Lucid Time!

Spoiler for Notes and technique breakdown.:

So included with this dream journal an example of my chart technique along with a sample of my documentation of RCs I want to show everything that I'm documenting with my chart and med method. I've talked about this in other posts but I want to break down this technique here so that in the future, if I ever need to refer somebody to what I'm using (either if they want to attempt to copy my technique or they are trying to help me troubleshoot it, I can save time in just showing them to this dream journal entry.

Now obviously I'm insane for doing this because last time I worked on this technique I actually saw a decrease in my lucidity rate on the nights that I tried the hardest. But last time I kept my results fairly private. Granted this will probably recede into privacy too, but for today, or at least the first couple days of me getting back into this I want to make my results public because... well I don't know really.

So the technique breaks down like so. There are three main goals for me to accomplish during the day. The most complex and time consuming being twice-daily meditation. I generally meditate using a two part system; in where I count down from a number to clear my mind and get mental chatter to quiet down, then briefly reset to a lower number and start again, followed by either focus on problem solving a particular subject or simply focusing on breath and mental quiet.

I document this in a chart with the starting points of counts. (Counting down from 50 and then restarting from 15 is the norm for me. I used to count from 100 and then restart from 30 but it would take too long and I would find myself spending too much time on the phase of meditation. I still do 100-30 occasionally if my mind is particularly crazy and I have the time. Then I put an S for subject and an M for mindfulness, and if there is a subject, I like to talk about the themes that I meditated on in my dream journal.

The second is documenting RCs. I carry a small notebook and pen/pencil with me and document major RCs. Almost every RC I do has the time written down that I will observe before and after writing down the RC and attempt to observe if only a minute or two have passed, so all RCs include a built in clock check, and generally a nose pinch is included without me documenting it. I won't be copying this into my DJ regularly but this is what it looks like.

8:20 - I'm at home. Clock check. Sun check (there is only 1 sun). Nose Pinch. Recalled waking up 1h ago.
9:09 - I'm at school before class. Clock Check. Nose Pinch. Second sun check.
10:10 - I'm in a boring econ class. I recall registering for this class and coming to it previously. I check that my calculator is functioning logically. 74-18 =56. I work it out on paper to confirm. Clock check and Nose pinch.
10:20 - Econ class ended early, this triggered me to RC. I checked the moon to confirm there was only one and that it was of a normal size. CC and NP.
10:47 - Season check. Does this weather make sense for april, or is it the middle of summer or snowing. Checks out. CC and NP.
11:29 - Recalled waking up in the morning. CC and NP.
12:41 - Art history is starting now. CC, NP and recall registering for this class.
1:02 - I rewrite the day as it has happened so far. I woke up, meditated, ate breakfast, drove to school, went to econ class, got lunch, went to the bank, sat in the student lounge, then went to art history.
1:17 - I do a hand check and confirm I have 10 fingers. CC and NP.
1:40 - I reread my earlier documentation of the day and make sure I still remember every activity. CC and NP.
2:58 - I just arrived home. I do a seasonal weather check, CC and NP.
3:45 - NP and CC
4:20 - Seasonal weather check, NP and CC

Though I stayed up until 10; I did not document anymore RCs because I got heavily invested in a programming project and didn't think to RC anymore. This is a situation that I would like to highlight. I can become very invested in things and lose track of time and reality. If I could stay alert during these times, I could probably increase my chances of becoming lucid. I'm pretty pleased with my coverage of the day otherwise, it might even be a bit overkill.

And the final daily goal is to maintain a consistent bedtime. I'm aiming for between 10 and 11 pm, though I might decide to shift that a little earlier. Not really much else to explain there.

Finally I record the dreams into the chart, quantifying them as a star ranking from 1-5, with 1 star being the 'worst' and 5 star being the 'best', on a sliding scale of dream recall, clarity and lucidity. I don't have a precise rubric as dreams are very hard to quantify and weird phenomenon always come up. (Say, a night with a lot of false awakenings.) Generally it works as follows.

No stars=no recall.
1 star=any amount of dream recall, even if it's just a fragment, up to a fair amount of of non-lucid dream recall.
2 star=a lot of non-lucid dream recall; recalling multiple separate dreams, or recalling a very long/vivid non-lucid dream. Sometimes depending upon the circumstance, layer 0 and layer 1 lucidity works in here.
3 star=generally a decent amount of semi lucid dream time, or a breif LD.
4 star=a long stable lucid dream. Basically my goal is for most or every night to be a 4-star.
5 star=god tier. Multiple lucid dreams in a night in a chain or a very long and vivid LD.

Date	Morning Meditation	Evening Meditation	RCs	Bedtime	Star Ranking
18.4.2017	50-15-m	N/A	14	10:40

So with that in mind, I plan to progress this technique. My first couple days will probably be documented publicly but after that I will probably switch over to doing this entirely in my private DJ as to not scum up the DJ section and for my own privacy.

In the dream I am attending college. The building I am in feels vaguely like it belongs somewhere on my campus and the surrounding area has the same feel to it, but it really blurred the line between a completely original to dream campus. The building was ten stories tall and had many wings and corridors and contained both classrooms and student dorms.

In the dream I had a gun with me, something that was forbidden by the rules of the campus and would be punishable by a long time in jail. The actual gun was like an uzi or small SMG and I remember at some point firing the bullets from it and noticing how small they were; they were like little pellets or pointed BBs. Yet the gun still had the capacity to kill people. The dream's plot revolved heavily around me trying to dispose of the gun.

I at first figured I would dispose of the bullets. During a class, I snuck into a women's bathroom and emptied the bullets from the magazine down a toilet and flushed. My logic behind doing this was that the police might find the bullets in the plumbing but they would attempt to trace a female to possessing the gun and give me more time to get rid of it. I then crushed up the plastic magazine by stomping on it and threw the pieces into a ventilation grate.

I then had to go to class. The class was at the center of the very strange and large building. There was a large circular tower that protruded from the side of the wall and castle like crenelations on top when viewed from the outside. I went to the class that was some kind of magical/alchemical class. I saw my friends S, A and C along with other dream characters outside trying to get my attention and waving at me. I waved back and they started throwing small rocks at the window as if they hadn't gotten my attention. They started to throw larger rocks and one of them cracked the window and got the attention of the whole class. I looked outside and saw some police escorting my friends away and thought that the police might think that we were troublemakers and might try and get a search warrant soon; so I should hurry up and dispose of the gun.

After the class ended, it was dark outside. I stashed the gun in my pocket (yes, it fit). Near this weird alternate school was a river with a small island in the middle. This island had sand dunes on it that people would climb up and then ride down on these sled-like devices. I decided this was how I would get rid of that gun. I went to the shore of the river where there were guys in small rowboats that would row you across for a dollar. I got one of them to row me across and while he was, he remarked that it was getting dark and I probably shouldn't be heading out to the dunes so late in the day.

I told him I had forgotten something earlier in the day and just needed to visit the sand dune island for a few minutes. Once on the opposite shore, I began frantically walking around the forested portion of the island looking for a good place to dispose of the gun. I ran into my father and he of course was really clingy and wanted to spend time with me, but I managed to convince him that I was jogging and that he couldn't keep up. So I jogged off and found myself at the top of the large sand dune where there was a small store and the sled things were kept. I got on one and started riding down, something that was frowned upon because it was unsafe and smart to have people nearby if you got hurt. I rode for a bit around the winding path in the sand until I found a place between two dunes that was out of sight of everybody.

I knelt over and dug out a hole underneath some dune grass in the sand with my hands and put the gun in it; then carefully covered it up with sand, ensuring I put dry, coarse sand on top as to leave no evidence anyone had dug there, then carried on down my sand sled to the bottom of the route and deposited it at a small shed where a few others had been. It was now completely dark and I saw that the row boat guys had retired for the night and I was now trapped on the island. I think I wound up getting back onto the mainland by hopping across some overlarge lily pads and swinging on some low hanging willow branches, only managing to get wet up to my ankles.

I retired to my dorm room that had a large furnace apparatus in it, and used the heat from it to dry my wet clothes. My roommate had questions as to what I had been up to but didn't get that suspicious. I plugged in my computer and started playing KSP and the dream started to fade out. I think it carried on for a bit, I recall glimpses and fragments of the dream carrying on into the days and weeks that followed this incident and how I continued to be paranoid that somebody would connect me to the gun and try to find me.

-+-

The dream somehow gave way to one of me driving on the highway and continually missing exits that I was supposed to turn off at, finding myself on unfamiliar parts of the state. Typical dream contrivances such as having a dysfunctional phone gps with a fraction of a percent of battery and the dream periodically distorting so that I find myself in the back of the car with nobody driving up front played out.

I remembered that my goal in the dream was to buy a birthday present for my new cousin. Apparently my aunt on my mom's side had given birth to a third boy after the two cousins I was familiar with, but he had aspberger's syndrome and she was ashamed so she kept him a secret from the rest of the family. But she eventually decided that wasn't right and she would introduce him to the rest of his family. This dream took place shortly after that and it was his (8th or 9th) birthday. I went into a random Toys R Us and bought a large blue Nerf gun and brought it over. This new cousin dream character was thrilled.

We started having a nerf war. My cousin's house was revealed to have many levels of basement that had never been seen before that the war took place in; including an all white room in where there were sliding panels and doors everywhere. The room didn't have any function outside of being a place for the nerf gun war as far as I could tell. I attained a small amount of lucidity and became concerned that the dream could take a dark turn if the nerf gun I was using converted itself into the gun I had tried to hide from earlier.

...

The dream somehow gave way to another dream that I was driving my parent's old minivan and doing flips and stunts around a stadium with monster trucks. I felt as though I were playing a video game and didn't care that I was badly damaging the car. The dream was very hazy and this probably would have been a rather exciting dream sequence had it been clearer.