Life's Recollections

Finally a WILD success to report! WILD 12 did the trick, and was followed by a DEILD of its own! Let's get into it:

Awake/explanation
Normal dream
Semi-lucid dream
Lucid dream

12:00 AM - 3:00 AM

I fell asleep so late last night I decided to abandon my first 2 hour alarm at 1:30 AM, because I knew if I slept only 1h30m, I wouldn't have had any dreams. When my alarm woke me at 3:00 AM however (approx. 3 hours of sleep), I remembered a dream!

I was trying to go into some kind of swimming pool/resort place, but I realized my phone was losing charge and I wouldn't be able to listen to any music/books, so I decided not to stay after all. I was in my car driving home, when I crossed through the parking lot of some place called Cafe... something. I can't remember the name, but as I was looking at it, I thought-- that sounds pretty nice. I could go for some coffee. And it also was the end of my work-day and I was driving home anyway, so I pull over into the parking lot.

There was a lady in a phonebooth nearby who was arguing so loudly I could hear her screaming, but I couldn't understand what she was saying specifically. I locked my door and started to walk away from my car, and as I got about halfway there, two people came out of the store, a guy and a girl, and I suddenly remembered I left my wallet sitting in the passenger seat of my car. So I went back, unlocked the door, pulled it out, and headed in-- while still listening to phonebooth woman yelling at someone over the phone.

I go into the store and notice it's much larger than I expected, with a full first floor, and also an escalator that goes up to a second floor. I'm a little overwhelmed because I really don't know much about coffee, though I like it alright, so I just start walking around in a counterclockwise circle looking at the walls. As I pass the escalator I see a group of 4-5 children with a woman watching over them, who seem to be getting something for themselves, like decaffeinated coffee, and they're all picking various flavors and creamers while she watches. I walk past them and notice I'm in a "kids' section" of coffee, and just sort of glance over things there and keep walking.

As I'm walking near the back aisles of the store, I hear a woman say, "everything alright?" and I just ignore her for some reason, thinking she's not talking to me I guess. She says again, "Can I help you with anything?" and I turn and look at her a little startled and say, "Oh, no, I'm just enjoying looking around," with a little laugh, and then say, "all this coffee is making me almost want to buy something." She laughs too and says, "Imagine how I feel working here." I notice she's an older lady, probably in her 50s, a little chubby and wrinkly and she seems nice. I tell her, "I just was on my way home and saw the store and decided to come have a look," and she says, "Oh, you're on your way home, did you stop downtown?" I tell her no, and she says, "There's an film festival happening there, you should have went and looked around!"

Someone had mentioned this to me earlier in the dream I remember, but I can't remember when, but as I was telling her, "yeah, someone mentioned that to me earlier," I woke up.

When I woke up, I decided to do my WILD, and as usual I fell asleep without transitioning.

3:00 AM - 4:30 AM

I woke up again before my next alarm which was set at 5 AM, and I think because my alarm has been set at 4:30 I didn't comprehend this, because I got up as usual, peed, and laid back down. Here I began thinking about King Yoshi's WILD Guide which I have mentioned before. In it, he mentions that a technique for stopping dry-spells is to pretend that you are an expert at what you're doing, and very confident you'll have the lucid dream.

Taking this a step further in my groggy state, I first start saying to myself, "Oh, yes, I know exactly what I'm doing," in my head, and, "I'll definitely succeed at this WILD, I do it all the time, it's very natural to me, like breathing." I'm kinda amused by this and suddenly while adjusting myself I'm just playing along with the idea and find myself talking to a fake audience, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to see a lucid dream performed live on stage for your entertainment-- I'll be lying here and for the next two hours you'll be utterly entertained by the world of fantasy unfolding on the screen above your heads, whereon you can see everything I can see..."

I continue running with this mind-voice, promising them that it will be fantastic, as I comfy myself, then saying, "Now, I need absolute silence from the audience as I enter into one of the most difficult parts, wherein I must fall asleep comfortably," and I chuckle at this and get comfortable on my side and begin trying to count down in my head with each breath in and out.

4:30 AM - 5 AM

Suddenly, I'm awoken by my actual alarm going off, and I roll over and shut it off and lie back down, mentally saying to my fake audience, "That was a close call, ladies and gentlemen, what you saw was almost me failing for the entire night, but fear not! The alarm has caught me and now I will roll over and begin anew, and once more I need total silence please." I laid down on my right side now, and began counting down again, and quickly, I found myself lying in my bed in the morning with the sun shining through the window and the smell of breakfast from the other room.

I sat up, thinking, darnit, I messed up again! But then I reach up and plug my nose and find that I can breathe. I'm baffled by this, because I feel 100% awake and as if this is the realest, most regular awakening ever. Everything looks normal, sounds normal, feels normal. I plug my nose and try again and can still breathe. I'm so confused I think something is wrong with my nose, I can't understand how I can breathe.

But, I think, I have to be dreaming! There's nothing else that it could mean! So I basically leap out of bed and look at my hands, which look normal, and I start rubbing them together to increase the stability of the dream. I walk through the kitchen where my dad's making breakfast, and tell him I'm going outside. He seems puzzled by this but I open the door without waiting for his response and walk down the sidewalk and into the front yard. I'm still telling myself, "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming!" because everything is so real I'm afraid I could lose it at any time.

As I'm walking into the front yard I remember my goal of "splitting a mountain with my aura" for the lucid dream tasks of July. So, wondering how to even do that, I begin screaming at the top of my lungs trying to somehow "charge up" like in DragonBall Z or something. Nothing really happens and I feel my voice becoming raspy, and have a faint moment of hoping I'm not actually awake and screaming in my front yard at the top of my lungs, lol.

But, to quell my fears, I immediately run an acre or two into the yard as fast as possible, and I'm able to run so quickly I know that it can't be real life. I stop again, and begin yelling again, trying to do... something, and my next idea is to stomp on the ground so hard it sends my aura out and splits the mountains. So I stomp on the ground, and nothing happens. Next, I bend down and punch the ground as hard as I can, then stand up and look around. Suddenly, I notice something falling and look up, only to see the moon has turned dull grey and is falling through the atmosphere breaking into pieces and falling to Earth, lol. So, I think, I can destroy the moon-- surely I can destroy a mountain. (Also I don't know why the moon was directly overhead during the day, don't ask questions.)

Again I punch the ground as hard as I can, then look up once more, and in the distance I see a mountain breaking into pieces and crumbling into dust, and I feel self-satisfied that I achieved my goal. When I woke up I feared I had failed, thinking the goal was to "split the mountain," but it turns out the goal was simply to "break a mountain," so I think I passed after all!

Content with this, I remember I had wanted to explore the mountain after it split. It kind of just crumpled into dust, but I figured it still might be worth seeing what was there. So I head over that way and find some small lumps of tiny mountain still standing next to a house. What's more, they seem to be lightly glowing, so I begin kicking at them and trying to see what's underneath. Eventually I take my hands and slash the air in their direction, as if cutting X's into them, and soon one begins to erupt, as if it were a tiny volcano. Without thinking I reach out with my hand and catch a piece of lava, and find out it is unbearably hot and drop it on the ground (not sure what I was expecting). I pull my hood up over my head (suddenly wearing a hoodie I guess) and pick up a piece of rock that has some lava sitting on it, and throw it at the nearby house, just to see if I can catch it on fire (I guess I'm kind of destructive, huh?).

It doesn't, so I head over to the house; I somehow teleport inside the house and don't know how. This confuses me and makes me worry I'm losing control, so I begin rubbing my hands together again to reassert control and stability in the dream, and then I decide to exit the house by holding onto a banister and kicking my way through a window. I do so and slide out onto the ground awkwardly, but get out nonetheless, lol.

I walk away from the houses and notice that I'm on a hill, overlooking a golf-course, and there's another hill above me-- and people are hitting golf-balls off the hill into the course as if it's a driving range. I head up on the hill and at this time, a friend of mine, Brooks, comes and begins talking but I don't listen well, and soon after a girl he used to date comes up and begins complaining that someone has broken the window out of her house. She questions him, and then me, and remembering that I don't have to stay here for this and have better things to do, I smile at her and then turn and jump off the hill and begin gliding down into the golf course with my arms out like wings.

However, I'm not satisfied to glide, and think about how I always have trouble truly flying. I remember how on the forums here at Dreamviews, someone said that the key to dream control was to simply know that it would work. As a symbolic gesture, I simply drop my arms by my side and begin saying to myself, "I don't need to worry, I'll simply lift into the air and float. This is my mind; I control everything here."

Surely enough, I begin rising into the air, fairly rapidly, up above the trees, until suddenly I see a cliff overhang I hadn't noticed before. I float along underneath it and land on a small platform and notice there is a nametag on it, and a ragtag house. The nametag says "William" something or other, and I turn around to see a little anthropomorphic mole (standing on his hind legs) looking up at me. When turning around, I accidentally bump him and he falls off the platform, like 10 stories, and hits the ground. I look down after him trying to ascertain that he's okay, and when I see him get up and brush himself off I decide he is.

I start walking into his little house (uninvited, lol) and soon encounter another little mole person who is pointing a shovel at me warily, and I tell him, "Sorry, sorry, I don't mean to intrude!" and he threatens me with the tiny shovel again, and I say, "Your friend is okay, he's coming, look!" and I point down at him coming up in a little elevator. The one pointing the shovel at me continues holding it out but looks down at him.

And suddenly, just like that, the lights go out. I have no idea what time it is, but I realize I've woken up, and I hold my eyes firmly shut and just lie there. I feel like I'm struggling to fall asleep again. Eventually, I open my eyes and I'm in my room, but now it's dark. Once more I think, "Darn, the DEILD attempt didn't work," and start to get up, thinking it's the middle of the night still. Then I stop, and plug my nose again as I'm getting out of bed. And I find I can breathe! Once again I'm baffled by how real the false awakening feels, and how quickly I dismissed it as being real life, and am glad I did another reality check before taking it for granted. I stand up and go over to my door in the dark, and think, "When I open this door, I'll be overlooking the rings of Saturn," which is the first thing that comes to mind. I open the door, and instead I'm looking at my hallway, and my dog is at my feet wagging her tail. I close the door in her face (lol), and think, "When I open this door, I'll be somewhere fantastic!" and I open the door again. Once again, I'm in the hallway and my dog is at my feet wagging her tail.

I say, "alright, fine," and walk through the door with my dog following me. It's now light as I exit the hallway, and my dad is in the kitchen making breakfast, and I say, "Good lord, how long have you been making breakfast?" and he says, "About an hour," (LOL) and I walk past him and go out the door into the yard again. This time I stop and bend down to pet my dog, and I notice her eyes are shut and her face is even more greyed than in real life, and I sympathetically say, "Oh no, you're getting all old girl!" and as I say it I realize I've made a mistake. She starts bending down and coughing up phlegm and stuff and I think, "Oh no, I set the expectation that my dog is old and sickly and now she's gonna die in front of me," so I start backing away from her and saying, "No, just kidding, you're young and spritely! You're even younger than real life! I've never seen you so energetic!" but I'm also backing away from her because I don't want to get distracted with this and want to go do more lucid dreaming stuff.

As I'm heading into the driveway, I look back and see my dog is indeed young and healthy again like when she was a puppy, and she comes bounding down after me into the driveway. I start jumping in the air repeatedly, thinking to fly again, and then I stop and think, "Oh yeah, there was that other dream task of milking something!"

No sooner did I think this than I suddenly found myself trapped in some strange, half-awake state, unable to move. It was like one of my eyes was seeing my bed in real life, and the other eye was seeing the dream, and the dream was suddenly "locked up." I was just stuck there floating in space, and I closed my real life eye (this was purely an illusion/dream, not reality I think) and still I was stuck in the dream, but now I was back in the mole house sitting on a sofa, unable to move. There was a man there talking to me about lucid dreaming in theory, and I told him, "Actually, I'm lucid dreaming right now, I just can't move!"

He went bug-eyed at this and then began scoffing at the idea, and I said, "No, no! I really am, I'm just stuck!" and while ignoring his scoffing I somehow accidentally found myself awake for real.

I did another reality check JUST TO BE SURE, and then laid down again in my bed and patted myself on the back. Finally, at least one decent LD after a week of work!

Edit: listening to my audio logs I also discovered I reported a dream fragment I had forgotten, but I don't know when it happened:

I had a dream I was playing Runescape (lol) and came across these two guys swarming around this emerald lying on the ground as if they were protecting it. I walked up to them and watched them for a bit and then just ran up and took it off the ground. They both ran after me telling me they were trying to protect it and I needed to drop it, and I just said, "No, that's okay," and logged out and changed to another world (lol). Once I got there I used a spell to go home and then walked away still holding the emerald, but I accidentally wandered into a dangerous area and got the crap kicked out of me and died, dropping all my stuff.

Panicking a little, I ran back there again and picked it all back up and tried to run back to the home town, but again got killed and dropped everything again, but a little closer back to home.

But I woke up shortly thereafter.