IndigoRose

comment dream lucid

After a week with my new Fitbit, I evaluated my sleep patterns (which is how it should be used rather than obsessing about specific data… a note to myself) and completely changed my strategy for the night.
Simply, instead of focusing on the 6th-8th hour of sleep, I decided to focus on the 1st REM period and then on the 4th-6th hour - parts of my sleep that aren’t completely messed up yet.
So, the idea was an auto-shutoff alarm (vibrations only, 1 second… this wakes me up most of the time but doesn’t wake my husband) for the 1st REM period (fail, I wasn’t dreaming, light sleep only) and the second alarm for WBTB after 4 hours of sleep.

I had problems staying awake… only did a quick MILD.
Then a lot of really good dreaming. On and off, with a couple of very short awakenings.
Awakening again, from a NLD. Time for a LD. I use the “I am dreaming” mantra but only manage to say it twice...

I am standing on a cliff, on the edge of some deep cwm (amphitheater-like glacial valley). It could be Snowdonia, but it looks a bit wilder, maybe the Scottish Highlands. Some of the slopes are grass and gravel, some steep rocks. I remember my plan to fly. This is a great place to fly. And it's a dream, right, so I can fly, right? I look around again and the sub-optimal vividness makes it obvious.
It's that weird part of the day that only exists in some lucid dreams - too dark to be day, too light to be night, but it's also nothing in between... more like both night and day combined.
I jump off the cliff and want to fly. But I'm wearing a nightgown that completely blocks my movement like a straitjacket, so I can't spread my arms and I am losing altitude. In-flight, I take off my nightgown and throw it away. I'm naked now, but who cares here. I've lost too much height and I land softly on the ground. I notice I still have some stupid slippers on and I take them off too and throw them away.
Ahead of me is a rockface and some large boulders, I see a cave at its base. I feel drawn to it. But I tell myself no, the plan is to fly, I can come back here later.
I jump up twice. During the third jump, I remember my mini-goal - to look at the night sky, so I do a backflip and look up. There are little swirls everywhere. I focus more, wanting to see some space objects, and I see little planets with rings. Cool. I'm slowly floating on my back, looking at it in awe.
I get down on the ground again, really tempted by the cave, but I'm not sure if it's still there. I remember the permanence schema - it's always been there, and surely, it's still there.
I turn around and the cave is where expected, I walk towards it. There's a person I “recognize” as my companion inside. He has my discarded clothes and some camping gear. I can't fit in there with him inside, so I leave it to him. I want to try flying again.
But as soon as I turn and walk away from him, the dream fades.

After awakening, I regret not taking time to stabilize or to try to increase vividity. I was a bit like a kid in a candy shop there.
Technique-wise, I am not sure, what it was. DEILD? I wasn't completely lucid from the first second, but I still had the self-awareness carried on from the micro-awakening.
I know that the awakening happened in the middle of the REM period, so perfect timing.
There is also a possibility of the awakening being a FA.

comment daydream/forming dream fully dreaming and lucid

WILD/V-WILD

Thinking about lucid dreaming when awake at night… and as a result, having problems with falling asleep… my brain goes into the WILDing mode. I experience vibrations two or three times. I can tell I am due for a REM period. I experience forming dreams when I can feel the dream body and sensory perception from the forming dreams but I am neither able to relax into it nor force my way in. I remember I usually need movement or action to do this but I am not able to get anything going.

I try to relax more to be able to fall asleep normally. The fact that I am close to my usual waking time makes it harder but I still have time to get some sleep.

There is a daydream or a forming dream. I am on a meadow and there are three men with swords. I decide to run. Running is what I need to get immersed in it, even though it feels weird to start a dream by being chased.
I'm running downhill, there are forests all around. But I'm not gaining any distance, quite the opposite. It's not vivid, it has more of a daydreamy feel. I run into the woods, but I realize that the woods are going to be bad for sword-fighting, and I don't have much choice but to face them.
Suddenly I'm back in the meadow and trying to catch my breath. I draw my sword. Three men stand in a quarter circle in front of me. I know I have to move to stand a chance against three, but I'm already out of breath. However, since I assume this is still only a daydream, I can cheat and imagine the way I want it. I'll cross swords with the first two, break through the guard of the third, who I manage to surprise, and thrust my sword into him. It still feels like I'm imagining it and not very realistic.
Then I back away from the other two. One comes after me and I somehow lose my balance and am on the ground. Suddenly a large, humanoid, white, plush rabbit is standing between me and the man. The man tries to push him away, but he can't. Then suddenly I see the man on the ground and the rabbit is sticking a long, thin rapier into his neck.
I touch the grass around me and feel that the dream is now solid. I can feel the grass, nothing else, and I'm happy I got in. I consider doing something else for a moment, but this scene deserves a continuation. I look around and see that I can't quite see clearly and that the dream feels unstable. I grab the grass again. I want to stabilize the dream more - a little further away lies the severed head of one of the men. I crawl on my hands and knees to it and grab it, it feels more like a toy than realistic.
I stand up and look around again. I don't see the third man anywhere (was the head his?). I walk over to the rabbit. He has a human face now, but still has the vibe of a plush rabbit.
I thank him for his help, shake his hand/paw, and ask, "Who are you?"
He answers something about some mistakes. It's hard to understand him.
I say, "Yes, I've made mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. But I ask, who are you?"
He smiles, looks very happy, and seems to realize what I am asking. But he just says more incoherent words.
I sigh, wondering why it always has to be this way and consider trying to ask again.
But I start to feel myself waking up.

BTW I have a new Fitbit to play with (chosen after reviewing several trackers vs. polysomnography studies). It is bad with awake vs. light (biased towards light) and with light vs. deep (also biased towards light) but it is pretty good with REM. It tracked this REM period as being 4:30 long.

comment non-lucid (shortened) lucid

I was sitting at a table with a guy I liked and I asked him something (in Czech). I realized that I was in an international group and that he wouldn't understand me, but that if it was a dream he would understand me. He asks me some follow-up question, which makes it unclear if he didn't understand or misheard. I answer it in English. He answers in Slovak, which satisfies me - it makes sense that he understood my Czech. I continue talking to him in a mix of Czech and English.

I used to have some language-induced LDs. These days, similar situations usually end as only semi-lucid (I know that people in my dreams understand everything). This was almost there…

In another dream, I'm running errands in Prague, walking down a street in the centre, I want to catch a tram. I think about the previous dream - I set an intention for the next night so I don't make the same mistake again. Anyway, it's a pity that I haven't managed to fall asleep again after that dream, otherwise, I would have had a good chance...
...How do I know this isn't a dream? It doesn't seem likely to me that it is. But thinking about it, I don't really have any reason to be here... RC confirms. Nice.

I'm in the mood for a different experience today than yesterday. I recall Sageous's thread and the memory exercise. I know I'm not in Prague, and I know I'm sleeping. I recall my birth year. Then the exact date of birth. Easy. Highly lucid, I think, ready for anything (not as much as I thought at the time, but it wasn't bad).
Goals? TotY, TotM, and teleportation training. I tell myself that TotM - asking a DC which part of my subconscious they represent - is easy and a good place to start.

I turn the corner and approach a woman. I excuse myself and ask her, "Which part of my subconscious do you represent?"
She looks confused and scared and doesn't know what to answer. She tries to talk her way out of it, so I let her go.

The city around here isn't much like Prague anymore. It has a vibe somewhere between the multicultural neighborhoods of Western European cities and third-world countries. There are more women around with headscarves. I don't want to ask them in case I scare them. I also notice there are a lot fewer people around than there were at the beginning. I want to go back to the center.

I tell myself that an experienced LDer would fly, but I still can't fly. Just taking off probably won't work, it's never worked for me. I decide to try high jumping.
1st jump - I jump higher than I would in reality and the man who passes me looks at me in surprise.
I bounce again, and I'm even higher, about 2-3m, which still isn't enough, but gravity already has a weird feel.
I bounce once more, this time bending my legs a lot to bounce, and gravity is already completely broken, like it was in the Defying Gravity dream. I do a half backflip and float in the middle of nothingness, seeing only solid grey above me. As I realize there's no reason for me to land backwards on my hands, I flip forward again and the street reappears in my field of vision. I use swimming motions to orient myself and dive into the air in front of me. I'm flying!
Occasionally, I'll add a swimming stroke, but my clothes restrict my full range of motion. I'm losing altitude a little, but very slowly. I started at roughly streetlamp level and flew about 200m before I landed on the ground again. Cool!

I want to give the TotM a second try. There's a small market in a side alley. I approach a group of people, same question as before. They look confused and I notice they're really young, young teenagers. So I explain it to them in more detail.
"There's a theory," I say, "that all the people in the dreamworld, except for me..." a girl interrupts me: "Why except you?", but someone shushes her.
"All the people in the dreamworld, except me," I repeat, and continue, "represent a tiny part of my subconscious. And I have an assignment that my mother gave me" (this seems like an ok lie) "to ask some people what part of my subconscious they represent. So what part do you represent?"
The children seem attentive and understanding. One boy starts to say something but stops after two words and it doesn't make sense. Someone says they don't know. Someone else says something evasive. So I thank them and say ok. It doesn't get any better than that. Done.

Teleportation. There are lots of doors and lots of walls around, lots of opportunities for different techniques. There's even a box that has doors on 4 sides! But I want to go somewhere farther.
My lucidity has gone downhill from here. I want to fly more, but I'm carrying strange silver plates. I want to tie them to my waist with a towel so I can fly, and a woman is helping me, but it's not really holding. Then I think about leaving them in this locked chest I have with me, but I find it's full of silver coins with wolf images on them.
A merchant shows up and offers to trade me silver for gold so I can have a smaller volume of stuff. He's got these dodgy coins, pale greenish-yellow, don't look like high purity. He wants to know if my Witcher coins are genuine, and he wants me to prove myself to him with a Witcher pen. I remember that I lost the pen in the previous dream. The deal is off.
I wake up.

comment non-lucid (shortened) lucid

I walked down the street, looked around and thought - "could this be a dream?" Everything seems normal. In the 1st split-second, I think clearly not, just like with reality questioning in reality, but then I think "it could very well be" and as I raise my hand to RC I already know the outcome.
DC, who is walking towards me, looks at me as if he recognizes what I am doing and smiles. Meanwhile, I inwardly celebrate - "Yes!", but tone down my enthusiasm. I feel like enjoying the dream as it is, as long as possible, having fun, nothing complicated.
Something is happening in front of me, something fantasy. Some sort of battle preparation or perhaps a LARP? I arrive in town and there are more people around. I come to a bush that has brittle dry branches and break off a large branch with the goal of turning it into a sword. But as I break it off, someone attacks me with a staff, and I block the attack. Turns out he just wanted to practice, and we try different attacks and parries.
I'll keep my staff as a magician's staff. I'll remind myself it's a dream so I don't lose my lucidity. I go to a nearby building and there's someone in charge of battle preparations and wants my help with a little something. I'll help. Then he goes out that he needs to pick capable people and heroes. I say I'm happy to help with that (I mostly want him to pick me), but he doesn't really want my help and doesn't take me seriously.
Everything out there now is a mix of fantasy and modern and there's quite a crowd. To my right, I hear some talk about lucidity and I turn around and there are two girls giggling. I ask if they're lucid dreaming too. They say they do, and they look happy. I congratulate them.
I say to myself, that was a good reminder. And I think it's probably not true, since it's my dream and I don't believe in shared dreaming. But I suppress such thoughts - I don't want higher lucidity and I don't want to stir up a fuss or disturb the story with the truth. This dream is fully about the suspension of disbelief.
I'm looking at some dresses on a rack outside a shop. Then I go inside where they have decorative cushions. I wonder when the dream will end, but I know I have plenty of time and there's no reason for it to end. I walk down the street away from the crowds and the shops.
Then I want to go back again and notice I don't have my staff. I try "Accio staff!" and try to imagine it in my hand, including the feel of the wood. Nothing. I'm disappointed. Maybe it's because I can't see it. But if I could see it, I could use telekinesis. I decided that when I see it, I'll use TK. I want to go back to the commander and convince him to test me to show him I'm a mage.
As I'm going back, I'm suddenly in a wheelchair and moving awfully slowly. It takes ages to get back...
I start thinking about how I'm going to write the beginning of my lucidity in my DJ, and I think of the best wording in English, and how I'm going to post it on DV. And as the balance between me and the dream collapses, I wake up.