lucid

09.11.2009

Diving for Treasure (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

The dream started with two guys sitting in a castle trying to roll a joint. They were trying to smoke a dead mouse. The dead mouse was stolen from the ingredients cupboard of an evil wizard who lived in the castle. He often kept people as slaves, and these two were his current ones. The men were then summoned (by a booming voice) to the wizard's room. The castle was dilapidated in general, but the wizard's room was the worst. It had no celing, and most of the walls were broken down around it. There was snow on the floor and a blue aura of coldness. The wizard was enraged when he saw the mouse-joint, and blasted the slave holding it out of the room. The other ran after him. The booming voice then said that all slaves were to head down to the lake to search for treasure for the wizard.

This is the first part where I became involved in the dream. It was a difficult walk to the lake. Me and about 7 other people had to cross over the top of a high, rocky ridge. When we got to the top we could see the lake. I said something to the effect of, "Jesus fuck, we won't find anything in a lake that size!"





Everyone seemed to automatically know that whatever we were looking for would be on the very bottom. The lake was really deep, and we didn't have any diving gear. I decided to run and dive into the water to get a head start. I took a run up and jumped off a small cliff, superman style. As soon as I left the edge, I saw that the drop was a lot greater than I thought. In fact, I had misjudged my dive so much that I was going to land in the shallow area by the shore, where the water was only inches deep. What shocked me into lucidity here was that when I landed, I wasn't dead or in any pain. I jumped up in the air and took off gliding over the surface of the water. I had a bit of trouble with this, because it seemed I could only glide like a paper aeroplane, rather than control my altitude. I ended up back in the water, and immediately went down to the very bottom. It was murky, muddy and dark at that depth, and I could just about make out some other people in the distance searching for something. I felt sorry for them because they were having to come up for air, whereas I could breathe. When I resurfaced, the rest of the people in the lake were being forced to swim and find whatever the wizard wanted by a fat woman with a kind of cattle prod. She looked like pure evil, and would shock anyone who came into the shallows for a rest. She was cackling maniacally as she did this. I vowed to get her. I submerged again (I could move faster underwater) and kicked off the ground in such a way that I would come up right beneath her. I was exactly right, and resurfaced at her back. I grabbed her hair with one hand, and shoulder with the other. With my right foot, I kicked her in the spine, breaking her in half.

After this encounter, I tried to teach the other DC's how to breathe underwater. I said, "I'm able to do this because I know I'm actually sleeping safely at home and can't drown!" Turned out this made me lose lucidity because while I was demonstrating, my subconcious convinced me that I was sleepwalking in the dream, and I was only able to breathe underwater because I was asleep and didn't need as much oxygen.

06.11.2009

Attack of the Giant Hand (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was the character of Chev Chelios from the "Crank" movies. I was in a car chase- I was doing the chasing. Some woman was talking to me in an earpiece I was wearing, telling me where to go. I reached a huge spaghetti juntion, and the car I was chasing sped off up a ramp, which had a barrier put in front of it immediately, preventing me from going that way. The voice in my ear told me to keep following the road I was on; it would lead me to the same junction as the other car was approaching from a different direction.





As I got closer to this junction, I began to question my driving skills. In real life, I can't drive, and I quickly lost confidence in my ability. It was the fact that I was driving which slowly brought me to lucidity. (Becoming lucid in this case was not as immediate as the colour change implies!)

I discovered that I could have fun driving, and totally forgot about the people I was chasing. I weaved between lanes, pissing off other drivers, and had several near-misses. Before long, it was getting dark and I was driving in countryside. There was a narrow bridge going over a river that my car could just about fit over (turns out it was a 4x4), and I put the boot down to fly over it. As, I landed, I saw a white van pulling out of a field to my right, and I had to swerve dangerously to miss it. I ended up flipping the car into a field on the left. It landed upright however, and undamaged. By some miracle it stopped just before hitting a caravan which was parked beside me. I was a bit shaken, and decided to take a rest in the back seat. It was now night time.

I happened to glance out the left window, and saw a horrifying sight. It was a giant, disembodied hand, crawling over the top of the caravan. It was like a giant (non-green) version of the hand from the Addams Family. It was scuttling about like a huge spider, then it made right for me. I was shit scared, and although I knew I could make it disappear if I wanted, it seemed like less effort to force myself awake. For half a second, I could see the spider-hand on the car window "overlaid" on my duvet. Kinda weird.

06.11.2009

X-Factor (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

After waking up from my previous dream, I gave it another go. This time it was incredibly easy to go straight back in. I remembered a technique I had used in a previous WILD attempt, where I imagined my dream body rhythmically pressing buttons. I did this again, and a dream formed up around me in a few seconds.

I felt a real sense of "entering the matrix", where I was lost for a fraction of a second, then zoom I was in. I had arrived in my friend's house after a night out. We went into the front porch and were greeted by my friend's mum. I said, "Hey, how's it going?" to her, and she replied, "Not bad, John, not bad." With that she turned around and walked into the living room, where my friend's family were watching the X-Factor. God I hate the X-Factor... Like before, I wanted to do something outrageous, but I was scared to, in case this was real life. I don't know my friend's family well at all, and I think it might have been my nervousness that stopped me trying to bust through a wall or something. I thought, "If this is real life, I will look like a proper dick if I try anything!" I leant over the settee to look at the TV, and experienced a false awakening.

EDIT: The previous paragraph was curiously precognitive. That exact situation happened in real life a couple of days later. I had never been at that friend's house after a night out before, so it was quite a coincidence! No doubt my mind was just simulating a possible scenario which, if I thought about it at the time, was quite likely to come true.

This was my first proper false awakening where I was in my own house and I actually got up out of bed to test if I was awake. I'm not sure if I should do this section in dream colour or lucid colour, it was something in-between. I threw my bedclothes off me and got up. Looking down at my hands, I was surprised to find there were actually the correct number of fingers on each! This really confused me, as I was pretty sure I was still asleep (or maybe sleepwalking!). Everything was blurry and the room started spinning slowly. I became very dizzy and stumbled around the room bumping into walls and my TV- but staying on my feet. -This is how I know for sure it was a false awakening; if I was stubling around my room I would most certainly have hit the deck because half my floorspace is covered in piles of clothes and unpacked suitcases! These were absent at the time, but there when I woke up for real. I think I fell back into a normal dream.

06.11.2009

Nice Long Lucid (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I can't remember what I was dreaming about before becoming lucid- the lucid part is all I could force myself to remember!

I was standing in the car park of a shopping centre near my house and I was Homer Simpson. I don't know how that happened but I thought, "Right, enough of this!" and changed myself back to normal after a few tries, one of which nearly woke me up. I had to rub my hands together and forget about my physical body- soon I was back to stability. I was then picked up in the family car we had back in the 90's, a big Ford Galaxy. My whole family was in the car, and I had the back two seats to myself. I was desperate to get out and try to fly or something, and I thought of opening up the boot and taking off out the back, but everything seemed so real it was hard for me to do something that might kill me if in fact it was real.

For the second time ever, I remembered to do a reality check. I looked down and counted my fingers. Sure enough, there was an indeterminate number on each hand, maybe six. I leaned forward to show it to my brother, but I can't remember his reaction. I was completely sure this was a dream, but I was still impeded from jumping out of the moving car by my self-preservation instict. I'll have to train myself to remember that this is only useful when I'm awake! Maybe I'll deliberatly do something suicidal next time and see what happens. I was then distracted by waving at a girl driving the car behind. I used to know her from school, but havn't seen her since. She didn't see me at first, and I could see that she looked very sad. When she did notice me, she gave a very half-assed wave and turned away.

Despite wanting to do something extreme, I thought I might as well go along with the dream. I was content just knowing that I was dreaming and marvelling at how real everything looked/felt. The car stopped and we went inside a house we havn't lived in for five years. At first it looked like the one house, but once again, it was an amalgamation of more than one of the houses I've lived in. I walked up to the kitchen table, looking to try some food. I went for a mini Cadbury's Crunchie. It tasted just like it should in real life, maybe nicer- I'm not even very fond of Crunchies. Once everybody was inside, I noticed that the door had been left open. I ran at it and jumped into the air, drop-kicking it in such a way that it bounced off the wall and slammed shut.

I woke up here.

29.10.2009

First WILD! (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had just awoken from my previous dream but I knew I could probably give it another go. I couldn't feel any part of my body, but I had it in my head that feeling things is good to strengthen lucidity. It felt like three of my fingers were touching an electronic button each. I started pressing the buttons rhythmically, like I was drumming my fingers, and after about 20 seconds, the buttons fell off and dropped into my duvet. This took me straight into a lucid dream.
I was in the same house as before, except this time I wasn't wearing anything. I saw my laptop on a desk in the middle of the room and tried to use it, just to see if it would work. I got onto Facebook and tried to update my status for a laugh. I tried to type in that I'd heard a decent cover version of Paparazzi, but I had lost the ability to type properly. I kept accidentally erasing what I'd typed, and getting the spelling totally wrong. I decided it wasn't that much of a loss, really, so I stood up, and saw two girls in bikinis walking past the front window. One of them I knew, and she came inside. Unfortunately I woke up as I approached her!

29.10.2009

Simply Lucid (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

By carefully re-relaxing and focusing on becoming lucid again, I would up back in my messy four-houses from the previous dream. I knew I probably didn't have much time before I woke up again, so I tried to prolong it my not letting myself get agitated enough to wake up. I slowly walked around the house until I got to the living room. There was a big, old-fasioned, wood-pannelled TV in the corner playing a music channel. Robbie Williams was doing a cover of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi". I thought it was rather good so I made a mental note to download it when I woke up- if it existed! (It doesn't ) I turned off the TV when another song came on so it wouldn't make me forget Paparazzi. I went into the kitchen to find more of my old possessions strewn across the floor, and found an old journal from 2005. Even though I knew I was dreaming, I lifted it and put it in my pocket, lest anyone read it.

Here I was woken up by noise downstairs. I snapped straight from the dream to sleep paralysis.

29.10.2009

Flying Practice (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I managed, for the first time, to chain the next three lucid dreams together in one morning. I must be getting somewhere with all this!

I was playing a game of Halo 3, on a map called Last Resort, one of my favourites. It was just a mess-around game, and I wanted to tweak the settings to reduce the effect of gravity so I could fly. Having done this, I realised, "I can't fly..." even though I was in the role of a video game character. I became lucid there. I decided I'd had enough playing Halo 3, and I was suddenly in my own house. What I realised after waking up was that the house I was in was a clever amalgamation of the three houses I've lived in during my life, plus my dad's current house. However it all seemed normal at the time. I was wearing pyjamas. There was mess everywhere, like a party had been had. There were a lot of my possessions that I hadn't seen in years lying around the floor. I tried to fly around the house. I jumped up in the air, higher than I normally wound have been able to, and on the descent, I hovered about a foot above the floor. I then kept this up and floated around the house. I said to my brothers, "Hey, look at this!" They seemed impressed.

I went outside with the intention of flying much higher. I was slightly worried about this because any time I've ever tried to fly unaided in a dream in my life, I've got to a certain height, shat myself (not literally) and plummeted. I told myself though, that it was only a dream and I couldn't actually injure myself. (Turns out this doesn't make heights any less scary!) Some people in the street looked at me strangely for wearing pyjamas, but I didn't care. I flew up to the height of a street light, but had real difficulty going any higher, or staying at that height. I grabbed onto the top of a pillar made of bricks and dangled off it quite comfortably. Then a grey car pulled up outside and out stepped some of my friends' parents, come to pay a visit. I guided them inside, floating of course, and told them to ignore the mess. In the living room I found my old friend Lucie lying on the setee. "'The fuck are you doing here?" I asked her. She didn't reply and I found myself losing the dream.

28.10.2009

Flying and Skateboarding (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I can't remember what I was dreaming about prior to becoming lucid, but the first thing I remember is coming into possession of a flying elephant. It was a much larger version of Dumbo and could probably seat about six. I remembered the basic task of the month for October on dreamviews- "Scare a DC", and decided to take a woman standing near me for a ride on the elephant. I controlled the elephant, sitting on top of its neck (the driving seat I assume!) while she sat on the top of one of the huge flapping ears, close to the head. We flew low at about 90mph through a city which had lots of things overhanging the streets and bridges to go over/under. It felt a bit like swinging through trees, so I started singing the George of the Jungle song, and the woman joined in. I made the ride deliberately extreme to try and scare my passenger, but nothing worked. She said, "Sure this is a dream, it's not even real!" I was annoyed so I jumped off the elephant and it flew away into the distance. I recognised the city I was standing in as Paris. The street went downhill for as far as I could see and I had a desire to skateboard down it.





I knew I couldn't skateboard in real life, but that didn't matter. I took off down the street on a board, and basically grinded along the railings on the side the whole way down. I hopped from railing to railing as fast as I could think of where to grind next. I jumped over the tops of cars coming the other way and landed on the other side of the road a few times. When the road became level at the bottom of the hill, I finished up my ride by deliberately landing heavily on a low railing and snapping the board in half with the force of the impact.

I felt like I should maybe try and integrate myself better into the dream, so I felt everything around me carefully and paid close attention to the feel of the peeling paint on the railings. I even did a reality check for the first time (in a dream). My reality check is to look at my hands and count how many fingers I have on each hand, then turn my hands over and double-check. When I counted my fingers, I found that I couldn't quite tell how many there were. The first time I looked, there were seven on my left hand (which I checked first), and when I looked again, there were six. My hands also looked more like a womans, with longer nails.


Having been fully convinced I was dreaming, I walked over to a nearby kebab cart on a busy street corner with the intention of trying some food or a cold drink to test my other senses. The cart was the size of a large van and had lots of vats of food. I grabbed an ice cube out of one and a handful of doner kebab strips out of another and crammed everything in my mouth. The kebab meat was delicious, and although I could feel the ice cube getting crunched up and melted in my mouth, it didn't seem as cold as I expected. Maybe I don't have sensitive teeth in my dreams. :S I wasn't actually hungry, so I spat what I was eating back into the pile of food, to the disgust of several onlookers. I saw my brother eating out of a cantine farther along the cart, and I asked him what was good to eat. He directed me to a drinking fountain. I saw that the water flowing from the tap had steam coming off it and I thought, "I don't want to drink hot water!" So I ignored it and walked on.

25.10.2009

Sleepwalking at a Swimming Pool (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I know the dream I was in was extremely long and involved but can barely remember enough to make it worthwhile typing it out. I remember the lucid part though.

I suddenly found myself sitting on a wall at the edge of a swimming pool. I was on holiday with my family somewhere warm. The first thing I did was reach down and feel the wall with my hands to increase the vividness. It worked, but not significantly. I got up and walked over to the diving board, past my dad in a deck chair. I then had a false awakening. I actually dreamed that I had been sleepwalking along the side of the swimming pool, and that the scenario I was in was actually real life. I don't know how my subconscious managed to trick me into believing I was sleepwalking, in the middle of the day, at a crowded swimming pool. All I remember after "waking up" is thinking, "God, it's lucky I woke up, imagine if I had drowned!"

Moron lol.

22.10.2009

First Totally Stable Lucid (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I fell asleep in the late afternoon after having a shower and listening to my ipod for about an hour. I didn't attempt to WILD, in fact I didn't even intend to fall asleep.

I know there was a dream which led me to becoming lucid, but I can't remember what it was. Recall isn't the best today. The first moment of lucidity I can recall was me sitting in the passenger seat of my mum's car (purple Renault Megane). My mum was driving, and somebody else was definately there, but I have no idea who it was, never turned round to look. We were in a multi-story car park (Castlecourt car park, for anyone in Northern Ireland!) As soon as I realised I had finally achieved being independantly aware in a dream, everything started to fade out. I remembered reading on the DV forums that a good way to stabilise a dream and increase vividness is to handle and feel an object, get your senses involved. I quickly glanced around the car's dashboard and could see nothing. I noticed the car's radio, and desperately pressed the "tape eject" button. To my enormous relief, a gray tape popped out, and I turned it over in my hands for about 30 seconds, keeping me in the dream.

The most amazing thing about this was that it was a conscious decision to slowly lift and move my arm to the button. I could feel my arm muscles working and all the while I was thinking, "This is amazing, it's like I'm in another dimension, and completely asleep!" I felt like it took a bit of mental acrobatics to seperate my awareness of my actual body from my dream body, and moving my arm consciously was slow, like learning to walk.

The radio then activated itself and "Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles came on. Strangely, this was the very first song (of about 25) I listened to in my ipod session earlier, but it put me in a really positive mood. My mum started to drive towards the barrier at the exit and started talking. Then I saw she had the head of my 14-year-old brother and was talking in his voice. I wasn't having him driving the car! I rotated his head 90 degrees round to me by grabbing its top. I looked at him and shook my head in exasperation at the weirdness that was invading this previously normal situation. I entertained myself by singing along to "Back in the U.S.S.R." and bobbing my head in time.

I had the first of several false awakenings here. I only realised they were false awakenings when I woke up for real at the end- I was then surprised to be sleeping in a different place than I expected from my false awakenings.

Where I woke up was weird indeed. It was a dingy, underground, but well-lit basement. The bed I was in was slightly above the level of the floor, and there was a kind of computer terminal on the rusty platform beside it. The computer terminal was playing the same Beatles song. I thought I had woken up for real (Weird how the brain makes unfamiliar places seem familiar just to trick you into thinking you've woken up, creating a bizzare dream-within-a-dream scenario.) Another of my brothers was walking around the huge basement room talking to someone round the corner. Since I was still in a deep state of relaxation (in this first layer of dreaming), I was able to fall right back into the same dream. (second layer) This time nothing happened at all and I just listened to the music for a bit, happy that I'd managed to get back in.

I experienced another false awakening, but this time I had my head under the covers in a totally different position. I wondered, "Should I have been able to have moved in my sleep? Should sleep paralysis not have stopped me?" My brother was still walking around talking belligerantly, and the music was blasting now. I got up, and ate a cake. Yes, straight out of the blue. There was a cake sitting beside the computer teminal. It was small, only about 6 inches across and was full of jam, really sticky. It was absolutely delicious. Best cake ever. Part of me thought "I'm never getting back to sleep", but I decided I would be able to if I had been dreaming that I was dreaming. i.e. loud things in dreams would not stop you sleeping in dreams. Turns out I was right and I went to sleep almost right away.

This time I went to find a girl I remembered from a non-lucid dream I had earlier. She was blonde and awesome, but of course, completely made up. I'll censor the next few minutes for the sake of decency! Unfortunately, I decided NOT to have full sex with her because I was genuinely worried I would start sleep-thrusting in my bed, and that could be embarrassing if anyone walked in... (I remembered that my real bedroom door had been left slightly open) By the way, any readers of this, does that happen??? I'm pretty anxious to know!!

I had yet another false awakening to the basement room. I must have been nearly ready to wake up for real here because I had occasional flashes of awareness of my own body in bed. Once, I could really feel the numbness of sleep paralysis. To try and anchor myself in the dream-world and avoid unneccessary waking, I climbed around the edges of my dream-bed (which bacame extremely long suddenly :S), feeling the wood which made up the frame very carefully. Not long before I woke up, I opened my real eyes, and I could see an image of my wall on top of what I could see in the dream, which was pretty crazy.

Can't wait for the next one!