side notes

Date: 22 Aug

Behind with journalling as usual. These are for CL's dare about the Great Pyramid.

Pre bed: 200 val, l arg & lysine

Back to the old place dream. It seems even though I left the place, I have the dream memory that I come back and stay here every time for a while [yes, every couple of dreams!]. I feel guilty about not informing the landlord and think about packing my stuff.

At some point when lying in that room's bed, I get in touch with both realities (i.e. start to feel my physical body) maybe just waking up as everything looks very blurry now. Semi consciously, I exert efforts to bring back the dream. The room forms again, everything is perfect even the table although it is not quite an exact match.

I open the window, it's very dark and I look in direction of the neighbors to see a young woman holding or throwing some object. I look at the mostly cloudless sky and then remember an on-going goal [enjoy the night sky], expecting to see cool constellations but the stars look rather normal even too dim. I feel the urge to fly up and so go ahead and lift off.

This flying style is more like that of a bird (hands spread like wings), at any rate it feels like a bird sliding on currents of air. An unpleasant feel as I quickly fly down - it's a physical sensation rather than a mental one. I wonder about it and try to control it, fly gliding down a bit. At some point I land on the top of a nearby building. There is a DC below trying to interact with me. I remember the pyramid task but there is snow all around it doesn't quite feel right. Nevertheless, I try to summon a pyramid by spontaneously getting my hands to form a triangle and I impose it on the background, staring inside to see the pyramid. This results in a good but distant version of the pyramid where I feel like it will take too much time to reach so try again.

The outcome is a smaller pyramid, made of much lighter white greyish stone and something that looks like an entrance. As I come closer I disappointedly ascertain that this pyramid is way too small and the entrance is more like a diagonally shaped part of the design. I wonder whether this would count but dismiss the idea.

Somehow, possibly after turning around and looking for a place to do another summon, I end up inside a store. I continue with my summons here (facing the windows) and make a triangle with my hands, looking inside with squinting eyes causing blurred vision which helps manipulate the color and material of the pyramid. Alas, all resulting pyramids are a shifty mirrage and their place is taken by something like a large mosque from a nicely matching material. I leave the store to explore and see if anything can be made with the structure but the alarm wakes me up.


Date: 24 Aug

I'm in some sort cafe with couple of Asians and Emm. We are about to drink tea but I have to leave without paying as everybody evacuates due to disease alarm. On my way out I contemplate that in this dream Emm didn't quite play a positive role.

After getting out, I end up in this yard and look ahead. At this point am already lucid after the contemplations about classmate Emm. The grass and eveything else has a red tint and it looks very interesting. I remember that this was a task [add photoshop effect] but think that since it's already done it may not count. Once again I have an urge to take off and just fly ahead. I do so and end up flying between trees and bushes and towards a darker area of the woods. It doesn't look very inviting and also there is the reduction of visual stimuli that adds to the feel. Before I can do anything else the dream falls apart.

PS: Stay tuned for the next part!

Black is Non Lucid.
Blue is Lucid.

Lucidity: 3/5
Vividness: 4/5
Length: Short

I was in a mansion, trying to eat a gigantic pumpkin that I found. It started to develop spikes all over it, like the inside of an artichoke. I saw a bug on it, but it didn't bother me too much. Then a spider that was black and spotted white, was jumping randomly, like it was drunk. I left because the spider was scaring me.

After leaving, I gained lucidity. I flew to the upstairs, glad that I finally fell asleep after trying to for about three hours. When I reached the top, I was in this menu where I was choosing what I looked like. There was no option to get out of the menu, so I kept looking up, down, and around, willing a window to appear so I could get out. One did, eventually, and I flew through it. I was back where I was before I was sucked into the menu, the upstairs of the mansion. I came to a room that had the spider in it, somehow, but there was no spider. Instead, two frogs were trying to murder each other. I had two options, according to a dream character: Let the frogs kill each other, or kill them using a bird. I chose the second one, and a bird came down and scooped up one of the frogs. It came back after a second and was disappointed that the other frog wasn't there. I killed the other one, then got angry when I thought of how I tried so hard to fall asleep tonight, and punched the frog in the back of the head, it being as large a human being now. I then was in a restroom, looking at my reflection. I was very skinny and had scars on my back. My face looked the same as it usually does, though.

After losing lucidity, I was in a DOTA game where I was Crystal Maiden with Tidehunter's E, dodging everything and hitting all of the other team with it. This took place in a field that was not textured at all.

.../I'm in my grandparents home town, near the lake I used to play around when I was a kid. I see two groups of men running somewhere. I notice one group is wearing the same sport uniform while the other a more informal sport clothing. I notice because of the haircut style of the first group, that they are police officers apparently in their day off, while the other group looks like a bunch of delinquents. They are going to play a match on an indoor soccer field that floats near the shore of the lake. I wonder about the limitations of the field, because of I don't see any security net around it, just some humble railings. I'm standing on the bridge that communicates the platform with the ground which is to my left side. There I see a vagabond old man. When the guys to my right start asking for their ball which has landed on the water in front of that man. He tries to catch it, but it's hard for him to get it. I jump from my place and fall on the water trying to reach the shore, I take care of not getting wet with it in spite of half of my body got into the water (most ignored dream sign of all). I turn and pick up the wet ball to bring it back. I want to kick it back but I see the platform is too far away to try this move and it's possible that the ball will fall again on deep waters. I walk until I have a proper distance to throw it with my hands, while feeling its weight, which reminds me some past experiences with this type of leather soccer balls. I have a flash of memories before I unsuccessfully throw the ball which lands on the water after bouncing on some ground. It doesn't matter because the guys are playing with another one, which I see is floating further from my point of view. I see a friend of mine from the school, jumping on the water and swiming until he gets back that red and black ball. They go on with their game.

I move near to the lake port to have a better sight. I see a huge floating structure where, according to my dream memories, it was used to produce milk during the old times when the cows where brought on the ships, but now it's abandoned. I examine the structure to see if it's already floating or it's sunk on the bottom. I see the bases moving with the waters. I think about the recipients which look like train containers connected by huge red pipes above in the shape of arcs. I'm wondering if those things got rotten milk in the inside, when for some reason I have to move from there. I get inside a huge hangar, where I see some adjustable wrenches of different sizes on a table. There I see a huge one, which I think must be used on the ship. I see how easy could it be for anyone to pick one of those, but I leave them there, I don't have to do it.

Somehow I get to the living room of my grandparents house. I'm wearing some old clothing. It's still day and for some reason we have to go out. I don't remember who was there, apparently is a new friend I met in this dream world. I notice my shirt has just one sleeve, so I pull it off to have the shirt without sleeves. It's easier to pull, because of it's old I think. When I see there's a skull similar to the Misfits' fiend skull, I show it to my new pal saying something like "look I have a new patch". Then I go on trying to match the broken fabrics. I cross in front of a mirror to see it doesn't look that bad. I'm wearing short pants and the long shirt. I just need to put my fanny pack on to go out. I have some problems with my clothing because of the shirt has grown too long, it gets to my knees and I feel like I'm looking like a junkie delinquent from those lands.

Out in the streets I see a couple dressed in black talking with a man. I think they could be related to the porn industry because of their look. It looks like they are explaining something to the guy, I go on walking until I get to a place which is a mixture between a restaurant and the interior of a bus. I see two girls deliberately pressing her bodies trying to cross a tiny passage. One of them comes to my place and sits on my legs. I see some guy in one of the tables is paying attention on what she does. I think they may be a couple. I realize she's wearing a very light dress/...

.../Previously there were something about my old daughter and a pain in her back, which I assumed it was because of she wanted to lift a heavy weight or some. I'm scolding her/...

.../There's something with my little demon sneakers that are full of sand/...

.../I see in the back of a newspaper, some news about two Indian elephants swimming together to cross a river/...

Ritual: I got fed up with the dry spell I've been having for the past couple weeks and took drastic measures. Back in 2010 I experimented a couple times with nicotine (in patch form) as a lucidity trigger, but quickly gave it up because I found it impossible to fall asleep with even a very low dose (half a 7mg patch, so 3.5mg). These days my problem—and the main thing hampering my lucid attempts—is that I've been falling asleep way too easily, so I thought there would be a good chance I'd be able to fall sleep wearing the patch and see if it had any effects on dreaming after all.

Went to bed at midnight, woke naturally at 3:30am and stayed awake until 5am, mostly reading, but finishing the WBTB with a brief seated meditation. I googled to make sure using nicotine patches well past their expiration date was advisable, but was reassured by what I found. So I took 200mg L-Theanine to make it easier to fall asleep, and applied a 7mg patch with half its surface covered, so 3.5mg total (though the dose might have weakened with age). I also worked on my mental motivation, not just intending but vowing to get lucid tonight.

When I returned to bed I felt my heart beating faster than normal, though I wasn't sure if it was the nicotine (if so the patches must be exceptionally fast acting, because this was only minutes later) or just a consequence of the excitement and anxiety of trying something new. The feeling reminded me trying to fall asleep on galantamine, which also has a very powerful stimulant effect. However, I started counting and was reassured (and somewhat surprised) when I began to lose my place already by the time I hit "ten." I reset and kept counting, rarely making it as far as "ten," and often not past "one," until I felt my mind had reached a place where I could easily fall asleep, then turned on my side to do so.

I fell asleep very quickly, although my intention to remain aware of the transition went nowhere—I just zonked out. I woke up almost two hours later with the memory of a DILD and least one FA. The dreams were definitely atypical in tone: the plot was epic and confrontational, which I attribute to the nicotine. The dream awareness was spontaneous rather than triggered, but the lucidity was at very low level. Worse, my dream recall was unusually vague and fragmentary.

DILD: The dream had a complex narrative that I can't satisfactorily recall. The most notable aspect was that my husband was in it and my dream logic concluded that it was a shared dream and that he was actually there and trying to learn the ropes of lucidity from me. We were trying to summon spirit allies, and he wanted a gryphon. The first version looked cartoonish, reminiscent of the monsters from Where the Wild Things Are, but it wasn't a proper gryphon. Neither were the next two, though they were massive, monstrous creatures that reminded me of the kinds of avatars you would summon in the later Final Fantasy games. When I summoned my own spirit ally, I was surprised to find that it was just a somewhat transparent virtual version of me.

(Source: I think this was day residue, as last night in ME3 my Shepard came across the holograph AI of herself on the Citadel. The notion of iconographically incorrect gryphons might have been inspired by the poor versions I saw in the astonishingly bad—so bad it was almost good, I couldn't stop laughing—film version of Hercules I caught the last fifteen minutes of on cable yesterday evening.)

I wish I remembered the plot of the dream more clearly. There was a group of entities that we were in conflict with, and they were insisting that I was breaking the rules of dream in some way. I disagreed, as I felt justified to do as I liked in my own dream, so I countered by exerting a massive field of control over the environment that made the ground shudder and shattered buildings. It wasn't quite an earthquake, more a gravity-reversing vibration: I have a mental image of dust and dirt rising and hovering in the air accompanied by an almost subsonic drone. It felt good to do this, powerful, though something of a guilty pleasure.

(Source: I was sure there was a waking life source for this image of dust rising from the earth in the wrong direction but couldn't remember; now it occurs to me that it might have been from the movie Transcendence, which I saw last month.)

At one point I had the presence of mind to wonder, or maybe someone asked me: was I actually hurting anyone by doing this? But I pointed out that you can't hurt DCs merely by disrupting their physical bodies, because the dream state does not have that kind of continuity. I demonstrated this by plucking my own spirit ally from deep in the rubble where she had been buried and reviving her.

I might actually have remembered somewhere in all of this to try the Patronus TOTM, which had been my intention before falling asleep, but if so I don't recall the outcome, unless that was somehow connected with the idea of spirit allies. Too vague to be sure, unfortunately.

FA: I woke up next to my husband and wondered if it had really been a shared dream, so I watched his reaction carefully. He gave me a look which led me to conclude that it had been. But before long it began to dawn on me that this might be a false awakening, and soon I was sure of it. I decided to review the events of the previous dream in my mind before I forgot, but as I was doing so, I became aware that my mind was interpolating new ideas, and whole new scenes were even taking place, spinning off from my memories of the previous plotline—this is the risk of reviewing dream memories while you're still dreaming!

For instance, when I thought about our spirit allies, a girl showed up at the foot of the bed who I took to be a transformation of the gryphon in the previous dream, only now she looked human and very familiar. I tried to place her face and decided she resembled the character "Marnie" from Girls. Not sure where that came from, as I haven't watched an episode of that since the last season ended.

Then when I was trying to remember the main plot, it became confused with a new plotline in which I was worried that war was imminent and that if it took place, the spirits of mythological creatures would fuse with nuclear bombs to create a weapon that was as devastating to dream as to the waking world.

I was out trying to investigate and prevent this outcome, and found myself in the house of people who had melee weapons shaped like real or imaginary animals. One was a rod with a sculpted head shaped like the head of an animal that mingled the qualities of a lizard and a single-horned rhinocerous. Another was a club shaped like a narrow stylized boar, and while my husband was handling it, I noticed that it could also be fired like a crossbow. Again, very random imagery.

Conclusion: I would call this a partial success at best, as the low-level awareness and limited recall made the overall experience less than satisfactory, and I didn't actually succeed in doing the TOTM that was my original goal. Still, breaking my dry spell by any means is reassuring. It definitely felt like nicotine had an effect on dream content, and I attribute the unusually "epic and confrontational" quality to its influence. However, after waking up I felt almost as uncomfortable and unrested as I do after using galantamine, so while I might experiment a little more along these lines, I will not be making this a frequent induction method—which is probably for the best, nicotine bad and all that.

I am a small duck dressed in a trench coat and sunglasses. I am a bounty hunter, and am after some guys hanging out inside a night club. It is daytime outside My awareness is positioned outside of my body. I enter the club, and exit carrying some stuff I stole from them. I then get into the car I own in WL, where my awareness now enters my body. I am trying to back up, when one of the thugs moves his car to box me in. I turn the wheel hard, ride up and over the car beside me (not possible at all in WL) and in the process, tear the head off of a thug who was trying to climb in through the back window.

I become lucid, as this is ridiculous and could never happen in real life. I continue driving my car down the street. I am now driving down some hallways (almost like I am in the back of a kitchen or something) and I realize the car is gone. I think to myself, Oh, I'm running now but then have a flash of insight--I'm not doing anything--I'm lying in bed. I also realize I have no body and really haven't had one for quite some time. Furthermore, as I am dreaming, there is really no reason to get a body anyway.

At this point, I decide to test my bodiless-ness and pass through a set of push doors. I bang my forehead against the door, and then just raise my hand and open it! I remember my discussion with dutchraptor and Sensei about pain in dreams, and realize that--as usual--I do not feel any pain from knocking myself in a dream.

I reach an open area, where I am looking down at a helipad. The helipad is about forty or fifty feet below me, and there are numerous helicopters on the ground, propellers spinning. I think that I might jump down into one of the propellors, but then change my mind, as I really have no wish to test being chopped up (dang it!). Instead, I decide to use this high point as a jump off for flying. I leap into the air, but just fall (very swiftly) to the ground. I hit the ground and then fall down on my butt.

I now stand up, look around, and just lift into the air. I fly higher and higher, really not even trying now to do anything, and travel perhaps several hundred feet into the air (that's advanced, right!? ). I then look around, and my body begins to fall. I am momentarily scared, but then remember that I'm not really doing anything, nothing is happening, and there is nothing at all to worry about. I relax, and just hang in mid-air. I then accelerate upwards again. As I am thinking these things, I realize my body is moving of its own accord, flying this way and that. I think this is kind of neat and just observe my body flying. I then relax again, and I this must trigger something with my WL body because I wake up.

On a side note, this dream has caused me to think more about meditation in dream, and has prompted me to concentrate more on my daily practice of sitting, as well as begin to integrate sitting more into my dream practice.

I'm working on the prototype for a video game I intend to create with a good friend of mine.
The game will require fast AI pathfinding over dynamic terrain for a large amount ( >1000 ) of enemies.
My current navmesh/A* approach is working fine, but I'm a little worried that it's not going to scale well if we want to add even more enemies.
I remember that one of my friends did her masters thesis on swarm AI,
so I decide to call her on Skype to get her opinion on my situation.
Unfortunately I'm having trouble navigating my contact list.
The names don't seem to be sorted alphabetically...

I hear the door bell go off, so I go downstairs to check who's at the door.
A man in his early 20's offers me a package addressed to "Hyu".
Huh? Did I order anything using my nickname? Why would I do that?
I accept the package and the man just leaves without asking me to sign anything.
What the hell?

I go back upstairs and open the package.
OH MY GOD. It's the Oculus DK2 I ordered!

I am so excited!
I unpack everything as quickly as I can, tossing the empty package into a corner of my room.

Once I've plugged everything in I notice that my computer is now running Elite: Dangerous.
That's not right, I was working with Unity3D before...
hmm....
I try to increase my awareness, going through the last few minutes in my mind.
Yup, I'm definitely dreaming.

I'm so disappointed. I got all excited for nothing.
Then again... I wonder what happens if I...
I sit down and hold the device in front of my eyes, trying to see if the displays in it are showing anything.
The device just straight up vanishes from my hands as soon as the screens cover my entire field of view.
I'm left completely immersed in the game, sitting inside the cockpit of a Sidewinder, which is the ship you start out in in the game.
Huh, that's kind of a neat trick.


Also I'm in a spaceship. Did I mention I'm in a spaceship?
I'm super excited and get going immediately.
Fortunately the controls are identical to the joystick setup I use in waking life, so I have no trouble maneuvering the ship.
I use the lateral thrusters to lift off and to get to the center of the station.
The moment I let go I immediately feel the weightlessness, which makes me feel a little sick initially,
but the feeling quickly subsides.

As I maneuver out of the station, I notice for the first time how tight the entrance actually is.
You don't really get a sense for it on a computer screen.

Unfortunately I don't really remember much else.
I faintly remember feeling the heat of a sun radiating into my cockpit as I dropped out of frameshift, but that's about it.


The experience got me thinking about how virtual reality is going to affect dreams though.
I wonder if it'll make it easier to incubate dreams about video games.
I imagine it could also make such dreams more immersive.
Usually when I have video game dreams, it feels like I'm merely an observer.
I'm not really in the dream, it's more like I'm viewing it on a monitor that happens to cover my entire field of view.
Perhaps this is going to change with regular usage of VR.

This morning I had a lucid but it was very vivid and I wasn't of the greatest level of lucidity either. The only part I recall from being lucid was being in a public restroom with a younger Asian woman. There were other events prior but I can't recall them that well. It had something to do with being in a store, and I think I was looking for bread for some reason.

I’m in a long closet like mom’s going through clothes. I come across a Wal-Mart bag with the broken pieces of the sand-dollar mom gave me, except it looks like a smooth, jagged gem/rock piece.

I hide it in the back corner, but then realize mom might come across it, so I take it back out and put it in the drawer of something like my nightstand.

There’s a brown box in front of me, and there are two yellow bags of chicken in it, as well as a few loose pieces. I pick up one, and it’s kind of soft and raw in the middle.

Mom comes over to the doorway to the closet. We talk a bit about the clothes; I can’t remember the exact conversation. There’s a pink shirt and as I held up a pair of pink pants, I think they might match, so I hold them together and ask. Even as she says no, I can tell that they’re different shades of pink.

Then there was something about mom trying to get me to remember what the chicken was from. It had the feel of me having done something but trying to repress it. I said that “It was too long ago for me to remember”, but she insisted that, “It really wasn’t that long ago.”

I have a kind of flashback story narrative sequence:

-Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul is eating alone on a chair, a clerk standing at the counter in front of him
-Taking a group of friends to a host-club type place, the one nearest to my outsider POV being Hide.
-Walking into a room where there are three girls(?) very similar in appearance. He asks ‘which one it is’. He’s supposed to be tutoring them. The middle girl steps forward, she’s shorter than the others. It’s Hinami. She says ‘me’ and introduces herself as Velma.
(It was only after I woke up that I realized that one of them was probably Touka, the other may have been a copy or Ayato. And that ‘Velma’ was actually Hinami.)

Inspirations: I haven’t thought about it in a while, but mom gave me a sand-dollar she got a long time ago from a friend. It broke during a move and I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.
I’ve been reading a lot of the Tokyo Ghoul manga lately.
The chicken might have come from me thinking about the piece of chicken I’m thawing in the fridge?

.../I'm in sort of a first person shooting game which name is 'Combat' or some. We're in a patrol moving across a road, we know the enemies are hiding at the left side of the road. To the right there's a precipice. We're preparing to cross an open place where it's supposed to be an enemy entrenchment. Got our weapons ready and we cross shooting everywhere to cover our run. Once we crossed it I notice there's no more road and stop just at the edge of the precipice which is now in front of me. Another guy stops to my side, and I'm like "It was really close!" When I sit to see the landscape to the front, there's a beautiful lake in the middle of a jungle down there. which most of its color tones and perspective look something like this:



although the lake starts some hundred meters to the front because there's some jungle ground between its shores and the bottom of the precipice, it extends to the sides and there's no river from my point of view, it just goes to dark green, almost black to the rear of the dreamscape. I'm amazed with this view and I want to tell my pal it looks like a dream! Now every thing makes sense, I don't need to RC to confirm it. I'm just blown away with the dreamscape. The lake looks awesome, its waters seem to be deep in some parts although it's not homogeneous. My first impulse is to jump off the cliff and start air surfing, I want to fly above that view for a while before doing anything else. I ask my partner to move on because his legs are impeding me to move and stand up and run some before jumping. It's impossible to get a proper distance so I stand up and just jump off the cliff to start surfing on the air. It takes a while before my motion turns to the front in stead of free falling, like in a wing-suit jump. There's a moment when I think I'm going to crash to the ground, I stop looking for a while but then I go on looking to the front thinking it's not good to close my eyes, finally I'm flying above the lake. I'm totally excited with it, while I start to air surf almost above the waters at a high speed, I remember the TOTM. I realize it's too late to think about it because of I'm in the middle of an adrenaline rush and it would have been better to do it before the jump. Anyway, perhaps it's not that bad, I look for some ground to land as I get closer to the surface and calm myself down. It turns in a tropical swamp with some weird plants around. I remember the shoes task. As I'm getting about to land, I see a pair of white velcro shoes with orange-yellow tapes for girls, in the middle of some vegetation. Great imagination buddy boy! Ok, it doesn't say it must correspond to my gender. I land, and look for the shoes, when I see more pairs here and there, some sneakers are good, but all are for ladies. C'mon can you put something more interesting? It's getting too long, so I pick up the first shoe I see close to me, again it's a girls sneaker, size for kids. Just one! I don't see the other one. I decide to pick up the next pair I see. Another pair of sneakers for kids, light purple with laces. Ok, it doesn't matter, they will fit, I know it. Next step, find a place to change mine. I walk around looking for a comfortable place while feeling the shoes in my hand and looking around to avoid fading away. I try to keep calmed, but I'm little bit over excited. I find some ground to sit. while opening the shoes because of the laces are too tight. I pull off my left shoe to find it's laced around my ankle. Great idea right? I look for the lace with my fingers to pull it off. Finally I got to free my foot and put on the first shoe.


* I wake up pushing my foot in the same direction

Date: 3 Sept

Mini-wbtb: lecithin

Decided not to wbtb, no latte, but had a natural wake. Didn't quite concentrate on lding, but had some thoughts about it.

LD Frag: In a classroom and I see one of the classmates that greets me. At some point my awareness increases and I realize that I'm in the room with my class and dreaming. One of the long term goal experiments comes to mind (learn to recognize DS by experience from the dream). The room is full of classmates sitting behind the desks and I start my mantras despite there being some instability "I see classmate, I know that I am dreaming, etc." and make them all repeat this with me. I list a number of classmates and stress the dreaming part. One thing that strikes me is the synchronisation between my thoughts, my words, and the words that come out of all classmates - it all happens exactly at the same time, and it's as if I can feel this invisible causality connection.

After going through a number of names in alphabetical order, I decide that this amount of information is enough for now and that no more should be repeated. An unknown DC teacher wearing grey comes closer, not a very pleasant one. I decide to change him a bit and give him a hug. He seems so touched by this that he sheds a few tears that fall down his shirt, leaving realistic wet marks.

At this point, I recall the shoe task and start looking around for shoes. The are shoes scattered around but from different pairs and sizes. The room becomes someone's apartment. In addition, again, I become too picky trying to find a pair of shoes that I like. (And we know what this usually means). Finally, I find a pair of colorful moccasins, very nice ones and get on with the task. There are papers into the first one, so I have to take them out before putting the shoe on. I grab the second shoe and as am about to put it the dream ends.

FA: I have a task of the month thread FA where I read my current dream post and another dream that includes OpheliaBlue and Schmaven.

Another fragment/mini-dream: I appear somewhere more like outdoors and realize that am still dreaming, though I have the definite certainty that am going to lose lucidity (like feeling your mental sharpness going down) and I continue forward focusing on maintaining the alertness.

Frag: It's like the same apartment again as I figure out 'dreaming, same place'. These are like wildlets in reverse as I'm in the process of waking up.

Wake up, brief review.

Frag: Only remember the ld part. In an appartment again, this time I find a pair of slippers and put them on without any issues. Wondering what to do next, I exert a great deal of effort to recall the other tasks that I didn't plan on performing tonight. The fortune cookie task finally comes to mind and I head towards the kitchen. There's lots of stuff on the counter including pieces of cookies but for some reason I decide to have a DC do the work for me and skip the cookie altogether. I look to my left and see two DCs (think they were from the non-ld part), both of them holding a piece of paper in their hands. I take the one from the nearest DC and try to read it, the words change to something like 'crazy couple'. I consider the task complete and get distracted with the dream to lose lucidity.


Shoes & Cookies Part II

Date: Sept 10

Decided to skip wbtb due late bedtime. Woke up naturally and had trouble falling asleep until couple of mins before the alarm.

LD: I finally fall asleep and find myself starring at...myself. There is a doppelgänger DC right in front of me, seated near where the desk used to be in my old room. But she looks more like doll, an object rather than a real person even though she is looking at me. I decide to ignore her and turn to the other side where under pressure (due to alarm), I go to recall immediately my tasks. The ones I had planned to try don't fit the place and current time constraints so I decide to go with basic totm instead.

I recall the shoe task and have a look at my feet - bare, the next second my mind produces a pair of shoes exactly like the slippers I had when I lived in that room. I take them off and look for another pair of shoes next to me. There are a few actually and I'm conveniently facing the wardrobe. The ones that look from the same pair and right size are orange flip flops that I put on. My attention is briefly caught by another pair of rather fancy high heel shoes that I figure belong to my mom. I'm excited to try them but at this point my feet's motion translates into physical motion...Yet, the dream still holds together despite a brief wave of instability.

Since I'm still here, I decide to do the the fortune cookie task, moving on to the place of the old desk. There are lots of items on top of it and I scan for a fortune cookie while thinking about one. There is a misshaped fortune cookie and a piece of paper coming out of it. I notice at first that there are only black and white drawings of snoopy or a simialr character but the other side of the fortune reveals a conversation next to the character. The drawings disappear to leave an ever changing text. In its last version that I try to memorize it is an old German proverb that repeats the same word three times. It looks like an old Latin proverb (dream knowledge) translated into German.

After completing the task (though later forgot the saying), I get a surge of confidence and decide to try another pair of shoes this time with laces for the bonus wings. There is a pair of purple sports shoes on the floor and I grab and start to untie one of them. It feels pretty accurate and not messy at all. This excites me that once they are untied I will put them on and tie them, no problem. As I prepare to put one on, I notice that there are papers inside again. I take one piece out and decide not deal with the rest of the paper, but rather press my foot inside. My foot presses against the papers to make space and then my physical foot moves again and this time dream is gone for good.

Disappointed but after a while with closed eyes, sleep resumes.

DEILD: I'm back into the same room, but this time it's dark as if midnight. This is not welcome as I hope to find my shoes somewhere nearby. With a touch of sarcasm I decide to order more light, though I know it's rather difficult to turn on the lights either by a switch or by command. To my surprise the space in front gets lit up as if there is a screen behind me that casts bright light ahead.

Alas, the alarm rings at that very moment...

.../The dreamscape corresponds to one of my university times, when I didn't know about inducing lucid dreams. I'm carrying all my stuff that I use to take with me going to work nowadays. I check that everything is in place. I'm waiting for my bus to come, getting bored, I go here and there waiting. I'm worried about my bag, I take care of it. I see a kid talking about his dreams, I want to ask him if he knows when he's dreaming but I don't find an opportunity to ask for it. I go upstairs of the building next to the bus stop. I see a lot of public transport from above, when I see my bus going away. I cannot get down fast enough. The whole place is getting empty, no more cars. I'm worried about it. I see the time in an analog clock , it shows 7:00 pm, when I see again it's 6:50. I remember the last bus comes until 9. I don't remember which one I have to take. I think I will recognize it when I see it. I see a couple of known buses. Not the one that I need. I go up and down the building. I see kids coming back from school/...

* I spent the whole dream doing that, waiting for my bus, worried about the thieves, alone. No RC, perhaps because in those times I didn't think much about it. I cannot believe it!

23:30 1mg melatonin
00:00 Tuesday 2014-09-09


Big night!

dream
lucid
comments

06:10

+ Shark park
I see a Ford Taurus (big wagon with bulging round back end) drive up out of a body of water, it was entirely submerged, it drives to the left up the stairway and stops. Inside is my ex gf SB, the car is entirely filled with water, and a huge shark. I have to figure out how to get her out. I open the passenger left side door and plan to extract SB to save her (no more water in there). I just see her leg, I think I will distract the shark by making a long deep incision in SB's leg from her ankle towards her knee with my pocket knife (!!). We have to get the timing right. She says do it, I ask "Now!?" I ask again "Now!?" then do it: I make an about 6-inch incision from her ankle going up her leg, I see red leg meat inside, the cut is pretty deep about 1/4 inch at least.

We're standing outside the car, a middle-aged couple (man+woman) is walking nearby there, "Help!" I call to them, to get assistance for my friend's leg. They're leery of helping, the woman ways "You know if we help them we're obligated to investigate/get involved" but the man said "Yeah well what can we do?". He starts asking me all sorts of questions about where I was earlier and did I have the knife with me before, I thought these questions were ludicrous: I had been walking earlier in the park with my dog, and had been whittling a stick with my pocket knife, DUH!

The shark is under control on a leash but LOOK OUT it can get off, it's escaped, it's huge, a great white, about 15 feet long and at least a meter or more in diameter, it lunges at the man and corners the man up against a hedge, I say "careful! That thing could eat you!" I'm trying to reach for my automatic machine gun but it doesn't work.

+ Something about a thing will cost around $200,000, that means split 3 ways we'll each end up paying around $70,000

+ In a stadium, a girl is putting on a school colors sweatshirt (mostly gold/yellow) and talking about the sports program, will the stadium be used for boys athletics only or also girls?


Almost (or do, briefly), fall asleep with my phone in my hand before journaling shark park while doing recall. Tired, don't want to get up. Dang it, cool dream, must journal it, so I do.
Don't want to get up, a bit cold and I'm sleepy. Decide if you want LDs must get up for WBTB, I had already prepared 20 drops of wormwood tincture in a shot glass to drink with some water.

Did Dreamer-MILD (incubate location, notice dream signs), Zipplord47 self-hypnosis (notice when dreaming), then took wormwood, back to sleep didn't take too long

07:xx(?) unsure, didn't journal at waking

+ I'm in a computer lab, I need to find a free station for a guy to use, I walk around down the full table and find a free one, the computer is a combination old ADM3A terminal and modern computer, I ask does he know how to login? He says he doe.

+ work/baseball
I'm arriving to work in a large open room, a girl is saying I have her music book, I doubt it but reaching my desk I see a pile of books leaning up against the screen and one of them is hers I'm sure. My station is at a desk with another person's computer, mine is to the left. There is a large scaffolding set up right over my table, workmen are up there doing something, I'm concerned about stuff falling on my computer. The workman is trying to insert some electrical cable into some slot, the slots are labelled like "I-1", "I-2", etc. My manager directs the workman to plug in the big-screen TV to the cable feed, the workman says he'll have to notify upper management about turning on the TV, my manager laughs and says she's already gotten permission, he plug it in and there's a professional baseball game on the TV, I see the players swarming over the field, it's a night game and the field is poorly lit, quite dim.

Then I'm there on the field, sitting in a large indentation/trough along the first-base line. I look up and see GMT with a big huge fat face sitting in the stands and eating, he's with his fat wife and some other friends enjoying the game, I stand up and wave to them, they see me and wave back we meet and greet.

While I'm standing nearby first base a batter hits a line drive down the first base line, I watch the ball it to see if it's fair or foul, it looks barely fair, the batter runs quickly around the bases, he comes close to me I think I need to get back out of the way, I notice his foot misses first base, nobody cares.

Another batter back in a team area starts psyching himself up out loud, "I'm going to blast a line-drive right into center field! I'm going to really wack that ball <etc for a while.>" I think he's trying to talk smack to really get himself pumped up, I think he's stupid. He gets to bat and drives one foul down the first-base line and I call out "Hah, not much of a line drive to center!" He tries again I think and misses, I decide not to heckle him because: 1) he's trying his best, and 2) he could probably kick my ass. The players are all very large and athletic/tall a bunch of them are black.

I'm looking around the field and am not impressed. It doesn't look much like a pro baseball diamond: the outfield is irregularly shaped and not very deep, and the stands can only hold about a few hundred people, quite small. I say "this is more like a playground than a stadium....it's a playground!".

+ playing chess (late in day recall), thinking about rook moves

+ lost my bridge, I'm going to have to go all day with a gap in my teeth (late morning recall)


08:38


+ LD #62 I'm walking and realize my waist bag is hanging very low down from its normal position and it's open. I get into argument with annoying girl, we're both very angry with each other, and accuse each other of being immature. Enter into a building, a store of some sort? I choose to walk a different way, my path becomes blocked by tall things, I decide to fly up over them. I fly up to the ceiling, turn around, and look down at the floor and get lucid while still floating up at the ceiling. The floor is made of industrial tiles like used in hospitals/schools. I want to land, this is cool, I approach the floor slowly, it takes a while to get there, I'm anticipating my landing and it's pretty rough, I sort of tumble on the floor and hit the floor with my arm and my leg. I stand up and instantly think about doing TOTM. I'm in a classroom, standing to the right and back a bit from the teacher's desk. I go to the teachers desk, he's an older-middle-aged man with very crinked bags around both of his eyes. I get down close and look him right in the face and tel him to give me my fortune cookies (I like this form of summon, worked for the wand, too!) he starts leading me to the right side of the room, as we're walking I tell an adult man sitting at a desk to take off his shoes and have them ready for me to wear later (DC summon #2! How's that for thinking ahead!? ).

The teacher leads me to an empty desk with about 5 regular looking fortune cookies in plastic wrappers. I open one and pick up a traditional looking fortune slip of rectangular white paper, see small faint Chinese Kanji. I turn the small white paper over and read some text which seems garbled and nonsense. At this point some more people are joining to enjoy the hilarious fortunes. There are more and more fortunes appearing on the desk building up in a pile, now they're written on paper like they were torn from crumpled brown paper lunch sacks, they are multiplying on the desk top. I pick up a large one and it's from "Leticia" who's going on and on about Jesus in messy/uneven small-child-like handwriting in different colors).

I decide to move on and cross the room to the other (left as facing the front) side, picking up the shoes the DC guy made ready for me, with laces, on my way. I'm really happy and having a great time. I sit down on the floor, put on the shoes (beige loafers but with laces) and tie the shoes. I run through the tying sequence in my mind. I then start trying to tie the laces of a a girl's shoes who's sitting to my left, and I can't untangle the laces. I then see that her shoes didn't have this lace at all, they were already tied with short fuzzy laces, and I relalize I've already tied my own and should move on. While I'm sitting on the floor I look up to the front of the room at the teach at his desk, look at the chalkboard behind him (some vague diagrams are written there) and call out "So what's the next lesson?". I'm looking all around and notice that on the wall next to the two girls (they're twins) are rows and rows of little colorful stuffed toys attached to and covering the wall. I think about touching things like the floor to engage. Someone says that it's a good thing that there are no girls in the class because they'd just cause trouble like the two twins do.

I think "Ok, what's next?" Toilet -- uh uh. Patronus! I stand up and look across the room, and I see 3 witches, male and female, old, two in front of me standing close, one standing more to my left across the room, have appeared there. They are wearing in full black robes and tall traditional black witches pointy hats they are standing and looking at me! I think for a second about a wand but just stretch out my arm, point my finger at one of them, and shout EXPECTO PATRONUM!! Some white mist shoots out of my finger forming a small cloud and there's some fizzling but no animal, it dissipates quickly. I go over to the one I pointed at (a woman, McGonagall?) and say "oh, you're the good guys, aren't you?!" and "you've brought my wand, give it to me!" (DC summon #3!). She instantly takes out a wand from her robes and hands it to me, it's beautiful: black, about 18 inches in length, tapered wide at bottom to narrow at top, covered in indentations (like toothmarks on a pencil), and some iridescent colors like blue & orange are shining as I turn it to look at it, I run my hand up the wand and am well pleased.

It's time to go bad guy hunting with my witch friends, and I run out if the room into the hallway. Unfortunately, at the last second I call back for the girl who's shoes I tried tying and she comes to me, I pick her up in my arms so that she wraps her legs about my waist, kiss her, and hold/carry her there the rest of the dream where I'm running down stairs and enter a large open area.

Spoiler for Explicit NSFW action, you've been warned:

My attention turns fully to the girl I'm still carrying/holding in my arms. I reach down with a hand behind her and up her dress, and feel all around her (ahem), she's sopping wet, and so tight that I can't really find the opening. I'm poking around a while and she says something slightly plaintively "You can't put it in that way!?" I've turned and am heading towards something in the distance that looks like a bowling alley. I say "OK well let's go from the front then!" and I grab my (ahem) and bring it to to her's and start to push in, and just as a sensation of entry begins, the dream fades.

Spoiler for Explicit NSFW action, you've been warned:

Fogelbise would be proud, I accomplished his trademark Reach Down For Moisture (there was a lot) before the dream ended.

I really wish I had avoided the girl thing because frankly the task and adventure part of the dream was so much more fun. Real incentive to avoid caveman in the future!

It's been a while since I've put up an entry and I think it's time to make the decision wether maintaining this DJ is archievable and still nescesarry or if I can do it in a less intense way. I found myself using up most of the time after school doing work or just relaxing and seem to have lost the motivation to write down my dreams in detail up here. I still note them in my tag-book which is sufficient at keeping my DR high (+-4 dreams a night) and I seem to have found my golden technique after more than 3 months of non-stop research, testing and tweaking. It seems my work here is done and if I keep practising I will probably archieve atleast several lucids per night with this technique. I will probably post all my LDs on this forum so I can do the TOTM stuff and all, I just don't know if I will do it the day itself or at the end of the week in a large overview entry.

I plan on writing a tutorial of the technique on here in the future but for now a small description is:

1. Set alarm to wake you up after 6 hours of sleep.
2. Relax and use this sleepy state you're in to auto-suggest waking up after every dream for the remaining 2 hours of sleep. (That is if you have to wake up for work or school after a night of 8 hours.)
3. You will probably wake up atleast 6 times in the following 2 hours which gives plenty of room for trial and error.
4. Use every natural awakening to use a seperation technique of your liking (inducing vibrations, rotation or just any movement you can think of while your body remains still.), personally I think of a song I like and after some time I feel my body pulsating with the rythem of the music in my head. This also helps me stay awake in this drowsy state.
5. Once the pulses become very noticable I know I'm actually asleep but still in my real body.
6. At this point I think of rolling out of my bed not using any muscles, this should be extremely easy and you will probably know if you're rolling for real or if you're just rolling your dream body. (If you move your dream body you won't feel any resistance from your sheets laying on top of you.
7. Next step: brace for impact, believe it or not but the first time I did this I actually thought I fell out of my bed for real. I was in my room sitting on the ground next to my bed, it was dark and my head was hurting but a nose plug RC confirmed I was in a dream.


I've had 2 chances of doing this technique and both were succesfull, my main problem now is usually falling asleep in time so I have atleast 5 hours of prior sleep. If I have trouble falling asleep and lay awake for 2 hours I cancel the attempt and make sure I get enough sleep for the next day.

You should always prioritise your health above anything, even lucid dreaming!


I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me (replying to the DJ, giving advice and just being friendly) in my lucid comeback, the last 3 months will remain a very important turning point for the rest of my life.

Dream Fragment

I'm sitting down with Jayd and Csure. I ask them a question, if they had ever been in a situation where they're in the friends zone. I figure they probably think I'm in that exact situation.

Side Notes

Ive been sick for almost 2 weeks and haven't been focusing on lucid dreaming. Sleeping has been pretty good since darkening my room.

Haven't been around much due to work--it's a 60 hrs plus gig, so not much time for the good stuff. However, here are some of my offerings from last week

(??): I am in a car, flying high above the street. I realize immediately that I am dreaming, and that this is a dreamlet. Despite this knowledge, I nosepinch anyway and lose the dream.

From now on, if I know (and I mean really know) that I am dreaming, the hell with those reality checks. That's the devil tryin' to get in my head!