing next to the footboard and partially facing a wall which I proceed to rap in order to deepen my phantom environment. My wife rises from under the covers and asks me what I'm doing. 'I'm lucid dreaming!' I excitedly reply and begin expatiating on why it is amazing and deserving of joint exploration before pausing at the realisation that I've been talking to a figment of my dreaming mind. Tapping the wall appears to intensify the environment and the grainy surface melts like a white marshmallow as I press it with my fingers. At this point, I remember the recalling experiment (as part of a plan of action) as well as the previous nightmare where, as a foot soldier, I witness my brigade getting killed by an invisible agent.

I make an attempt to delude myself (according to this counterintuitive experiment) by entertaining the idea that the nightmare where the infantry perished was real and that I must've been knocked unconscious and carried to this bedroom replica by the invisible agent. Not feeling confused in the slightest about what's real and what isn't despite trying to contrive a confabulation, I also feel the need to tell myself that waking life memories were implanted in my brain by the enemy. This still doesn't seem to be enough as my sceptical mind emphatically rejects self-delusion for lack of evidence, so I tell myself that the enemy is conniving, that absolute certainty of any world being 'real' is impossible and that what I need in this situation is a leap of faith.

I penetrate the melting wall to find a peculiar staircase adorned with a myriad of glossy beads (instead of my youngest son's bedroom as would be the case in the real world). The stairs appear to reflect weak sunlight coming from arched, stained-glass windows displaying complex mandalas and I scuttle downstairs with the purpose of somehow finding and confronting my mysterious enemy. Before I can reach the exit of the building I'm in, however, I suddenly feel myself to be back in bed. Refusing to give in to these dispiriting sensations, I wilfully interpret them as the enemy magically pulling the wool over my eyes before forcing myself out of bed to glide out of the window with blurry vision.

I land on paving slabs in broad daylight and begin stomping the pavement, producing echoey footsteps that help me to intensify the scene. There is a hyperreal quality to the esplanade before me as I run alongside a concrete wall—at the end of which is the looming suggestion of a beach hiding behind it. I glance at my bare feet and notice crystalline water in the gutter running counter to my direction. I look up and see a man in black watching me before disappearing behind the wall towards the beach. I feel I must reach him as he might be able to lead me to my enemy. Reaching the end of the wall to access the beach (it never occurred to me to go through concrete as a logical shortcut), I come face to face with the figure wearing a black trenchcoat and a fedora hat. He's a dead ringer for the actor Ed Harris but his eyes are uncannily blue and his gaze chillingly penetrating.

'Where is the enemy?' I demand as I display my infantryman persona. 'The wizard is in the tower,' the man in black softly replies as he points to a lighthouse on a rocky promontory beyond the sandy beach. I waste no time in gliding to the top of the lighthouse, entering an empty garret overlooking a calm sea and cloudy horizon. Where is the 'wizard' who wiped out my brigade? Perhaps he is invisible in this very room. Could the man in black at the beach be the real enemy? I leap from the lighthouse and descend on the beach next to a stall that wasn't there before. The Ed Harris lookalike is there, apparently polishing an amulet and a few trinkets are on display. 'Are you the wizard?' I enquire. The man in black appears to be smirking as he turns his back on me before vanishing into his little shop as the beach fades.


WAKING

I dash off some notes in my journal in conclusion of this experiment. In hindsight, my lucidity was solid enough to maintain the knowledge that what was unfolding wasn't real. I never came to fully believing what I wanted to believe for the sake of this experiment. The most I could achieve was entertaining a what-if scenario, which is surprising because in many past experiences what usually takes effort is countering the loss of lucidity and preventing the manifestation of ordinary dreaming. Most of the time it felt like I was pretending to be a soldier looking for answers to see how it would influence the phantom world of lucid dreaming. Curiosity of what would happen if I entertained a mere hypothesis is what drove me. Deep down I still knew that I would eventually wake up to the real world where my family and everything I care about exist.