side notes

So, I'm at an impasse. I've been faithfully DJing, as you can see, for the last 50 days. Nearly two months, now. My ability to recall dreams is much better than it has ever been before. I can say that I have progressed that much, at least. Lately my DJ activity has dipped (in terms of # of dreams per night) but mostly because I've been too lazy/tired to write them down during whenever I wake up. I feel like if I were to read over my entire DJ I'd see that I'm way too scatterbrained in terms of my efforts and attempts at induction techniques. The only thing I've done consistently is DJ and RC during the day. I think it's time for me to quit messing around and finally pick a technique to work on.

So I've strained all of the excess techniques and left my two favorites: The CAN WILD technique, developed on this forum, and the MILD technique by the big man himself, LaBerge.

Pros of CANWILD:
-LD at will, essentially.
-Seems like it'd get concrete results quicker.

Cons of CANWILD:
-Sleep Paralysis. I don't like the idea of the hallucinations. Though my fear of SP may create a self defeating mindset. If I quit fearing it and just rolled with it I may be OK.

Pros of MILD:
-No sleep paralysis.
-Seems more organic.

Cons of MILD:
-A bit harder to actually do consistently with all of the steps through the day that are required.

Suggestions?

And my fragment from last night:

I dreamt about this remnant that had been passed down a million different times abs touched a bunch of different times. Each time it got touched the person touching it imparted some sort of detail upon it.

L u c i d D r e a m G o a l s

Difficulty: Easy

• Have a lucid dream
• Stabilize a lucid dream
• Recall a whole dream
• Recall several dreams in one night
• Talk to a DC
• Have a successful DILD

Difficulty: Moderate

• Fly slowly and peacefully through the clouds
• Fly in a spazzy manner to another planet or dimension
• Go to Degrassi
• Bake a cupcake, and eat it
• Hold up a free hugs sign on the street
• Control the weather - make it snow, sunny, or stormy.
• Ride on top of a moving plane
• Pilot a plane
• Meet the Beatles
• Have a party with my friends
• Make/listen to music and remember it the next morning
• Ride a horse
• Walk on the moon
• Bring back the dinosaurs
• Explore the bottom of the sea
• Jump into the television
• Tell a DC that I love them
• 360 degree vision
• Find my DG

Difficulty: Hard

• Have a shared dream
• Have a WILD
• Get over my fear of SP
• Complete a Task of the Year
• Complete a Task of the Month

Ohhhh my gosh, I have so much to write and at the moment I have NO TIME! Okay, just really quick notes ranging from a few weeks ago to last night, in no particular order because I couldn't remember how these things went if my life depended on it:

~Lady with a chainsaw kills a couple people and then takes stuff from my room

~Vendetta and Charlotte from 'Making Fiends' moving into some place with bunk beds and a bunch of other people

~Riding on a motorcycle with Edward Cullen (most of DV will hate me for this, but I liiiiiiked it )

~Helping the Animorphs trick Visser 3

~Running around school, delivering books to random teachers

~Doing some worksheet about verbs

~Learning a bunch of stuff at Dream School (lucid)

~(I think I might've been only half asleep or something with this, because I could feel myself moving around in bed.) Seeing spiders all over my pillow and having to wake myself up (lucid)

~Horrible nightmare where a creepy old man with glowing orange eyes was screaming at me like he wanted to kill me

~Going to some camp-type place with a lot of other people, and swimming in a pool

~In a big, kind of deserted looking school with a friend, and I told her I'd help her with a project

And I'll probably remember more later.

Because of this website teaching me some techniques, I was able to recall four dreams from last night.

My first one was some guy placing a nuke on OSU campus. He told us we had 150 minutes to run to a safe place (which would only save us in a dream) after that, the bomb grew legs and started chasing me.

The next one I particularly liked. Halo: Reach was released on Steam and I bought it. The dream didn't show any gameplay, which kind of stinked.

Then I went fishing in this very small lake and caught outrageously large fish. After fishing for a few minutes, I suddenly appeared at a new lake in the desert. Some small lizards chased me around and I caught some swordfish. Weird dream.

My last dream was me taking my cats to go search for bigfoot (loel). It was an unsuccessful search with no results.

Overall, my dreams last night were short and boring.

non-dream - non-lucid - lucid

04-09-10 I seem to recall 4 dreams although they are very fragemented and possibly interconnected.

I am in a tunnel, there are a series of doors that have to be opened by shutting down the power supply and reconnecting it again, as I proceed through the tunnel the difficulty of the tasks increase. My friend Daniel is there, he is pretty useles in this dream, so I am trying to teach him how to do the assignments. At one point he is trying to reconnect the power to a door, but I see that it is a tricky task so I take over, as I attempt to reconnect the power I get electrocuted with something like 300 volt, and I am unable to let go of the cord. I feel the shock (very realistically!) but I am able to scream, I keep yelling to Daniel that he has to pull me off it as I myself am unable, he is just laughing. He keeps laughing, I sense that he thinks I am joking, after a while he realise I am in agony and his smile fades from his face, I wake up before he pulls me away from the power.
...
I am in a heroes of might and magic setting and there is a woman who is teaching us how to build in order to get an early victory and achievement (I know heroes doesn't have achievements). Daniel (same guy from above) is moving for me and screws up the entire plan. I get angry. I think there is something I am supposed to do when I get angry but think little more of it (Anger and acting on aggression is a clear dream sign for me, so whenever I have a slight aggressive thought IRL I RC)
...
There is a big group of old friends of mine from highschool and we are working on obtaining cash to go somewhere on a ship. There is a shop that sells equipment we need in order to get the money. I have bought a ferrari, an old worn down ferrari, and my friends are mocking me for breaking my code of conduct regarding consumerism. That is until they see the car. I seem to have also bought a bike where the wheels have no tires, pretty pointless. Lasse gammelgaard is in a wheelchair and needs a certain moped, but he is unable to bargqain the price down within his budget of 18,700 Danish kroner. As we are preparing to leave my cousin explains that he is not going to leave Mads behind, I explain that I just saw Mads and my cousin convince me to say goodbye, which I agree to. Unfortunately Mads has been taken to a mental instituion. We find him and join him for group therapy, he is just goofing around he has no intentions of taking it seriously so we start goofing around as well. Apparently Thure, my flat mate, becomes the center of attention for not only the therapist, but also the rest of the group. However the Therapist is starting to suspect that some of the people there are not supposed to be there, apparently she can tell that we have been watching movies, which means we are not allowed to be there. The group is disbandening slowly with people laughing as they leave.
...
I am with B, a friend of mine, and she tells me she really wants sex, and by that she means very quickly and with me. This is weird we are too close friends for this I think, but seeing as I do fancy her a bit I go with it. We kiss, she tells me that won't be required she is ready, she takes her top off revealing some perky small pink nipples on perfect breats, just dying to be licked, so I do this. She tells me I don't have to do this she is ready. Essentially she wants it hard and fast! So I start removing her stockings and by doing this gets extremly excited and wake up.
...
I ma playing startcraft in a 4 player game. I get my ass handed to me big time, the winning player admits there was a bug in the game he exploited although he didn't know it would be there.

Notes: The funny thing is that Daniel from my dreams (the first time I dream of him) actually ended up disturbing 3 WILD attempt during the morning, by first starting a hoover upstairs, then turning on the music and lastly knocking on the floor all at times when I was extremely close to transitioning. This made me angry at first, but I thought it funny later on =P

This is a theme that appears frequently in many of my dreams; Jurassic Park. Being a big Sci-Fi, I like watching Jurassic Park movies. Obviously, they've become a major part in my dreams. The fact that I'm interested in Paleontology has made this theme occur even more. Since I'va had so many dreams that I can't really remember any one of them, here's my most recent one that I had about three months ago.

It started with me and many of my classmates crossing wooden logs above a swamp (filled with vicious Compsonagnthus and Deinonychus) in a sort of puzzle way. We would have to balance each log out by placing a certain amount of people on each side in order to get to the next log, until we finally got out of the swamp area.
Now that I'm out of the swamp area, all of my friends have disappeared.I'm now with my sister and father. We see the swamp area behind us, as if everything that just happened with me and my classmates actually happened with me and my two family members. This only further contributes to the entire videogame theme within this dream. So, my father, sister and I continure into this odd box canyon with a cliff in the center. On the cliff is a large cage with a roof, almost resembeling a bird cage. We walk up this ramp carved out of rock that's about a forty-five degree angle off the ground. Up inside the enormous cage are a family of Styracosaurs. We examine them for a few moments before heading down the ramp. Of course, down below is a Giganotosaurus standing there watching us. We quickly run over to some kind of maintinence building along the cage fence and hide inside. We can see the therapod outside trying to kill us, but he is unsuccessful. After that, I remember us somehow getting home, and then the dream ends.

This dream may or may not have been longer, but here are the parts that I can remember.

I was living with my family again at our old house on Broadway, only there was also this other guy living with us who kind of looked like Gabriel Iglesias only shorter and not quite as fluffy. Anyways, I was in what must have been my brother's room (because A) it was really heavily cluttered and B) there was a scene coming up where I was in my room, which was different) and my brother was there too when Gabriel Iglesias guy came in and demanded something. We were both blew him off so he took out an uzi and sprayed the room; he didn't hit me at all but it killed my brother. Shortly, it cut to a courtroom where I was watching the verdict in the murder trial; GI guy was somehow found not guilty. So I wake up in my bed some morning after but I'm all depressed so I just lay there for a while. When I finally got up, I found my dad and GI guy in the kitchen packing up my brother's stuff. I asked if I could look through it for anything I could use (there was kind of a neat looking fan, and a lot of our old Nintendo hardware). As I started looking through his stuff, I said, "I know we didn't get along, but now that he's gone I kind of miss him." Then I broke down in tears.

Now here's the kind of weird part: I sensed something was weird, I guess probably from the emotional breakdown so I thought, "AM I DREAMING? REALITY CHECK!" But instead of doing a proper reality check I ended up just waking myself up.

Oops.

There was a little bit of dream bleeding with this one too. I woke up into reality trying to figure out how I could sneak some concentrated potassium chloride into GI guy's bloodstream.

So it seems the new mantra has a bit of a gaping flaw, and I suspect I know why. Namely that I haven't associated it with an actual reality check. I'll maybe fix this in the future, but for now this'll go on the back burner.

A little bit better of a night of dreaming. I got two decent recalls and I suppose that aint too shabby in the long run. Here they are:

I am witnessing this dream in 3rd person. There is this woman and she's a new employee in some sort of office environment. Everyone works at computers and I THINK it's some sort of call center. Anyways. She's massively disrespected by this one guy who seems to be the leader of the group. He's almost 30 years old, I remember him saying, and pretty disappointed with his life. Anyways. this dude is sort of a dick to this woman but she wants to be the best so she doesn't just give up. There's some sort of competition coming up, I'm not sure what they're doing, I just know that the man has a day or two head start on her because he cheated somehow. Somehow she evens up the score and manages to catch up. And then I flash forward in the dream to find out that the woman was tricked AGAIN and somehow still lost.

And then I'm in another dream. I work for some sort of grocery store but my shifts are awesome. I only work for a few hours every day and then I go to school. But my "school" is the same hours my REAL LIFE work is. Anyways I'm at work for some reason and I'm discussing hours with my manager. She looks like Sarah from Super Valu (my first job) and she's describing that somehow my hours got switched around and I'm allowed to take off whenever I want today. I appreciate that and decide to myself that I'll cut out about an hour early to give me time to eat a nice breakfast before school. For whatever reason I now am taking a tour around the store with Sarah in tow and we're going through all of these different meat sections and I'm describing them to her. We come across an aisle dedicated to already cooked bacon (that isn't in a package) and it's just hanging on different hooks. We do the same for turkey and ham, as well.

I hope I'm getting closer. Those two dreams were more vivid than I typed out but I, of course, was typing from a shaky memory as they were delayed recalls. Tonight I ate some banana before I hopped into bed and I'm taking my RCs more and more seriously. Hopefully this pans out some.

I've only been asleep for about three hours, but every dream I remember was so unbelievably effed up it brought me back here - after six months... Just thought I'd try descibe/express the level of freaked out I'm feeling right now.. Anyway:

I am in a place that looks like a graveyard, there is like a red fog, I only remember there was a group of us trying to get into this hole where all the mosters/zombies/aliens whatever where. I think someone got chopped into pieces, lasered or something.

There is this person who can control people by jumping through them, he has no physical form. He started jumping through my family, I was holding my baby brother and when he got to me he tried to throw him downstairs, I resisted, he went to my dad, and I knocked out my dad with a glass bottle

It's dark and I take my sister to mcdonalds. There is nobody anywhere, no cars, not even customers in the stores... She talks to someone at a bus stop about this guy who escaped from prison. Dream ends there.

It's dark in my house and relatives come into my house. They talk to my dad about in the kitchen random stuff, have a laugh, maybe they were drunk? I go in, the lights go out and I get beaten with glass cups, I feel a knife at my back and get water in my face

Which wakes me up, my face still feeling wet

Something else about childbirth, flying around looking for cookies...

I might try to go back to sleep now :/

My first lucid dream was about 4 to 6 years ago. I have the book Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming and I find it quite useful. I have had fewer than 100 lucid dreams and perhaps fewer than 20, with less lucidity than I can have and they weren't very long.

So here I sit, early in the morning before going to bed again and attempting to lucid dream again because I want to develop my lucid dreaming skills (and it's a fun and neat experience, too). Four or six years is enough time to wait until going in depth with lucid dreaming, right?

I only really had one vivid dream recalled from last night and I had a little fragment that I still remember. I'm not going to bother writing that one down but I will post the dream.

I'm working at brew and grow and I'm handling the front counter while Julie is working in back. The computer isn't working so I'm small talking a customer while I stall for time. I also notice that the light switch is not working either. So it's kinda dark.

The dude kinda looks like a real customer. He's white and probably thirty with brown hair and a beard and goatee. While we are small talking I'm making myself lunch which is chicken alfredo though it's out of some sort of powdered packet.

I look back at the computer and type in some sort of command as the screen is all black and if mostly stays that way. Julie must have said something funny to me because the customer says that what she and I have is special. I think it's ridiculous that he'd say that as I am married and also because I can tell he is jealous and I don't want him going nuts on me.

So as I'm going through my routine (reality checks throughout the day, random stops to just "feel and look" around me, WBTB) I decided to add on a "day journal" of sorts to help me clear my head everynight as well as incubate some ideas for me to dream about and realize I'm lucid. Plus: it'll be a good way to get my creative writing back into the swing of things.

This is my break Back into LD tonight

Despite starting my foray into the world of lucid dreaming in the late second week of August, it's already felt like a long road--though I'm already looking forward to a lifetime of practice. There have been some early encouraging successful results, but they are tempered by rocky outcomes towards the end of the month.

General Dream Content (This Month)
Number of new dream journal entries: 17
Number of documented dream sequences/fragments: 23
Number of lucid realizations: 3 (13%)
Number of significant lucid dreams: 1 (4.3%)

General Dream Content (Total)
Total documented dream sequences/fragments: 23
Total lucid dreams: 1 (4.3%)

Dream Signs (This Month)
Total identified dream signs: 37
Action: 7 (18.9%)
Context: 16 (43.2%)
Form: 8 (21.6%)
Awareness: 6 (16.2%)

Code:

0810-0811: Aw+1
0814: C+1, F+2
0813-0814: Ac+1, C+2, Aw+1
0815: Ac+1, C+2, Aw+1
0818-0819: Ac+1, C+2, F+2
0819-0820: Ac+1, C+1, F+1, Aw+1
0821-0822: Ac+1, C+1
0822-0823: Ac+1, C+1, F+1
0824-0825: Aw+1
0827: C+1, F+1
0828-0829: C+1, F+1, Aw+1
0829: C+1
0829-0830: C+1
0831: Ac+1
0831-0901: C+2, Aw+1

Dream Signs (Total)
Total identified dream signs: 37
Action: 7 (18.9%)
Context: 16 (43.2%)
Form: 8 (21.6%)
Awareness: 6 (16.2%)

Dream Sign Associated Lucid Triggers
Number of lucid realizations: 3
Action: 2 (66.7%)
Context: 1 (33.3%)

Code:

0821-0822: Ac+1
0829: C+1
0831-0901: Ac+1

Analysis: It's no surprise that the most common dream sign is unusual contexts. These often manifest as unusual situations, but also include a reasonable setting but an unusual sequence events therein. This highlights a definite need to be able to identify unusual situations for reality checking. It is, however, notable that Action-type dream signs seem to have more reliably triggered lucid dreams (if 2 out of 3 can be considered reliable); it's interesting that 2 out of the 3 lucid realizations involved my wife saying or doing something that I thought was highly unusual.

Other notes: I've been playing with different sleep mantras, trying to find a combination that helps. The initial one (which I'll list here shortly, it'll be the first one) helped a lot with dream recall, so I'm a little reluctant to drop it over concerns that it might dampen my recall; I'm also concerned that switching them every few nights might be dampening their effectiveness. I've been having trouble finding one for other aspects of dreaming that have the same subconscious impact. Here are some that I've tried:
"I will wake from my dreams and completely remember them."
"I will remember to realize that I'm dreaming."
"Tonight in my sleep I will dream."
In recent nights I've tried to combine them into one, long chain mantra (tried #3>#1>2 at first, but later found that #3>#2>#1 makes more sense), but it's been difficult and hasn't brought on noticeable differences. I would try to fall back on the first one when I got deep enough into sleep to not be able to concentrate on stringing three sentences together.
Last night I tried something new (and got a partial lucid to show for it):
"AM I DREAMING? REALITY CHECK!"
Short and to the point, and I suspect it'll be easier to impact into my subconscious.

I'd like to end by commenting on some observations I'd had with regards to the last few lucid realizations. I've noticed in dreams that during a nose pinch reality check, the sensation is such that I'm still able to breath but it feels as though my nose is a little bit stuffy/congested. During my second lucid realization I attempted to hold focus by keeping my nose pinched and breathing; as it dissolved back into reality I noticed that the sensation of breathing from the lucid dream matched up with the sensations of natural breathing in reality. So I wonder if the success of this reality check is related to or contingent upon clear, breathable nasal passages.

August 29, 2010

I was having an AMC dream. JR discovered Annie was sleeping with some politician dude. They were getting it on in a car. JR discovered them and had got upset, but this part of the dream faded.

False awakening. I "woke up" in bed. I spent a moment lying there and recalling the dream. I was also quite surprised I had fallen asleep again. I didn't even feel it coming.

Edited for TMI content...

I wondered about the possibility of this being a false awakening. I then noticed that, consciously, I did feel different. Fairly positive now that I'm dreaming, I thought to myself, "Only one way to check, and that's to get out of bed!"

As I slowly rolled over and got out of bed, I marveled about the fact that this really did feel like I was moving my real body. I began to question whether I was truly dreaming or not. I rather felt that getting out of bed would feel floaty, especially since in lucids, I don't normally feel gravity and weighty. This felt exactly like real life. Future note, WILDs may feel exactly like this. Especially when I think I'm awake...

Anyways, I was thinking a lot about this whole "Am I moving a dream body or my real body?" thing, and I heard a voice in the back of my mind, "Don't over think it, or you WILL wake up too much and move your real body." This voice sounded female, to my surprise (I usually expect Danny to tell me these things). It was probably myself; but in the past, Janine (my first DG, before Danny) often sounded like me... I wonder if this was her, again?

I didn't spend too much time looking around the room. But I did notice that the bedroom door, positioning of the bed and my endtable were all as they should be. This made me question, again, whether I was lucid or awake. I looked at the clock on my endtable. The numbers should have been a dead give-away. I could barely read the clock... it looked tired-eye bleary and I couldn't really make out any numbers. I concentrated harder. Does that say 4:41 or 4:48? I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It says 4:48. "I don't have to get up until 5:30," I reminded myself. "This is perfect, I can sleep longer!"

Completely forgetting about the false awakening, I crawl back in bed beside Jack. I noticed he was awake and reading something on his phone. We had a short discussion about him not staying up this late and my alarm rang.

Alright, so even if I hadn't gotten distracted, it's not like I could've done much with the lucidity, anyways. My guess is, this all happened just before 5:30, waking time. Maybe about 5:25, but this whole scene felt a bit shorter than 5 minutes. Still, this is a great note for future WILDs... I guess this is considered an INRALD (I'm Not Really Awake Lucid Dream)... I thought I was pretty good at determining lucidity by how it feels alone... and normal DILDs, I think that still holds true. But this whole new foray into INRALDing and WILDing... when I honestly think I'm awake, it really, really does feel like I'm awake! Further proof that I REALLY need to RC upon waking up...

Last night I had no true recall. I attribute this to the fact that I must have slept deeper then I normally do because of a certain partnered action. I also decided not to perform WBTB so as not to bother my wife while she sleeps. I think I'm going to go back to attempting Stephen LaBerges MILD technique while utilizing a day journal to help me incubate dream topics. I've decided I am going to focus on doors, primarily. Anytime I walk through a door I will stop and comb it over while performing a reality check. It'll be tough to integrate into my daily routine but if effort is my only barrier than effort I shall put forth.

As always: wish me luck.