non-lucid

Despite my increased motivation to LD, the recent two weeks have not delivered to my perhaps unrealistic expectations, so I decided it’s time to analyze what has been happening.

Negatives:
- Sleep schedule disruptions: unfortunately guest stay-over during the weekends (on bf’s initiative) means having exhilarating conversations up to 2 am, then listening to bed preparations, and I fall asleep at 4-5 am. Obviously, this makes it harder to wake up early, and go to bed early, and this is spiralling into the week.
- Increased sugar intake: I have been very tired last couple of days, mostly like because of the above reasons, but I’m thinking that eating some ultra sweet desserts before bed in the last few evenings has contributed to this. Don’t usually consume that much sugar and this dehydrates and exhausts me.
- Reduced physical activity: have not touched dumbbells/jogging, etc., really don’t feel like moving at all! I probably should go back to exercising, this does help my sleep and improves my mood. Just do it!

Positives:
-RCs: after registering at DV, I have been doing a nice amount of RCs, including starting the day with a RC
-DJ: I keep the tablet near my bed, so it’s pretty fast & easy to jot down any dreams
-Sleep recall: I have been writing down dreams every day, even if it’s just fragments, and that helps me remember more
-Just let it be: I try to have a positive attitude, perhaps my body is tired and needs more sleep, so I just let myself recharge, confident that things will eventually align
-Dream Yoga: as mentioned before I was conducting the experiment, having to fall asleep, while concentrating on a white letter ”a” on the area below navel for seven days in a row. That helps me fall asleep faster, plus usually helps with LDs, so I think I will try to incorporate it into my every night routine.

19 March Dream Fragments

As mentioned, was really exhausted last few days, so I slept like a log, didn’t even wake up to go to toilet.  After waking up still tired as hell, I couldn’t remember anything. I was beginning to get rather pissed off, but did a RC anyways. I also repeated my DS – there are lots them. If not anything else, I catch the feeling that I dreamt 3 DS, I sit on the sofa and try to concentrate (got interrupted by a phone call and conversation in the process).

Dream1 [Fragment]: I am at my grandma’s apartment(DS). She is also there and plans on going to the city center with the tram. I tell her that she will be really uncomfortable in the tram, taking into consideration the way she is dressed. She wears a green sweater, similar to one I had but never wore in the past, and she has a semi-transparent red-orange blouse from a lighter material over the sweater, so basically these are reverse and I tell her that she needs to change, so that she is more flexible in the public transportation. [there was more I can’t remember]

Dream2: I am in my first school (DS) and a schoolmate (DS) from there tells me he wants to find our teacher from second grade. We go into one of the classrooms (I am always amazed IRL at how accurately I remember my schools in dreams!), looking for our teacher. She is behind the teacher desk, her hair has greyed, she behaves like a puppet. I tell her that my schoolmate was looking for her and wants to send his regards to her. While I am saying this, she behaves like a robot, doesn’t even look at me, but continues writing down on some document, which she signs, and perhaps tries to pass to me. We leave the room and I continue in the corridor, towards the school gym. In the corridor are two girls from my high school (DS). They are happy to see each other, talking to each other. I remember during the dream that they are good friends. I continue towards the gym and see some more girls from high school. A narrator’s voice is telling me something about the two girls, how the mood of the one was actually influencing the behaviour of the other all the time, or something like this.

Dream 3 [DS recall only] – I am sure that I dreamt the guy from high school, that I called main DC in the previous DJ post…

I don't remember much about last night's dreams, beyond being back in college and in a class. My computer screen was a hologram suspended above the desks. I was openly browsing a porn website, but nobody really seemed to care. There was a girl who was taking a class on playing the fiddle, and I was jealous because I wanted to learn to play. I began telling my classmates about a woman who played the harp with a bow.

Then I was going to a job, which was inside of a hotel. I was carrying a handful of fake, dried rose petals. I was very protective of my fake rose petals, if other people tried to look at them or take them from me. There was a man inside, wearing sort of a hotel-concierge-uniform, working on an arrangement of cut roses. I wanted to set my petals down but was worried someone would mistake them for real ones and clean them up and throw them away. I showed them to the man and woman, and they seemed fascinated by them.

Then I was in an elevator going up to a room. In the other room, there was an obese woman conjuring illusions in a large, cylindrical fish tank.

03.19.2013

Roaming the Night (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Prior to the events of the dream, I was hanging out with a werewolf and a vampire in a pub somewhere in the city. These two happen to be characters of mine from some silly story I tried writing in middle school/early high school.

The dream opens as I am walking through the city at night, searching for my car. Once I find it, I make a wrong turn down a dark, sketchy looking road. Somehow I end up on foot again as I try to turn back around (dream logic doesn't like me driving, apparently). As I'm walking, a tall guy in his late teens approaches me. He is dripping with an air of false friendliness.

He soon questions me about the vampire I was hanging out with in the pub. He wants to know his name. "Vincent," I tell him, mentally preparing myself for the fight or chase that is bound to happen.

"Vincent what?"

"Just Vincent. He doesn't have a last name. For all I know, Vincent isn't even his real first name, either."

The guy loses his friendly act and says that the vamp is bound to come here once he hears my screams. I can't really see Vincent caring one way or another what happens to me, but Dakota (the werewolf) would surely flip out. Not wanting the wolf to find out what trouble I've gotten myself into yet again, I break into a sprint.

I easily stay one step ahead of the guy, but soon we come upon my Aunt's house and I see that this isn't going to end without a fight. The guy is stronger than I would have thought; it becomes clear that he intends to rape me. The fight is brutal and lasts several minutes. In the end, I get the upper hand and beat the guy until he is moaning on the ground, pleading for me to stop.

seems to have been a full-fledged dream but i can't recall all of it. at the beginning of the dream i was watching a video. the video focused on a brown-haired teenage boy. he was quite thin, very pale and had reddish areas on his skin that resembled abrasions. i understood that he was very ill and close to death, although he was acting normally. he was lying on a bed under rainbow sheets in a blue-walled room. the lights were off but a window let rays of white light through. his shirt was off and i understood that this was a pornographic video, although i don't recall ever seeing anything that would indicate that. there is a strange atmosphere about this scene.

at some point the viewpoint switches: i am no longer watching the video but inside of it. the boy lives in a large house (warm hues, oranges and reds) with many other people - i recall a young blonde-haired woman. there was some controversy over the fact that the boy had been in a porn video. some people hinted that he had other videos in which he performed very perverse sex acts.

edit: i have another memory, but i'm not sure whether it's a dream or not! i was walking from my bedroom to the bathroom and i was bumping into everything. very clumsy. the setting was indistinguishable from real life but the extent of my clumsiness makes me think it may have been a dream... also the fact that i didn't see any bruises on myself on the morning... but i took benzos on an empty stomach before bed, so who knows.

----

rather odd dream, made me a bit uncomfortable when i woke up. a quick analysis - the theme of this dream seems to have been derived from a) a uh, porn video that i watched recently that involved a man who resembled the one in the dream and b) a documentary about a hospital for disabled vietnamese orphans. i am not sure why my subconscious decided to combine them, but there you are.

the "strange atmosphere" i talk about was an odd sort of calmness... i would define it as acceptance of, and contentment with, one's impending death.

i dreamt that i was in the bathroom at my old townhouse. i was sitting on the toilet drawing on my laptop while pouring a bath. suddenly i heard a loud beeping sound. i wasn't sure whether it was coming from outside or whether it was in my head. i plugged my ears to check. i could still hear it with my ears plugged. i became afraid that i was going crazy.

then i woke up... it was my alarm.

I used to have casino dreams a lot. But after a while of not having casino dreams I had one tonight. In the dream I was looking for a machine to play on and someone who was male was with me. We talked and I'm not sure if he wanted me to win or not... We were outside and there seemed to be a lot of machines in a circle. But we were headed somewhere. Then I saw someone I kinda know hand a lighter to someone I didn't see who it was. I was in kinda a depressed mood or something when I got up.

Hmm, I could have swarn I wrote a dream down at night. memory fooling me! Either it told me "you already wrote that don, so don't bother" which is something my mind has done to me before! or wouldn't it be amusing if I had dreamed of writing in the dream journal, and assume I did.

I remember some combination of previous dreams: the number 3, the name fluffy, and perhaps a few others, and to my sleeping fuzzy brain they all made some sort of weird sense about dreams of course.

Dream recall from today's nap, including very confusing false awakening and failed DEILD attempt(but i was close i think).

Nap #1:
Dream 1(fragment):

I was visiting some kind of sky lands.
Then i woke up with eyes closed and decided to try to DEILD.
There was hypnagogic imagery(i think) of my room as it was daytime, and some objects were missing, i tried to 'grab' into it but it disappeared, then different version of it appeared instead and disappeared shortly as well.

Dream 2:
Then i suddenly lost awareness and fallen into non-lucid dream without noticing it, i was in some hill/forest area searching for something and then talking to some bald kid. Then there was cutscene in cave with asian dude in black clothes, he had two curved yellow energy blades and he was preparing for something. I was back at hill/forest area and i heard battle sounds coming from direction, i quickly went there and there was some kind of japanese temple with red roofs. The fight was going on between some dude who was in full metallic suit and group of people who were protecting temple. The metallic suit was black and somewhat resembled some kind of humanoid lizard, also he had two yellow energy wings. He quickly defeated opposing group and then started flying away. The bald kid that was with me quickly reacted and threw dagger into that dude. He managed to hit him exactly into base of the left wing, it transformed into yellow energy blade so it was obviously dude from cutscene earlier, but he was still able to fly after that, and he quickly flied out of my field of view. I ran to pick up the blade.
But then i woke up back at my room, items in the room were misplaced, there was weird anime doll on the ceiling and on monitor of my PC YouTube was playing last part of the let's play that i was watching before, i have absolutely no clue how, but that somehow convinced my dream self that i was sleepwalking(which i don't do IWL for sure) and thus i forgot to do reality check, i got up still looking around, i closed eyes and that automatically moved me into 'classic hands forward' sleepwalking position against my will, then i opened them and everything was fine. And then i was thinking 'Wait a second, why there's this weird doll on the ceiling', and then i woke up.

Long story short.

I was batman. Was about to arrest bane. This cat questions me. I end up doing street poetry in a bar. Alfred steals my cape and cowl and calls me a pussy while riding in my limo.

03/18/13

Line of Eld
I am in front of a lot of people, but at least I am not alone there. There are other people there with me, and I recognize them right away, or I recognize most of them. MoSh, Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susanna… all the people from the Dark Tower group. I am not fully lucid, so I don't realize what is going on right away. Roland steps forward and introduces himself. Eddie goes next, stating he is from the line of Eld and the ka-tet of 19. I am not sure what it means, but it seems that is what everyone wants to hear. They want to hear that we are all from the line of Eld so they know we are all gunslingers. I wonder if I should say it, too, even though I don't believe I have any connection to the line of Eld… Susan introduces herself with a curtsy instead of a bow, but also states she is from the line of Eld. Roland indicates MoSh should go next, so MoSh follows suit with the others and follows the pattern by saying he is from the line of Eld. I wonder if he has reason to think he really is or if he is lying just as I am about to lie… Roland is talking to Jake, but he indicates I should go next, I am not sure entirely what to say… so keep it simple. I give my name and say I am from the line of Eld, I say that with a straight face and no one calls me out on it so I guess it doesn't sound as fake to them as it does to me… and with the ka-tet of 19, I drop a curtsy using my Assassin robes since I am not actually wearing a skirt. People are still responding positively, and my introduction goes off unquestioned. Jake introduces himself, then he puts Oy down… and the billy bumbler steps forward, gives a bow, introduces himself… "Oy… Eld… Thankee…" which everyone finds to be absolutely amazing. I think it is one of the cutest things I have seen Oy do, he returns to Jake seeming quite pleased with his performance of the trick. Now Roland says he isn't very good with speaking and says Eddie will take care of that. If looks could kill Roland would drop dead from the look Eddie gives him. Everyone is cheering and calling for Eddie to speak. Eddie finally starts talking, and he isn't doing too bad. Everyone in the crowd seems satisfied with it. I don't remember a lot of what Eddie says, though I think he says something about not facing the wolves on our own, they will have to fight for what they want to protect. That doesn't seem to deter anyone. After that there is a lot of interacting. People are wandering around, I see Eddie get annoyed at one particular man. Roland is talking to some guy with a long white beard. I'm not sure where Susan is, but MoSh seems to be talking to someone about music as he has a guitar out. I think I might be giving off signals that say I don't want to be talked to, as no one seems particularly interested in talking to me. Finally someone does speak to me, and he wants to know if I really think we can stop the wolves from taking their children. I have no doubt that we can send the wolves home yelping, but I know that is not meant to be conveyed yet… so I tell him I cannot answer that with certainty until we have seen more of the town and what we have to work with. He seems unsatisfied with the answer. He says he has two sets of twins and stands to lose four children, please save them… I hesitate, then I tell him not to quote me, but if I have to speculate, he will still have all of his children after this is over. He says he doesn't want to see them ruint. I wonder what it is the wolves do to the kids, and if there might be some way to heal the ruint ones… even partially heal them. I think I will determine that after I know more about what the wolves do. I move off to the side, I get offered food, and then I manage to step around a corner before I wake.

It's been a while since I could remember a dream, though luckily, I find myself taking in more than usual about the images I find during my slumber as of last night.

Part I: Career Day

I found myself at my High School. The hallways were all rather accurate to how they were realistically, if not slathered with posters, pictures and decorations of a lot of different things, most of them famous men, women and children who all specialized in specific positions.

I walked with two of my friends--one an Asian kid named Eric, always had this huge mole under his chin, and my friend Gabriel, a boy with fair, wavy hair and a cherub-like face. We walked in this hallway, somewhat crowded but not too packed at the same time. I assumed it was some sort of career day of sorts, and so I looked for something that piqued my interest.

Along the way, I saw a poster of lead guitarist and singer of the 90's band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain. The picture was of him, singing and playing guitar in black and white. I touched this poster, and then I looked to my left. Kurt Cobain was coming at me with a butcher's knife, something out of a campy horror movie. I didn't attempt to run, perhaps too perplexed by the fact that Kurt Cobain somehow rose from the dead. He pounced me onto the ground, grabbing the handle of his knife with both hands and raising it in the air. I kept shouting "No!" over and over again, but he then pushed his knife right into my chest. What's odd about this is that I did feel a bit of pain as the blade stuck into my chest.

Things went black, but as suddenly as that happened, I was back in the hallway. I was now with my brother, looking much like himself, strangely. People were leaving and we were getting our backpacks from a pile in the middle of the hallway. I didn't understand why, but my brother had apparently put some very important items for a project in my backpack, though I was unable to find my backpack.

They said it might be in another room, and if it wasn't, it was stolen. We checked that room -- no dice.

I was lead to believe that my backpack was stolen. That was when I woke up briefly.

Part II: The Chaser

Not long after, I fell asleep again, the dream following connecting itself to the last dream I had.

I was now hell-bent on finding my backpack, though I only acted on it when my mother was driving me home from school, parked at a gas station on an early summer morning. I then found myself becoming a badass biker dude going along a California coastline; palm trees and the blue skies and oceans passing by me like a big blur. There were a few cars and bikers that passed by me. Though I knew they were enemies, they didn't really do anything to actually threaten me, nor did I do them.

I followed these "enemies" until I reached a beach, where we stopped. I told their boss, a man dressed in a cliche leather jacket with a short-cut Elvis hairdo something rather intimidating; intimidating enough to make him give me my backpack back. My brother was suddenly with us, and there he retrieved a medium sphere that looked like the shape of a planet. He smiled and looked at me, making some cheesy joke about how I was lucky to have gotten this thing back, or else. Then we laughed and the dream ended.

Notes:

That pain that I felt when Kurt Cobain stabbed me was rather significant.
I've rarely gone that fast as I did on the motorcycle in a dream before.

Interpretation:

Gee, I really don't know what to think of a dream where I get killed by one of my favorite musicians and chase a man on a motorcycle to get my backpack back. Perhaps, leisure is killing me and I focus too hard on school.

Me, and two boys I don't recognize are walking around in some weird rundown grocery market that has only about four or five isles of food. I expected the two boys to have sneaked stealthily into the isles with me hiding from the security guard that was watching us, but when I look back, they went to these two large displays that have tons of red beans in them, and the two boys are just standing there and thoroughly digging there hands into them as if something is hidden in there. I become annoyed with them, and sneak over to them and tell them to follow me and hide because we are being watched. I walk to another isle again and when I turn back expecting the two boys to be behind me, but they're still at the two displays and they climb into the beans and disappear. I panic because now I'm alone and I feel like I'm being watched, so I run out the markets front door, and when I get outside there is a train getting ready to leave. I get into the train and walk to the middle of the train car and take a seat. It's just me and an older man in the train car, he's sitting across on the passenger side. I'm not on the train long before it stops. I get up and hurriedly exit the train, as I'm walking away the man runs up to me panicked and with a fearful look on his face. I just stare at him becoming concerned until he pulls out a photo he took while on the train, he hands it to me and I look at it being curious. In the photo is me in the seat I was in on the train, and 2 seat rows behind me are 2 grey aliens with massive black eyes wearing trench coats, and fedora hats just sitting there leaned into each other staring forward at the back of me. I become instilled with fear, then i wake up

Commentary
Non-Lucid
Lucid
Dream Signs
Total Sleep: 6hrs
WBTB: No
Supplements:Prebed Caffeine 50MG
Technique:Prebed MILD
Bedtime:11PM

1:53AM

My son, R, can sing super awesome. I am amazed and thrilled. I tell my wife and her sister. M is like, "Yah, so?"

5:01AM

I stole a wade of money from the Wessen in the latest episode of Grimm. They dropped a wade of cash during the bank robbery and I picked it up and ran.

I hide inside some large cone-shaped thing. They lift it up and peek inside. I am able to lift my feet up and they don't bother to look up inside the cone. I escape detection twice.

Then I come out of the cone and it is part of the structure of some huge tent. Some guy wants to tell on me but I offer to buy the tent to make him happy.

"How much is the tent?"
"Uhh... $1000....$2000"
"OK I can do that" I think I must have about $20K cash
"No wait. 6... $7000."
"Fine."

I wake up.

5:38AM - Between snooze alarms.

Monster truck. Yep that's all I got. I should have wrote a little more down this morning.

*Alarm*

I have a hand held healing device. I use it on a wound on my left forearm. I see it suck up red particles from my arm and the infection is gone. Seeing how great that worked, I remove and band-aid full of blood and gore from my wrist and attempt to heal that.


*Alarm*

I am sitting with the Cylon woman from Battlestar Galactica in her red dress. (I have only seen the first handful of episodes and found it boring)



She wants to make out with me but we are in a stadium full of people and I feel modest. I turn my head away from her. She is setting to my right so I turn left.

She points to the men in the crowd and says, "All these men would love to make love to me. That one is thinking about it. That one. That one too. All of them." She moves closer.
"And you have had me many times. Are you ashamed or proud? Kiss me."
I feel flattered and my now inflated ego gets the best of me. I turn to her and we kiss.
She whispers in my ear, "I love you." But I think about my wife, A. I think, "I am married." Then I think how much of a liar she is. I know for a fact that she was with someone the previous night.

But I fear her because I know what she really is. I feel that I have pushed her too far already and don't want to anger her. I automatically say, "I love you too." I feel pain and guilt at this. I tell myself it is only lip service and means nothing.

*Alarm*

[img]

#1 - Don't recall the dream much, but recall thinking, "If I were lucid, this would be more vivid." d'oh! That's close, though... my near-lucids usually indicate I'll have a dream-induced lucid dream within the next night.

#2 - I dream I work in a store. We are selling $20,000.00 coffee cups, and a whole row of them got broken (not my fault). I get into an argument with my boss, who treats all people with disabilities as if they are stupid, which infuriates me. I call my friend M__ and complain about it because I know she'll understand.

#3 - I am going up a river bank with a bunch of other people. I don't recall why, I think it was a picnic or social gathering or something. It's getting close to dusk.

I suddenly hear gunfire and see the muzzle flash of automatic weapons. Naturally, everybody panics. We weren't doing anything violent and obviously didn't expect to be shot at. There's nowhere to run - we can go backwards, away from the river, for some reason (I don't remember why).

Now we are being shelled as we scramble along the river bank. There's smoke everywhere and everybody is panicking. Up ahead, through the smoke, I see a bunch of soldiers. From their uniforms, they're friendly toward us. They're returning fire across the river and indicating for us to move toward them so they can get between us and our attackers, but there's a whole stretch of bank to cross and it's under fire. In addition, the bank is very crowded and it's difficult to get everybody to move in a specific direction instead of running in random directions and flipping out.

#4 - I am renting a room in an apartment. The room is very small and I'm putting my furniture together and thinking about how to arrange it. My friend Z__ wants to meet up since he heard I moved back to town. I am thinking about how much money I need to make before I can rent my own apartment. I'm putting trash in a trash basket, but it's made of plastic mesh and all of the trash keeps falling through the spaces in it.

Didn't sleep the greatest last night and I kept waking up, but I still remembered a few things.

Dream 1: The setting was possibly a cave-type place. There was something about a mission where one had to dress up as a girl and pretend to be distraught, until a monster or something heard you and dragged you away. In this case it was Harry Potter, I think.

Dream 2: Setting was my grandma's house or something like it. Me and a girl with long, darker hair, possibly Indian, were lying on blankets or something and talking. Either she was my moirail or she mentioned something about one. This part is a little blurry, but there was something about spawning or generating a creature, and how the one I got was named "Dogg", which apparently had been a name I had gotten in the past.

[Gap]

I was in my aunt's room? and there was a dark man there talking to me, and he held up a really small dried up/dead baby snake and was telling me how you have to take care of them or this happens, and I was thinking about how it was 5 A.M. and I was busy doing something important so I couldn't take care of that too.

Dream 3: Two? people are listening to Kankri and Karkat from Homestuck talk, and they're being sarcastic and joking, and they banter about something off-color, and one of the watchers turns to the other and concludes that Kankri must have done something inappropriate to Karkat? o_O

Fragment: I think this might have been apart of around the #2 dream: I spit a wad of gum out of my mouth and was picking pieces of it out of my teeth. (Side-note: Gum is one of the items in my memory palace, so it might have come from that.)