lucid

Wednesday 4/24/13

last night bed 1am - 8:50am

Today nap 11am - 1:20pm

Nap WILD

I was getting close to WILD, so I imagined I'm flying upwards and I started to feel sensation of flying up, then I imagined falling down, and got that strong sensation.

Here I thought, that I must be already dreaming, no need to wait for any clues and decided to get up. I payed attention to my body standing up and it felt as my real body. Went out on my balcony and thought I better confirm, before jumping off. I did a thumb/palm and it was going in easily. Didn't push it all the way through, because I was a little grossed out. Then I pinched my nose and I could breathe. I didn't do these RCs in a long time. Even so, I was just climbing down on the outside of the balcony instead of jumping off, just in case.


I'm walking through neighbors yard. Looks like it's winter, trees are without leaves, maybe with some yellow, spring flowers. I walk over to our yard and neighbor is looking at me and waving, calling my name. I yell back, yes, you can see me, because you do meditations (he does IWL). But he can't hear me, so he stops.

I perch myself on top of the fence and start singing. Beautiful voice, melody, cool words. I'm very happy with myself. (As WILDing, one of my requests was let me hear some beautiful music. So I guess this was it? I guess I need to specify "not sung by me")

My dad and my mom are in the yard and it's so real, as if I was there for real. Dad in red tshirt, cleaning vegetables.

I don't know what to do, so I say this is also nice, visiting family. Then I remember I wanted to go to starship Voyager. So I say when I turn around, there is starsip Voyager. I turn around all smiles, but there is only open field.

I walk through the fields with a little girl and we are finding lots of toys in bags. I ask her if she would like them. Principal walks by.

As I get out of this LD, I start to iniciate another flying/falling sensation and it works. At some point I can feel both up and down falling at the same time. It was awesome. When it was over, I smiled to myself and said ok, now we can go and have a lucid dream. Again, I said to myself no need to wait for clues, I just get up. The moment I got up, neighbor came home with such a ruckus, sounded like she is moving or something. Damn. Then I just got up and will continue tomorrow.

Total sleep time: 7 hrs

Dream1: I am in a supermarket looking at the shelves, trying to find some coal. I soon see a number of large plastic bags full of coal. All of them are sealed, and I need one piece only. I then notice that one of them is open and while pretending to be looking around, I swiftly take out a rather pointy piece of coal, the size of my palm. I put it in my pocket and try to pass the cashier without being noticed. The guard obviously sees something strange about my behaviour and soon finds the piece of coal. I try to mumble an excuse that I forgot to put it with the rest of my shopping items. He believes me, puts a barcode on it, I grab some more items and head for the cashier. I am examining the piece, thinking I should have gotten a smaller, rounder one.

And this wasn’t lucid?

Fragment2: Something that resembles my hometown, school classmates are here again. I am looking at what I consider to be a church, thinking about Sagrada Familia, but this building is brown and is Portuguese? I am trying to travel to school by bus but end up confused again.

Unidentified Fragment3: Where my grandma lives, the streets, but someone is blocking the way so I have to go around and use another road to go back home. I might have been lucid for a micro-second here, but my memory is really vague.

Dream4 DILD: I feel like I am still somewhere in my grandma’s neighbourhood, talking to one of my classmates. The story we are being told is rather strange and irrational, some kind of animals have been activated, they leave their cells, memory of skateboard? At first I think that these animals or whatever they are will wreck havoc in the city, so we will be safe in a hotel.

I am in the hotel, I have a room there, I notice that the place for the room card has some sort of inverted moustache things, but totally dismiss that. I am walking around the corridors, when I see a friend running around, looking somewhat scared. He tells me that he is running away from these things, because they are now in the hotel. I look down the stairs and see that they have completely messed up the first floor. I try to go back to my room, but get lost in the corridors. I enter some room, which then becomes my room.

A guy from the hotel staff enters the room, and pretends to inform us about the situation. But I feel that he is fake and one of them! I do not pay attention to him, but head for the window, start opening it. I look out and see that there are staff members on every window below me, supposedly explaining the situation to guests. What a perfect timing, these can’t be real staff members. I jump out of the window, land in the nearby yard, the staff member is after me.

I continue running and become lucid. I am in something like hill-like suburb area, so decide to descend by flying over the houses, instead of taking the road. I am flying over the hill and houses for some time, it’s great, flying feels as if I am on a deltaplane. I want to see if I can speed up my flight and try to by concentrating ahead of me, but the speed remains constant. Then, I have some minor navigational issues, I am turning left without any desire to do so, can’t continue to fly straight. I land near some houses.

Then I somehow find myself back in the hotel room! This time one of our guests from real life is in the room too. “We really should be leaving”, I tell her. She starts to pack her bags, wants more time. I tell her that there is no need to do that since this is a dream. She can leave everything here. She looks at me with some disapproval. I also feel like I have forgotten something and have the urge to take my handbag and room key. “What handbag, this is a dream!”, I remind myself and then jump out of the window again. We must have been on the second floor. I land down, my boyfriend is there this time. I see other hotel guests are trying to leave the hotel, so everybody is queuing for a taxi. I am so happy my boyfriend’s DS is here, finally I can have some fun with a partner, and we will do TOTM together. I say to him “You know what, this is a dream, so let’s not wait for the taxi, we will find an alternative way to go”. We leave the hotel area, we may have pushed a girl on the floor while walking out. She is now lying on the floor, my boyfriend looks at her with concern. “This is a dream, leave her”, I tell him.

We continue on the road and I do my speed movement thing - I am moving very fast, as if I am on a motor bike, just without one. Now it’s just me, speeding on the road, trying to get as far away from that hotel. I try to increase my speed to see how fast I can go. This time it works, but I only speed up to the extent that I am still able to observe where I am moving. I think about TOTM as I am moving forward, but decide I need to be just a bit further. I look around, some special medical center complex, it goes on and on. My memory gets messed up. I am seeing Gabriela from desperate housewives in my mind, her two children are really her younger sisters? I look in front of me, still moving forward “I am dreaming, I am dreaming” I tell myself, then everything slowly fades and I wake up.

Comments: Still no coal to diamond, but I got so many lucids in the past few days, I am simply speechless…

I'm having a hard time remembering how I got to understanding I was dreaming. I was in some room with many windows and a high ceiling. My understanding is that I'm in some building that is supposed to be recreational for kids 10-18. So I'm in this room, and I realize I'm dreaming and there's no one else in the room. Immediately after I figure out this is a dream, the dream starts to collapse and the room is getting dark. I start shouting "clarity now!" as I'm looking up at the ceiling that starts to get fuzzy and darker.

The dream exits out and I'm in dark matter alone with my thoughts. I'm thinking to myself 'did I cease to exist? this isn't right...' and then I feel my body land onto something under me. Of course it's me laying on my bed, but I can't see anything and I'm unable to move. I keep breathing heavily trying to wake myself up but nothing is working. Suddenly, I emerge into this really bright room sitting on a bed. The walls are covered with long streaks of blue, red, and orange and the ceiling seems to open up into the bright yellow sky. I take one look at this place and conclude that the last room I was in was simply a dream and that now I'm actually awake. This place seemed too real to be a dream... this is experience was surprisingly very freaky and scary for the amount of stuff that didn't happen.

This was a very long dream / lucid dream series, going on for at least 45 minutes to an hour. I lost lucidity early on and regained it, so the first part of the dream is extremely scrambled. Also, a little background on one portion: I recently found out that Wife thinks lucid dreaming is more or less a waste of time. I was disappointed by this and concerned about what her DC might be like in future dream appearances.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #88: Reconciliation Hour

I'm in a lucid dream where I'm in a current of strong running water. I'm taking things easy, reminding myself to be more patient in life. I have a false awakening into a completely rearranged version of my house, downstairs. I hunt around for my dream journal... there it is, on the counter! I reach for it and as I grab it, my friend The Schwartz walks up and asks, "Hey, whatcha doing?"

"Hang on, [The Schwartz], I've gotta get these dreams written down. My dream memory is good for like 3 seconds. If I think about anything else, it'll all go away." I feel my dream memories leaking out of my ears. (Figuratively.) He looks a little hurt and I remember that the message of the dream I just finished was to be more patient. "Sorry, man. I know I'm not as patient as I should be sometimes. My dream was about getting better at that. You were even in it." (I assume this is true but no longer have any memory of it.)

I crouch down by a coffee table and get ready to write. Just then a full-sized poodle noses aggressively toward me. "Hey puppy," I say, reaching out to pet it. The dog turns away, totally snubbing me, circles around behind me, and then bites me hard on the butt. Another dog, a German shepherd joins the poodle and behind them I see my real two dogs (Siberian Huskies) lying on the carpet, panting.

"[Wife]!!" I wail, going into the kitchen. "Why do we have four freaking dogs in this house now? Wasn't two bad enough?"

Wife is in the kitchen cooking huge pans of a strange, purplish, bubbling yogurt conconction with her mom. "Oh, those belong to sissy and [brother-in-law Muppet]. We're just taking care of them." I grumble at this but sit down to journal. All but the last 2 pages of the DJ are filled, and the last entry is really hard to read. It says something about 139 pounds, but everything else is blurry and shifty. I demand proof that I'm not dreaming and become lucid.

"Hey, [Wife]," I say. "I'm having a lucid dream."

"Cool!" she responds. "Why don't we go to the park?" And then we're someplace else, holding hands and walking outside along a broad, grassy path with a great number of other people. We trudge past a flooded parking lot and the steel-toed boots I'm apparently wearing are soaked through. I'm annoyed at first, then remember that I can just fix it -- I do.

After walking for a long while, we get to a playground. The playground is a sort of cross between a playground and a petting zoo because all sorts of little animals like sheep and pigs are playing on the equipment as well, mingling with the kids. Our two kids (who weren't in the scene before) streak past us and join in the playing. My oldest son E sort of sits on another boy and I cringe, worrying that there might be some sort of confrontation. All is well, though, and everyone plays happily.

We do this for a while and then wander various paths in the park, the kids coming and going. There's an indoor scene as well where our son E gets to take a class and writes on the blackboard (something he can't do all that well IWL yet.)

Eventually we return home and put E to bed, except he's sleeping in a crib for some reason now. I'm happy, the way I feel after a great day out with the family. I keep looking at my hands as we put him to bed, reminding myself that I'm dreaming. Each time I do, I seem to grow an extra finger. The extra fingers even work pretty well although it seems to take extra special effort to move the "new" fingers vs. the old ones. By the end, my right hand has nine fingers.

As we leave his room, I show my freaky alien-looking hand to Wife and she laughs, saying, "That's awesome." I laugh too, peeling the extra fingers off like a glove and tossing it into the corner of a room where it lands with a rubbery thump. The fingers transform into a brightly-colored kerchief.

I say, "You know, I wish you felt differently about lucid dreaming." (IWL, Wife expressed that she thinks lucid dreaming is pretty much a waste of time.)

"I love that you have these dreams," she says, smiling.

I'm confused. "But you pretty much told me that this was a waste of time." She looks away, her smile fading. Then it hits me how caught up I am in confusing fantasy and reality, even while lucid. "Sorry. I forgot. Here and now."

She smiles again and turns to leave the room. I check her out as she's walking away. "Not gonna happen..." she says, without turning around, and bounds out of the room. I follow as the dream fades...

Dream recall from today's naps. Short WILD and short DILD, still a good result after yesterday.

Nap #1:

I am in my bed and i have feeling that something's different. I open eyes and room is indeed different, i take off headphones and can still hear binaural beats, confirming that i am dreaming. I notice mom doing something on the table to the left, which is table that is not in my room IWL. I get up and rub hands, dream stabilizes, but as i walk towards the balcony i accidentally make an error, i think about the waking body in the bed... and i wake up.

Nap #2(fragment):

I was in my room, i was recording some game, but i was controlling it from the distance and apparently my PC was not really there? I recall there was some part of the level with falling platforms. While recording i noticed that there's alot of circular sawblades on my bed(Sawblades looked like ones from Half-Life 2), i was a bit annoyed and kicked them off the bed onto the floor. Their physics glitched out(Again, like it happens in HL2) and two of them were stuck floating in the air horizontally. I sat onto one of them while recording, and then was thinking that i finally recorded something while sitting on the sawblade and how awesome it is( ).
Ad i finished with recording i went to do an WILD attempt, as i was falling asleep i felt something different, like that i am dreaming, but for some reason i can't open eyes. I start rubbing hands and after a few seconds i can open eyes, though not fully. In a few seconds the pillow starts shaking and there's loud noise that gets louder and louder, it gets ridiculously loud and then changes into a snore as i wake up properly.
Dunno if it was an actual snore or HH...

04/20/13

Stolen Treasure
I am on a ship at sea, it looks like an old pirate ship. I am there with Jack Sparrow and Nomad, I look around and see Spike is also there looking out over the ocean. I see there is another ship in the distance. A sailing ship. I wonder what that ship is doing. Nomad asks if I realize I am dreaming. I do a reality check by pinching my nose and finding I can still breathe. Jack says they have already spotted us and are getting closer. Nomad says someone should distract the enemies while someone else goes in and gets the monkey idol. I see that the other ship is indeed getting closer.

I am not sure if they are approaching us or if we're approaching them, but they are definitely closer. Some cannons are fired at each other, then the ships are close enough to board, and then a fight starts. I wonder where the monkey idol might be kept on the ship. I have an idea on where I need to go to find it. Fighting is going on all around me now. Someone tells me the idol is in the cargo bay, go get it while everyone is distracted by the fighting. I look over the edge of the ship and I see there is a hole in the hull of the ship made by a cannon ball. I slip over the edge and in through that hole. I now find myself in a room with a lot of crates in it, though there is one in the middle of the room with three men guarding it. I wonder why they aren't going out to join in the fight… whatever they're guarding must be very important. The men attack me when they see me. I form Witchblade into a sword and block the attack from the first one, using Battery to strike the others with a bolt of lightning. I am able to take the last one out with my sword. I go over to the crate they were guarding, keeping an eye on the exit to the deck, wondering if anyone heard that something is going on in the cargo area. I look into the crate and I find a statue made of gold in the form of a monkey.

That's what we're after! I take the monkey statue from the crate and head back over to the hole in the side of the ship. I jump out of the ship and telekinetically fly over to the Black Pearl, depositing the statue on Jack's ship. I telepathically tell Nomad that I have the monkey statue. He and the others fighting on the other ship come back to the Black Pearl. We are already moving away from the other ship, it seems they are much too slow to catch up with the Black pearl. A few more cannon shots are exchanged before we are out of range, leaving the other ship far behind as they are still trying to turn around in order to follow. I am watching that ship disappear in the distance as I wake up.

Three Nights Ago

#1 - Guilt-Free Food!! [DILD]

I was with high school friends and random people in a large mansion watching tray after tray of food be prepared. A large dish was placed in front of me with an assortment of snacks on it. As I was staring at it I suddenly became lucid and came to an important realization: guilt-free food!! I reached out and started grabbing everything that I could and shoving it into my mouth. First I remember tortilla chips and guacamole, then chicken strips and ketchup, followed by cupcakes with icing and sprinkles, and something else too but it's hard to remember now. The flavors of all of these foods seemed correct, but there was a significant drawback to it all. I had the flavor, but not the physical sensation of actually eating. It made the experience seem less realistic or satisfying, and I decided that I should try to focus on that whole process next time.

As this was all going on I had the feeling that the dream was starting to lose stability. All of the other people in the room began to chant "the burning bridge in Bethlehem", oddly enough, and I started repeating this along with them to keep the plot going. However, it only worked for so long and the environment ended up falling apart.

#2 - Summoning Practice, Again [DILD]

I was wandering through a high school, not necessarily one of the ones I went to, looking for my next class or something of the sort. I spontaneously became lucid and started talking to people in the hallways and opening doors to practice my summoning. The first person who came to mind was this girl who I met in my physical education class in senior year and always found attractive, and I would expect her to be behind each door or actually say out loud that she would be but it didn't quite work. However, there was a girl behind every one and with each try it seemed to resemble her a little more and I would feel them up a bit before moving on, getting particularly distracted with the last one's rather plump posterior.

After that I gave up on her and decided to call out for an old friend instead, and the door I took looking for her led me into a large and empty office. At that point I lost what I sometimes call the dream "chatter", this sort of ambient non-sound that tells me that the dream hallucinations are still running in full force. Without it the scene lacks realism and begins to collapse in on itself, and that's exactly what happened despite my best efforts from that point on.

Last Night

#1 - Meeting The In-Laws [Non-Lucid]

There was a family party going on and my family had somehow joined with a new "step-family" and this absolutely horrible woman was my new grandma. I was eating my dinner around a table with her and some other people and she picked up a bag of fucking dog turds and put some in my food. She had a really nasty attitude too, but I can't remember what made me think that now. Eventually I walked away and started talking to my cousins about how awful she is and they agreed, and then I met into a new step-cousin, another one of the woman's grandchildren, and she said that they always have to put up with her crap. She starts telling me something about her and her brother run some company that owns the building we were partying in and she had vouched for him for something at one point but he used her support to snatch part of the company out from under her.... I don't know, it was confusing, but she was showing me these computers she uses to remote control salad bars and other things with high-tech interfaces. That's about all I remember about that, though. And at one I definitely walked back to the new grandma's food when she stepped away from the table and spit in her rice. Hehe.

#2 - Flexible Walls [DILD]

I was at a party with some high school friends that I've still kept in touch with, and one of them gets me and few other girls to sneak out the front door with him and tells me that he's going to make a dash to his car and take off. I follow him down to the parking lot, and apparently the party is taking place in this large apartment building with some kind of event going on on the ground floor. There are celebrities in fancy suits and dresses all over the place. I follow him to his car and the other girls get in with him and I start to joke with him about something, but I can't remember what exactly. He laughs and rolls his eyes at me as he pulls out of the lot with me still hanging on the window and threaten to say that he has speed in his car with all these cops and celebrities around, very loudly. He freaks out but I was just messing with him anyway, I knew he didn't have any and I just wanted to pay him back for brushing me off and I know how paranoid he can get, but he's pretty much straight-edge. He stopped and started begging me not too, but I just laughed and said no one would care in the middle of all this commotion anyway and he drives off.

I walked back to my own car, which was not my car at all and is very pink, but there were some creepers following me. For some reason I went to the back right passenger door and unlocked it manually, and I could tell that they were waiting for me to auto-unlock all the doors because they were standing over by the driver door. They all panicked since it wasn't going according to plan and I started trying to close all the doors and windows in time but one of them got in the door I unlocked and grabbed a few things, but aside from that I was able to shake them loose after a little bit of a struggle. I decided to re-park my car somewhere more in the middle of everything and go back to the party. As I was walking back I saw some celebrity in a dress looking at me from a distance and I had a momentary feeling that she was Hayden Panettiere, who oddly seems to be something of a dream sign for me and who I've become in both lucids and non-lucids, but I got distracted easily and didn't pursue it. The last thing I remember doing outside is looking at my phone and seeing that it was, I believe, 5:27 PM. I thought to myself that my friend was acting oddly for having left so early.

Next thing I know I'm back in the building and I'm either walking into or already in the elevator back up. There are metal walls on all sides and this is where I become lucid. The first thing I did was sort of make my hand stiff so that my thumb and all my fingers are pointing out in the same direction. I firmly pressed them up against a wall to see if I could push it back at all, but I wasn't expecting to be able to. I used to do this to try to phase through walls before I figured out a much better way to do it, but I did remember that back then after enough pushing the walls would start to bend back some. I backed up and had both of my hands in the same position now and pulled them back to put my all into this, and then I lunged them forward at the wall. There was a loud banging noise and the whole thing bent back pretty far and stopped, then bounced back and forth until it balanced itself out again and became a solid wall. I laughed at this and started doing it over and over again to all of the walls and the ceiling. However, I realized that I was getting too into this rather than continuing the plot of the dream, and I phased through the elevator doors to try to get out of them and into some hallway, but all it did was cause the dream to fade to black and I was unable to retrieve it successfully.

Today I tried to perform a WILD. I went to bed around 12 AM and set my alarm for 6 AM. I woke up, went to the bathroom and then went back to lie down. I entered my dream semi-lucid.

I find myself entering my room. For some reason my dream self decides to hide in my closet. At that point I think to myself: "If I get out of my closet and see myself lying in bed, that must mean that I am dreaming!". I get out of the closet and indeed, I find myself lying in bed. This is I believe the third time I've seen myself lying in bed in my dreams, yet it never feels odd or strange. Anyway, at this point I become fully lucid.

Everything suddenly becomes much clearer, and I notice all lights are turned off and it's dark outside. I remember that I want to stay lucid for longer than an instant and touch the wall of my bedroom to feel the texture. After that I start spinning around, since I read everywhere that that is a good way to stabilize a dream. Now the dream has been stabilized I decide to test the extent of my lucid control by seeing how far I can walk from my house before completely losing lucidity. I don't bother changing clothes and walk out of the house in my sleep attire. Once outside, I notice my clothes have automatically adapted to the situation, because now I'm wearing jeans and a shirt. It's not dark anymore and I start walking. To my right there are some children with broken bycicles and they run towards me, claiming I had promised to fix at least two of their bikes for them. I realise it's just a dream and that these kids are preventing me from starting my mission and just walk away, since they're only dream kids anyway. About 50 m away from my house the dream tries to take over and I become semi-lucid again.

My father and an unknown friend of his are walking with me, and I guess we're talking about those kids with the bikes from earlier, because we spot a rack with three bikes in them, of which two are all rusted and broken. I guess these were the two bikes I had to fix. I notice that I'm semi-lucid and I remembered to stabilize. There were some brick houses nearby and I walked up to one. I touched the walls and felt their texture, and after that I decided what the hell, I'll lick it(I did this on purpose, because I read that licking or tasting something in your dream helps to stabilize it and I knew it was also a ToTM). I regain complete lucidity after this.

I'm happy I regained lucidity and continue my walk, leaving my father and his unknown friend behind me. As I walk further and further, I notice that the only people I see are women, and they're almost always on bikes(I guess bikes played a big role in this dream ). They all look at me as if they're mad at me for something. Walking further I realise it has become dark really fast, while I have only walked about 200 m. The further I get, the darker it gets, and also the eerier the surroundings. It still looks like my neighboorhood streetwise, but I see a woman standing approximately 50 m away to the northwest, and behind her I see a really dark tank, like those used in the army. Beyond this point lucidity escapes me and the dream takes over.

I don't remember what happened next. From what I can tell I think I walked a total of 400 m. Next time I will find my Dream Guide/Subconscious. I have some questions for him/her.

Semi-lucid
Lucid

Our guests woke me up again, I spent about an hour trying to fall asleep, my mind was way too awake, and when I finally fell asleep I got into some WILD/OBE thing where I couldn’t move much.

Total sleep time: 6 hrs

HI dreamlet1: Some woman, her face was colored black with something like tar. She lives in the woods, in a hole under the trees. A scary story begins about the holes in the woods.

HI dreamlet2: I am an unknown street most likely in my home town, have different hairstyle

Dream3 WILD/OBE: I am in my hometown again, in front of me are my guests. I am looking at my hands, some blue pink ghost like double layer is also visible. My hands quickly stretch out, a familiar feeling, they stretch into infinity, space bends and the whole of me is quickly sucked forward. I also feel my dream body detaching. A short moment of darkness follows and then I find myself on our old balcony. It is dark, there is some light perhaps from the moon. I immediately notice my position and feel my dream body. Instead of my feet being on the floor of the balcony, my midsection is where the floor is and my feet are below it. Don’t feel the floor, I notice that my position and state is somewhat similar to when I sometimes meditate – I am physically sitting, but feel the rest of my body is standing. I decide not to pay too much attention to that because I have to stabilize. I run my fingers over the surface of the balcony, very realistic. Everything is rather clear, but I can’t move my legs. I try to but I can’t.

I decide that perhaps I should give my dream body some more time to adapt to the dream. I start rubbing my hands, now my elbows barely move! I decide to wait a bit, but black out for a second, then I am back to the dream still no improvement. I force my limbs to move, and I can feel a great force on them preventing them from moving. I try touching the wall again with my fingertips, but it doesn’t help. I look to my side, towards the end of the balcony and see many plants there, it looks like a small jungle, it is dark and there is a dark hole between the plants. Now, it is definitely not the time to expect something scary to come out of there, I tell myself. I try to be indifferent about it. I then notice that a song is playing “give me my love, give me my love”, a nice song, but then it gets stuck, the same part plays over and over again. I wake up.

Comments and Analysis: I was worried after waking up that I have finally managed to mess myself up and instead of having normal LDs, the more time I spend in the void, the more aware I become of my falling asleep and will begin to get stuck more in the middle. I really hope not! Now, I feel relaxed about the situation, but am sure I will be getting more experiences where I would need to remain calm.

The stretching hands and being pulled forward (not just the two bodies separating) experience plus ghost like layer is something I have seen before and I kind of relate to OBE types of experiences (if these can be differentiated from WILD). I can only say it is a different feeling altogether.

Such continuous dream paralysis is not something completely new, but the only memories I have of it are when I was a very young. I don’t remember getting stuck in the middle of a floor ever.

Some explantion why this happened: I am thinking that the longer time spent in WBTB, the more my mind is aware of my physical body. If I WBTB for 5 min, then I would transition to the dream much faster. An alternative explanation is that I am being increasingly aware of the void and this somehow affects me.

Future strategy: I really have to write a few key words on a piece of paper so that I don’t forget. 1. Patience and detachment. I didn’t panic today, but the situation could have been different. 2. Rubbing hands 3. Try zooming into something else or 4. Try floating up?

For some reason I can't really recall the first part of this dream or how I got lucid in the first place, kinda weird as I was lucid, and with some good quality as well.

My recall started when I was looking at the seat of the living room of one of my prior homes in M.
The dream could have started somewhere entirely different, and I'm sure that I was lucid for some minutes already and that I did something else, also I know that my girlfriend was in the room and that for once she didn't just exist, but we were actually talking about a lot of stuff.

I looked up from the seat I was staring at (something was lying on it but I don't know what it was) so now I was seeing the aquarium in the back of the room. My mind was clear and this time I wanted to summon my dream guide for real. I focused my mind and clarified what my dream guide should be and do, and then tried it. Even though I knew I had quite a bit of control all I got was a piece of wood... I then tried to pull a person out of it in case someone was hiding in that shape, again without success, it was indeed a dead piece of wood. Then there was a weird scene with some tiny cassettes I can't explain, but I know that they told me that as a matter of fact I don't have anything like a actual Dream Guide.

Maybe my girlfriend is my Dream Guide and I should try to teach her how to make me lucid in dreams and stuff like that. Maybe I should scrap the idea of a Dream Guide in my dreams altogether in favor of focusing on something else. Oh and the kind of dream guide I was talking about is something internal, not a spirit guide. I already wondered whether my summon attempts maybe went in that direction or whether I maybe should try to summon a spirit guide intentional.

Anyway, the fact that I had a lucid so fast again is a good sign, it's now going up for me and I have a little hope that it will never go down again. Also I woke up a lot more often and can recall at least 2 more dreams as well as being yet a little step closer to WILDing thanks to talks about not trying to stay aware but simply choosing to do so, it really made more of a difference to take that approach than I even was expecting.

I was in a school, not necessarily mine, but a school nonetheless. I'm assuming it was mine because of the people, but rather than it being an L shape like my real school it was more of a square shape. I was in a drama club meeting, just sitting down on one of the benches in the drama room while we talked about things which escape my memory. We were probably talking about the work needed on the theater. Then, one of the girls sat next to me and started holding my hand. At the time, being non-lucid and all, I simply thought "oh, cool, I have a chance with this chick." The rest of the meeting was rather uneventful. I decided to go outside for a bit, maybe to the store or something, and on my way down the stairs I was distracted by some random misses, either having a midlife crisis or whining about some bullshit high school drama. I couldn't tell. Maybe both. Forgetting what I originally went to do, I went back to the drama room. Not much happened. Then off to class. Cool. It must've been the start of a new year or something, 'cause I didn't know anyone in the class. Except for the drama club peoples, all of which would've graduated by now if it was a new year. I decided to sit with them. While the teacher was doing attendance, we just chatted, as one normally would during a class. Then I noticed a crowd of people going out to a bus or something. I dunno. I knew one or two of them, so, being lazy, I climbed out the window of the room that previously was on the second floor and apparently now is on the first, and had a bit of a chat. After that I remember being in a very nondescript thing up to my waist. It was at this time I realized I was dreaming, but I probably got excited and forgot I was dreaming, or didn't know what to do and just let things run their course. No matter, as the dream didn't last very much longer.

[Not sure to call this a lucid or non lucid, so I'm gonna tag this DJ as both.]

22ND APRIL 2013
I fell asleep around 10:30, cause I was paranoid about bedbugs or something idk

I was at school. I set my binder down at a random table near a bike rack and for some reason I realized I had to walk home. I walked home and accidentally left my binder there. When I got 'home' it was this huge mansion that I'd never seen or been in before, but in the dream I just thought it was my home. I went upstairs to my room (which looked exactly like my room in real life. I realized I left my binder at school. I walked back and saw my best friend Brianna. She said, "If you had been at the s'more party this winter we would never have become friends." I guess I had, in fact, been at this "s'more party" and I remembered it. It was nighttime and there was about a half a foot of snow on the rooftops and ground. I vaguely wondered why it was snowing, I never remember it snowing in the three years I've lived in California. Anyway I was on top of the short portable building and there was this random blonde girl I'd never seen before. She was trash talking me and stuff, (can't remember what she said) and then she punched me in the side. I fell in the snow on top of the building. Then there was a burning sensation on the left side of my stomach (It wasn't really painful, just burning.) Somehow I knew the girl was doing it, but I didn't know how. As this was happening I noticed her shirt went above her stomach. She had a tattoo around the same place where I was burning and it looked like one of the little "Parental advisory explicit content" things you see on music albums, except it had different words on it. I wondered what it meant. The girl kicked me, I think in the chin, and cheers erupted from my schoolmates on the snowy ground below. I felt winded from the kick, but no real pain. Then I snapped back into my dream "reality" and walked back home, forgetting my binder AGAIN. When I got home I realized I didn't have my binder. I went back and got it and brought it back home and the dream ended.

[Dream 2] Lucid
I was in a cave in Skyrim. (I play skyrim way too much, 2/3 of my lucid dreams have been about Skyrim) I was fighting two men and a falmer (goblin sort of thing, for those of you who don't play skyrim.) I killed the first guy with my sword and then I thought, "This is a dream, isn't it?" I was lucid and (I told myself that next time I was lucid I would go on a rampage) went on a rampage. I was holding a shield with sharpened edges so I threw it like a frisbee at the falmer, slicing it in the chest and killing it. Then I thought that I would try out a "dream power" or whatever and I pushed the second guy away with a telekinetic thrust of my right hand and he died. Then I walked into a huge dome shaped chamber. The floor was stone. I decided to grow a tree in it. (Because who can grow a tree in stone?) I imagined it growing out of the floor and then lifted both my hands: a tree grew out of the cracks in the stone. Then I decided to fly. This time I WOULD be able to fly (In my first lucid I tried to fly but couldn't) and so I started flying and flew a little ways. Then the dream faded away.
[Dream 3] Nonlucid

I had a false awakening. I was at my mom's house in my room (exactly like I was in real life) I forgot to do a reality check. I got up and walked out into the kitchen and saw my Uncle Chris and this other good looking man I didn't really know, but I felt like I knew him. My uncle asked me, smiling, "Jayden, how come you woke up so late?" I looked at the clock and it said "5:41". Maybe If I had checked it again I would have become lucid, but I didn't. Then I woke up to the real world and vaguely wondered why I had woken up twice in a row.
All of my lucid dreams are DILDs.

After two nights of involuntary sleep deprivation, I was really happy to get some decent sleep. Wasn’t really trying to lucid but got two DILDs as a bonus.

Total Sleep time: 8.30 hrs

Dream recall technique: wrote a few sentences and reviewed in mind; Dreams 2-6 were really one big dream chunk, but after the lucid my memory got really fragmented so I am missing the link between scenarios.

Dream1- DILD: I am in our old place (DS), my dad is talking about some old prosciutto, which he throws away. It is brownish dark in the room and there is a heavy storm outside. I feel as if the building is hanging in the air, the floor is swaying. I try to feel as stable as possible and wait the whole thing to be over, so I lay on the floor and observe the swaying motion. I must have fallen asleep…I find myself flying in the air. I know that I am dreaming now, I look below me, there is a game-like map, green fields with unnatural colors. I decide to take my time and do some flying, I go very high, then I feel some fear of heights, so I zoom-fly down. I am observing my reaction as I do this. The moment I reach a certain level of altitude, I get like a spasm on my back, which makes me want to fly lower. I find it entertaining and repeat this a few more times. Memory gap…Now, I am on the street and in front of me is a friend from school. This time she is behaving badly and is stepping on me with her shoe. I am still lucid, so I think I want to play with her. So she’s bad ah? I don’t care what she does to me, I will enjoy observing any unpleasant feeling, I will be detached. I feel some pressure-like pain and decide this is cool. I struggle a bit with her and overpower her, she is just staring at me now. But then, I feel that I can’t move my arms, they are twisted around, and I can’t fix that, there is some pain too. This is not fun anymore, so I decide it’s time to wake and DJ. I wake and write down some notes.

Dream2: Two Buddhist nuns are in the same room with me. One of them is a Swedish woman, who was a TV star when she was young, the other one is Asian and quite old. Some kind of lecture is about to take place. The nuns expect people to have read a particular brochure and ask questions. I have not prepared, so I will ask a practical question “How many hours a day do Buddhist monks meditate”. Less than the expected number of people enter the room, the lecture starts. For some reason, I don’t ask the question. Memory gap. The lecture is over and everybody goes out to perform a ritual, they are prostrating themselves, squatting in front of statue maybe of Shiva. I get confused about this, but imitate people nonetheless. I then remember that there were two lectures, one about Shiva, one with the Buddhist nuns. I chose the nuns I remember, at this point I see the image of something like a garden in front of a monastery I have been two about two months ago, in another dream. After I am finished with imitating others, I go back to the building.

Fragment3: In that building I am going back somewhere but the corridors are really narrow and there is a guy going in the opposite direction with some pillows. I finally manage to go in a room, where I meet a Russian guy. He tells me that I am his girlfriend now, and informs me what kind of expectations his dad has. While I want to be friends with the Russian guy, I tell him that I cannot possibly meet their expectations because I have a boyfriend.

Fragment4: I am moving by means of holding on to the rail tracks of a tram, travelling as they move.

Fragment5: I am on the street and there is a large white peacock flying in the sky! I observe it for quite a while until it lands. The sight is fascinating.

Dream6 - DILD: I am walking with a Chinese DC, she is explaining something about Chinese immigrants. We are about to enter some kind of mall/underground. There are many people there. I become lucid. The Chinese DCs guide me to a certain direction because it is so crowded. I notice a small screen with some kind of writing there. Five words, I read them out loud, a few times, they don’t change. I want to write this in my dream journal so I repeat this to myself and to nearby DCs many many times, until am sure I remember it. Out of the five words, I only remember the word “daily”. (what’s wrong with my lucid memory?) I really like reading stuff, so I guess I subconsciously summon more stuff to read, I see some poster and I concentrate on it. There is a mix of letters there, I try to read it out loud and laugh because it sounds absolutely ridiculous.

I decide to move on, but notice that the surroundings have changed while I was playing this little game. Now there are dark stairs going somewhere where I really don’t want to go. I want to have more light, I might have shouted something like “Light” but nothing happens. I want to change the scene, so I close my eyes for a while, despite the fact that I am a bit concerned it will all disconnect. I feel as if I haven’t physically moved from there, but the surroundings have changed, now this is like large underground parking lot. It is dark again, there are no people around, it feels creepy. I am pissed off because I don’t like this place! I hide behind a truck. I want to change the scene. What do I have to do, rub my hands? No, I shouldn’t do that! I can’t change the scene, I really have to read some more on that! I decide to wake up and maybe DEILD to another dream since I don’t want to stay here. I close my eyes, I want to disconnect. I am in the void, I also feel my legs, my physical legs. They are kind of paralysed, but I feel them submerged into some kind of electric thing, like electric water maybe, between my ankles and knee caps, I like that feeling and observe it with interest. It goes away and fall asleep to have a non-ld.

Dream7: Me and my guests are in a shower cabin. Two of us taking a shower, the third watching us outside the shower. This is the shower cabin of our guests and I have to clean it. They tell me that since I am cleaning the shower, I might as well clean the toilet seat as well. I wake up.

---------------------------

Side notes:

- Did not RC or stabilize in both DILDs, they were stable and vivid

- Dream amnesia: did not remember TOTM, although I thought about DV when trying to read the letters

- LD dream recall: after browsing some dream journal notes of mine, I have noticed on some occasions my lucid memory deletes itself rather fast, and I remember some non-lucids in much more detail. Today’s lucids were very vivid and detailed, yet I forgot quite a lot. I think I have read in some DJs that other dreamers also forget some lucids, so that is not a new phenomenon. I wonder why that is.

-Changing the scene: I will have to read more about this because it seems that I can’t remember how or what to do. A reminder to myself- when trying to change the scene, try to picture where you want to be, not just close your eyes! (although closing the eyes kind of worked just the scene was unpleasant again)

I just got my Remee sleeping mask yesterday so I tried it out last night and I think it worked, really well.

I can't remember too much but I know I chained like 5 lucids last night. I kept doing a RC on my hands and then having a false awakening, then doing it again.

I remember telling a DC he was dreaming, which he refused to believe. He thought it was "just a humble suburban home". I started screaming it at him but he still wouldn't believe it.

I saw my brother playing on a futuristic keyboard. I tried to use the computer next to him to go on the internet, but it didn't work.

I thought about doing the task of the month but I couldn't remember what it was. Maybe tomorrow I'll get it.

Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #87: The Diamond

I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and I realize that I'm dreaming!

I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

"Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

"Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

"Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

"Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

"What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you." I wake up.