Hyu's Adventures

A friend of mine has gotten into lucid dreaming about 2 months ago.
He's been lucid dreaming naturally before that, but only learned about induction recently.
Both his and my friends are very uncomfortable talking about dreams, so he and I talk about our dreams rather often.
He has texted me on msn before this dream, expressing that he wants to experience more "spiritual things".
Things like visiting unknown worlds and talking to "intelligent" DC's.

I'm home, programming on a project for school. Things are not going well, I'm getting all kinds of errors that don't make any sense.
I'm tired of this, I want to do something else. How awesome would it be if this was actually a dream and I could become lucid right now?
Then I inevitably realize that I have no idea how I got here, and that the code indeed makes no sense whatsoever.
I'll be damned, I am actually dreaming! sweet!

I remember the conversation I had with my friend before going to bed and decide that it would be awesome to try and visit his dreams, they are quite different from mine.
I summon my phoenix wings, search for his aura, and try to teleport to him.
The transition is not as smooth as usually, I nearly loose consciousness, but then the new scene finally appears.
The heat is strong, and I am blinded by the strong sunlight.

I investigate my surroundings. It appears that I'm at an outdoors marketplace. It is very crowded.
It reminds me of the Bazaar in Cairo, except it's completely outdoors.
They sell all kinds of items, pretty much anything you can think of, from food over household appliances to souvenirs.
I hear people speaking Arabic and English, I must be in an Arab country.

Seeing how busy everyone is is very pleasant, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by it.
It is very difficult to navigate the marketplace, it is way too crowded.
I realize that I'm getting distracted and search for my friends aura and approach it.
At first I doubt I'll be able to find him in this crowd, but his aura stands out, making it easy to track him.

The crowd clears up a bit, and I finally see him next to some shop selling handcrafted and painted household items, such as many beautiful plates.
He looks slightly different compared to waking life, but the differences are subtle.
As I approach him I notice that he seems focused on a woman browsing some clothes a few meters away from him.
I get a feeling of what he's doing. He's attracted to the woman, and he's trying to put the thought of being interested in him in her head.
He's obviously lucid.
I've done this before... I can tell quite clearly what he's doing.

Should I intervene? I don't want to interrupt his lucid.
Err, what am I doing, he said he wanted to experience new things.
I sit on a desk belonging to the shop, right next to my friend, the woman is already approaching him.

"No wonder you aren't experiencing anything overwhelming my friend, you're being distracted by women all the time."

He turns around and looks at me very surprised. He looses focus on the woman and she goes back to browsing clothes.

"I don't blame you, some women are just irresistible."
"No kidding..."
"You're Hyu right?"
"Yep, you even used my nickname, how come?"
"I don't know, you told me you're called Hyu in your dreams."
"True..."
"Fuck... this is really you isn't it?"
"Yes, I can't prove it though"
"Well, I suppose that doesn't really matter. Tell me about dreams! How to go past the limit of my imagination, how to meet dc's that seem sentient! Tell me!"

I think for a few seconds, about many things, about what to say to him, and then I suddenly know exactly what to do.
I grab a spoon from the shop we're at and hold it in front of me.

"You've seen the matrix, right?"

I start bending the spoon around with my mind.

"Yes! The spoon doesn't exist!"
"Why?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Why does the spoon not exist?"
"Because it's not real. It's a projection of my mind, and because everything in my dreams is, I can control everything!"
"Right... so... how do you define reality?"
"Err... well, some time ago I would have said that whatever I can grasp with all of my senses is real, but nowadays..."
"... uuuuh man, this is hard... I'll go with everything that directly affects my waking life."

I'm positively surprised that he's thinking past his senses, but I'm not quite satisfied with his conclusion.

"So, everything you experience in waking life is real, because it directly affects you?"
"Do you agree that every action you take in waking life will change your future, the outcome of your life, regardless of how benign it seems?"

He thinks a bit.

"Yes, any action has an infinite amount of consequences, it's the butterfly effect."
"Very good! Now, tell me friend, when you look at this spoon, when you touch it, when you bend it, does this not affect your waking life?"
"No?"
"Does your brain not save the sensation and experience of holding this spoon? Does it not form neural pathways to remember this information?"
"Aren't many of your decisions in waking life based upon the past experiences you can access in your memories?"
"Can you really in good conscience tell me that this spoon is not real?"
"Sure, the experience of holding this spoon is very benign, but what about exploring your inner self, the experience of letting your creative mind run wild, do these things not affect your waking life?"
"Fuck..."

I'm pretty sure he gets it, and I feel surprisingly wise telling him all of this.

"Telling yourself that the spoon is not real is a fantastic way to improve your dream control."
"But if you really want to explore the unknown and go beyond your imagination..."
"... If you want your dreams to affect you, you have to understand that they can do so."
"And you've stated yourself that every experience will ultimately affect you."

"I see... that does make sense, and I feel like this will help me, but how do I create a sentient DC?"
"Don't you see the contradiction? Creating something sentient? I think that is your problem."
"You think that everything right now is an illusion created by your own mind."
"Tell me, what are you basing this assumption on?"
"I... well... Yeah, I have no fucking clue."

"Now, I'm not telling you this spoon is not a creation of your mind, but if you want this world to affect you, to overwhelm you, you have to understand that it actually can!"
"And if you want to meet a sentient DC, you have to understand that they may actually exist."
"Yes, I understand."

He takes the spoon from my hand and looks at it closely.

"The spoon is real!"

We had a discussion about this today, and I told him the same things in waking life, which ended in a discussion about
how our brains are awareness factories, and what it does whilst awake and asleep.
He feels that thinking everything is an illusion and nothing affects him (which he did) was indeed holding him back.