The Lab Notebook

[This is a catch-up post. I had another good lucid dream on the night of April 27-28, 2011. It took me a long time to get around to finishing the writeup of this, but here it is.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at a meeting of my local community advocacy and action group. It's being held in a big, spacious, public multipurpose meeting room. There are no chairs or tables in the room, just empty floor space. A lot of the people there are wearing our team color, orange. We're electing the new secretary for the group. The election process begins with everyone who wants to run for the position walking out of the crowd and going and standing in a line, facing the rest of the crowd. My friend J. is there, and she starts to go and stand in the line of candidates. I tell her something like, “Oh, don't run for this. You already do so many things.” I'm specifically thinking of choir when I say this. [In real life, J. and I are in choir together, but she's not part of the advocacy group.] I say this to her because I don't want her to get overwhelmed with too many responsibilities.

[Later, different cycle.] I'm walking through House #1. Everything looks gray, dimly-lit and fuzzy. Because of that, I suspect that I might be dreaming, so I do a reality check. [I don't remember what it was; I think it was trying to go through a solid object.] It doesn't work. “Aw, nutbunnies!” I say aloud, disappointed that it isn't a dream.

And yet, a part of my mind is still suspicious. As I continue walking through the house, I decide to try doing the nose-pinch RC. This time, it works. I'm delighted to find that I really am dreaming! Breathing through my pinched-shut nose feels really cool, too. I do it several times, to verify that I'm dreaming and to experience that cool, weird sensation. It's been a while since I've experienced it.

As usual, I'm eager to just explore the world of this dream and see what there is to see, so I leave the house through the front door and go outside into the yard. It's a bright, sunny, breezy day, and now everything is in color, rather than shades of gray. I walk through the front gate and out into the front yard. Standing on the front lawn between the hedge and the liquid-amber tree, I allow myself to be lifted up into the air on the breeze. It's really fun. “Wheeeee!” I say aloud, enjoying the moment with pure, childlike playfulness. The wind blows me into the branches of the liquid-amber tree, which are pointy and scratchy. I return to the ground.

Our brown car is sitting on the north side of the driveway, the side furthest from the front lawn. [I think it might have been the Mazda we had when we lived in House #1, not the Honda we have now.] I decide to continue practicing my intangibility skills by passing through the closed car door to get into the car. As I start to go through the door to the back seat on the passenger side, the door becomes semi-transparent and stretches inward, like a rubber sheet. I get all the way through and feel the door pull away from my body as it snaps back into place. It feels like rubber, too. I'm now sitting in the back seat of the car. “Holy s***, that was awesome!” I exclaim aloud. I'm really proud that I succeeded in going through the car door like that.

I sit in the back seat of the car for a moment, just taking in the realism and detail of its interior and basking in the glow of my achievement. Then, I decide to get out of the car the normal way, by opening the door. By the time I get out, a van has parked on the other half of the driveway, right next to my car, and there are people getting out of it.

I think, Hey, I'm here in the dream version of my old neighborhood. This would be a great chance to go fly up to the top of the baseball backstop in the park. So I start flying toward the park. To get there, I fly above the streets that lead to it. “I’m not exactly going as the crow flies,” I remark to myself. I realize that I'm following the same route to get from my house to the park that one would follow if one were driving between the two points; I'm just following that route out of a habit that was ingrained into my mind in the real world. The thought crosses my mind that I might wake up from this at any moment, but I immediately push the thought away and ignore it, because I want to stay in the dream.

I arrive at the park. “I’ve always wanted to do this!” I exclaim. [Some background for DV readers: As a child, I once came across a book about out-of-body experiences in a bookstore. I didn't buy it, and I was too afraid to try to induce an OBE, but I thought the idea was really cool. I fantasized that if I were ever to have one, the first thing I would do would be to go to the park, fly to the top of the chain-link baseball backstop, and sit on the edge of it. I wanted to do that in this dream because it was something I had wanted to do for many, many years.]

I start flying through the park toward the baseball backstop. My dad is there, and he stops me and shows me a way to hold my arms that will help me fly better and faster. I do what he shows me: hold my arms out in front of me, elbows bent, fists out, right fist in front of my left one. He tells me that I can fly faster by pushing my right fist further away from me and pulling my left one in closer to my chest, as if I were pulling a rope taut. I try it, and it works. During this training session, I notice that I’m suddenly wearing red boxing gloves.

Using this new method, I continue flying toward my goal. It's a long, long way to the place where I think the baseball field should be, over wild, natural terrain. When I get to where I think it should be, there is no baseball field there, just a broad area filled with rocky hills. I spot the backstop among the hills and land next to it.

“What?” I say aloud, surprised and confused. There is a metal baseball backstop, but it's tiny [maybe two feet tall], overgrown with weeds, and covered with the spiky seed pods from liquid-amber trees. “That’s pretty lame!” I say in disappointment. I turn away and fly back the way I came.

I eventually fly back to what appears to be the counter of a sporting-goods store. I land there and take off the red boxing gloves I'm still wearing, and the bicycle kneepads I have on my feet. I then leave the store by flying through the big, high, square window above its front door. Flying through it creates a sort of flashing, ripple effect in the glass, somewhat similar to what I saw the first time I went through glass, but more visible and flashier. I knew I could fly through glass intangibly because I’d done it before.

I'm now flying outside. There is a concrete parking structure that looks a lot like the one at the local mall right in front of me, and there is another park off to the right. I head toward the park to fly up onto one of the baseball backstops there. As I’m making my way over there, I hear the very faint sound of smooth jazz music. I realize that there’s only one place that music could be coming from: my parents’ clock radio. [I notice that the music is playing at normal speed, too – this demonstrates to me that time does indeed pass at the same speed in my lucid dreams as it does in the real world.] The combination of the music and my knowledge of where it's coming from cause the dream to fade and me to wake up.