FryingMan

Last night was one of those dreaming nights you wish you could put in a can and just keep opening again and again!
Legend: not-dream, normal dream, lucid dream

Day: lots of prospective memory targets. Medium number of state checks, a few Sageous RRCs.
Before bed:
One hour of transcribing my voice journaling into written journal for a couple days.
~1 teaspoon lecithin granules, couple of glasses of apple juice
Read for about 45 minutes (helps me get to sleep faster I've found).

Bed at 01:00 Thank SC for dreams, ask for more LDs, put in request for particular themes.
wake at 05:17, no recall (may have been some earlier awakenings, I thought, hey, I didn't recall doing any journaling yet, and I was pretty sure I had some earlier light recall)
drank 1/2 cup of apple juice
then did some MILD reps based on previous night's dreams
and did some SSILD cycles for good measure.
wake at 06:17: LUCID!
Progress! A different lucid awakening moment, this time: critical faculty! I was in the middle of a (somewhat bizarre) conversation, I was asking an old friend about his hush-hush new business venture. It had to to with coaching (kids?) football. I said I had not ever coached football but that I had coached soccer (true in WL). I tried to hand him a card from my wallet, when all my cards fell to the ground. About 10-15 of them, I'm kneeling down trying to pick them up. And I can't. They just keep falling out of my hands, they just won't get arranged how I want them to be. Then I think, "Hey, this is a bizarre situation, I should check to see if I'm in a dream" and BOOM as soon as I said "dream" I became lucid. Same "sucked into the movie" feeling as the first DILD, I instantly stood up in amazement. I was *so sure* that I had been awake before, I was almost in shock to realize it was a dream. No RC again like DILD #1, as soon as the word "dream" popped into my head after and I had the notion to question my state, I was instantly lucid.

And I wasn't super-confused before being lucid, like I am sometimes in dreams, it was more like light puzzlement, the flavor of the thought was, "oh, this is one of those times when things don't work like you think they should that you're supposed to see if you're dreaming." If I can get consistent with this then my frequency will skyrocket since I have these moments all the time. I missed one earlier in the ND portion: I saw a shooting star (cool, it went all the way across the sky). Then more, and more and more shoting stars (whoa!). Then I saw colorful pinwheels of stars in the sky, I tell my friend "Look! Check that out!" Then I see a huge picture/ scene in the sky and first am filled with wonder, but quickly think, "Oh, someone must be running a projector somewhere" and my attention moves on. Doh!

Again, right away the very high/giddy excitement, I completely forgot and blew off the ND conversation and DCsI, I just turn around and walk through the crowd of people and head down the corridor, no clear goals in mind. Without willing it, I suddenly float like a balloon up to the roof of the hallway and stay there, looking down. I feel out of control. I get a grip on myself, and rub my hands together (yay!). I feel my hands rubbing and and see them briefly, feel a little heat. Right away I float down to the ground, and feel more in control. (I wish I had right then done a thorough stabilizatation / dream quality shouting, but I didn't, I guess I felt sufficiently stable.)

I start walking the hallways looking for a way out. All the people have vanished. I'm walking through a building, observing, looking for a DC to talk to. It's sort of a cluttered industrial "backstage" place, lots of random stuff around.

I decide to try summoning. I say to myself "there's a DC around that next corner." I look around the corner -- empty hallway. Darn. I turn around, walk back, and then try "there's (my prepared-in-WL special dream location) through that next doorway. Nothing. Just an old woman in the distance.

Have the idea to stabilize (woot), I decide to try "making out with the ground" as heard in a podcast here on DV. I lie down on the ground on my stomach and lick the floor. I'm only wearing underwear, and I feel the grain/grittyness of the wood floor on my stomach and arms. I lick the floor with my tongue. No taste, though. In retrospect I think it's better to "make out with the wall" since lying down can be risking a waking.

I want to get outside, to where more people are. I'm still in the very high-ceilinged storage room, the same area I've been in for a minute, I see a sign/doorway about 15-20 feet above the ground. At one point it says "exit" I think and at another it shows a big picture of a person in a swimsuit. Must be the way to the pool, I decide to go there.

I start climbing up a dresser to get to the exit/door and have a Matrix moment (as in, "do you think that's air you're breathing!?"), thinking I'm going about this the wrong way. Some things are in my way, I try to "jedi force blast" (I wasn't actually thinking "jedi force blast" I just pushed my hand forwards and willed the stuff to zoom out of my way) them out of my way, I succeed in moving a few things out of my way. Then 3 people came in to the room from the swimming pool entrance above me and I woke instantly, no fade to gray.

Thought briefly about trying DEILD to get back in but decided I wanted to journal and remember.

Subjective time: 2, maybe 3 minutes

Thanked my SC and asked for more!

07:20 MILD reps and SSILD cycles
09:37 woke from vivid ND , just what I asked SC for!
09:57 trying more MILD and SSILD
Couldn't sleep, very excited, going over dreams in my head
10:43 trying more MILD and SSILD
12:44 woke from another awesome reasonably vivid ND, many details forgotten, but still fun

Woohoo, one month to first DILD, 1 week to second DILD (with 3 days of missing the key REMs), shooting now for multiple per week! And it didn't need to wait for the late morning REMs, it came around the 5th hour.

There is a very different feel between my 2 DILDs and the recent vivid NDs: in the vivid NDs I'm totally confident and feel entirely in control, in my LDs I'm excited but my attempt at control was more "hopeful wishing" than "confident expectation." That's the next thing.