side notes

Ah, feeling quite happy. Last night, after reading up on MILD (including my own previous experiences with it) and "rehearsing" reality checking to things like darkness and water, I decided to try MILD again. I went to bed, reciting "I will have a memorable, vivid and recalled lucid dream tonight." I tried to really take it slow and focus on every word's meaning, visualizing when I could. As I started to fall asleep, it became harder to concentrate on visualizing and meaning, so I just tried to keep repeating the mantra as much as possible. It took me a good while to fall asleep, but as far as I can tell I stuck with it basically until I was sleeping. And it paid off -- 4 dreams recalled (though good recall wasn't really the focus, but I'll take it!), one of which was lucid (not all that memorable, but still) and another of which was close / semi-lucid. Here they are.

#938:
Date: July 2nd, 2010
Length: 4 minutes

I'm in some kind of small city. I step out from the street into some kind of small store, accompanied by some guy I apparently know. For a long time I look around, unsure of what to buy, if anything. The guy ends up talking with the cashier, a girl that he knows. I think he buys a few things. Meanwhile, I start checking out an aisle that has a bunch of books/comics.

After a while I still haven't made up my mind about what to buy, and the others start making fun of me for it. I just kind of laugh and go along with it. The dream is a bit blurry here -- I recall something about stick figures: either one of the comics involved stick figures, or the guy and girl themselves turned into stick figures, I don't quite recall. Regardless, it somehow dawns on me that I am dreaming.

Excited, I step out into the street, and as I walk I try to stabilize everything. I then take flight, into a kind of suburb. After a while I land, and for some reason my surroundings seem extremely familiar, like I've been here before, but I don't think I have. I see two girls nearby, and I think I ended up kissing one of them. Shortly after that my surroundings become quite foggy and strange.

In front and to my right, there's a particularly thick patch of fog I can't see through, and I decide to try diving through and to see where I'll end up. I do so, and the dream sort of goes nuts -- my surroundings turn all dark, and my vision goes to third person for a moment, then my entire field of vision turns upside down and I see myself falling. I'm not positive about how this ended, but as far as I can tell/remember I had sort of a false awakening where some voice was trying to get me to wake up, and after that I actually did wake up in real life.




#939:
Date: July 2nd, 2010
Length: 3 minutes

I'm participating in this sort of worldwide game/contest (at times it feels like a video game, not a "real" thing), that involves accumulating treasure in a very short time, around three minutes I think. At first I see a sort of world map, and several dots indicate places where I can search for treasure. I pick one, and end up in front of some gigantic fish. It goes towards me and eats me whole.

I find myself inside the fish, wondering where I was supposed to find treasure here. After a few moments though, I realize that what the fish is eating is heading towards me, and see that it's treasure -- some kind of golden artifact is the first thing I spot. Instead of staying inside though, I decide to escape the fish. I take out a large knife I happen to have on me, and start slicing away at the "walls" around me. Eventually the fish dies, and I crawl out into some cave whose floor is covered in water.

I take a look at the fish, and realize that it has a bunch of teeth that are actually precious gems. I take my knife and start extracting them (there are about 10). After a few moments, my mom randomly arrives, and she tells me time is running out and I need to quickly grab all the gems I can and leave the cave because a rescue squad is waiting for me outside. I quickly remove the rest of the teeth/gems and start heading out.



#940:
Date: July 2nd, 2010
Length: 5 minutes

It's late afternoon on a sunny day, and it seems I'm trying to walk home. However, I'm in some place that I don't know. The terrain is very open, green, and uneven. I find some old woman, who decides to serve as my guide and help me find my way home. I follow her all the way to some isolated stretch of land very close to a large body of water, which I apparently need to get to the other side of. For a moment, I take a look around. The water is a beautiful blue, and it has suddenly become extremely windy. I realize that I'm going to have to backtrack and walk around the body of water.

I thank the old woman for her help, and tell her I'll find my way from here, not wanting to be slowed down by her and having a rough idea of where I'm headed. As I make my way back, I encounter some sort of large wooden structure with a bunch of ramps on it, serving as a kind of bridge. However, as I start walking on it, it quickly falls apart under my weight. Soon enough, it's entirely broken, and I drop down to the ground, a foot or so below. I realize that this wooden structure was actually part of someone's garden, and perhaps some sort of thing for children to play on that I've now wrecked.

I take a look around. The garden I'm in is part of a very large house, where a party is going on. I quickly walk down some stairs towards the house, and go inside, trying to look like a guest. Once inside, I walk up a large set of stairs, and find myself face to face with the father of the family that lives there. Worried that he'll find out what I did, I try not to look suspicious, and ask him where the bathroom is. I go there, and take a leak. The bathroom door, which I closed, opens for no reason. Shortly after, I see the father just outside the bathroom, and am terrified that he's going to confront me, but he doesn't.

Instead of leaving, I decide to stick around for the party. I go back outside, where there are many people near a large pool, most seated at tables and having discussions. At this point, I seem to realize that this isn't quite real (perhaps the sight of water twice in the dream unconsciously reminded me that it's a potential dream sign of mine). I don't become fully lucid, but get a sense that nothing I do here really matters. With this in mind, I decide to mess around a bit. I randomly sit at some tables and try to barge into the conversations, or act obnoxious/awkward (eg, randomly sit between two people and rest my arms on their shoulders as if we're good friends).

After that, the party seemed to disperse, except for a few guests around a distant table that had tons of food on it. They were standing, having a quiet, sort of suspicious conversation. I ended up going near them, but I don't recall doing anything in particular.




#941:
Date: July 2nd, 2010
Length: 3 minutes

I'm apparently a player for the Golden State Warriors, and we are having some kind of training session in a gymnasium. For reason, Yao Ming is on the team, and he has a broken left arm and is wearing a cast. I don't really recall any other specific players, besides maybe Ellis. The coach organizes a kind of practice game, I think 3on3, one weaker team (mine) against a stronger one (Yao's). I think there were a few people watching us from some windows that gave a view of the street.

We start playing, I think getting pretty handily beaten. We then reach a play where I am defending Yao, and we end up colliding hard, and we both fall to the ground. His broken arm takes a serious hit, and it seems he's badly injured. He gets carried off by medical staff I think, and the training session ends.

#937:
Date: July 1st, 2010
Length: 4 minutes

I'm on some kind of one-day trip to Britain, where I meet up with a friend for dinner. We end up in some kind of restaurant, with a couple of people he apparently knows. For some reason though, I leave the restaurant (with the intention of coming back in a bit), and head to some kind of airport. As I walk, I'm a bit confused as to this whole situation -- I vaguely recall arriving in the country, but seem to have absolute no plan as to how I'm going to get back home, or even where I'm going to sleep this night. I seem to have assumed that my friend would have planned everything out, and so I tell myself that I'll ask him what the plan is when I go back to the restaurant.

First, though, I decide to exchange some of my US dollars for pounds. I go to some sort of change bureau, when I find my grandmother working, for no apparent reason. I go up to her, give her some of my money, and in exchange, instead of money, she gives me large pieces of paper, signed and with some monetary value written on them. I'm slightly suspicious of these, but I take them anyway. Don't recall much after that.




Been thinking a bit about my dream signs lately. From my more recent dreams, a couple ideas have come up:

- Darkness/night seems to quite frequent, maybe 50-60% of my dreams involve it.
- Fear, pain, confusion, or some sort of danger are pretty frequent emotions too.
- I'm very rarely alone in a dream -- usually accompanied by family or friends.
- Water might also be a minor dream sign, it seems to show up occasionally.

11:00p-2:00a
I had originally planned to do a WBTB and take some Tylenol Ultra for a CWILD. I had deprived myself of caffeine since like... 1pm. I don't know if it was anticipation, or whether I was just going to have an insomniac night anyways, but I drifted in a light sleep during this time.

I remember a fragment of Raven Knight telling me my mum had said hi to her (as if this was Warcraft).

2:00a-6:00a
I got up for my WBTB. I stupidly took the Tylenol Ultra, not thinking that maybe if I was having a rough sleep, I should skip the caffeine jolt *Sigh*

I did have some interesting experiences though.

I nearly WILD'ed twice. I wasn't intending on it, but I mean... what is WILD, but mind awake, body asleep, right? I experienced some SP vibrations, which were oddly something I saw, rather than felt. Hard to describe, considering all I saw were the blacks of my eyelids.

The first time this happened, once they subsided I kind of just went, "Fuck, now what?" I wasn't feeling floaty, and I couldn't induce that feeling. Okay, so try to open my dream eyes. I opened my eyes. Unfortunately, I saw my sleep mask. Transition fail, again.

Second time, I felt the SP vibrations the normal way. I even felt kind of floaty-ish this time. But once again, transition fail. I do not know how the eff to complete a WILD.

After this, I had this lucid HI where I was sitting in an office. It was very unstable, visually. I tried to focus on the visuals. Danny (my DG) told me to STOP trying to force something visually as the first thing. He told me to close my eyes and sway back and forth. He said focus more on my dream body and less on my real one. My problem is I focus too much on my real body, so I remain anchored. So, once I've got my focus on my dream body and I'm not aware of my physical one anymore, then I can open my eyes. This was working, but it kept flipping in and out (possibly due to the caffeine). I finally got a visual where Danny handed me a small orange pill and a glass of water. I swallowed it and said, "It reminds me of cat food."

"Cat food?!" Danny asks, sounding thoroughly confused. I wake.

Throughout this time, one of the things I was doing to help me sleep was listening to a slow song. In hindsight, I'm wondering about the validity of that as an anchor when/if I WILD in the future. Does anyone else ever listen to music during a WILD? I mean, I knew when I was dosing off because when I came to again, I'd notice the song wasn't where it left off. But I also wonder... if I'm consciously transitioning into a dream, will I still hear the song? I wouldn't mind that, in fact, it MIGHT not be such a bad thing, so long as I can stay focused on the dream. Hmm...

I finally did pass out at around 5. I had a non-lucid where I was chatting with Garrett's mum on MSN, only she didn't know it was me. I was chatting through Garrett's account and was pretending to be him.

I had a faaail lucid opportunity. I was talking to an old friend called Harald about lucid dreams and we were like playing a game sort of like a lucid dream. I talked about noticing that you had 6 fingers in a dream and bla bla.

I had a lot of long dreams but I'm having like a lazy period so I'm just going to write some things in my DJ.

Long dream trying to save my dad. Lots of mutations involved in the dream. Going to write the last part.

I needed to pee. I was in my house and I stood at a window on the second floor and I thought to myself "Damn, when I get my own place I going to pee out the window sometime." then I went down to my cellar. I went through a door and on the other side there was a big garage like room. I was going to pee at the door I just entered through. I was like a soldier then and my leader was behind me. He asked "wtf are you doing soldier?" but I kept going. There was another soldier there too. Some alien or something appeared out of nowhere and dragged him away under some fence thingies on the floor (think Alien movie). My leader was like "Shit, we got to get the fuck out of here!" and I was like "Huh?" and we started making our way across the room.
Mutated soldiers popped out of the floor and we shot them. I wondered if some of them weren't mutated. We finally made it to the door on the other side. Mutated soldiers jumped out every second. I somehow got a bag in my hand. When a mutated guy was close to me I like put my hand in the bag in panic. When I pulled it up it looked like claws in Prototype. The bag seemed to be some kind of mutation thing. I tried to attack him but then I noticed it was just ugly looking long normal fingers and they were in fact not nearly sharp enough. We ran out and my leader was first. I recognized the place because I'd been there earlier in the dream with my dad and brother bla bla. It was outside and there was grass on the ground. We were going to a little natural arena place where my dad was.
Right behind my leader a mutated soldier ran. I think it was the one I tried to attack with my fingers. He dragged a fat long tongue or something behind him. It went over a hole in the ground and I jumped in slow motion on it so I got over too. Then he like threw his real slimy little tongue at my dad and dragged himself super fast over there. I was at the arena somehow. I don't remember what we did to the guy but I don't think we asked him to join our nice little gathering.
The next part was about a falcon lady. She was mutated too as you might already have figured out. She was half bird and her feathers were white. She was larger than a big human. And my dad and brother told me she was easily stronger than any of us and they talked about "she can land bla bla tons of pressure on your chest...". She started to fly around and we saw like 4 red dots appear on different people. That person was going to get attacked. She flew close and picked on the 4 dots and then flew away. I never got the dots on me but I tried to stop her when she got close. Her mistake was that she thought she was so superior.
She landed on the sandy ground. It was like the ground in Gladiator. Her wings were gone and she looked like a normal woman now. She didn't expect my brother and I attacking her. My brother kept her distracted while I kicked her in the side. She started to get focused. She was charging up a powerful attack on my brother but I hit her in the side (in the kidney perhaps) and she like fell over on her stomach. I don't remember what I did next but my thought process was that we had to do something because she was the source of evil (sort of) and she could get up any second and finish us.
So there I am holding her head and bashing it into a object on the ground(some wooden chest or metal pipe). We were on the side of the arena now. But then I stopped because she hadn't moved in a while. Fear struck me. I felt bad. On the left side of her head there was a wound so deep that you could see her brain. It didn't bleed much but I was still afraid. I checked her pulse on her neck. At first I didn't feel anything but then I felt a strong pulse.
I got so relieved. She looked beautiful. I figured she was just unconscious. My dad and brother talked about her entering the third and final stage of the metamorphism where she would be less powerful and less evil.
AND THEN I WOKE UP

I was at work and I saw a bunch of childeren running around like it was a feild trip or something. I felt like I was responsable for them. I did not ever become Lucid in this one BTW. I went into a back room where I saw an old friend of mine from HS and she was putting a bunch of weed inside of bags. This is weird because I don't smoke the stuff now. I used to all the time back then, I kind of grew out of it I guess. AW, I asked her to smoke some with me and she did and I was really high in my dream. After spending what seemed like an hour with her back there, I suddenly realized that I had left the children unattended! I paniced, jumped up and ran out of the room. The whole time I actully felt paranoid like I used to back then when we would skip school and get high. I ran though a series of doors (still at my current work place) and came into a big warehouse to find the kids all swinging and climbing 20 feet in the air on the very dangerous pallet racks. In the middle of the room was my Father telling me how disappointed with me he is for not taking care of the kids. I argued for a sec and and said he was not any better for allowing them to do what they were doing right that second. Than, I started to notice that he was still talking and it was like he was part of one of those "truth about smoking MJ comercals" so I laughed and woke up. As I layed in bed I remember mt dream and asked myself "wht the hell would I dream about these things?" I like comments and Ideas of why I would dream like this. Go ahead.

Missed a dream sign..

After grad night I got in late and was dreaming about lots of people wearing suits. Should have picked up on the dream sign but I missed it. When I was dreaming I remember thinking to myself, "that's odd.". Lots of negative imagery in the dream also, negative feelings, situations and ideas.. Likely something to do with *her.



*note to self - highlighting dream signs in blue to help in the future

I haven't really been in a mood to write in my DJ lately and I've also been away. But last night I dreamed partly about portals. It was like in the game Portal and they worked. I didn't get to experiment that much but I'm going to try it in a LD. It worked once so I should be able to do it in a LD.

Hey, Everyone.

Just a short update to keep my mind on lucid dreaming a bit.

Upon waking, I began to rapidly forget the dream I was having. I had to get out of bed and do something but couldn't hold onto the memory and it is gone.

I definitely need to work on recall and start taking some more notes. I should of had a real entry today.

June 28, 2010 - Part Two
4:30p-9:30p
I had to do a night shift tonight, so I settled in for my nap at just after 4:30 this afternoon. Actually, it was probably closer to 5. I had decided to do a WILD attempt, since I read and got some instructions on two very neat-sounding techniques. Essentially, if one didn't work, the other might.

As a side note: I forgot to deprive myself from caffeine, so unfortunately, I didn't do a proper CWILD. But, I did find out that Tylenol Ultra has caffeine in it, but it's 65mg to 500mg of acetomenophine (spelling?). I remember reading that anything less than 120mg of caffeine wasn't really enough, but I didn't want to take 1000mg of acetomenophine, so... that's why my CWILD failed.

Note: CWILD is a technique I learned from another site. It stands for Caffeine Withrdrawl Induced Lucid Dream. It can be combo'd with any induction technique, including DILDs and has no direct relation to Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (other than it can be combo'd).

Anyways, so I settled in and got to work on relaxing each area of my body. I don't really have a set relaxation technique (like the 61-point. That is a brutal tech). I just focus on each area, like feet, calves, thighs, etc and imagine that with each exhale, there's energy floating out of my focused area. It works like a charm, for me). I felt good and relaxed and decided to work first on the "anchoring" technique.

The gist of the technique is to find something to anchor your consciousness/awareness (passively) as you're falling asleep. Normally, I would use my clock, because it ticks really loudly, but today, I was using earplugs. So, I twisted my fingers in a weird position. It... kind of worked. Not really as well as the tick-tock works. I talked myself into sleep and did notice that I was losing focus on my hand and becoming a little too involved in the dreamlets. I noted I was experiencing some visual hallucinations in the form of yellow swirly light playing across my eyelids, but I didn't really pay too much attention to it. Some dreamlets rolled in... again, noted, but not focused. I drifted like this for a bit. This was all set up to be a good start to the WILD.

Unfortunately, my throat was a huge distraction for me. I had ate a grilled cheese sandwich before sleeping, cos I was super hungry. So this made a horrible mucous-y feeling in the back of my throat, which, once I started drifting into the HI, got a bit easier to ignore. But, it certainly delayed the whole process; triggering my body's constant need to swallow. I found breathing through my nose helped bypass that, for some reason.

The other problem was that I'm a bit sick, so my throat started getting massively tickly. To the point where my body decided to say, "Fuck you, I'm coughing," and it wasn't something I could control or supress. It did this twice And wrecked my efforts, twice.

Rebuilding the SP wasn't too difficult, but I will note a few interesting sensations.

1) At one point, the strongest point of the SP, my legs felt all hard and brittle. Like, if I moved them, they would break and crumble. I thought this was pretty neat. I decided to try wiggling my toes, and it took a lot of mental effort to do so.

2) It seemed like each time I "shifted" into a deeper phase of the SP, my heart would race. I had to do a little mental focusing to calm it back down. This was accompanied by my light hallucinations pitching me into complete blackness (each time I shifted). It actual resembled a light being shut off in the room (even though I wore a sleep mask).

3) I noticed some very subtle vibrations. Unfortunately, they were so subtle and weak, that it was difficult to use them of an indication of falling asleep.

So, once I hit that deep stage of leg-brittle, I decided this anchoring thing wasn't helping, nor did I seem to dive into a scene. I began to wonder if I had done the same thing in all my other WILDs... I'm already asleep, and trapped in a mental prison. I was chatting with someone about this a few days ago, who had the same problem as me. He'd get to this point and move, but he kept moving his real body. He said he had to learn how to separate his dream body.

So, I gave up on the anchoring, and I instead tried to activate my dream body's senses. This... pretty much didn't go very well at all. Not much to say other than I couldn't float out or move any dream part or anything. Ughhhhh.

Anyways, once I was wracked with my second bout of coughing, I decided maybe rolling over would help alleviate my throat. I rolled over, got myself all re-relaxed and passed out! I hadn't really intended to pass out. I'm not entirely sure what happened there, to be honest. I never consciously decided to give up and pass out. In fact, I was quite keen on being successful.

Anyways, so once again, I'm thwarted by the ever-elusive WILD.

Hospital Audit
I was in a doctor's office. They asked me to do an audit on the place, like ensuring the equipment was working and such. At this point, I was too tired to do the audit properly. I was half-assing it, walking around the building and not really paying too much attention. I decided to leave it for now and went for lunch.

[Lunch]
I was in a Safeway, which had a mall-like food court in it. But only the KFC was open. I didn't really want "Kentucky Fried Suicide," but seeing how my options were forcibly limited, I got some food.

[Back at the doctor's office]
I got lost in the building. Also, my clothes were now covered in some-foul smelling liquid and I had some dirty yellow stains on my clothes. This part is choppy, but I remember finding my way into a dark room, and watched a movie on the big TV in there.

I left the room when I remembered I was supposed to be auditing. I walked along hallways and wandered into a ward. It seemed to be a maternity ward. I felt like I was trespassing, and left before anyone saw me.

I continued to walk down the hallway and came upon these small cubby-like lockers. There were pink on one side and blue on the other. Then, some nurses appeared. They asked me why I'm covered in stained clothing. I don't remember what I told them.

I completed the audit and snuck out.

Game Show
I was competing against my mother in a game show. We each had to run these obstacle courses 5 times through. Although I didn't know which course would be the harder one, I was in the points lead, so I got to choose the course to run. I chose the one on the right. As our host was explaining the course, and what constituted as a win, I woke up.

I wanted to at least hear the rest of the instructions, or run through the course once. I started a DEILD and was near-successful at chaining back in, but I dragged myself out of it cos I really did have to get up and get ready for work

this wasn't a dream so much as me going through my memories.

I was laying in bed, sorting through my matrix of memories. I found myself in the area where I store the memories of my ipod's email.

there where 3 memories sorted in "actually happened" (for lack of a better way to describe it) that I know for a fact didn't actually happen, or are impossible.

One of them was a message when I opened the email, it popped up and said, "Email cannot be opened"

another one, when opened covered my ipod in blood splatter.

the third memory was a bit more disturbing to me, It appeared to be a message from my subconscious, I didn't even have to open it, the mail description said, "You are engrossed with yourself"

I'm not sure if it read engrossed, or obsessed though.

I don't know if anyone elses "dream world" is like this, but if I change something in one dream, it tends to stay the same in the dreams that follow. If it doesn't it's just in a different area of the world. I'm not saying my dreams are linear or tell a complete story, but things carry over.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to tell the current state of common locations and people in my dream world.

Average Dream Charactors: They don't dislike me, but they lie to me about random things. Like what their name is or
or what day it is.

Important Dream Charactors (IE: IRL friends and family): Nothing special. They act exactly how they act IRL.

Homeless Guy (possible DG): The only DC who can fly, tells the truth consistantly, and is aware that its a dream.

The City: A large, unnamed city where most of my LDs occur. My current goal is to destroy it. I have not yet figured out a good way to do this and I usually get sidetracked.

The Shivering Isles: A location in a DLC for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. A very fun place to go to in a LD. Look on wikipedia if you haven't played it.

Well that's about it. I will update if anything substantial changes.

Entry from 4/30:

No recall today. Though it had something to do with family guy.

EDIT:might try a WILD tonight. Wish me luck!

I dreamed I was asked to be the leading lady of a Canadian production of TLM (The Little Mermaid) since the director wanted someone to be perfect for the role and the casting director was in my neighborhood and heard me singing Ariel's song "Part of Your World", but I wasn't even in my part anymore but 2 streets over delivering catologoues-so he was like Prince Eric trying to find me in the town. But he did find me. But I was worried about a couple of things:
1) being kidnapped (they had hired body guards)
2) what would people think of a leading lady coming out of the blue from nowhere?

When I went to my first practice the people playing the mer-sisters, maids and princesses (all the same people) were jealous saying that since I didn't audition I shouldn't have gotten the part. So I showed them by singing "Part of Your World", then they realized that the casting person was correct.

I was so astonished about the person was going to play Prince Eric in my dream was a boy I grew up with that I fainted. Because when I fainted when there was commotion around me, some tried to kidnapped me and locked me in a closet where I came too (sp?) and people were looking for me but I heard the boy who I grew up with voice so I shouted "Limmer" his dog's name so he could find me.


So I could have some experience being in a rowboat with "Prince Eric" he and I went to a nearby pond and practice (well he practiced I should say since in that scene Ariel can't 'talk").

Somehow my body guards were knocked out and both he (boy I grew up with, playing Prince Eric) and I were kidnapped

I'm going to make a habit from now on to "question everything" and "feel everything" in my everyday life, see if that makes me have more lucid dreams. I figure, if I get in the habit of asking myself, "Is this real? How do I know?" it'll carry over into my dreams. DILD's here I come!

Major Dream Sign Discovered!

Something I really have to look out for in my dreams from now on is getting my phone wet. I know it's not in any dreams here, but the past few years it's cropped up excessively. I'll be swimming, or fall into a lake or something, then find to my horror that my mobile phone was in my pocket the whole time. When I check it, it works fine! This has actually happened about 12 times in dreams and never in real life. I guess it must be something I'm subconsciously paranoid about... So far, every time this has happened, I've merely gone, "Phew, thank god!", set my phone somewhere safe, then gone swimming again!
I'll have to look out for this in future.