DoubleHelix

April 27, 2014: FIRST LUCID DREAM: Last night after going to bed (in real life) we received a late night phone call. After getting back in bed and reciting my mantra “I will have a lucid dream tonight” I fell asleep for real.

In my dream I had yet to fall asleep after the phone call and was merely laying in bed thinking, when I grew concerned that my wife may have shut off the wall switch that controlled the power to my bedside lamp. Without getting out of bed, I tested this by pushing the switch on the lamp several times and indeed, it did not come on. This meant that if I needed the light to write in my dream journal later on, I’d have to get out of bed to turn the wall switch on, which I did not want to do as it would risk my recall. In my dream, I got out of bed and flipped the wall switch to “ON”. The bedside lamp did not come on...but this was possible because I wasn’t sure how many times I’d flipped the switch on the bedside lamp. All of this felt totally real. Hyper-real, in fact.

As I made my way by habit and feel from the wall switch near the bedroom door back to bed, I started to sense a growing anxiety or dread about being in our bedroom in the dark. I tried to turn the bedside lamp on, but it wouldn’t come on even though I had just assured myself it should come on because the wall switch power was definitely on. I appeared to be trapped in the dark, and in my dream I started to get anxious. I started to sense there was something wrong...something amiss...but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I desperately wanted the light to come on, but had exhausted all possible remedies and didn’t know what to do next.

As my anxiety grew over the perplexing malfunctioning of the light, I had the realization...I’m DREAMING!!! This is a DREAM! That’s why the light switches don’t work! And of course...the excitement of being aware of the fact that I was experiencing my first lucid dream caused me to awake. The hyper-real experience of the dream and the joy I felt at having succeeded in having my first LD (no matter how short!) made this a most auspicious occasion!