false awakening

15.04.2011

Relearning (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

It has been a long time since I WILDed, and I felt like a nap today so why not.

As I relaxed I listened to some easy-going music, and turned it off when I realised I couldn't remember the last three songs that played. I must have zoned it out. As I lay there, I tried to stimulate some simple visualisations, but none were coming easily. After a while, I seemed to read a newspaper. The print was very small, and the articles made absolutely no sense. I was reading very intently, and felt quite alert. Soon after, my hand touched something cold. I assumed it was the wall. But, not having moved myself, I knew it was sleep paralysis.

I ran my hand along the wall and opened my eyes a crack. I could see the same thing I had before I went to sleep earlier, and wasn't sure whether it was part of a dream or I was really opening my eyes. So I closed them again and slowly stood up in bed, feeling the cold wall the whole time. When I jumped sideways out of bed I opened my eyes again, knowing there could be no question this time. I saw my room in halls, crossed with the room of the house I lived in five years ago.

I stumbled to the top of the stairs. Everything around me had a psychadellic, vibrating quality to it. It slowly stabilised. I was very conscious of being in a dream, and even moving around in virtual reality felt strange. In hindsight, what I should have done next was rub my hands together and attempt part of the task of the year. Instead, I caved to my base instinct and went off on a shagging spree.

A false awakening followed, and I kept my eyes closed. It felt like someone got into bed beside me, so I asked if they wouldn't mind helping me up. This they did. When I stood up and looked around, there was no-one to be seen.

I'm going to have to get back into WILDing, I'm out of practice.

27.02.2011

Shark Hunt (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was waking up from an unstable dream. I was almost completely awake, but didn't move. I ignored all input from my body (which was too warm) and concentrated on whatever I could visualise. I found a beach came easily. It was a beach I used to spend a lot of time at as a kid. It occurred to me that this could be a good opportunity to do the Jaws part of the task of the year- kill the shark. But first I had to struggle back into a dream. I imagined that I was barefoot. That way I could feel the sand on my feet, and could dig in with each step- giving great sensory input with which to fool my brain into a dream.

I got to the huge concrete pier at the end of the shore and climbed onto it. I paid close attention to how hard the concrete felt, and jumped around on it for a few seconds to anchor myself. The dream wasn't quite solidified yet, so I was able to force a boat to appear in the water beside the pier. More anchoring techniques. The boat was roughly the same size as the Orca, but was in slightly better condition. As I got close to it, I saw that it was captained by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. His first mate was one of my lecturers, Prof. O'Hare. I put the presence of SLJ down to having seen a particular .GIF which I'll link here if possible, but I couldn't figure out why O'Hare was here.



I stepped on board and the boat rocked dangerously. I sat down in a small tin bathtub which I judged to be near the centre of the deck and waited. Samuel L. Jackson unhitched the boat from the pier and started the engine. O'Hare offered me a dry cracker from a packet he had been munching from, which I accepted. We sailed out to sea, and the sky quickly got dark. It started to rain, then became cold. Next thing I knew, SLJ was shouting something (containing "motherfucker") and backing away from the side of the boat. O'Hare shouted for me to get "on the gun", and indicated a large harpoon-turret on top of the cabin, which I was sure hadn't been there earlier. I climbed up on the roof and looked down the sight of the turret just as an enormous shark reared its ugly head above the water. It was gargantuan. The mouth alone was about three metres across, and it wasted no time in chomping down on the front of the boat. I lined up a shot and pulled the trigger. There was a whoosh noise, the sound of something being hit and a shout of "Aaaaaarrghh!" I looked up from the turret and saw that the harpoon had gone disastrously off course, and was now stuck halfway through O'Hare's upper arm!

The boat turned violently, and I was thrown off the roof of the cabin into the water. As I fell, I saw Samuel L. Jackson at the wheel, dripping with sweat, trying to get the boat to speed up. It sped off, and the shark began to follow. I grabbed its fin as it passed. Strangely, the shark was oblivious to me, an easy meal, clinging on quite close to the side of its mouth.

Some frantic music started to play as the shark persued the boat at high speed. I looked around under the water and was amazed. We were in an area I knew. It was a coastal town, but it was now completely submerged. We were swimming around shops and houses I knew well. I tried to mess with the shark, and tugged its fin. This sent it off-course dramatically, and several times I was able to steer it directly into buildings and archways. This chase (with me as shark-saboteur) went on for a while, then the music stopped. I worried, thinking this might signal the end of the dream, and I hadn't yet killed the shark! I let go of its fin and rose quickly to the surface. I held out my arms and telekinetically brought the shark with me- pulling on the dorsal fin. When we rose above the water into the air, I threw my arms wide apart and the shark exploded into a thick red mist. I looked around and heard a buzzer. It was my alarm, waking me up in time for a driving lesson.

Or so I thought. I woke up, but my body barely worked. It was like all energy had been drained from my muscles. The feeling was familiar from older dreams, so I checked my hand. But my vision was so blurry in general that I could barely see it!

03.02.2011

Try Jaws (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was exhausted and had the oportunity for a WILD, so I went for it. I lay on my back, head to one side, with my hands on my front. Before I drifted off I reminded myself of the task of the year. The part I wanted to try was to kill the shark from Jaws.

There were a few strange noises as I lay there. Bangs and whispers that were far too close to have been real. Sleep paralysis came on from my legs. It spread out in a wave over my whole body and receeded a few times before it stuck. My head felt like it leant back an inch or so, my right leg lifted of its own accord. I feared I might wake up because my left arm slid off my body. However I suspected it was just a very real hallucination. It was. The hand was still on my stomach when I woke up again later.

I "woke up" at the top of a street near my house. It was night, but the roads were busy. Looking downhill, I could see Belfast Lough. The first thing to do, I reasoned, would be to find a boat with which to go shark hunting. I jumped into the air and flew down the street hoping to find one. I did. It was attached to the towbar of a big 4x4. Unsure how to get the boat to the water (about a mile away), I got on board to look around. I tried to levitate it, or push it in the right direction, but nothing was working. Looking back now, I think I know what went wrong. I was too lucid, and being too ambitious. I knew too well that nothing around me was real, which caused it to take on a blurred quality. From there, my stability and control went down the shitter. I should've taken it more slowly and done some stabilising techniques.

The dream went on for much longer, punctuated by several false awakenings. I tried to get to water or find a boat many times, but always ended up having the same problem.

When I was exasperated for the last time, I very deliberately looked right and left a few times to try and replicate LaBerge's signalling from within the dream experiment. Although, I had to way to measure to see if it worked.

18.01.2011

Re-Entry (WBTB)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

My friend rang me this morning to remind me to get up and study for today's exam. I said ok and promptly lay back down.

A few minutes later I heard someone rustling about beside my bed. It was definitely a person- I could hear footsteps. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if someone had indeed invaded my room- in which case, what the hell was I doing??

Then this person got into bed beside me. It was a woman. I moved one of my hands over and found one of hers. Then she flung me out of bed.

I stood up. My bed was empty, and the covers strewn everywhere. I knew it had to be a dream due to the fact that my room was red. It's mainly blue in real life. I can't remember what happened next at all.

08.01.2011

Going to see the Pyramids (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Somewhere between dreams this morning, I remembered the task of the year I'd been neglecting. Unfortunately I didn't remember that it was in fact next year, and there were new tasks I hadn't seen yet. Oh well, it was fun anyway!

After my previous dream about Cheryl Cole, I woke up into some kind of recording studio. I was lying on a comfy chair, in a circle with about ten other people. One of them was my friend Kay from work. We were all hooked up to one of those dream-sharing devices from Inception. Kay said something, but I ignored him, thinking about my last dream and how awesome it was. I tried to do a DEILD back into it, and a little loading icon appeared at the bottom of my vision. I paused, thinking of something more worthwhile I could be doing, like the task of the year on Dreamviews. I strained to remember what they were, and recalled that Egypt was definitely involved. Then it came to me. There were two related to Egypt- finding out how the pyramids were built, and watching the Exodus. I snapped awake back into the studio and stood up. After telling Kay of my plan, I went outside to the street. It was a huge crossroads, filled with people and the occasional car. I kneeled down in a patch of gravel and sketched out a (very) rough drawing of two pyramids and the Nile using my fingers. I looked at it very intently, visualising it in front of me. I lost touch with the crossroads, but felt Kay coming up behind me.
"Good luck," he said calmly.

By now I had a cartoon-ish picture of Egypt in my mind, and was trying to insert myself. I realised it would be hard to insert myself at the P.O.V. I had drawn, because I usually needed some sort of tactile sensation to pull myself into a scenario. The P.O.V. was in the sky. My vision zoomed down to the ground, on a sand dune. There was a tall wire fence along the top of it, separating me from Egypt. I wondered what it could be doing there, but used it anyway. I moved towards the fence and grasped it tightly. I got my whole body involved in climbing up and over the fence, and my surroundings got a lot clearer. When I was on the ground on the other side, I jumped up and down for a few seconds to make sure there was no chance I was going to lose touch with the dream from poor integration.



I found myself in a quarry. It was a huge hole in the ground, but nothing was happening. It was eerily quiet. I took off and flew downhill in the direction I assumed the pyramids were. I ended up following a wooden train track, which I thought must be for the transport of big blocks of stone for building work. After clearing one last tall sand dune, I saw an Egyptian city. There was one small pyramid, with a much larger one in the early stages of construction. I landed on a ridge overlooking the scene. Around me were a number of large stone blocks, each about the size of a car. It looked like they had been abandoned here. I went over for a closer look and laid my hands on one. It immediately turned a bright bronze-like colour, and looked a lot like metal. Many of the nearby blocks did the same. I flew off the edge of the ridge, and down into the city. I landed at the edge of the unfinished pyramid building site. Nothing seemed to be going on, again. I was curious for an explanation. There were people staring down at me from balconies and rooftops. I shouted,
"Pharaoh!" A man on the roof of a large building raised his arm. I jumped and flew over to him. He was very old, and wearing a ceremonial headress/crown thing. He didn't seem to want to communicate with me at all anymore. Another man on a different rooftop gestured for me to come over. I ran and hopped to his building. I had a long conversation with this man, who turned out to be the Pharaoh's son. He explained that production had halted on the pyramids, and that his father wouldn't allow him to go to university until it had resumed. I remember he said,
"What does he know anyway, he's basically mummified already!" I laughed. But down to business.
"How are the pyramids made?" I asked.
"Come and see," said the prince, and showed me to the edge of the rooftop. There were lights coming down from the sky through the clouds. Spotlights, which seemed to be scanning the blocks in the area. On finally stopped to scan a block I had turned into bronze earlier. The block then transformed into a bronze golem, which immediately got to work stacking blocks on the base of the unfinished pyramid. A voice boomed down from the sky,
"He has repaired our equipment. Construction can recommence." The people on rooftops and balconies all around me cheered. The prince turned to me and asked if I could fix a few more blocks before I left. I agreed, and jumped down to the building site. I placed my hands on a huge pile of blocks. They all turned bronze and transformed into golems. After a few seconds, the whole area was buzzing. The golems were lifting, pushing and hammering the blocks of the new pyramid into place.

I stood back, satisfied. I thought then of waking up into the previous dream level and going back into the gameshow for another round with Cheryl Cole, but I wanted to wake up and remember this dream accurately. I turned and waved. The Pharaoh and prince waved back. I closed my eyes and roughly three seconds later, I woke up.

08.01.2011

Banging Cheryl Cole (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a very hazy false awakening where I really couldn't tell whether I was awake or not. I had difficulty moving and couldn't see my hand when I checked it, so assumed I must still be asleep. Rather than force myself out of this apparent inertia, I went for a WILD, inside the dream- with the intention of finding myself somewhere else.

I woke up sitting on a chair in what appeared to be a large, indoor arena for a gameshow. The lighting was low, but there were spotlights zooming about everywhere. The arena itself was covered in ramps and chairs. On each chair was a naked woman reclining. I was highly confused, but quite excited. The voice of Davina McCall (who hosts most UK gameshows) boomed out, explaining that under one of the girls was a playing card, which I had to find without being distracted by them. It was their job to try and seduce me. A klaxon sounded and I ran into the arena. The first girl I came across was an ex, who wasn't too hard to resist, depite the fact that she was naked and covered in massage oil. The card wasn't anywhere around her. I made my way down a ramp and was confronted by a naked Cheryl Cole.



"Fuck the card," I said, and we had sex on the ramp. It went on for a while, so long I thought I might be wasting lucid time, but it was worth it. When a buzzer sounded indicating that I had ten seconds left, I reached underneath her and pulled out a playing card. I threw it up in the air behind me and got back to business.

04.12.2010

Floppy Neck (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was about to reply to some of my adoptees' PMs on Dreamviews, but I thought I'd get inspired to reply with something more interesting if I had a WILD first. I was quite sleepy, and feeling the effects of a severe hangover. I predicted a WILD would definitely be on the cards. Before getting back into bed I turned on a lamp in the corner of the room to provide a little light. It's annoying to have a false awakening into a pitch black room- and I hoped having a light on in the real world would affect my dreams.

For a long time I lay on my back, to try and relax. Nothing much happened. After shifting position a few times, I thought I could hear someone talking. It sounded like a radio show. I listened carefully and made it louder. It turned into a roaring vibration coming from the sides of my forehead, then stopped.

The next thing I knew, I was playing Halo. I assumed this was brought on by looking at the new map pack before going back to bed. Although for some reason I was playing Halo 1. The graphics weren't great. I was inside some kind of blue-tinted warehouse, and some maniac was flying around on a ghost. I stuck it with a plasma grenade and jumped out of the way before he splattered me. I considered taking the ghost (which wasn't completely destroyed) for a spin, but I felt myself starting to wake up.

I was back in bed, unsure of whether or not I was awake. The lamp was on. As a kind of anchor, I tried to continue playing Halo with a controller I found in my hands. I kept my eyes closed, so I could still see the game I was playing, and used the "controller" to keep moving around.

I didn't think I could sustain the dream this way, so I gave up and opened my eyes. I thought I had woken up and was disappointed. Just to be sure, I looked at my hand as a reality-check. It was missing. I dropped my arm in disbelief. Getting out of bed was a challenge. My neck muscles didn't seem to work, and my head just flopped back on my shoulders. I momentarily fixed it by pulling my head forward by the jaw, but then I was stuck looking at the floor.

Suddenly I was back in bed. There was someone in the room with me. It turned out to be the dude who lives across the hall. I held out my arm and he helped me up.
"What are you doing here anyway?" he asked.
"Dreaming," I replied. "This isn't real." I knew this dream wasn't very stable, so I abandoned any ambitious goals I may have had. Instead, I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. For some reason, I could only see my reflection in the mirror when I looked at it from an angle. There was no reflection at all when I looked straight-on. Unlike real life, I was clean-shaven, and my hair was quite neat.

After another false awakening, I found myself in a supermarket, looking at some kind of media device. It was quite like an ipod, but was more square than my ipod touch. I scrolled through various music tracks, and found myself drawn to one piece: "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Downloaded when I woke up, a good choice. It wouldn't play in the dream though.

20.11.2010

Wanted... Dead or Alive (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a few DILDs thoughout the night. As is always the case with dreams in the middle of the night, the lucidity wasn't quite top-notch. I was easily distracted several times, and made slightly strange decisions.

Early on in the night, I was having a dream where I was on a beach. It was a dark evening, and the sand was gravelly. There were quite a lot of people around, fishing from the shore. I stood beside a strange man who had a black walkie-talkie as bait on the end of his line. I thought this was strange, even more so when I saw his bucket full of walkie talkies. I didn't bother asking him what he was doing, and sat down in the sand. The waves were quite unpredictable. It was windy, so there were big ones and small ones, with a lot of spray. Then a larger wave washed right over me, soaking my lower body. I was wearing my jeans, and my phone was in my pocket, as always. I had a moment where I panicked, then thought,
"Where have I seen this before? Only in dreams." I looked around at this scenario with puzzlement. The guy beside me had spilled his bucket and the walkie-talkies were floating away. But he was encouraging them, as if they were baby turtles trying to get out to sea. Ignoring this, I stood up and jumped into the air. I flew off over the top of the sand dunes, but saw that they went on as far as I could see. There were mountains on the horizon, so I decided to make for them. Flying was slow at first, and I tried various methods of speeding myself up. Tensing myself and scowling didn't make much difference, and I was slightly afraid of waking myself up with the exertion, so I tried something else. I remembered from a dream a few months back that I could fly faster if I imagined a force pushing me from behind. It worked, but slowly. It took a while to build up any real speed, but I kept getting faster, which was what I wanted.



The mountain range was vast. It looked like I could be in Tibet or something. There was a temple-like structure on each of the peaks, but one was larger than the rest. This was the one I went for. Flying over the tops of the mountains was difficult. I had to keep landing for a few seconds and get a running jump to fly to the next one. I felt like I had reached my maximum altitude. It had become a beautiful sunny day, and for some reason I felt like singing. The first song that came to me was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. I sang the entire song word for word, and noted that my singing voice was far better than in real life. After that came I'm the only gay Eskimo by Corky and the Juice Pigs. I don't know why, it was just the next song that came to me. Anway, I landed at last on the balcony of the huge temple. Its roof was painted red, and all the walls seemed to be made of wicker. I stepped inside a flimsy door and looked inside. It was much darker inside, and I could see why. It was part strip-club, part casino, and part games arcade. I went inside and lost track of what I was doing after a bit.

There was a short dream segment next which I can't remember too well. I was duelling Voldemort, semi-lucid. I disarmed him and used the body-bind curse on him with his own wand. Then I sped off on a huge bike. It was bad-ass, I wish I could remember more.

I had a false awakening in what I initially assumed to be my own bed. Turned out it was in the middle of a street. My friend Hugh was standing in the road with an electric guitar. He said,
"I am Bon Jovi." This was too weird, there was no point in reality-checking.
"Play Dead or Alive!" I shouted to him. I suddenly realised I couldn't remember off the top of my head how Dead or Alive began, but hoped that it was stored in my memory somewhere, so my subconscious could play it. It started perfectly, and I sang the vocals from my bed. As the song continued, I got up and walked aimlessly down the street. A fat woman approached me. She asked if I would lift her car onto the pavement, as she couldn't park it properly. It was a weird request, but I obliged. Just for a laugh, I stretched in preparation and cracked all the joints in my spine. The car was more of a small bus, but it felt very light. I dropped it down on the pavement. The fat woman handed me a bottle of some kind of alcopop as a reward. I shrugged and drank some of it. It was red, but blueberry flavour. Some kind of thrash metal started playing in the background, as I wandered into a shop. There was a booze section, so I made straight for the Smirnoff vodka. Out of dream-excess, I snapped the neck off the bottle and took a huge swig. It was just as nasty as real life. Nail polish-remover. I coughed a bit, and woke up.

09.11.2010

Trip To the Beach (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This was a kind of "dream-within-a-dream". I went to sleep in a dream and ended up WILDing into a lucid dream. Technically a DILD though.

I was wandering down the street of a seaside town. The buildings were old, made of stone, and whitewashed. I was pleased that the WILD had worked so easily (suspiciously easily), but reminded myself that I only had about half an hour before I'd have to get up for work. In actual fact it was a Saturday, I could've slept on... retard. I was drawn into a conversation with one of my roommates who I ran into outside a cafe. He told me that there was, I quote,
"A special kind of broadband connection in the shower block over there. It lets you send yourself across the internet." I confirmed with him, and he did indeed mean my actual physical body. Having nothing better to do, I reckoned I had been handed a great opportunity to try something interesting with my lucid dream, and followed him to the building at the end of the street. The shower block itself was delapidated, but still functional. It was right at the entrance to the beach, and it looked like it was there so people could wash the sand off themselves. I pulled back one of the curtains to see if I could find this miraculous wire. The shower was on full blast, and I could barely see through the steam. There was a thin brown wire hanging from the wall, quite innocent-looking. I stuck it in my neck, as I assumed this was the way to teleport oneself through the internet. Faulty dream-logic, I should've got myself a scanner of some kind!

I was getting nowhere so I turned to leave. In the doorway, carrying a red laptop, was my ex. She asked me to help her do something on her laptop (I think involving some sort of user-interface) and I obliged. I almost got caught up in the intricacies of the laptop and lost lucidity, but before that happened, I closed it.
"Want to walk down to the beach?" She asked.
"Sure, why not," I said, with no other pressing engagements, apart from the nagging feeling that my alarm was going to wake me up any minute. We exited the shower block and took a left straight onto the sand. There was a huge, wide open expanse of flat sand between us and the sea, so we started running. I found I could go very fast. After one burst of speed I jumped, and went soaring through the air. She did the same. We continued this, getting closer to the sea all the time. But then, disaster!

My alarm woke me up for work, and I got up (in my old house) and got into the shower. I was in the middle of washing my hair when I realised,
"Wait, what?"

And woke up.

10.10.2010

Recent WILDs (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Lately I've not had much of a sleeping pattern, which is handy as far as lucid dreaming goes. What follows are a few short accounts of WILD experiences I've had in the last few weeks.

I was dozing very lightly on my back when I started to notice the imagery I was seeing get stronger. I heard a beat as well. I automatically took notice and the beat developed into a song. It was "I Love it Loud" by KISS. What a tune. I listened and looked around. I was in the passenger seat of a car, driving along a road I know well. I punched the dashboard a few times in time with the music to try and integrate myself more fully. Then I sang along. I was really belting it out, so much so that I got out of breath. I took two big gulps of air, and wondered whether I was taking these breaths in real life. I knew eye movements in dreams are sychronised with real life, but I haven't heard anything on breaths. The car sped on around a corner. I looked at the driver, and didn't recognise him at all. He was a middle-aged dude with a receeding hairline and very small rectangular glasses. Just because I wanted something to do, I grabbed the wheel and swung it hard to the left. I was reminded of a previous dream where I did this and crashed, after which my recall vanished. Thankfully though, this time we swerved into a church car park. Somewhere around here I got out of the car and lost lucidity through various distractions.

Just earlier today, I was hungover as hell, and went back to bed after breakfast. I lay on my back, as I find it seems to be conducive to sleep paralysis. After a while, I felt my body fall asleep. I literally fell asleep fully. My body was exhausted. But my mind was still 100% awake. No dream formed up immediately, it was very strange. My breathing went on autopilot and I heard myself snoring very slightly. If anyone had been able to observe me, it would have appeared that I was sound asleep, and I suppose I was. I found it remarkable that I could observe the process of falling asleep and remain fully conscious throughout. A few minutes later, hypnagogia finally started. First came the sound of someone else breathing, then I felt my right arm move. I knew this to be part of the dream, since my real body had been paralysed for a while now. I took control of it, and felt my way to the bedside table. After that, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor. Only then did I open my eyes to see the blue carpet. I took a short walk around my floor, pausing to have a look in the kitchen. No-one was around, it was a bit lonely.

In a recent (and seperate) dream, I became lucid out of the blue. It was during a dream where I was a passive observer of the action. Set in medieval times, I was watching a knight defend a castle from attack by a dragon. I was incredibly aware of being in a dream, and wanted to get involved in the action. But I had no physical body. And no matter what I tried, I couldn't force one into existence. This was the very first lucid dream where was simply apprehending the scene and not participating. I could switch viewpoints, rewind time and have an event happen differently, but I could not participate. It was rather frustrating.

13.09.2010

Nonsensical WILD (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was really just going for an early-afternoon nap and hoping for a lucid dream, but it turned into a WILD. I felt my arm move, seemingly of its own accord. I took control of it, and used it to prop myself up on the bed. I opened my eyes as I did so. I could see my room. But I could also see my real room, I had opened my real eyes! The dream-room "fizzled" away and was replaced by my real room. I closed my eyes and tried again. This time, I was able to move freely much more quickly. I waited until I had sat up completely before opening my eyes. I could see the dream room fine. I cautiously got out of bed, keeping in mind how important it was not to move my real body. As soon as I had gotten into a standing position (ie, something totally different to the way I was sleeping), I jumped around a bit to anchor myself.

What followed was a disjointed series of false awakenings (all in different beds in my house) and short lucid dreams. In one, I had a jacuzzi bath with a beautiful girl. The jacuzzi kept emptying itself though. I employed various methods of control to keep the water in place, including THE PLUG, then "believing it would stay full", and leaving the taps on. The jets were also far too powerful. All-in-all, not a successful romantic encounter. Thanks dream-bath.



In another, I was convinced I had fallen asleep with headphones in. The sound of music premeated the dream, and I felt sure that it was coming from an external source. When I awoke, I realised I hadn't gone to sleep with headphones in, so I either imagined the music, or it came from elsewhere in my house. I recognised part of "Stacey's Mom" by Fountains of Wayne.

Later, I was in the passenger seat of my dad's car. But it was being driven by my mum, who has never driven the car in real life. I asked her a question I can no longer recall. But her reply was startling. I can't remember it either, but my reply was,
"Whoa, my mind is really getting good at simulating you! That's exactly the kind of thing you would say!" In making that statement, I wondered if my subconscious was taking note of my approval, or if "it" was even able to take messages in such a way. I'm beginning to think of my subconscious less as an entity, and more of a mass of random/chaotic thoughts, which occasionally come together to form convincing situations in my dreams. As we were travelling along the motorway, I pondered how I could actually make use of this lucid time. I remembered the task of the month then. It was a surprise that I recalled it, despite reading it once about half a month ago and deciding it was probably too hard. "Shrink yourself to the atomic level". An idea occured to me. Feeling the gearstick, I found that the top flipped open to reveal a red and a blue button. I assumed, naturally, that the red button was to transform the car into a rocket car, a la "Men in Black". The Blue, I reasoned, would be to shrink the car and its occupants. I pressed it once. The car shot forward and got a little bit smaller. But I stayed the same size. Now I had to bend over to avoid hitting my head off the roof. I pressed it a few more times, but all it did now was give the car a momentary speed boost.

Before I woke up, I heard my brother calling me. The first time, I completely ignored him. The second time, I had to do a small DEILD to keep dreaming. After the third, I realised he was now right outside my room and wasn't going to give up. I forced myself awake. What an asshole.

27.07.2010

Handless (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID



I had just "woken up" from a lucid dream, in my own bed. I could hear someone coming up the stairs outside my room. I think I dreamt of this because I was expecting visitors this morning. I was unbelievably drowsy. Getting out of bed was like swimming in treacle. There was a knock at my door. I stumbled over, and realised I was naked. This was enough to remind me to reality-check. I looked down at my hand. There was no hand. I saw no forearm or anything. But I could feel that I did indeed have one. I opened my bedroom door with said hand and saw a few of my friends from different places. People who have never met in real life. Some from work, others from my old school, some from elsewhere and my girlfriend- who was the actual visitor I was expecting. I was reminded of the first scene of The Matrix.

29.05.2010

Superlucid Musical (WBTB)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was woken up and went back to sleep three or four times this morning, so lots of mini WBTB's. My memory of them has really gone down the shitter though, due to other dreams and the time between then and now.



I remember already being lucid in a kind of mall. It was extremely bright. The walls and roof were made of glass with a steel frame. The roof was pretty damn high above me, and there were lots of little white columns and platforms on top of most of the shops. My friend Hugh was beside me. I turned to him and said,
"Dreaming aye?"
"Yep," he replied. I told him I wanted to do the task of the month, even though there was only like a day left. (Jump off a skyscraper) I reckoned that if I could fly up to the top of the highest columns, I could maybe get out onto the roof and see if there were any skyscrapers nearby. Hugh and I flew gently up in the air towards one of the taller columns. I didn't quite make it to the top, but I grabbed onto some rungs on the side. I surprised myself with the clarity of my thoughts here. I knew I had been completely lucid for a decent while, and had no difficulty remembering details from waking life. Then Jess shifted beside me, and the dream crumbled. I percieved that I was back in bed, but desperately clung to a feeling of disassociation to try to DEILD. I "moved" around and grabbed the rungs of the ladder as much as I could, focusing not on my real body, but the dream body. Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but it took quite a lot of concentration! Pulled it off, I was back in. I drummed on the column with my fists in jubilation. The realism astounded me again- this was kind of like going back to my first few lucid dreams, wonderment-wise. Just a few seconds ago I had been lying in bed, but now here I was, seemingly physically somewhere completely different, banging my fists on a surreal column-platform thing, which appeared for all intents and purposes, completely real.

Those moments of super-lucidity really are great. When you are 100% you, not some quasi-self, slightly warped by the dream world. I was me in the Matrix. Unbeatable realism.

I think I gave up on climing to the roof, it got a little difficult and I was having trouble flying. (Lack of control sometimes seems to go hand in hand with hyper-realism for me) I ended up back on the ground, looking down the other end of the mall. A set of very tall doors looked to open up into a type of ballroom. I decided to investigate, and started running towards the doors. As I did, music started playing. It was a brass band or something. The floor was shiny through the doors, so I dropped to my knees and slid through, arms open wide. In mid-slide, someone tossed me a microphone, and I caught it, jumping to my feet. I was on stage in an auditorium. There were two galleries full of people near the roof at the other end of the room, and on the floor between them was a massive fountain. Behind me was the band. I instinctively started singing. The band backed me up. I was literally just singing whatever came into my head, but for some reason I was hyper-creative and the song just seemed to flow. It became a continuous medley of songs from the 80's. I remember YMCA was definitely in there. As for the rest, I wish I could remember more of the song, it was brilliant. It was a proper musical performance. The audience loved it, and cheered wildly.



When I finished the song I bowed, and reminded myself that I was still asleep. I thought,
"No doubt Jess will wake up soon, she's an early riser." It was strange. I visualised the sight of her lying in bed- as in, just imagined it. But the act of doing so made it real. I wasn't just thinking about it, it became part of the dream and caused a false awakening. I got out of bed and started typing this up.

Makes me wonder. Can we have a visual imagination in a dream? Surely that ability is already maxed out with the creation of the dream itself. Is it possible to imagine something in there and not have it become real in some form? Puzzling.

Just got a few fragments from last night, not really worth a DJ entry.

Part 1: Was at a crazy-awesome party on a roof terrace. Got really wasted. I think I woke up a bit and went for a DEILD- or maybe just tried to stabilise, because I remember spinning on the spot really fast. I stuck my arms out and went even faster. Then I started floating around the party.

Part 2: Woke up the next morning at the party (false awakening ofc). Semi-lucid. Found myself wrapped up in blankets beside a naked Holly Valance. Freakin' jackpot! Good times were had.

Part 3: I was doing some kind of important assignment and a dude behind me was annoying me. I very uncharacteristically turned round and yelled at him, and he stabbed me in the eye with a pencil! I couldn't believe it, the pencil was actually embedded several inches in my eye! There was no pain. I slowly pulled it out which made a squelching noise. Niiice.

18.05.2010

Nooo Not the Sea! (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a really disturbed night's sleep last night. Throughout the night I woke up dozens of times- many of which were false awakenings, and I always felt stressed about something. I don't know what I should be feeling stressed about, but something definitely wasn't right!

One DILD I remember quite clearly happened at the beach near my house. In real life the beach is a dump (not literally, just a mess), but on this occasion it was completely clean with just the odd piece of driftwood lying about. I was walking towards the bottom with my brother and a few other people, and we got to the part where it becomes a grassy bank. The huge rocks that are usually at the bottom of the bank were gone, so the water was quite deep right at the base. Also, the bank itself went right into the water, with grass all the way in. I was walking with the sea to my left, on the left side of the group, so I ended up having to walk along the steepest part of the bank. I felt myself slipping on the wet grass, so I threw myself down flat and tried to grab hold of something. It didn't work, and I kept sliding down towards the sea.
"Shit, somebody help me out here," I said. My brother stuck out his arm. By this stage my legs were already underwater and I remembered I had my phone in my pocket and it was about to get soaked..
"Hang on a second," I pondered. "That's the ultimate dreamsign." I checked my hand, and couldn't believe it. "Don't worry!" I said to my brother, and let go of the bank. I floated out from the land on my back, looking up at the sky. A part of me still found it painful to think of my phone getting wet, but I just smiled about it.

It was right here that I either woke up or had a false awakening. Woke up feeling like there was something important happening, but couldn't make any sense of it. :S