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    CanisLucidus

    Bears

    by , 11-09-2013 at 05:26 AM (742 Views)
    Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

    Lucid #159: Bears

    I’m in a restaurant fashioned like a log cabin, talking on the phone with my friend “Dragon”. He’s telling me about the new job that our friend “AJ” just got and he’s chiding me because I know so little about it. We finish talking and I wander outside to find myself on a wooden deck high up in the mountains.

    Now I feel like I’m part of a video game and I’d forgotten to do something important. Three pale bald men in dark trench coats (sort of like the guys in Dark City) come floating toward me. I turn to run, but one crashes into me, pushing me off the side of the mountain. I fall, unharmed, to some rocks far below. I want to get the hell away from these guys, so I duck into a little cave and wind up in some kind of white-walled room that looks like a lab. I wonder whether I’m actually playing a video game or just dreaming and
    realize that yes, I’m dreaming.

    There’s a bed in the room that I’m in and a few other people milling around. Their identities don’t seem to be all that stable, but for much of the dream, one of them appears to be Anna Kendrick. I feel like they’re all trapped here, so I say, “This is all a dream. You don’t have to stay here!” I head for the doorway and they all follow.

    When I get close to the door I remember my goal of cranking my dream vividness up before anything else. I decide not to let myself get in too much of a hurry. There’s a weird section of carpet by the door so I kneel down to touch it, telling everyone with me to do the same. “This is my lucid dream. None of us have to believe that this is real.” (I’m addressing them, but mostly reminding myself.)

    There’s a box of toys on a shelf to my left, and I rummage through it, intending to bring myself even more into the scene. I’m surprised to find a stuffed bear that I gave to Wife when we were teenagers! I pull it out and take it with me, sort of hugging it to me the way a little kid would.

    We emerge from the lab into a chamber with hallways in four different directions. I try to remember my goals, but all I can remember is the Great Pyramid. I know there’s another one I’m not remembering but I can’t figure it out. I start to feel pretty stressed about my memory and get worried I’ll wake myself up if I get too wrapped up in this. (I was forgetting Great Barrier Reef!)

    I walk down one of the halls until we step out into an amphitheater filled with apparent worshippers. They're performing some kind of sinister chant and at the bottom of the amphitheater, a huge crackling ball of dark purple energy is taking shape. Everyone’s participating in the chanting except me now, including Anna Kendrick and the rest of the companions from the lab.

    I become sure that they’re summoning some kind of dark god. I know that I shouldn’t worry about stuff like this, but I just want to get away before this causes me a problem. I turn around and decide to ignore their evil ritual before it becomes a nuisance for me. Slightly annoyed by my own fear, I clutch the stuffed bear to me again, hugging it roughly as I flee up a set of stairs..

    There are a couple of guys sitting near the top of the stairs as I emerge into daylight. One of them, a black guy in a checkered shirt, asks me, “What’s with the teddy bear?” I explain that I’m using the bear to help keep myself anchored into this dream. I hand him the bear just as a crush of people come trampling down the stairs like it’s rush hour. Pretty soon I can’t see the guy anymore through the crowd.

    Rather than get frustrated trying to recover the bear, I move on. At the top of the steps, I see my son’s green Beanie Baby bear, so I scoop it up and hold it as a replacement. I walk onward, passing by the front entrance of a hotel. A couple of guys come up to me and offer me a $1200 discount on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. I think that this sounds like a great deal but I tell them, “Sorry, I’m having a lucid dream, though. So maybe offer that to someone who can use it.”

    I lose the dream, wake up, and hold on for DEILD. The DEILD works and I emerge back into a second-story bedroom. I grab onto the bedding, kneading it with my hands, focusing on making the scene super vivid. It works, and I keep doing this for a while until I realize I’m sort of afraid to let go. Stop being a weenie! I force myself to let go and take a flying leap at the window, intending to phase through.

    The phase gets stopped cold, though, and I bounce right off the window. I will the window to come down, which it immediately does… and behind it is another pane of glass! I lower that one as well, seeing a third pane. I’m starting to feel slightly irritated by this, and fortunately when I lower this pane, it’s a clear shot to the outside.

    I scramble through the window, catching my reflection on the outside of an office building across the street. Even though I’m crawling through the window, my reflection is walking upright like there’s nothing in the way. My reflection and I both laugh at the error.

    When I drop down to the street below, I feel the sun bright to my left side, which I believe is west. I feel slightly nervous about heading into such bright light, so I turn eastward. I know that the Pyramid is somewhere ahead of me. There’s a slight wobble in the dreamworld, but it stabilizes as I walk on. I take to the sky, and with one final wobble,
    the dream collapses for good.
    Highlander, NyxCC, Bubble and 1 others like this.

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    Updated 11-09-2013 at 04:54 PM by 57387

    Categories
    lucid

    Comments

    1. fogelbise's Avatar
      Nice long one with chaining as well!! Do you feel like all of those techniques early in the dream to stabilize had a long lasting effect? It sounded like they did.
      Highlander and CanisLucidus like this.
    2. Highlander's Avatar
      Congrats on the long and vivid LD & DEILD - quite impressive!

      You should have taken up the tickets to Hawaii and gone to see Stephen Laberge at his retreat.
      CanisLucidus and fogelbise like this.
      Updated 11-09-2013 at 12:25 PM by Highlander
    3. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by fogelbise
      Nice long one with chaining as well!! Do you feel like all of those techniques early in the dream to stabilize had a long lasting effect? It sounded like they did.
      Thanks, fogelbise! I tend to think so, yeah... I was trying to keep my mind focused on making the dream a super vivid experience as much as I could. Honestly, I was hugging the teddy bear and kind of feeling its fur a lot more often than I mentioned in the dream. Not the most grown-up dream behavior I've ever engaged in, but if it works, I'm all for it!

      I was trying to really keep my mind focused on making the dream super vivid. That seems to be an important part of the trick. Once I worried that the dream was unstable, it'd tend to wobble and kind of get that way. I tried to stay focused on the positive aspect... making myself a part of a very vivid dream. You know what I mean?

      Quote Originally Posted by fogelbise
      Congrats on the long and vivid LD & DEILD - quite impressive!

      You should have taken up the tickets to Hawaii and gone to see Stephen Laberge at his retreat.
      Thank you, Highlander! And that is both a hilarious and awesome idea for a super-advanced LD goal! Go to Hawaii to Laberge's seminar and have him give you a tip for making your LDs better. Nice.
      Highlander and fogelbise like this.
    4. Bubble's Avatar
      Haha, I like how you led the DCs to freedom. The altruism of saving DCs is entertaining.
      Congrats on such a long, clear lucid dream! I wonder what would've happened if you'd let them finish their summoning...
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    5. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Haha, I like how you led the DCs to freedom. The altruism of saving DCs is entertaining.
      Congrats on such a long, clear lucid dream! I wonder what would've happened if you'd let them finish their summoning...
      Thanks, Bubble! Ha, it was funny how I didn't want to be the only one that was lucid. Between that and spending the whole dream clutching one teddy bear or the other, I'm starting to think I was feeling a little insecure!

      I do wonder what would have happened if that summoning had completed! I'm sure that it would have been very entertaining if I'd just stuck around. In lucids I always have this fear like things will turn into a big distraction, freak me out, or something similar and somehow end the dream prematurely. Really, though, this is just one more fear to get over! Better to go ahead and let the dream show me what it had.

      Always working to strike that balance between focusing on goals but also taking time to experience the interesting material the dream throws at me from out of nowhere.
    6. NyxCC's Avatar
      Congrats on the super long ld and deild, CL! Very cool dream with all the rituals going on in the amphitheater. The air flight discount was very funny too.

      And of course, I totally loved the part with the bear. Holding on to something and carrying it around brings us extra confidence and feeling of stability and there is nothing that better serves that purpose than toys, since this is also a part if their function.

      The tech of boosting dream vividness is working great!
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    7. TheForgotten 's Avatar
      I explain that I’m using the bear to help keep myself anchored into this dream.
      Love that portion of truth right there.

      A couple of guys come up to me and offer me a $1200 discount on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. I think that this sounds like a great deal but I tell them, “Sorry, I’m having a lucid dream, though. So maybe offer that to someone who can use it.”
      LOL. The awareness and logic involved in that is funny. That and yah! Hawaiian Airlines!

      When I drop down to the street below, I feel the sun bright to my left side, which I believe is west. I feel slightly nervous about heading into such bright light, so I turn eastward.
      Bright light is typically associated with very positive things (unless of course you're being cremated but that's a different kind of bright light.) I'm just curious why you felt the need to adjust your position away from it? What about the light made you nervous?
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    8. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      @Nyx - Thanks! Yeah, there were so many different pieces to this one. It kept going and going in spite of my irrational fear that it was all about to end any second. The constant teddy bear clutching is a pretty good sign that I was nervous about things overall, but it worked out fine.

      I may have to try it again. Who knows? Maybe I'll finish the King Kong Task of the Year item as "King Kong holding a gigantic stuffed bear"

      Yeah, I'm really pleased with how the vividness boosting is working out! It's still challenging for me to remember to do it, but it seems really effective. Fun, too! Man, dreams can look good.
      NyxCC likes this.
    9. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by Kaomea
      LOL. The awareness and logic involved in that is funny. That and yah! Hawaiian Airlines!
      Ha ha... I do tend to make this dream assumption that DCs keep going about their business/lives in the background after I change scenes. It's probably a little silly, but I frequently thing silly things in lucids. And everyone likes to save a little money, am I right?

      Are you from Hawaii?? We were in Maui just about a year ago and I happened to have probably my 2nd-best and certainly my all-time longest lucid while we were there. I think it was down to being saturated with so much beauty and positive energy while I was there. Or maybe pineapple gives me LDs, because I went nuts with the fresh-cut pineapple there too. Anyway, that's what I thought this might be a reference to, but I really don't know!

      Bright light is typically associated with very positive things (unless of course you're being cremated but that's a different kind of bright light.) I'm just curious why you felt the need to adjust your position away from it? What about the light made you nervous?
      You are so right about this. To my waking mind this makes so much sense. At the time I had this irrational fear that bright light meant wakefulness, and I was afraid I'd lose the dream somehow. This is not a great mindset to have at all, but thoughts like these just kind of jump out of the bushes at me sometimes in LDs!

      You know, a good goal would be to learn to turn confidently into the face of these things that suddenly, irrationally make me nervous. In the dream I tend to cower away from them, and waking me is embarrassed that I can be such a weenie.
      Kaomea likes this.
    10. TheForgotten 's Avatar
      That's pretty awesome you got to go to Maui. On my list of favored islands, that's number 2. The Big Island is my top choice only because of the family ties. But really, Maui has some of the best untouched, natural beauty. It sounds like a number of factors could've induced your lucids. Yeah, I'm from Hawaii but had to move to the states for a while. Not sure when I'm moving back, probably will head over to Europe to live for a while first. I keep checking those airfares though! On Hawaiian Airlines, lol.

      At the time I had this irrational fear that bright light meant wakefulness, and I was afraid I'd lose the dream somehow.
      The association with bright light and wakefulness makes total sense, actually.

      In the dream I tend to cower away from them, and waking me is embarrassed that I can be such a weenie.
      What's really cool about this is that you still write about those experiences. That and yeah, sounds like a good goal.
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    11. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      That's pretty awesome you got to go to Maui. On my list of favored islands, that's number 2. The Big Island is my top choice only because of the family ties. But really, Maui has some of the best untouched, natural beauty. It sounds like a number of factors could've induced your lucids. Yeah, I'm from Hawaii but had to move to the states for a while. Not sure when I'm moving back, probably will head over to Europe to live for a while first. I keep checking those airfares though! On Hawaiian Airlines, lol.
      Oh nice! When we were there, Wife and I talked often about "What do you think it must be like to live here?" Since I'm sure everybody asks what it must be like to live in Hawaii, I'll spare you my questions... but I think it's super cool that you got to experience an actual life there! And wow, enjoy Europe too. Great stuff.

      I'm sorry, but I can't help but think about how with all this travel you're collecting a lifetime's worth of excellent lucid dreaming fuel.

      What's really cool about this is that you still write about those experiences.
      Thanks. One can only hope they build character.
    12. NyxCC's Avatar
      Yeah, I'm really pleased with how the vividness boosting is working out! It's still challenging for me to remember to do it, but it seems really effective. Fun, too! Man, dreams can look good.
      I think if you practice it long enough it will become like a habit, in-dream ADA. It seems that when one has a genuine interest of any dream items one is looking at vs. the "I need to stabilize" panic and looking around, the dream quality increases tremendously. And I don't know if it is the same for you but since I started this year's lding sessions, I have a greater interest in observing those small details around me, even if I am not RCing/ADA. I find it quite pleasurable to look at details in both dreams and rl.

      With regards to that, I forgot to say that the reflection effect in the Deild was quite cool!

      Can't wait to read about you using bears to fight the military on top of ESB.
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    13. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      I agree! It has a very positive impact on dream vividness from my experience as well.

      In many ways, my recent experimentation with vividness boosting and just paying lots of attention to details is a throwback to my earliest LDs. In my 2nd LD of all time I tried a bunch of level of detail experiments to test how vivid dreams actually were and how much detail I could really make out. Here, yeah, this is the one. Flashback: Lucid Experimentation - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

      It's funny to look back and find myself still up to the some of the same stuff I was in my very first lucids.

      Thanks, glad you liked the reflection bit! I found that neat too. And I love your idea about how to employ the stuffed bear in a more macho fashion in the Empire State Building Task of the Year.
      NyxCC likes this.
    14. NyxCC's Avatar
      Thanks for the link and sorry for the late reply on this one. It's really amazing how much rendering our brain/mind can do. If you think that all the buildings as well as living things etc all follow an enormous amount of often complex laws and rules. I am no architect, yet my mind constructs perfect and often so elaborate buildings.

      Also, this information is so easily absorbed into the subcon which later could randomly reproduce it in such detail. Like if you ask me to imagine a famous person and paint them, even if I had the best skills, I still need to look at a picture of that person to get the right proportions, but the sleepying mind can easily present you with the end result especially in non-lds, where you are not trying to influence the process.

      Perhaps because our rational part/decision making of brain is not functioning as much, more resources are allocated to other areas like the ones for visual and musical (i.e. right brain) experiences which seem to receive a boost.

      By the way, I had a close call today. Someone was throwing stuffed toys from a tall block. I was below and caught a stuffed bear, they continued throwing toys and I casually mentioned that it looks like a dream and now is a good time to RC. Unfortunately, my reasoning continued that perhaps they were just dusting...
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    15. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      You're right, it is amazing! We're all master architects/musicians/landscape painters in our dreams, yet so few of us can do these things at an expert level in waking life. This hints at tremendous untapped creative potential... and at just how hard it is for ideas to make the leap between our imaginations and the waking world.

      That's the real gift that creative people have... to be able to tap fearlessly into that creative energy and then somehow build the skills necessary to turn it into a physical reality of some form that others can share and experience.

      Ha! Nice close call! And "dusting". The dreaming brain seems to always be there with a ready excuse for everything!
      NyxCC likes this.