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After having a bit of a rought time recently, I've been doing a lot better. I've been keeping up with work, eating relatively healthy, reading, and making music. I had a big tidy up (my flat was a complete shithole) and this improved my mind clarity. I did buy some weed a couple nights ago and have been smoking fairly regularly, but I've been making sure that I'm not wasting my time consuming online videos, trying to be a bit more aware and productive.

A few days ago, a book I ordered arrived - Stephen LaBerge's "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming". I bought this book because of a recommendation somewhere on this forum, and I'm so happy with it. I only started reading it last night, but it struck a real chord with me. I've been aware of lucid dreaming for almost 15 years and had relative success with DILDs and WBTBs as a kid, but I lost my way with it through various bad habits and the general challenges life throws at you as an adult.

I read the first 50 or so pages in one sitting and I felt a pretty profound change in my state of mind. LaBerge has written this book so that it flows really nicely, and whilst I already know a lot of things he is informing the reader of, it feels great to start from the beginning again. I kind of forgot about the depth of potential benefits that Lucid Dreaming provides, and reading this put me back into a magical state of inspiration and motivation to succeed in lucid dreaming again.

I felt so connected with all of this that I went to bed feeling immersed in my thoughts of having lucid dreaming. I had my laptop by my bed, ready to write my dreams in the morning, and I fell asleep half-attempting a WILD, staying completely still and having my minds eye encompassed in hypogogic hallucinations.

However, I woke up this morning with no dream recollection, feeling fairly groggy despite a long sleep. I had smoked quite a lot of weed last night but felt fairly collected as I got to bed, so I hoped that it wouldn't interrupt my sleep too much. However in hindside, it probably did. I need to remind myself that whilst I can smoke weed in moderation during the day, I'm going to have trouble pursuing lucid dreaming if I keep going to bed high.

Another interesting thing happened last night - whilst I was reading the book, I had a few moments where my consciousness felt altered, like I was aware of something spiritual or mystical on my mind. I've felt this many time before when I feel inspired by mystical scenarios or readings, but this put me quite on edge. I started to have this fear that I would look away towards my kitchen for example, and see a terrifying, black demon, such as the woman from The Ring. This genuinely spooked me for a while and I kept having this sensation that any second now, something terrifying was going to happen. I remembered that I used to get this all the time as a kid, I got spooked to the point that I wonder if I experienced trauma as a child, once to a film and once to a book.

I obviously wasn't scared to the point of true terror as I was as a child, but I realized that I hadn't thought about this sensation in years. When I've gone to therapists, they'd always ask me about my past and if I've had any traumatic experiences, and I've never had anything to offer there. I sometimes have felt that there is something hiding in my subconscious that I need to remember, and thinking about these feelings of terror made me wonder if that was it. I really was a bit of a messed up kid at times and the intensity of the fear would make me say and do weird things. it makes me wonder whether exploring this could be another application of lucid dreaming for me, working past my weird fears that seemed to arise again after reading lucid dreaming content as I would as a child.

Anyway, onwards and upwards - I'm excited for a new day today, to begin working through the dream sign annotation exercise in LaBerge's book, and I plan to stop smoking at least two hours before I go to bed tonight. My recall used to be amazing with up to 10 dreams per night, and I cannot wait until I've got back to that spot.

After reading for a couple hours last night, I let out some steam in an emotionally charged dream journal post, hoping to actually remember some dreams this morning in the process. I definitely think my calm evening of reading and meditation helped me slip into a deep sleep of many dreams, but sadly I do not remember any. I remember waking up in the middle of the night very horny and remembering my dreams, but also being very tired. Classic - I never really did find a way of logging my dreams as and when I remembered them. It's kind of like brute force - my ideal method would be laptop as I type fast and could get back to sleep ASAP, but having the energy to do that in the middle of the night is tough. I remember people years ago talking about using a voice recording app which I might try tonight, but I think I tried this before and my mid-sleep voice was just too slurry. Anyway, I woke up today feeling refreshed and well-dreamt (even if I don't remember them)... here's to tonight!

I rekindled my Dream Views account about a month ago posting about an unfortunate rut of bad habits I found myself in, adding a journal entry that covered my earliest dream memories as a means to improve my dream recollection.

This didn't quite go to plan - I think I had a couple of productive days, but flew out to Italy with friends shortly after. It was a great time, but an unfortunate argument with friends (which was resolved, but with a slightly bad atmosphere in the air), too much drinking, and some sad discussions with my partner about us probably breaking up sent me back into a bad place upon my return. I had left myself a gram of weed for when I got home, and this has ultimately been my downfall once again. When I smoke weed, it's like I have no control of how much or when I smoke it. It muddies my decision making, and before I know it I'm a month deep into a weed whole, eating horrendous food whilst neglecting my responsibilities.

Anyway, I've been crawling out of the rut the last couple of days, finished up some weed I had left over, and have been trying to make more music instead of mindlessly consuming content. I've been reading as well, telling myself that whenever I am doing nothing such as watching YouTube, I could just be reading instead. It's put me into a really good headspace, feeling meditative, calm, and inspired as I always would after reading for a while.

So, here I am again - hopefully back with a bit of consistency. I sadly cannot recall much dream activity in the last month or so. The only dream I really remember was a few days ago after returning from Italy, dreaming that I was on holiday with my partner and friends, but somewhere else this time. I was laying down or sat down, and she was standing over me, basically telling me in a rather harsh way that she was done with putting up with me and making compromises for our relationship, and that was that. It was a really vivid dream that left me feeling pretty emotional. Perhaps as part of a synchronicity, my partner messaged me that same morning to tell me that she had a bizarre dream where she faked her own death, watching me and my friend J crying all night at her death, only to be there eating with us at breakfast in the morning. Her dream kind of gave me complex-vibes similar to some dark thoughts I've had at low points in my life, thinking of faking or even taking part in suicide, knowing that others are mourning for you.

I didn't mention my thoughts on her dream - just told her that I had a slightly more realistic and sad dream of her finishing things with me. We both felt sad from this, and haven't really chatted much since. I wish I had a more positive and interesting dream to share with you, but perhaps they will come tomorrow.

It's been years since I've posted in a dream journal on DreamViews - I had one on another account which I kept going for ages, and I loved it. I've been in a rut recently fuelled by bad habits and laziness, and I want to pick myself up and grow stronger than ever. A big part of this is going to be about reducing my consumption and reconnecting with my spiritual side, something that I'm very excited to do.

I'm very happy to see Dreamviews is still going, and it's old-school forum format gives me great solice, feeling like I can base myself here for a while for my self improvement journey. I'm hoping to join in with the community again (I wonder if the daily/weekly/monthly challenges are still about), but I'm going to start things off by returning to my dream journal. I always found that if I wasn't remembering my dreams for a while, I could simply write down as many dream-related things as I could remember and I would remember my dreams the next day.

Earliest Dream Memories

There's a few dreams that I remember having as a child on several occasions, essentially recurring nightmares. They were super abstract and had a overall feeling of 'doom', which I've always thought is interesting. These are abstract and mature feelings, so it's strange to have them as themes in toddler dreams.

#1: The Rocket Launch. In this dream (I think it was recurring), I remember a vast 2D landscape, much like something you'd find in a very very old, rudimentary video game. It was in black and white, and the 'subject' of the scene was a cursor representing a rocket ship. I would see the black dot zipping across this infinite white void, not looking like it was moving due to its blank surroundings, yet something giving me a deep feeling of extreme speed. I would come to realize that this rocket was heading at enormous speeds towards a planet, perhaps earth. It also could have been the other way around, but there was just this overwhelming feeling of impending doom coming from the collision. I remember that this dream would feel infinite, timeless, and like nothing in the world mattered at that moment.

#2: The Baby Rattle. This dream is much less detailed, but I remember it terrifying me - there were three young toddlers, perhaps one years old, standing over me on my bed giggling goofily whilst shaking rattles, getting closer and closer to me. Although it does sound like the thing of horror movies, I remember realizing that the scene itself wasn't scary in itself at all, yet in the dream it was incredibly haunting.

#3: The Alice in Wonderland Effect. This is perhaps the most interesting of my old dreams - in fact I'm not sure it was even a dream. I remember it happened a few times and it would always happen as I was drifting into sleep. I would imagine a small ring that would have the mass of the entire universe, unimaginably heavy and dense. I wouldn't imagine it as the weight of the universe at the time because I'm pretty sure I was a toddler when this was happening. Something about the ring with this unimaginable mass really shook me up, it was an intense and almost doom like feeling. Later in life, I remember bringing this up to a couple of friends as well as my sister, and they all experienced something similar. One person remembered a feeling of the room feeling very small, whilst they themselves felt enormous. I also had a friend who had similar dreamlike experiences of being under a huge boat, with the monolithic darkness of the boat's bottom causing immense feelings of dread. I did a lot of research online to see if I could find anything similar to these experiences, and after a lot of searching I did. There was something called "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome" i think, and it had something to do with being caused by very mild strokes caused naturally in children. Apparently its very common in kids but disappears as they get older.