lucid

This is gonna be a long one, but the second part is now undoubtedly my all time favourite dream.

The first dream I'll dub my journey with Newton. He and I were venturing around the dream land recounting the old days and filling each other in. Mostly though we were just making jokes and grilling everyone around us like back in elementary school. At one point in that, it got extremely cold and he was going to back out of the dream so I just started hugging him. We've never hugged in real life, and after a moment I said "I missed you man." He said he missed me too. Then, he kissed me. That was extremely weird given who he is but I knew immediately it was because I just miss his friendship and companionship after all these years. After that moment I started really looking around and did my classic reality check which is just to say "This is a dream". Well, that really worked. So I'm in a lucid dream, and it immediately goes into my old house. I don't know what to do but I know I gotta act fast or I'll lose the dream (clearly wasn't very medetative at this point). I decide to run through the wall. I smash it and it shoots me back like rubber. Then, I try again but at the last second shoot a portal gun portal from my hands. It works, but obviously I end up back in the room. For fun I put the second portal across the room and just run forward infinitely for a bit, before walking out the back door. I notice everything is black and white, so I head downtown to find colour. Well I found it alright because everything was balloon animals. I thought about sex, so I went into a sex club but still balloon animal people so I lost interest and lucidity.

Dream #2: Electric boogaloo.

It started with me on a cliff top. I was hanging with some old friends of mine, but i was searching for something emotionally. One of the guys started doing a tightrope walk between two power poles like a lunatic. Uncle dave was watching with me, but he was near the cliff edge and it made me nervous. He noticed and started laughing because the drop was only about 10 feet, I just couldn't see.

At this point I felt extremely lonely emotionally, so I decided to go to my old house and retrieve something I'd left behind for myself. On the way there, it began to become a video game. This is because of how much Far Cry Primal I've been playing. I was walking up a hill when I noticed a hunter and a medecine man accompanying me. Two enemy tribesmen attacked me but my party quickly killed them without me raising a finger. I didn't like this, so I banished everyone. I was going in alone.

As I approached the house, it became clear to me that there were people living here. This is when the dream became my most favorite dream. It was as if I was playing Dishonored as myself. A first-person magician assassin. My goal was to kill nobody however, and this was emphasized as I realized who was in the house. The house was a massive White House kind of like the ones you see on plantations in the American South. I knew which window was going to my bedroom, so I just ran wall jumped up and grabbed the ledge. as I looked inside voice in my head said “Oh no, looks like company.” There was a little boy of maybe 10 years old using a small toilet the corner. He didn't see me yet because there was a curtain dividing us but my Advanced senses had picked them up. Luckily, I had the ability to use the Sleep spell from Skyrim. I don't even know if there is a sleep spell but it was basically the calm spell with sleeping affect. I approached the kid and Prime to my sleeping spell. I missed. I missed another two times as I got used to the delay that it has as it moves slowly through the air. He kind of ignored me instead of screaming out which was perfect. He sat in the corner of his room looking at something and said why do you keep trying to hit me with that. I held my hand and prime the spell.

This was my first Lucid moment, although I have not realized it yet. Instead of just triggering the spell, I activated in my hand and then played with it as advanced around my fingers. I tried to entice him to reach out and grab the incredible blue magic ball. He was rightly suspicious, so instead I just slowly walked it over to him and he went to sleep. I open the drawers under the bed and was happy to find what I was looking for. An old box full of items from my past. The piece of paper that have been sentimentally signed by my friends in a dream the previous night, as well as some Wooden Spoons for my kitchen for some reason and a piece of paper make granted me the power to summon a shaman at anytime. The very last thing in the room was a knock at the door. Suddenly I realize that my brother was in the room with me, he was the one who said that we had company originally. He was definitely in there because earlier today in the middle of playing Far Cry he texted me something and it randomly was inserted into that experience. This mirror that exactly.I told him to get out of here, I was on a solo Mission and I would do this my own way. He had other ideas and was going to stay. The boy's mother knocked on the door and he woke up, so I hit him with another sleep well. Stupidly, when she open the door, my brother slammed it shut when I had been planning to let her walk in and then hit her with a sleep spell as well. When he slammed the door, I could see through a crack in the wall of the all the other adults for starting to come investigate.

So I said f*** it and jumped out of the window. I started shipping along looking in the top floor but all the rooms are full so I jump down to the basement. The basement was line with big windows, and there was a guy way down at the other end working on something. I walked in and grab some food supplies before I could put the guy to sleep I realize there was another person walking right toward me in the dark. And then suddenly a girl sprinted right past me without seeing me. This was again mirroring the strange thing that happens in Far Cry when you berserk an enemy, and other enemies will run right past you trying to get to them without seeing you at all. I exited the basement and climbed to back up to the second floor. There was a man in the room that I entered and I took him down. I knew he was a bad man.

When I next exited I headed up to the rooftop to check out my surroundings. I noticed that I was actually surrounded, and next to the house was an old broken down Barn. I somehow quickly got onto the roof I'm sure of what just happened, And as I looked around I saw that I was in the middle of a mass of moonshine running operation. The big house belong to the guy who ran it all. As I was looking around I heard a noise and turn to see a moonshine runner smiling at me. He asked me “what parts are you from boy.” I replied “nowhere in particular.” He asked me how long I've been running moonshine and I said it was my first day. Suddenly the guy running the operation looked up and started yelling of the gentleman next to me, apparently they were good friends. He got a good look at me and said welcome to the operation. Little did he know he'd seen me only 20 minutes earlier sneaking into his house. He was the man in the basement. He was too narcissistic to remember a face, and I was in the clear.

When nobody was looking I back stabbed the man on the rooftop with me and from him I took wings. These were small and shitty straw wings worn on the hands, the exact wings I had feared would be replacing the wingsuit in Far Cry primal. The guy running the operation made a big speech about how he was going legal, and was going to get everybody permits in order to run “high-income swap options” by the end of the summer.I don't know what the f*** high-income swap options are but I guess my brain made it up as the most generic trade good on the Earth. After he was done talking I flew back to the roof of the house, but was so disappointed in how s*** the wings were that I just took them off my hands and threw them down. This began my lucid dream. As I took them off I realized I can violate the laws of a video game, like simply dropping my weapon or ripping off items that usually you could never do.

I jumped down. On the ground I found a dead man with a sword that I plunged into his head. I walked past him and picked it up, walking into the basement of the house and encountering a man. Another man came flying into the room and I stabbed him through the chest and then put the first man to sleep. Suddenly there were 200 moonshine Runners after me, but I just calmly walked out as they didn't know who I was yet and all the witnesses have been put down and some way. I looked up and I was next to a high wall and I knew I couldn't scale it with my video game logic, so I took the sword and stabbed into the wall then used it as a launching point to reach the edge above me. I grabbed the sword back out of the wall and then scale the tree that was growing on top of it. And this moment I fully felt my body and knew that I was in a dream, because I had trouble running toward the tree and noticed that it was the classic molasses running the happens and dreams. Once I scaled the tree I looked around me.

There were enemies everywhere, crawling around looking for me. Nobody looked up to see me. I had stripped myself voluntarily of my wings, leaving me with nothing but my wits, my agility, and those sleeping spells. There was an entire forest to my right, buildings to my left, and a sword in my hand. I was about to have some real lucid dreaming fun.

My alarm goes off.

I only got two hours of sleep but in my attempt I had several short HH's and a short dream.
1. HH of a beautiful large crown like nothing I have ever seen. It was gold with diamonds but mostly blue sapphire looking stones all over it with great detail. I was staring at it and admiring every little detail which was extremely stable but eventually floated outside of my vision.

2. HH of a beautiful woman with brown long soft wavy hair and piercing green eyes, very seductive looking. I was watching her and admiring how pretty she was when she started to transform as if she was stretching. I decided to try to control it and changed her hair to blonde, her eyes to blue, and she snapped back into being more stable, I had a moment where I was a surprised I could change her when I wasn't even asleep yet, then her eyes disappeared and she started to get scary looking and dissolved.

3. I saw an old school friend that had a glass eye. I knew him in 7th grade so knew this was a dream. He was reaching his arms out for me from a distance and never said a word. Just as I got to him to grab his hands I woke up.

I start off in this dream in what appears to be upstairs somewhere. There were lights on and I was doing things until I got semi lucid. My mom was making cakes and stuff and I seen square pieces of cake all around. They were on the table on some on the floor. I got hold of one and started to eat it until I thought, what if it tastes like fecal matter. I ignored that thought and took a bite. It was sweet to the taste but not too much. I sat the rest of the cake down and then went downstairs. As I did that I see clear glass bowls filled with banana pudding. It had the Nilla wafers on the top almost looking like egg yoke and some yellow colored cream under them. There were many big bowls of them. What one earth is my mom doing was all I can think the say of this.

Dream shifts or an FA. I'm watch transformers and a decepticon named Tidalwave tranferrs himself into some kind of Alt dimension. He is with a friend who was a dark colored robot, displaying greys and purples on him. Tidalwave seems happy as he began to explore this place that looks like it is outside somewhere with grass a sky and trees. He then starts to jump around joyfully running through the scene and I hear his deep voice laugh in enjoyment.

#2 LD this morning.


Since I didn't have anywhere to go after sending everyone out the door in the morning,
I decided to try a WBTB and MILD. It worked.

Again I do not remember what triggered me to do a RC. I was in my own house, in the kitchen I think. I plugged my nose and could still breath in easily. So that was it. I was dreaming, and knew it. The next tasks I have for myself were to study my surroundings more carefully, so I looked around with mindfulness and woke up.
This would be a beginner task of the month - fail.
So apparently its harder to look around mindfully than it is to do something active like flying.

I stayed there to see if WBTB would work again. And it did. For sure I was in the kitchen looking out the window and my DH was there with me. I did the RC and told him, "hey, we are dreaming!"
So a beginner TOTM success!
And did the RC again to show him. I did not want to abandon him and go try flying again, so I suggested that we try sex in the Astral Plane.

I have the whole dream written down on paper so no details here.

Had two lucid dreams this morning via MILD.

I was atop some skyscraper construction, in a room just below the roof. It was mostly empty, with only tiles placed. There were no lights or glass panes, but it wasn't dark as sunlight getting through random openings lit the area. It was a noon. I went down some strange stairs that were wider or shorter in places and got to a small hallway opening to some industrial area which was part of the building. I was holding my laptop. I got out to the area and on a ledge on higher level of construction I saw some people coming. There was a way to another hallway, leading down the skyscraper. I followed it, but then a sudden shot at the chest killed me. I was back at the opening to industrial bit, went out and saw those people on the ledge again. This time I decided to move in the opposite direction than the second hallway, but I fell with my laptop into some water cistern. I didn't drowned, but for some reason I somewhat opened up a console and used a cvar that would reset the dream state back to the first hallway. After the reset I thought that this might be a dream and made a nose plug RC. It worked and I was lucid. I didn't had laptop this time and ignored people on the ledge when going out. I entered a strangely shifted spiral staircase that was hard to navigate and got to a tiled hallway. Following it I stepped through empty doorframe and entered a five star hotel. Going further I met some blonde woman in a long, black dress that instantly came closer and hugged me, then she started leading a dance. The dream became unstable and just like a game or some programme, it changed from "fullscreen" to "windowed" mode and I could see the woman hugging me in a window on bottom-left corner of "screen". In the background there were colourfull energy streams.

6.30-7.15am
Back in school. Drama class. Ring of chairs around the outside, with a female student in the centre doing a performance art dance type thing? The performance finishes and my friend JR, in the chair to my right, gets up and enters the ring. Crap. That means I'm next. Is there a specific set of actions we are supposed to do? I get nervous at the thought of having to stand up in front of the class with no clue what is going on.

Thankfully, it occurs to me that this is a dream and I RC by looking at my hand. It's weird and twisted. I do a pinch-nose RC too, to confirm. Phew. Then I stand up and exit the classroom.

Outside I recall the plane TOTY and look around. A few trees. An empty road. No planes. Well, fake it 'til you make it: I squat as if sitting in a seat, arms forward as if clutching an imaginary flight stick. Then I do a vertical take off, thinking about a eurofighter shape until the plane forms around me. Now inside a reasonably realistic looking plane, I push the flight stick forward and start flying over the forest. It's quite speedy.

Now to find a time breach. A swirling pattern appears in the clouds and I fly towards it. The swirls lead into a wormhole of blackness filled with yellow 'dripping' dots falling in all directions. Gravity is screwed. Who knows which way is up anymore?

I get through the time breach and emerge in the future flying over a city on a mountaintop. There are a cluster of spires covered in metal spikes and radio masts. A river runs through the city. It looks fast flowing and drops into several waterfalls heading down the mountain. In the middle of the river are several silver structures that must be futuristic hyrdoelectric generators.

The sky is clear. I fly through the towers and look down at the streets below. They look mostly empty, no sign of cars. One building seems to be made entirely from black glass. There are no signs or screens or adverts. I spot something that looks like a motorbike and land. It has a very stylistic frame and is presumably an electric motorbike as there is no engine or exhaust pipes. Also it only has half a handlebar - the right side, with a throttle. So, no clutch or gears. Twist'n'go. I gotta try this thing out!

After swinging a leg over the frame I grab a fistful of throttle and it immediately wheelies down the road. Woah! I'm not sure what to do with my left hand, without a handlebar to hold, so I just sort of rest it on my knee. Anyway, rolling down the street pulling dank whoolies has attracted attention - a couple of other riders on similar machines join the road and start chasing me. I head down a narrow alley and see a blue and white droid at the end, which barely gets out of the way... I smash through into someone's back yard with grass and a shed.

The air is filled with flying fish! They are glowing blue. What the hell is this now? I stop the bike and wander over to a tree, where there are several fish hanging out in the branches. On closer inspection, one of the fish has a chameleon ability and changes it's colour to black. It's eyes look bloodshot. At this point I wake up.

COMMENTARY NON-LUCID DREAM LUCID DREAM

Sleep: 11:45pm
WBTB: 2:45am, 6:30am
Awake: 8:00am
Tech: MILD
Dreams: 2
Lucids: 1

2/6/17 -
1. My memory begins with me standing outside a building next to a man in a suit. I have the impression that he works for the government or some type of secret organization, but I do not remember why I have this feeling. The man receives a phone call, and before answering he walks down the sidewalk and into a large parking lot filled with cars. I follow him to try to listen to the phone call. When I get near the parking lot, he notices me but does not seem to mind that I am listening (perhaps we are working together?). I walk back to stand in front of the original building. Soon, he returns with an empty styrofoam container exactly like what is used for to-go food at restaurants. He is no longer on the phone. He hands me a list of items and says that "we're out of time, I need you to go buy these items now". I wake up.

I woke up from the previous dream at 6:30 as T is leaving for work. I write tags in my dream journal and say goodbye to her. I lay down and begin MILD. I repeat MILD process several times and have trouble sleeping. I decide my intention is set and stop process to allow myself to go to sleep. On several occasions, as my mind wandered near sleep, I naturally began the MILD process again, reaffirming intention and visualizing lucidity. Eventually, I must have fallen asleep. Upon waking from this next dream, I recall a blank period of sleep and then this next dream beginning.

2. I am standing in a rectangular room. There is a man in a suit standing near the far wall. He is speaking to someone on the phone and seems angry/anxious. He is holding a white paper in his hands. I remember him saying: "It's time for sacrido witness, Lincoln Burrow! At this point, I realize I'm dreaming and the feeling of "lucidity" spreads over the dream. I try to remain calm but I feel the dream fade and wake up immediately.

It felt like a FA but I RC and I am truly awake. Next time I will try to DEILD if that happens. I didn't RC to get lucid and I don't think I noticed a dreamsign or anything weird. Instead, I simply remembered from the MILD induction that this was a dream.

I am driving a car, and other cars are going the wrong way! I see a purple tube that descends off the floating road to where? I am lucid, but I want to know what is down there. I descend rapidly with tons on adrenaline, and reach a bubble. The bubble is the size of my car, and tansparent. I get out of he car and go in. Suddenly, it drops down and down, until it hits water! I am now in an air bubble floating through a beautiful pale sea.

I FA and become lucid by seeing 6 fingers, and attempt to wake.

However, I am still dreaming! I become lucid and fly out the open window. The sky is a cloud covered pink as I float through a serene town. I see a church with a yellow light emanating from inside, and I float through the window. Some poorer people from the village are gathered at a table sharing a humble feast. However, a rich man in a red cloak steps in, and sends them away, and eats it all himself. I leave sadly.

I wake for real in the middle of the night.

I fall back asleep. I become lucid and fly around aimlessly a countryside peacefully. I eventually try to fly to my solar system, by getting on a truck and trying to pull myself out of the atmosphere but fail.

I wake up for real.

I become lucid. A attractive olive-skinned woman in a scarlet dress stands before me. She gives me some advice, but I mistrust her. I ask Don if she can be trusted, and to my surprise she can. He says she is my secondary dream guide.

Had a short lucid dream this morning. It was via SSILD. I was jumping around this room housing three engines. They were more like 3 super fans or whatever. Crazy, I know. Dreams are going to do dream things. Woke up and tried to get back into the dream world. Reached sleep paralysis but I screwed myself by expecting some weird monster to attack me. A result of me reading Sleep Paralysis horror stories on this site. Since the dream world heavily relies on expectations, I felt something hug me. I turned my head to see this red creature thing hugging me. It resembled Him from Powerpuff Girls. That girly demon dude. Snapped me right awake again.

Important take away here is that once the WBTB ritual is completed and/or a quiet mindful state is achieved, it is imperative to FOCUS ON FALLING ASLEEP. That is how I got my lucid dream morning. I must absolutely keep this mind because I have a bad habit of wanting to lucid dream so bad in short time I have for a morning nap, that I try too hard to stay aware and thus stay awake. WRONG.

Do SSILD. Get into a quiet mindful state via meditation. RELAX AND FOCUS ON FALLING ASLEEP. Trust in the technique to do its job.

Sun, 05 Feb 2017:

I think I came into this scene with some awareness from a WILD style entry perhaps from DEILD but I don't exactly remember. I am in this rocky canyon area and feel boldness to fly and start to fly fully realizing I am dreaming. I then remember the plane TOTY I tried last night with some challenges. I land and start rubbing my hands together and saying how I will have a nice long lucid dream. There is no great spot to take off from traditionally with good size rocks everywhere on the reddish brown dirt but this is a dream anyway and it's a better spot than the empty sky off of the building I was hoping to materialize an airplane from the night before.



So I imagine I am climbing a small ladder up making the movements and I get into what is a vaguely forming cockpit. I imagine the key is in front of me and go to turn it with my right hand and the cockpit is looking good now with some controls and instruments that look like they belong in a plane. The engine sputters and is very rough sounding and I say okay that vague shape there on my right is one of the wings and I see them form like a small Cessna plane in off white color. The nose then forms with the blurred image of a quickly spinning single propeller on it and I have blue horizontal stripes on the nose and feel the rest of the plane behind me.



I take off using a gas pedal on my right foot to accelerate the engine and propeller, moving forward now and then pulling on the two-handed rectangular control (yoke?).

I fly up over the rocky area and off of a cliff with no issues. I fly around the canyon area a bit and remember that I need to open up a time breach before getting to my destination so I decide that what looks like the end of the canyon area is my destination and I mentally will a time breach to open and it looks like a big light-blue tunnel. As I go through, the visuals fade but not to black, more of a blur of shapes. I continue to hold my hands on where the controls were and fly forward willing myself to slow down but keep going forward.

Having exited the time breach perhaps, I eventually a small European village looking place forms with 2 story stone buildings and narrow cobblestoned streets forms.



I fly around the corner of one of the buildings having gone from a sitting position to a standing flying position. I see what looks like an attractively shaped girl with long black hair in a red dress from behind and I float up a little, like like I am exiting the no longer there cockpit.



I land behind her and tap her on her shoulder. She turns around and is indeed attractive and we start kissing passionately. I take her hand and we walk around another corner that becomes a room. She wants to

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

have sex

in front of her girlfriends, at least 5 of them and there's one guy as well.



Sounds good to me as I

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

lean her against a bed and whisk away her clothes with a swoop of my hand and take her from behind. It is very exciting having sex with her while other attractive girls look on eagerly. After a bit I feel like I could experience ejaculation

in this dream, because it feels so real. Instead, I start

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

having issues with it slipping out and needing to stick it back in multiple times. While back in

and losing sensation I start to wake, smiling ear to ear! My WBTB hour didn't seem right for choline or galantamine but I did take 5-htp before bed for the REM rebound effect, which may or may not have helped.

I woke up in a bed in parents' bedroom. The house looked like in the old days, long before any renovations. I felt like going to toilet. I went through kitchen which looked just fine, then trough a hallway and to doors leading to small room (basement and attic access) before toilet. I opened doors and saw that attic hatch was open, violent streams of opaque pale blue water falling down. By the basement hatch I saw a ducts opening closed with grates, our dog, though zombified, desperately tried to get out of the ducts. It's body looked like that of a mummy, anger in it's eyes. I quickly closed doors and upon hearing my grandma saying "I'm done, toilet is free now!" I repoened them and let her pass, then finally got to the toilet. It looked horrible, the bathtub was moved to the middle of the room and looked really old. I sat on the toilet seat and thought "Wait, is that a dream?" I made a nose plug RC and confirmed that it was a dream, just when I finished what I started doing on the toilet seat. I looked around, and thought "Give me toilet paper." and it instantly appeared on a small shelf nearby. I finished everything and washed up hands, then thought "What should I do now?" when leaving the toilet. I went to kitchen and saw grandma sitting on a chair, somewhat sad. Then I got an idea and said in my mind "I know! I'll just make my grandma happy!". I started with tidying the house, waving my hands and everything tidied on a whim. Then I thought "Wait, I should wake up!", and so I did.

...And the secret was getting 7.75 hours of sleep, apparently. I'm going to try and continue this trend. Regardless of how intense the week is, I will do my best to get enough sleep on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Which, for me, will be hugely beneficial I think.

So here's a list of all the many dreams I have recalled from last night:

Dream 1: Non-lucid; experienced during first 20 minutes of sleep. I fell asleep at roughly 12:10 AM, and had a dream about hanging out with my sister, my brother or friend (I think?), and a friend of my sister's. My sister went to use the bathroom, and the other guy I was with was talking with me and her friend. We were talking about her, but I don't precisely remember what we were talking about specifically. When she finished using the bathroom, she came out and said "You know I heard you while I was in there", because IRL my sister really does have good hearing. So maybe it was something embarrassing, but I don't really know for sure. I woke up and it was only 12:32 AM, so my brain had apparently launched me pretty quickly into REM again for some reason.

Dream 2: Non-lucid, but very close to lucidity. Good vs. evil! A giant snake was trying to kill me and two other people. However, my stuffed snake, Snakey, my tulpa, and I were destined to save us all! (I actually do have a stuffed snake, and he is actually named Snakey. He is the coolest. However, he is at my parent's house right now. :p In the dream, he had become real.) We prayed that we would be able to triumph over the snake. Then, we felt like we should just will it away, because -- get this -- we recognized that it was only in our heads and wasn't actually real. This one was SO CLOSE to being lucid, because of that realization, but not quite! We willed it away, and it worked!

Dream 3: Non-lucid. This is a fuzzier dream that I experienced during what felt like deeper sleep. Arguably it would've been significantly harder to become lucid during this one because of this fact. This one occurred in the middle of the night, if I recall correctly. IRL, I work part-time as a computer science TA at my university, helping students debug Java and Android programs. In this dream, the other TAs and I apparently "did not want to stop believing OR coding". I believe some malevolent individual was trying to get us to stop believing in God or something and also stop programming. Someone said that he would kill us all if we didn't do this. He had an army of supporters to back him up. Then, it faded and we were in a theme park. I dream a LOT about theme parks. Anyway, we were on the rides, but I was watching from a distance despite being on a ride technically myself. (?) Some of my fellow TAs were riding on a white roller coaster. The evil guy's plan was to hack into all the rides while we we're still on them, and somehow harm us. Maybe shut them down. I don't really know. I was worried for the others. Then, it faded again, and we were on a revolving turntable, much like the turntable by the roundhouse in Thomas the Train, but indoor and stark and depressing. I got onto it, and the evil guys had surrounded us. However, I somehow knew that we were going to be safe, and we were saved. I don't remember how.

Dream 4: Non-lucid. I was in a lecture hall of some sort for artists. The lady teaching was trying to tell us that 3D artists should NOT learn to draw or digitally paint, because apparently it would actually make us worse, since it would take time away from learning how to model and render a scene. I was really ticked because I definitely disagree with that philosophy, and I believe that the general 3D community would agree with me.

Dream 5: The DILD! Sort of. I didn't have a specific reality check that worked this time. But when I sleep 8 hours or close to it, my body starts waking up more and more as my actual wakeup time approaches. I will often physically wake up to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, and then go back to sleep for a while longer. This is the most natural thing for me. As I do this, I have more and more dreams, and more and more REM sleep. Then, I am much more likely to recall dreams, and also much more likely to become lucid. Hard work pays off, guys!

First, I was on the internet. Some girl said that she had recently had a week-long paid internship with Disney, where they were basically paid to ride rides all day long. They were supposed to observe the culture of theme parks, or something. Then, I suddenly found myself on a cart or truck thing going to a theme park. It was presumably Disney, but there were a lot of rides that Disney definitely doesn't have IRL. All these other people were on the truck, too, but they were official interns and wore brown vests. I was there, but I didn't have a vest, so apparently I wasn't an official intern. I was worried I'd get in trouble for being on the truck despite not being officially hired, and wasn't sure how I even got there in the first place. My mom and my brother were there, too. And neither of them had vests. I went to go sit by my mom, but as I sat down beside her, she disappeared. I felt that she was still there, but had no idea why she had just randomly become invisible. Also, the seats were tiny, so my butt barely fit on them. We were in the back of the truck, in the open air with just a pavilion thing over us. So if it would have been raining, we would've been sheltered, but we still got fresh air.

We kept riding in the truck, looking at the rides that we would soon ride. I then realized that I was dreaming, because Disneyland does not look like that IRL. Too many thrill rides. Well, that and my mom randomly disappearing.

So I sat by my brother, and told him, "I think we're in a dream right now." And he said something like "We definitely could be. Is everything out of focus?" I said that yes, everything most certainly was out of focus. So he said that it probably was a dream. Suddenly, instead of being inside of a truck, it was just me and him and the (inferred) driver inside of an SUV or a Jeep Cherokee or something, and there were suddenly windows. So I clambered out the window, which was partially rolled down, and flew towards one of the rides!

It was a water ride with boats that looked like Perilous Plunge, an old ride from Knott's Berry Farm that I never actually went on. It went inside of a brown artificial mountain, and it was super cool. But just as I was about to reach a boat to get on it, I woke up. D: NOOOOOO!

The dream was still fuzzy, too. I wish it was more vivid, but mentally I was so close to awakening that I did accidentally wake myself up. -_-

Also, my notes read "still had sizzle". Nope, no idea what I meant by that. o.o

Dream 6: I tried to re-enter the previous dream, but to no avail. I do have a note that said "she knew I wanted it lol." Don't recall what that means, but I can guarantee you that it was not appropriate.

Dream 7: I had a dream. There may have been a girl but I can't really read my notes. This was more like a fragment. My alarm woke me up before I could get any further.

And that's it.

Ritual: WTB around 2am. Drank a lot of wine last night, so woke up many times to rehydrate. Just before dawn I felt the slightly anxious insomnia that often helps me get lucid, so I decided to confirm my intention with a little piracetam. For years I've been trying to come up with a good dream mantra/affirmation but never found one that stuck. Since I got lucid in a recent dream from seing the word "awaken" I decided to start with that. I wanted it to be longer and have good rhythm, so I tried "Awaken into (seeing) dream," where the word in parenthesis could be varied with any other two-syllable verb with the emphasis on the first syllable: seeing, hearing, feeling, being, dreaming, etc. I liked the versatility and hoped the variations would help keep my mind active. It seems this mantra was actually successful because it was still going through my mind well after the dream had started, although, curiously, the words had changed (see below).

WILD, "No Snow for Sledding": The transition was very smooth, and I think the mantra actually served as a good anchor this time. At one point I was inspired to see if I could move my dream limbs, and felt that familiar ambiguity about whether it was dream movement or real movement. I was 65% sure it was dream, so I kept at it until I gently 'flumpfed' in a loose heap right off the bottom of the bed, and then I knew for certain. This dream version of my bedroom was remarkably accurate to WL.

I was crawling at first, and from that low perspective had a good view of my two cats. They looked a little different—shorter hair I think—but I could still tell them apart. Dream logic made me wonder if I could somehow better communicate with my anxious cat in a dream. I crawled over to her and put my hands on her head, reaching toward her with gentle thoughts and telling her that she didn't need to be so anxious. It didn't work: she bit my hand! After that she went into the hallway where I was surprised to see our older cat chase her, an inversion of their usual relationship. I moved toward them and noticed a third animal, a remarkably lifelike grey squirrel—even more vividly rendered than the two cats. [Source: I had recently remarked to my husband how odd it was that I had never seen any squirrels near our house here, but he said that he had. Then just two days ago I glimpsed a grey squirrel outside.]

I thought I had better remove the squirrel from the house, so I picked it up by the scruff of the neck—it was so realistic I thought I had better handle it carefully lest I get bitten again. I peered down to it, wondering if it might have anything to say (this being a dream and all), but no, it just twitched its nose like a regular squirrel. So I opened the window on my side of the bed, the place where in WL I toss out the miscellaneous bugs that stray into the house, and tossed it out.

Around this point I noticed that my mantra was still going through my head, though slightly changed from what it had been as I fell asleep. It had taken the form: "Awaken, dreamer, I am dream." It occurred to me that once I was already lucid, the word "awaken" was no longer useful, and in fact might be detrimental. I thought about how the meaning of the word depended on its context: from non-lucid sleep one can "awaken" into lucidity, but from a state of lucidity, to "awaken" is to wake up. With the precarious thought of waking I felt the dream begin to destabilized, and hastily altered the mantra to: "Dream on, dreamer, I am dream." I managed to restabilize, and with the natural musicality of dream found myself adding a bit of melody to the words.

After this my thoughts turned to more practical ends. Wasn't there a task I wanted to do? Right, the sled ride. I thought over the details. I would need to sled down from the top of a snowy mountain and then through a crack in the earth into... who knows? Finding out would be the fun part. It was snowy outside, like it is in WL, so I thought that would make a good start. I just needed to go outside and find a sled and a mountain.

I opened the window again to fly out, but now there was a pane of what felt like transparent plastic covering the opening. I was annoyed because even in WL this is one of the few windows in the house that has no screen, so there should not be anything barring my passing. I decided to shatter the barrier with my mind, concentrated, and... nothing happened. Disappointed that I could not resolve this more stylishly, I manually peeled aside the flexible plastic panel and slipped out onto the lower roof. (This part was not quite accurate to WL: although there is a sloping side of another roof to the left, there is no level area just below the window where one could stand.)

I willed myself to fly, but nothing happened initially. I kept focusing until I began to float up and across the yard. There were a lot of random pavilions scattered below, and I reminded myself to be observant so I would remember the details later. I flew over to the roof of a small outbuilding—the environment no longer bore any resemblance to WL—where I found two sleds. One was child-sized, the other larger, and I noticed approvingly that they were the old fashioned kind on runners, much easier to control than round saucer sleds.

I picked up the larger sled and looked it over. The details were wonderfully vivid: it had a painted metal superstructure consisting of thin round bars painted white, and flat wide bars painted green. These encircled a small rectangular seat of heavily aged and distressed wood. I noticed an odd detail in the very center of the sled, a transparent glass sphere about four inches in diameter, half full of water. I peered closer, wondering if it was some sort of gyroscope, and saw words printed on the sphere: "FAST WATER." I decided that this was a device for boosting speed, and that I would name my new sled "Fastwater." I felt very pleased with it.

Sled in hand, next I needed a mountain. I resumed floating through the air and scanning for suitable topography. I soon found myself approaching a steep hillock, but since it was at most a couple dozen feet high, I didn't think it qualified as a "mountain." After that was a second, taller hillock, but I rejected that one too on the same grounds. Then in the distance I saw a much taller hill with a massive castle on top of it. I had the impression that it was a German castle called "Schwanzstein," though even in the dream I recalled the meaning of schwanz (which, in common with many Americans, I learned long ago from the Mel Brooks film Space Balls). That seemed like a peculiar yet somehow familiar name for a castle, and I wondered why it came to mind. [Source: German castles have come up in conversation twice in the last few days, both the one at Wernigerode and another whose name I couldn't remember. I just asked my husband and he reminded me it was "Neuschwanstein." So there you have it. Sorry Freudians, you can go back home now.]

I figured that the type of hill on which one was likely to find a German castle could qualify as a small mountain, and decided that this would be a good spot to sled down from. I floated closer, noting a number of stiff and oddly sepia-hued guards standing around the courtyards, as though peopling an old postcard. I noticed a perfect straight chute for sledding that ran down from the top of the mountain, so that's where I landed. Everything was in place... except... there was no snow anymore. Could I just sled down anyway, I wondered? No, I distinctly recalled that the task specified a snowy mountain. I peered around, hoping I could at least spot a few patches of snow and call it even. But the grass was as brown as the guards—there was a hint of sepia about the whole place, like a movie scene shot through a filter—and no snow was visible anywhere.

I sat down with my sled, willing it to snow. I concentrated my expectations, imagining how the first tiny flakes would move erratically through the air. Once again the distinction between imagination and experience—which seems so improbable in the dream state—was reconfirmed, because even though I could clearly see the type of snow I envisioned in my mind's eye, the dream air remained stubbornly free of flakes. This TOTM has a lot of moving parts, I thought. It's as hard as a TOTY! A moment later I woke up and was amused to recognize my error; in waking life I would not have misremembered the category of the task, since the TOTYs are linked by a common theme.