non-lucid

Aug 21 2018

I went to sleep around 11:45 or 12. As I was falling asleep, I performed the Progressive Relaxation technique mentioned in LaBerge's ETWOLD. During the relaxation, I continuously repeated to myself that whenever I saw either of my parents or my fiance, I would do an RC and question whether I was dreaming or not (one of them almost always show up at some point).* I enforced this by looking over at my fiance and doing reality checks. (I've always been aware that they are dream signs but this is the first time I've tried to use them to trigger RCs).

I eventually dozed off and had a few NLs that I can't remember now. I should have written them down when I woke up at 4:15 as I could still remember fragments then, but I was in shock when I awoke. My entire body was numb! I've never actually experienced waking up into SP and/or REM Atonia, only trying to induce it on myself, which never really worked.

It was amazing! I was completely calm and relaxed. Even as my dog was rearranging himself next to me and putting his paws in my side, it didn't phase me or make me any more awake. It was a state of disconnection with my body, all except gentle, almost imperceptible vibrations.

I've been reading up about visualization and imagining all 5 senses after reading arby's VILD and visualization posts. During the day yesterday, I was practicing moving my "dream arm" while my real arm remained still, and also noting how my entire body felt while walking, standing, leaning on something, sitting, etc. So naturally when I found myself in this state I did the same. The sensations were remarkably accurate! I could visualize myself standing in another room and feel all the sensations of my body being there. This alone was amazing.

I also tried to use this state and convert it into a WILD** or SSILD-then-fall-asleep, but oddly I couldn't get "relaxed enough" to fall back asleep -- my breathing was very shallow and I had to strain to take deep breaths, which pulled me out of the state momentarily (although I returned quickly each time). So I sat in this state for probably an hour or two and just enjoyed it. Eventually I fell asleep into an FA that I couldn't catch and convert (those pesky buggers!) and another NL that I do remember.

The strange thing about my NL was that it was as if my brain was actively fighting me -- now that I had identified my parents and fiance as dream signs and was using them for MILD and RCs, it removed them from all my dreams and placed in people from work that never pop up in my dreams! Strange.

Overall a weird but positive experience!

*Does this count as MILD? I'm trying to figure out how exactly to differentiate MILD from other similar techniques and it seems kind of vague. Is it just setting your intentions and/or having a mantra as you go to sleep?

**edit: Looking back in my DJ, I actually did almost WILD two or three times but got pulled back each time, back into the state. I think it helped me to identify what the feeling is like though, as it was closer than I've ever been before!

72/ Babysitting in a haunted house. Finally saw the ghost's reflection in a mirror, a little kid shadow running down the hall.

73/ In school. Ewan McGregor was our teacher, though dressed in a nerdy disguise.

74/ A sideways storm swept over the area. Clouds were greenish. I was fascinated by it while everyone else (the smarter ones) were afraid and ran for cover.

75/ Motorbiking on a mountain road. It was all snow and sunshine, rainbows reflected off the snow. Was enveloped into the colors of a rainbow and felt at peace. Never wanted to leave.

Non-dream stuff - this has been the pattern for the last few days. I woke up at 8:30 but somehow fell asleep again despite not wanting to, waking up two hours later. Been having long non-lucid dreams on the first waking but usually forget too many details by the second waking.

---

Dream part 1:
I was playing a game like the new Monster Hunter, I even remember thinking "this game is too similar to Monster Hunter, feels a bit like a rip-off". It was day time but dim. I was playing a male hunter, walking around some marshland and there was an old ruin/structure, and there was an inscription on top. For some reason I changed character to a female hunter, and then used the grappling hook to get on top of the old structure. I was a bit clumsy about it but I stood close to the inscription and read it.

I can't remember what it said, but it was 3 sentences and was cryptic.

Details are missing here between the next part.

Dream part 2:
I remember I was hunting a large creature in the marshland with other hunters but then at some point there is a transition and I become a giant creature myself. I seem to remember the form I took was of a female reptilian biped, with creamy/dirty white scales. I then went around the world and met other creatures and either changed the type I was or simply got bigger.

Eventually I remember seeing a (in the dream context) god-like creature, which was so big it's difficult to describe with words; only the foot was under the clouds and even though I was a giant too my size was only of this creature's toes.

I climbed up the furry leg, which I seem to remember being brown or orange fur, getting past the clouds and seeing the sun; it had a skirt and I came to the conclusion it was female and kept climbing up her leg until eventually I reached her shoulder.

I can't remember what happened next other than I had a brief discussion with her; her father had made her upset for some reason.

---

Notes:

• This is the very rare dream type I typically enjoy quite a lot even if it's non-lucid. Unfortunately I did not think to RC at any point, despite the "massive" cues.
• The last dream I had of a similar sort was a couple of years ago, but it wasn't half as detailed nor was it of the same scale.
• I think I'm still doing poorly in regards to setting intentions about dreaming lately.
• The "goddess" creature reminds me now of a character I've seen an artist portray, so I'm thinking that's where her visual appearance stemmed from.
• From the first part to the second part, the feeling of being in a game was gradually reduced, until it felt more "real", especially with the climbing. Maybe because of the physical "effort"?

Morning of August 21, 2018. Tuesday.

Reading time: 2 min 22 sec. Readability score: 65.



I am with Zsuzsanna and our family but living on Loomis Street (where they have never been in reality, and yet my dream self does not detect the setting as incorrect). My brother-in-law Bob is sitting in his armchair. My mother-in-law is present, and Zsuzsanna is annoyed by her and goes into the bathroom. However, it is the Barolin Street house’s bathroom. We are all standing in here against a different wall. Zsuzsanna is the closest to the door. I tell my mother-in-law that she is the same as ten years ago even though she is not aggressive. (It has been over twenty years. We have not seen her much in reality.)

Distracted, I decide to go to the park. The house is again the Loomis Street house before I leave. I walk north to where no park exists in reality. In my dream, it is a large area. I am eating pieces of bread. (My throat is drier than usual as I sleep.) I become aware of wanting to fly (common liminal perception of vestibular system correlation). I look up to a structure that I want to fly up onto (before flying elsewhere), but I notice that a man and woman are seated there on a bench.

An unknown male walks to my left. While talking to me, the man soon takes his real left leg off as if it was detachable. He throws it several feet ahead. He asks me how he did, as apparently, he is practicing for an Olympic event.

“There was a lot of evenness in your throw,” I reply, not knowing what else to say. He then retrieves it and deliberately throws it onto the left shoulder of an unfamiliar woman sitting at a picnic table (about twelve feet away) with others. That act seemed more like a cheerful prank.

The woman seems only slightly annoyed. I do not know if they know each other.

---

I am ready to fly, but there is a subliminal awareness that the physical body in the dream state is not real. That idea projects into another dream character as throwing the leg of their illusory body (left side is usually dream-oriented while the right is directed more toward waking perception as I sleep on my left side), implying that walking is pointless in the dream state.

The earlier scene seemed preparatory for RAS (in an apparent need to wake and use the bathroom as Zsuzsanna was to the right of the door from inside the room), as both my brother-in-law and mother-in-law have annoyed me in the past (emotional trigger to cause waking). From there, I liminally created the porch buffer to vivify my dream on the way to vestibular system correlation (flight in this case), which transformed atypically.

It is typical for my dreams to mix up settings, never in the same way more than once even in tens of thousands of them, and the endless variation has fascinated me since childhood. Ultimately, this is to prevent my non-lucid dream self (infra-self) from subliminally perceiving my dream setting as a real location. That is also why many events and ideas are incorrect or the opposite as I would have them in waking life other than when biological, literal, or prescient (which reveals one of the many problems with so-called interpretation), or reactive representation of the processes in REM sleep. It fascinates me when people claim that their dream correctly rendered where they lived or have lived, as I have never experienced this in my life even in lucid dreams.

---

Ice Cream collector?

I ran around doing my job, which was fixing birthday parties and it was a lot! But at the same time I needed to collect as many kinds of ice cream as possible to make the best parties. When I wasn’t running around preparing, I went to see my baby I had. A friend asked me if it wasn’t a lot of work with a baby and I said: “Nooo, not at all.” And just tucked in a bottle in the baby’s mouth. I also took the baby to my mother and told her to babysit my child, which she gladly did. I felt so stressed during the dream like I wouldn’t have the time to do all the things that I really needed to do. Later I found my phone laying in the baby’s carriage and had a look at it. Instead of showing the picture of the locked screen it showed me so many pictures it possible could in a few seconds. The time was also going faster as the pictures changed. All of the pictures were of a guy. A thought I had was that the time suddenly stopped at the time my alarm should go off. And so I realised it was a dream.



Note: My alarm went off so I woke up tho… not sure if the dream was finished or not?

August 20th

67/ In class with piles of reading and work to be done. I packed up and left early. Had to maneuver under and over strings of ropes in the hallway to get out.

68/ At a meeting were people were dressed in clothes made of flags and bullets and feathers, eagle feathers I think. My friends were seduced into the group. It felt like a cult to me. I went into a house and sat alone wondering how to get my friends out of the group. A cat came and sat on my lap. A girl appeared out of the shadows and sat at my feet. The cat was hers so I gave it back. She wanted me to help her escape the group. I was conflicted. I wanted to help her, she looked so desperate but on the other hand I’d probably be charged with kidnapping. We tried to come up with a way for her and my friends to be rescued.

69/ I had to rush back to school, I'd missed my bus. I did intervals of jogging and walking even though school would mostly be over by the time I got there. Cars kept driving too near to me, almost running me over. At a corner a truck aimed for me. I ran behind a stop sign and the truck hit that instead. Was it even worth it to go to classes i didn't even like?

70/ 17th Lucid Can’t remember what clued me in, but I reality checked to discover I was in a dream. Told my friend we were in a dream. He didn’t believe me so I leaped into the air and drifted up and over electric lines. I told him to fly too but he couldn’t do it. I told him to sing a song he likes, run to the beat, his steps would get lighter each time. I drifted around in the sky and waited. He finally ran up into the air and flew unsteadily. He adopted a swimming through the air technique to stabalize. I drifted around in circles and rose higher into the sky. Friend swam after me. I suddenly sort of remembered one of my goals and yelled down to my friend, “I’m sorry. I have to leave. There’s something I must do.” I flew up into the clouds, which were brightly illuminated by the half moon. I couldn’t rise higher than the clouds. I didn’t know exactly what I needed to do, all I knew was I needed to get up past this world and into the next.

Fragments
Letters illuminating on a board, sort of like wheel of fortune but much larger.
A ragged cloth wrapped clumsily in blue ribbon

71/ 18th Lucid Was with a tour group in a place that looked like Arizona. We traveled for a while and came to a secret raging river and massive waterfall. People, against the tour guides’ wills, climbed down the rocks to the water’s edge. I was one of those people. I just wanted to touch the water. Everyone sat on a rock ledge and let their feet dangle in the river, chatting. I tried to sing but people talked over me. Arguing amongst the tourists ensued.
I noticed a small island mid river and was instantly filled with the unshakable desire to wade across to it. I reality checked because of the stupidity of my decision and discovered I was dreaming. I reality checked one more time to be sure. I slipped over the ledge and dropped into the water. It was cold and not very forceful but the stones under my feet were slippery. It felt very real, I reality checked again. Yes, still dreaming.
People behind me yelled for me to get out of the river. I told them it was okay. When they wouldn’t shut up, turned and angrily yelled, “I’m invisible. I was never here.” It worked. Everyone forgot about me. I reality checked again and waded across the river. It occured that I could get across some easier way but felt it was necessary for me to ford the rapids.
I got across and crawled up onto the island, which sat at the top edge of the very tall waterfall. I peeked over and could not see the bottom, it was too misty. I was tempted to fall into the mis to see where I'd end up. I didn’t. I turned back to the island there sat an old woman and man sitting in the flowers watching me.
“Will you sing us a song?” they asked, together. “I can try,” I answered. I sang for them all the songs I could think of. I don’t remember what happened after this.

Have to work harder at remembering my lucid goals and ways to not be distracted.

August 19th

65/ Roadtripped with others. We stopped for gas and behind the station was a massive old abandoned house. I asked the gas station attendant whose house it was, I wanted to explore it. Was told they were doing a tour that night, as they do every weekeend. We stayed and explored the house.

66/ We lived underground, in hiding. There was a doorway that could only be seen from a certain angle. There was no bathroom underground so we had to risk our lives to venture outside to take care of business. I went out on such a mission and found a one story cinderblock building that was a ‘bathroom’. Inside it was empty except for areas where people had left piles of feces. I noped the hell out of there and continued my search for a place, all the while being very careful as I wandered outside.

Note: Bathrooms are appearing a lot too.

17th - No recall. Got lazy and didn’t write out my dreams thru the night.


18th

63/ Flying over waterfalls. Don’t know if in a plane or helicopter or on own. The falls were very high. Had a feeling something lived behind one.

64/ My room had all shapes, sizes, and colors of ants. They didn’t bother me in particular, just went about their ant business. I let them be and continued on at my own business.

Fragment: a pile of dirty dishes that I considered just throwing out instead of doing


Notes: Ants are becoming a thing, as well as waterfalls.

This morning I dreamt that there were freaky storms and tornados going over my house.
It all started when I looked out the window in the living room due to the loud noises outside. I saw that pretty much the whole street except the buildings were flying in a linear matter right , there was a rainstorm and the wind was so strong that we panicked that this is the end for us. It was surreal, things went flying in a linear manner , not like in a real storm where things fall apart and fly everywhere, it was weird, and scary.
Then we went out at a point , now there was no wind no storm, things were a bit damaged around me but it didnt seem to be a full on annihilation of the street. Then I started to hear the noises again, it was tornados. one touched down nearby so fast and then passed by us so fast it gave out a machinery sound. Then another came and another came, I almost got caught up in one.

Who's the father?

I tried to collect as many different flowers as possible. It was some sort of a competition and many people were there to brag about how big and beautiful their bouquets were. I did have the biggest tho even if I held a baby in my arms I could still be the very best. It was just… I couldn’t figure out who was the father of my child. I was supposed to get a flower from the guy and I had two options. Darren Criss or Byun Baekhyun.
I went home to Darren’s place and entered the building. But he wasn’t there and it was really dark since the lights were not on. I couldn’t find any flower in there either which kind of made me disappointed. Before walking to Baekhyun’s home I was passing by a bar. I went in there and had a look. Darren was sitting at a table drinking beer. A few tables away I saw a vase with a beautiful white flower with a note saying: “For my one true love.”
I took it with me, smiled at Darren that hadn’t noticed me and walked home. The other girls that were competing were really jealous of my lovely flower that I had received. Later Darren came by and was really surprised by the flower. He didn’t know anything about it. He said that he wanted to bring a flower but he seemed to forgot about it. I glanced down on my baby and realized it looked like a watch. Like the time was running out.

There was another dream but I only remember taking the flight home from Italy to get my creditcard and then fly back again. Just so I could return to Sweden the day after with my luggage. The trip was really stressful and very unnecessary.

Morning of January 1, 2018. Monday.

Reading time: 1 min 28 sec. Readability score: 61.



I find myself in an unfamiliar, unknown movie theater where most of the audience is wearing 3-D glasses, though I am not wearing any. I see no one I recognize. In the movie, two serpentine dragons face each other, each of them unwilling to either move aside or to strike at the other. Eventually, I do not discern any movement on the movie screen. I think about leaving, as I consider this still scene will last about 2 hours, which will be an unreasonable waste of time. From the middle of the row in about the fourth row back, I get up and walk to the left to another area, ending up behind the movie screen in what looks like the inside of a warehouse. I perceive it as “my” bedroom. The mattress is worn and has no sheet. The headboard has horizontal wooden planks that are in a slightly irregular arrangement. Bette Davis comes in and asks me if I know where her husband is and rolls her eyes at me, also quickly glancing left and right, and walks away before I say anything. Puzzled, I slowly wake.

---

This dream occurred because:

My infra-self, having been satiated in previous dream sequences of apex lucidity, chooses to remain passive and non-lucid for a time, and so my dream space becomes a movie theater where I only watch. By not wearing 3-D glasses as most of the other patrons are, I am subliminally declining the potential for realism as well. (The movie is part of “Dragon Wars” from 2007.) However, RAS activity eventually pauses by way of emerging infra-control from subliminal intent. From here, subliminal awareness of being asleep in bed increases to passive liminality and I enter the warehouse area, which represents the temporary storage of transitory ideas that occur in REM sleep. I subliminally summon Bette Davis as the dream’s preconscious avatar as an influence from the song “Bette Davis Eyes” as an association with REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. She is not “looking for her husband” but seeks to initiate my waking-life identity (which is what RAS mediation is). Aware that the bed “behind” me is the bed I am already in, in sleep, I wake.

---

So
When this one begins my mom tells me to walk over to our Neighbor Ali's house and toss some of our garbage in his can. For whatever reason, we can't throw away our garbage at our own house, so we made this agreement with him. Anyways, I walk on over to Ali's house and enter through the side door without ringing the doorbell

When I enter the house Ali and his family are all watching a movie in the living room, but I pass by them without acknowledging them, thinking that I can come and go whenever I want without question. However, just as I walk into the other room towards the trash can, Ali's Father says, "Josh [my name] is that you? Come in here", beckoning me to the family room. He and Ali's mother put the movie on pause and scold me for just walking in the house, saying that even though we have an agreement I still have to knock. They're pretty pissed off at me, almost disgusted, so I apologize many times, dump my trash on the way out and leave feeling like a fool. The feeling sucks, and I vow never to screw up like that again with them. But then I realize something; I have no clothes on.
Sidenote: weird, this is my second "naked dream" in a row

I have no idea why, but I figure that I must have taken them off inside without thinking. And since I didn't want to do anything else to disturb Ali's family, I decided to take off running down the street to my house. Above me was a dark night sky, so I doubt anyone saw me. It wouldn't have mattered though, because halfway down the street I ran into my brother. I explained my current situation and told him that I told him that there was no time to talk. He leaned in closer to get a good look at me before saying, "What? You're not naked." I looked down at myself, only to realize that he was right; all my clothes were still on.

Since I was definitely full clothed, my Brother and I met up with some of the neighborhood fellas to play a game that involved jumping over rock walls. The game led us to a house on the street that the kids had no problem approaching, so I followed. In the driveway was a silver Les Paul style guitar, and since I'm a guitar player I picked the thing up and started strumming a few chords. But before long, the owner of the house, a ~30 year old woman with two kids, walked outside and yelled at me. She said that she didn't let white people touch her guitar and it was for mexicans only, and made me give it back to her. This seemed odd though, since this woman looked and sounded quite white and not hispanic at all to me. However, just before I could hand her the guitar, I dropped it, leaving a huge dent in the bottom of it. She didn't seem to notice though, so I quickly headed home and off to bed.

In the morning I woke up thinking about how silly the whole "mexicans only guitar" thing was, and scoffed a few times before looking in the mirror. When I did look in the mirror, I saw that I had long hair down to my shpulders. Apparently it had grew 7 inched in one night. I looked at myself for a long while before deciding that I really liked how it looked, and went to show my mom and brother. They both seemed to like it as well. Then I remember thinking to myself, "Hold on, this is silly. I have short hair in real life and there's no way it grew this long by now. This must be a dream." From there, I set my mind on waking up. Everything went hazy, and exactly that happened; I woke up, ending the dream.

This is the most important part of this post. Very often I have these moments of realization that should lead to a DILD, but I always end up thinking that I have to wake up, even though I could just stay lucid if I wanted to. If I can change this, I know I'll have many, many more LDs. So, next time I have a moment of realization like this, Instead of forcing myself to wake up I'm going to immerse myself in the dream world and carry on with the dream, the only difference being that I'll be at the reigns.

Morning of August 19, 2018. Sunday.

Reading time: 2 min 39 sec. Readability score: 55.



In my dream, I am walking through an unknown neighborhood at night. My dream self believes I am in America (even though I currently live in Australia). I have a false memory that I am supposed to go to a radio station to work as an announcer as well as perform live music on the air. At least two of my older brothers, Dennis and Jim, are already supposedly there. (In real life, Dennis is still alive, but Jim is deceased.)

When I reach the building, it is mostly unlit. There seems to be activity inside at first. Over time, I become very annoyed, because it is presently only serving as a relay station rather than a radio broadcasting station. I hear loud voices from inside that sound like my brothers, but the broadcast is on loudspeakers inside, and from an unknown location. I walk around the building, and a few unknown residents tell me the station is closed, and that no one is there. I still yell near the building in case anyone is there. All of the doors are locked. I am very annoyed.

Looking at the street from the front of the building, I see a police car arrive. The police are probably here to tell me to leave and to stop yelling. However, my infra-awareness shifts to where I non-lucidly transform the vehicle into a white semi-truck without a trailer. The preconscious avatar, still in a precursory mutable form, changes from a male police officer into the semi-truck driver. The cab is tipping forward, and he seems to be working on the engine. He does not look in my direction.

Soon, preconscious dynamics shift into a more dominant form for the waking process. An unknown woman opens the front door of her house, becoming the emerging consciousness factor (in the usual doorway waking autosymbolism). When I tell her of my situation, she looks at me and says that my Australian accent sounds unusual. I am annoyed by her comment and tell her that it is not an Australian accent as I am American. That triggers awareness of my conscious self and dissolves my fictitious dream self’s identity, which causes me to wake (rather than to become lucid).

---

What is a relay station in the brain? The thalamus is the deep-seated part of the brain that relays incoming sensory information. The brain’s outer cerebral cortex coordinates responses to this input.

The most important process of a dream is to bring about awareness of the conscious self as preparatory to waking (or in contrast, becoming lucid while remaining asleep). People who are “against” lucid dreaming because of misconceptions about control do not seem to understand that lucidity and dream control are separate factors. (The preconscious distorts threads of the unconscious with synaptic gating, to prevent false memory. In other words, the non-lucid dream self does not even have viable access to the unconscious mind, revealing that the theory that dreams are related to memory processing is asinine. For me, infra-control, or non-lucid dream control, often brings about full conscious awareness, but lucidity is not required to control a dream and people who make this claim have no credibility. To quote Stephen LaBerge, “Lucidity is not synonymous with dream control. It is possible to be lucid and have little control over dream content, and conversely, to have a great deal of control without being explicitly aware that you are dreaming.”)

Although I did not become lucid here, while threads of my conscious self were temporarily locked (the closed relay station), I still controlled my dream’s autosymbolism in non-lucidity by changing the potentially annoying police scenario into a non-event (which did not trigger viable lucidity). The man working on the engine is an analogy to becoming more aware, both physically and mentally. RAS modulation commenced, but with a less annoying context. A door did eventually open, to remind me of who I am, and that is the subliminal, liminal, or lucid quest of the dreamer.

---

Morning of August 19, 2018. Sunday.

Reading time: 1 min 21 sec. Readability score: 49.



In my dream, my family and I as we appear now are living back on Barolin Street (though the house is no longer there in reality and our youngest daughter never lived there). It seems to be late morning. She is looking out into the front yard.

A white plastic bucket (contents unknown, if any) rises from the ground in about the center of the front yard and hovers in the air to about five feet and floats slowly from north to south. The scene resets and repeats several times. I think that an invisible whirlwind is causing it. It does not pose a threat, and my daughter sees it as a joyful event.

---

It is not a tornado dream, but it is a basis for the ultradian rhythm process (in addition to VSC). Tornadoes stem from a specific type of vestibular system correlation at the peak of ultradian rhythm. Even so, I have often controlled their manifestation and direction in both non-lucidity and lucidity.

Here, my infra-awareness (with non-lucid dream control) mediates the event as being cheerful and soft. It represents ultradian rhythm being less dominant in the projected contemplation of my illusory fictitious dream body, also affected by the level of natural melatonin. The white bucket likely represents a specific measurement of it. From a biological standpoint, water and how it occurs in dreams is autosymbolism for the level and dynamics of sleep and levels of melatonin. I have “water symbolizing sleep” as appearing 350 times in my main online journal (though water induction/melatonin begins all sleep cycles). As I have written often, dream “symbolism” is not symbolism in the conventional sense, as it is not even viable in non-lucidity despite popular misconception.

The association, although I never take medication as such, probably stems from the following extract: “When it’s nighttime and melatonin levels are high,” says Dr. Wurtman, “taking melatonin supplements is like putting a drop of water into an empty bucket; when it’s daytime, it’s like putting a drop of water into a full bucket.”

---

Once again, I was in a city environment and I could hover and fly. I think my dad was there too. He didn't appear too surprised. Anyway, once again I was embarrassing myself by endlessly showing off for strangers. Going straight up was a little hard as usual. I got up to the top of the city's cathedral and jumped off of it, which was a lot easier.