side notes

I had a lucid dream. It was fairly vivid.
I was in the middle of a dream when it started to shift and I realized whats up. Then It shifted and now I was infront of my house, late evening. It was getting dark, I looked around asking questions for some reason.
I looked back, the buildings looked a bit different as I expected, I couldnt see clearly.
Anyhow, I tried to manipulate the dream and tested this invisible keyboard, cause I theorized that associations are the best sources to manipulate dreams, but it didnt work, I wanted to make it daytime again I think.
Then I tried to fix my vision, it was like I had no glasses on, so I tried another association, I imagined there is a focuser on the side of my head, and turned it and I almost got a good focus, but then it also stopped working and reverted to glassless focus.
And then I woke up.


So I theorized that associations are the best sources to manipulate dreams. Which partly worked, the first attempt didnt, then the second one kinda did, but then it stopped working.
I'd like to look more into it, come up with new experiments.

Night 5 -10.01-

*Blackout*

Night 6 -11.01-

…/immerse into work activity. We get a task to work in couples. Each one becomes a contract to work with. One of my kids is t doing something there/…

…/I see my English neighbor has cut her hair. She looks angry. Her mother is around while she’s sweeping the street next to a small park in front of her place. I ask her if she’s angry for something because of her face expression. She goes mad and we start discussing about something. Her mother gets something like a stroke but not really, I think to myself “It’s because of her advanced age” and somebody has to call emergency. I don’t have a phone at hand. My neighbor goes dancing on a stage while her mother waits for help somewhere else. There’s a festival show taking place on the second floor of the house surrounding the park which now is on its yard. The dreamscape then fuses into my grandparents house where there’s much more activity than usual/…

…/I’m going with somebody to a known place, she turns into S. There’s a couple of buildings joined with a bridge around. It’s recent dreamscape. I notice I’m not wearing any jacket. I see a jacket hanging inside a room. It looks like a Kindergarten dressing room when we get in. I turn to see we have nothing to do there. We better go now but trying not to be noticed by the parents who are playing with their kids in the front yard of the place. One of them throws a black plane with a gadget. They follow its flight. I turn to see it looks like a raven figure. It gets stuck on the roof, they laugh because it looked like the bird landed by itself/…

…/There's somebody saying that the police is searching random houses by tricking the people somehow to catch drug dealers. They notice because of a mark left on their lips by the use of a pipe/…

…/It’s an apparent that mixes with one of my childhood classrooms. It’s white. I’m not sure who owns this place, possibly S. N went out to meet her friends. I go to the corridor to do something. When I turn to get in again I see a piece of paper on the upper left corner. It looks like it was part of a bigger picture and was left behind by the former owner. It depicts a an Asian dragon similar to some I drew long ago for a design project. I want to take a picture to compare with mine. I turn to look for my phone and turn on the camera app. Then I cannot find the piece of paper. It takes a while to find it again. There’s a second corner of a picture but less visible/…

Night 7 -12.01-

…/We are with S on my dad’s bed. It’s a mixture of places again. We see some small insects popping out of her blankets. I slap the first one out with my finger. The second one jumps on my voice recorder when I put it close. Then I bring it to the window. A centipede now comes out of the mattress. It’s disgusting and she wants it out of here. I thought she was going to start a show but she didn’t/…

…/I see a reel of a beauty contest. The winner is carrying a white dress and turns to receive the price. She has a huge red spot on her butts, it’s an embarrassing situation/…

…/I see something I did on a list on paper. Has something to do with music and some explanations. I don get to see what I’m trying to show with the arrow I drew to the right side of the list. I’m trying to figure out what I wanted to say. There are some Chinese characters somewhere. I’m at work. The list has YouTube links on it and I can see a short clip telling in documentary mode saying something and that the guitar player didn’t mind, then again something about the bass player and that he didn’t mind neither while the video shows a very raw zoom in and out of their instruments. I hear a techno song fragment singing “I wanna be an Angel”/…

Night 8 -13.01-

…/it’s sort of big auto repair shop. There’s a lot of junk. The place is dirty with low illumination. Some corners are very dark. There’re different levels of the junk/…

…/again my grandparents house. Something about some lists and Google maps is not showing the actual position but you may use a reference to locate it/…

…/I’m shopping somewhere when I turn to see a big wall of peanut packages. There’s somebody saying we can have them for breakfast. I think they’re a snack for cheat talk or something like that. I see the cutlery must be organized, it’s random set on the box/…

…/some family recent stuff waiting to be done and more stress of work/…

I lost many of the fragments dictating them on the back of my mind with the voice recorder on pause…

[COLOR="#EE82EE"]I had woke up from some other dream I forgot, I was trying to get back to sleep for what felt like 30 minutes. I eventually found a comfortable position on my back. I was relaxed until I felt nervous for some reason.[/COLOR] I didn't try very hard to move, but I new I couldn't. For some reason I thought it must be an alien's fault. I then felt a prick in my breast, like there was a needle in it. I tried best to make my breathing look like I was asleep but I was probably failing miserably. I then remembered that sometimes people move in their sleep, so I rolled on the side it hadn't pricked yet. It managed to get the needle in my other breast, so I decided to open my eyes just a crack to see what it was doing, a black hand moved the syringe to my 4th breast and the needle went in. It filled up with a white liquid I assumed was milk. I shut my eyes for a few seconds, and I no longer felt the presence. I opened my eyes and sat up. There was a dishwasher like door in my wall, so I opened it. There was a plate with my milk, and a cow made of milk foam, morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I dipped my finger in the milk and licked it. It was like cow milk but creamier with more chunks. I puled the plate out and took a mouthful of foam. It tasted like when you an armpit, but somehow good.

[COLOR="#EE82EE"]I'm sorry if you read that,
anyways, I did a medium meditation before bed -1
It's a bit early in the day so ill write my rc score later - 2
remembered a full nld - 1
total- 4
comp total- 8 [/COLOR]

I was doing laundry when I heard something coming from down the hall, I tried to pull the door shut, but it was too late, whatever was on the other side pushed it open. I stared at the doorway, terrified as the door slowly swung open. In the hall was a bucket, colored in Lowe's signature blue. I was pretty relived at first, but I remembered some old guy telling me that if I ever come across a bucket like that, it can't kill me unless I can't see it. I then set the bucket down so it'd always be in my peripherals. I pulled some dirty laundry out of the basket and put it in the machine. Not even one load and I was already sick of the anxiety of having to keep the bucket in my sight, so I started thinking that maybe I could make the bucket go after someone else. I grabbed it, and took it into the back yard where my father sat in his truck. He was the closest person but I really didn't want him to die, and then I realize that even if the bucket kills him it's just going to go after me again. I walked back to the door, and started absentmindedly ripping the bucket apart as if it was made of paper. I sat on the porch and my spirits fell as the pieces tumbled back and used to the piece I was still holding onto. I then walked to the tool shed, it has a few flights of stairs going into a basement, so I got an idea. I threw the bucket, and while it rolled down the stairs I slammed the door shut and locked it. I was going to begin celebrating.

[COLOR="#EE82EE"]I rolled over and went back to sleep.[/COLOR],

I was in a room which was best described as the inside of lord Jabu Jabu. I walked past a counter with a few hand sized beetles, and I walked up a slope, and I saw a button. I walked on it, and I suddenly turned purple and saw a HP bar rapidly draining, so I ran to the beetles. I talked to some beetles who were useless, until I saw some golden beetle who said he could cure me. I then get a view of myself in a dentist like chair with deep scratches down my face, and a second later I'm back on my feet with only a few scars. I start walking away.

[COLOR="#EE82EE"]Did a couple good rcs today - 1
remember 2 full nlds - 2
3 dj comments- 1
total- 4 [/COLOR]

I've decided to pare back some of my loftier goals. The idea here is to get a better understanding of my dreamworld and practice stability techniques.

Goals:

1. Observe your hands. Record how they change in detail. Number of fingers? Distortion? Do they stay the same over multiple look-backs? ✓
2. Narrate what you are doing in the dream outloud.
3. Go with the flow. Let the dream happen with as little modification as possible. Look out for your common dreamsigns and note them as they appear.
4. Directly observe text changing. Will it into something specific. Practice this in-dream the same way you do it in waking life.
5. Maintain awareness through traversal of any kind. How does your brain bring you from one set to the next?

Acronym: HNFTT (Hands, Narrate, Flow, Text, Traversal)

Note: I've stumbled upon some info suggesting that the WBTB technique, as described here, might not be the most scientifically solid approach to lucid dreaming. So going forward, I'm thinking of using Stephen Laberge's suggestion of morning naps. I'll finish up the current test sequence as planned and tweak things for the next one.

Current Test <6hr/20m/None>
Test Process:
3 nights in a row: Re-establish sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
2 nights in a row: WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). No supplements. Stay awake for 20m. Return to bed.
Repeat until four WBTBs are attempted.

Test Data:
#1: Weak Lucid (The Vanishing Plant, Night of Friday 10/6/23) <-- note that sleep schedule was not 11PM/5AM WBTB at this point, but counting it because 6hr/20m was still used.
#2: Attempted WBTB, No Recall (Night of Thursday 10/26/23) <-- isn't reflected in DJ because I had zero recall before or after WBTB.
#3: Attempted WBTB, No Recall (Night of Friday 10/27/23)
#4: TBD.

Test Results:
It's starting to look like 20m without Galantamine is not enough time awake to encourage lucidity for me. I will continue and get 4th data point (maybe a 5th to account for #1's weirdness), but already planning to try 30m plus Galantamine for the next test set, and then 30m without Galantamine after that.

Previous Configurations & Results
<6hr/10m/8mg (Galantamine)>
#1: Moderate lucid (Seeking The Elusive Fantasy Forest™, Night of Friday 9/8/23)
#2: Weak lucid (False Awakening and Fade, Night of Saturday 9/9/23)
#3: Weak lucid (False Awakening, Night of Wednesday 9/13/23)
#4: Moderate lucid (Silverlight Way, Night of Thursday 9/14/23)
It's 50/50. Some great lucids here, but still not the level I'm looking for.

Let's start with... Jamie Dreams! There have been a few.

1st: Vague dream where we might have been kissing or something.
2nd dream: I wasn't lucid but understood the dream world so to speak. I was sitting in a living room with people. My dead cousin Kiah since 2021, popped up and was like, "hey, hello..." etc. And I asked her, "Can you do something for me? I need you to check someone name Jamie for me. She was supposed to show today but I can't find her." I specifically remember saying to Kiah to, "Just go through my memories, You'll find her." Kiah pulled a curtain made of nothing out of nowhere and wrapped herself in it making her disappear.
Dream skips to where Kiah comes back and says that she had seen Jamie bragging someone that she had a "dream of only," boyfriend. (referring to me, also hinting that Jamie doesn't actually plan to talk to me in person ever. Which is pretty bad in my view, how about I just don't post dreams anymore about this subject. Me, I want a future without this insanity. I'm pretty sure Jamie can find loads of simps to stroke her ego because they think they have a chance. I'm not one of them. seriously.)

I ask Kiah to show me. We teleport to some weird wannabe Harry Potter dream world. There's an english school. We go in. I'm in a role I think I've played before in this scenario. I'm in a teachers or principals office. 2 people are talking about a conspiracy or something. I just lose interest as Jamie's not around.

This morning: Jamie at a funeral being sad, Second funeral dream about Jamie hm...

Too many other dreams to really write down. Scariest one being I kept going into an elevator that would take me to a dark hallway where people were sleeping. A vampire would come by and kill them. not in the typical vampire way... In a way that's impossible do describe, you'd only have to dream it. (Raven if you still read these, try dream viewing this one. might be an exciting dream supernatural scenario that you're recently fond of) The guy would like teleport inside their skin and/or behind them, causing them to choke to death on a most horrific way. The guy seemed unaware of me. I saw this happen a couple times. I was also semi lucid at times.

Driving dreams... almost crashing a LOT. Driving up and down impossible hills.

One dream I had a really angry roommate or something. Walk on eggshells kind of guy.

Previous Results
<6hr/10m/8mg (Galantamine)>
#1: Moderate lucid (Seeking The Elusive Fantasy Forest™, Night of Friday 9/8/23)
#2: Weak lucid (False Awakening and Fade, Night of Saturday 9/9/23)
#3: Weak lucid (False Awakening, Night of Wednesday 9/13/23)
#4: Moderate lucid (Silverlight Way, Night of Thursday 9/14/23)

Summary
It's 50/50. Some great lucids here, but still not the level I'm looking for. Going to tweak a couple things and run a new test.

New Test
<6hr/20m/None>
3 nights in a row: Re-establish sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
2 nights in a row: WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). No supplements. Stay awake for 20m. Return to bed.
Repeat until four WBTBs are attempted.

Night 11

…/I turn and cross a door when somebody at my back says: “Here we ‘flay’ because of we f*ck and play”/… I woke up remembering that

Night 12

…/I’m in front of the model of a modern large house in the mountains. I’m carefully placing some round transparent reddish covering plastics on the courtyards to protect the next places I’m planning to go. I’m wearing skin colored stockings/…

07.09 - Night 7

…/I get into a new section of the sorter, it’s main purpose is to heal books. Here fall all books that got damaged along the process of distribution. The books this time are modern paperback versions. There’s a book with pink cover on top of one of the piles on the plates.
I don’t see it’s going to work, I have my doubts about the process. It’s not my task today anyway, I’m too wide away from my working place where I’m sorting stuff for titles for its placement or something like that. We’re moving to another section of the sorter, we have to board a train. There are people from the design area. The big J is there/…

WBTB

I succeeded to incubate the dream back again but failed to recognize when it started

…/it’s the same new section, there’re other paperback books piled there. I’m leaving the section now and I can see now the creeper of my living room hanging in a precarious way next to the sorter. I’m afraid it’s going to fall, I try to fix it into a better position while the sorter keeps moving. I’m trying to figure out what’s the logic of this new station. Each book has some values, like RPG cards. And they must be placed on their corresponding plate according to those numbers for the machine to take them to their new location or something like that . There’s a guy wearing glasses working on the first plate. He shouldn’t be there handling books because of his task has nothing to do with books. He’s taking the books away from where they should be taken by the machinery. I think to myself: “Now I see why it’s not working”/…

08.09 - Night 8

This time the dream was too abstract to recall a full sequence, I’m moving into thoughts and the scenery changes too fast to recall more

…/I see some coworkers, old J is there. They twist and fall into big woks like they’re sort of omelettes. Other stuff turns around and moves on/…

09.09 - Night 9

…/I’m on a train arriving at a train station. I see some cops with dogs doing their job/…

…/I see my daughter is watching films In a strange language. I cannot understand what the actors are saying. Look like a live show comedy/…

10.10 - Night 10

No recall, got too few hours of sleep, then must go back to work

…/There’re groups of cartoon like fat people with small thin heads, wearing coats. Some of them are wearing big round hats. They’re standing on platforms at different heights. There’s something like a huge tonearm of a turntable switching from one group to another. They follow its inducted instructions and sing along a melody. Some seem not to know the lyrics and start improvising. I don’t like it although it’s not bad the result. I go down to the lower level of the system. I get to the small yard of my grand parent’s house. The couch of the small living room is out there and another sofa. A short haired arrogant looking pretty girl around 20 is laying along the couch, with the head on the coach arm and both legs crossed on the couch back. She’s wearing black stockings, mini skirt, plaid shirt and a jacket. I want to correct her posture without being direct to avoid rebellious confrontations, just by sitting next to her in order to force her to put the legs down. She doesn’t look clean. I don’t want to get too close to her feet, she’s not wearing shoes. I sit and she turns to put her legs on the table in front of the couch. I think: That’s not the best but much better. I ask for a kiss as reward. She’s angry/…

…/There’s something with my dad/…

My daughter slammed the bathroom door when I was recalling the segments of this dream. That blocked my recall while I was remembering more details and lost the rest of the dream

I want to give myself a quick reference for ways I can earn points in this comp and formulate a plan to maximize points. This will also help me visualize the plan start to finish while meditating, hopefully making it easier to remember while lucid. If all goes according to plan, this dream will yield a total of 106 points, shattering my previous record of 70 points. If I achieve the below I will create a new plan involving the other ways to get points. For now though, based on the below I will attempt to execute the following:

Upon becoming lucid, I will reality check/stabilize (+1) and then teleport (+5) from wherever I am into a fantasy forest (+15). Then I will look for something to eat in the woods, preferably something sweet like cake (+10). Then I will find a cave and enter (+30). While inside the cave I will imagine my dream guide is inside it and find her (+15), and have a conversation (+15). My goal will be to have her give advice about how to create a persistent dream realm, and then execute on that (+15).


Challenge Task
Enter a Cave = 30pts

3-Step Tasks
Teleport(5pts) --> Eat/Drink(10pts) --> Summon(15pts) = 30pts

New Goals
Go to a fantasy-themed forest = 15pts
Have a lucid conversation with my dream guide = 15pts
Build a persistent dream palace in the forest = 15pts

Persistent Dream
Enter the same dream space more than once = 15pts

Enemy/Team
Fight one or more enemies = 20pts
Teammate takes you into their dream = 15pts
Fight an enemy dreamer = 10pts
Convert an enemy dreamer = 10pts
Teammates teaches you something = 10pts
Meet a teammate = 7pts

Old Goals
Make rain fall up = 10pts
Make music play during the dream = 10pts
Ask a DC to hangout = 10pts

Theme
Library = 5pts

Fragment 1

…/I’m heading to the end of a low illuminated dark brown corridor with dark green doors on the sides. In stead of a wall at the end, there’s a section of a conveyor belt crossing the way from left to right. The corridor is 3 plates of the conveyor belt bright. This part of the corridor is better illuminated with white lights above the machinery.
There are old but well preserved hard cover brown books on each plate and I’m filling the plates with more books to get piles of three books on each plate while the conveyor moves on. I finish to set the piles and turn to do something else to my left. Looks like I’m very concentrated in some task at work/…

I woke up remembering these scene, and wondered if I should consider it as a theme related fragment for the competition, since such books can often be found in libraries. They might come from one, same as they might go there. One way or another must point into that direction. Anyway, I’m constantly handling the main components of a library although I’m not aware of that during the dream. So I think it could score for that. Working with basic components of a library. I could use these books and the conveyor belt under dream control circumstances, to get straight into a library. May be jumping on one of the plates

Then I considered to give it one more try and started to think about the fragment I remembered and fell asleep somewhere in the process

Fragment 2

…/I’m again in the corridor next to the conveyor belt. The sequence unfolds the same until I start to arrange more objects on the first books. This time I see what I’m arranging on them aren’t other books, it’s my folded clothing. And think: “So, they weren’t all books, there were my clothes as well” and put my pants on the old book to see it disappear to my right carried by the conveyor belt/…

Night 3

I didn’t recall any along the day until I opened the refrigerator to see my daughter didn’t buy any other cup of her apparently beloved dessert

…/I open the refrigerator to see my kid brought more cups of the dessert that she didn’t eat for more than a year and are still on the upper corner as a reminder to show her great love for it. I start complaining about that fact with sarcasms/…

Night 4

…/back in my teens, catching up with a friend. He’s talking about his father and how he killed him because of he didn’t want to hear his arguments/…

…/It’s a huge house, I’m walking all around looking for something, possibly recollecting something, not sure. We have to set all in order and there are still two circles left to be finished/…

…/I’m on the street, close to one of the campus of the university of my youth, performing sort of sorcery or ritual with somebody dressed with long hooded clothings. We’re drawing big circles on the floor, with a broom that leaves a line of characters on the floor, turning our body 360 degrees to paint the whole circle with lines that must be perfectly matched in order to have a continuous closed line. It must avoid the evil spirits to come in or something like that. It reminds me an old film about an apprentice that has to spend 3 nights closed in a locked room with a coffin containing the dead body of a witch. I see the signs that form the border of the circle, twist at my will to match their ends. Some characters look like ‘m’s other are just straight lines. I have to finish two more circles of those/…

…/In the kitchen, somebody is washing the dishes and putting them on the dish holder. Turns it downwards and all of the cutlery falls on the floor. I come out of the kitchen and find a coworker is about to get into the bathroom. I stop her to tell something and cannot avoid the impulse to kiss her. She kisses me back and with a gentle push she shows me that she’s in a hurry/…

I haven't collected good data yet for WBTBs, so I am making another attempt at that now. Here is the go-forward schedule to test 6hr/10m. The idea is that balancing WBTBs with 3 days rest and 2 days on will help maintain sleep rhythm. I've also made it such that I will have 4 WBTB attempts from now until the end of Autumn Comp. So I've set myself up to potentially break my points record again. Time will tell on that one. This test will have Galantamine used in each WBTB, so consistency is maintained. I've also removed Choline because the pill bottle smells fishy. It always smelled, so it is possible that I had a bad batch from the start. It was probably bad judgment to use it for that reason. Either way, new tests are using Galantamine alone. Future testing will look at use/non-use of supplements and rest/wake timings and their impact on favorable lucid dreaming results.

Goal of the test is to prove or disprove this statement: While on a consistent 8 hour sleep schedule, performing a 6hr/10m WBTB with 8Mg Galantamine will yield favorable lucid dreaming results for theshirecat.

Night of Tuesday 9/5/23: Re-establish sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
Night of Wednesday 9/6/23: Re-establish sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
Night of Thursday 9/7/23: Re-establish sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.

Night of Friday 9/8/23: Galantamine-assisted WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). Stay awake for 10m. Return to bed. <6hr/10m #1>
Night of Saturday 9/9/23: Galantamine-assisted WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). Stay awake for 10m. Return to bed. <6hr/10m #2>

Night of Sunday 9/10/23: Maintain sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
Night of Monday 9/11/23: Maintain sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.
Night of Tuesday 9/12/23: Maintain sleep rhythm. Go to bed at 11PM and wake at 7AM.

Night of Wednesday 9/13/23: Galantamine-assisted WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). Stay awake for 10m. Return to bed. <6hr/10m #3>
Night of Thursday 9/14/23: Galantamine-assisted WBTB. Go to bed at 11PM. Wake at 5AM (6hrs). Stay awake for 10m. Return to bed. <6hr/10m #4>