non-lucid

This is one of the first times that a non-lucid dream has been so interesting to me. Usually they're boring things like being at school or playing a video game. Short as it was, I really enjoyed it.

It all started out with me piloting a mech, as you might have guessed. I think that it was third person, so it may have been a video game dream, though it did not look familiar. I was making my way down a desert road, with a large cliff to my left. About a quarter mile up, the road turned into a canyon in the side of the cliff.
A commander's voice told me that the enemy force would come out of the canyon. I made my way to the mouth of the canyon, and saw 3-5 tanks coming out of the canyon.
But these were not normal tanks; they walked on four small mechanical legs, and had missile silos instead of cannons. They had desert camo. They opened fire on me, but all of the shots missed.
I began to examine my own mech. It was a bipedal walker with three weapons; a machine gun on the left side, a missile launcher. The top had some kind of laser sniper cannon. It was kind of a dark-blue gray color.
I began firing back, favoring the missile launcher. More of the walking tanks came out of the canyon. I kept killing them, but I was getting overwhelmed.
"Snipers!" The commander hollered.
I looked up and saw another type of mech making its way along the canyon rim. Unlike the tanks that were slow and lumbering, these mechs were swift, with long, spidery legs and a huge sniper cannon. They had a bright red/orange coloration.
Shots hit all around me. One hit one of my mech's legs, and I limped over, immobilized. I looked up and fired my own sniper at one of the enemy snipers. He went limp, and the spidery machine fell into the canyon.
A second barrage, and my mech was hit in the cockpit. (This was third person.) I looked over to take out another sniper, but my weapons started malfunctioning and they all fired at once. I didn't kill another sniper. Then the walking tanks in the canyon fired all their missiles, and I think my mech failed entirely.

The dream cuts out at this point. I may have entered deep sleep and left the dream. I don't think I woke up.

When I was a kid, I used to always have these dreams about being in a pool or lake and huge waves would start coming and I would be drowning and gasping for breath. I made that a dream sign, but I rarely dream about that sort of thing anymore.

I cannot really remember how things got started, but I was treading water in the corner of this aquarium. The pool was sort of long and thin and I was trapped in one end.
There was this giant yellow-brown jellyfish, now I mean huge. It must have been three stories tall. The top, sort of domed shaped part poked up above the water. The stingers hung down into the aquarium, so that I could not dive under it.
To the left, there was about 6-8 feet of clearance for me, and I tried to squeeze around that way. But there was this strange thing floating between the jellyfish and the wall. It looked like a bunch of bloody goat horns kind of in a spikeball. When I went close to it, I was repelled away.
I thought about swimming though the jellyfish tentacles, thinking that maybe they wouldn't sting. I decided that was a risk that I wasn't willing to take.
After a little while, all of the creatures in the room rearranged into a maze, almost.
There were a bunch of the horn spikeballs and a few more of the giant jellyfish. I made my way to this computer terminal mounted in the wall, just above the water level.
When I came onto the computer, a popup appeared on the screen.
"Would you like to realize you're dreaming?" With a yes or no option.
I clicked the "Yes" and started to fly above the maze of jellyfish and spikeballs. Then I woke up.

These dreams were rather unstable and blurry, and don't seem to have much meaning. I have come to find these sorts of dreams rather boring. Not only that, they are awkward to describe in DJ entries.

Fragment (Last Night)

All I can remember is looking in the mirror and having short white hair. I did not appear aged at all, though my hair was bleached. I closed my eyes and opened them, and my hair was black. I think my hair went though several more transformations. I wish I could remember more of the dream.

Fragment (Wednesday night)

I was hanging out in the basement with one of my friends. I think it was S or A. I looked under the large couch in our basement. There was a large clearance of a foot or two between the underside of the couch and the floor. And there was all of this garbage arranged/organized under the couch.
After looking for awhile, I told my friend that I was going to clean out the garbage. I started taking a load of pop cans upstairs to recycle them, but my recall fades out.

The Skyrim house (Wednesday Night)

I hate dreams that relate to video games that I play. Especially when they make no sense, like this.

I was dreaming of being in the game Skyrim. I had just bought this DLC that added some new group to the game, and I was checking out their base.
It turned out to be this very small, modern looking house. It was made almost entirely out of these brick-red wooden boards, aside from a glass wall on the front. When I went inside there were three slots with walls in between them. The one on the left had an enchanting table, the one in the middle, a chest, and the one on the right, an alchemy table.
Then some sort of elevator in the floor that took me down into a much larger setting.
There was a very long room, made of the same reddish wood. The walls were on a 45 degree angle, and angled as though you were in the attic of a large house. There were support beams going down this large hall (Think like ribs on an old wooden ship)
The middle part of the hall was a sort of sunk in walkway, and along the edges were various stations. I can remember numerous DCs producing resources, foraging weapons, brewing potions, etc etc...
By this point someone started giving me a tour of the place. He was an old man, and apparently the leader of this faction. We walked for a long time and he was just talking about his plans.

Party Crashers (Also Wednesday night)

Save the best for last, as they say. None of these dreams interest me much, but this one the most for its plot and humor.

I can remember being in some sort of theme park. It wasn't a really big ticket place, and I wasn't with anyone. I can remember it being a hot, dry day.
This discreet looking man came up to me and asked me to do him a big favor. He was tall, thin, and short black hair. He said that there was a party for the rich and well connected taking place in that tower. (He gestured to a small, cylindrical glass skyscraper) And apparently he wanted them all dead.
He gave me four or five brick-sized explosives. They were just plastic black boxes with a red LED in one corner, and a detonator remote with a key in it. He explained to me that I should go into the party and hide the explosives around the room. Then turn the detonator remote, and I would have a minute and a half to get away.
I went to the small skyscraper and got into the elevator. The elevator turned out to be one of the rides at the amusement park. I had to get into a seat and put on a rigid shoulder support.
The elevator moved really fast and went up and down a couple times until I arrived on the party floor. The elevator let out into a medium sized dining room all prepared for the party. There were dream characters sitting at the table, but I hopped up on the table, and began duct-taping the explosive charges to the ceiling. They were completely oblivious...
After that, I hid one in a vase, and went into the observation room that gave me a view of the dreamworld. The dream was blurry and boring, so I set the last explosive in there, and started to head back though the dining room.
By this point the dream characters at the party had begun taking the explosives off the wall and trying to figure out what they were. I thought that if I could get out before they realized and got rid of them.
I turned the key on the detonation remote, and was ready to get on the elevator when the man who had given me the assignment showed up. He created some sort of portal on the wall and enticed me to walk though it.
From there, there was some sort of apocalyptic city, all charred and destroyed. I must have slipped out of the dream or woke up, because it sort of ends there.

Uggh. Crappy recall.

This first dream was very silly. I apologize for the lack of detail.

I can remember some dream that I had about me and my father, we were going backpacking in some mountains. I can't remember the dream very well up until the part where we arrived at this cabin.
We sat down in this log cabin, Me, him and a few other DCs. My dad took out this GIANT slab of beef and started to take bites off of it. (It was a sort of cylinder shape, about a foot around and a foot tall.) I must have been giving him a funny look because he told me that he was so hungry from carrying a heavy backpack all day that he would eat the whole thing.
He started to offer me various foods. I can remember trying some chicken and fried fish. Somehow when my dad took the food out of his backpack it would fly into my mouth.
But the final food was the one that I remember most vividly, a piece of pizza. When I bit into it, the taste was vivid and realistic, the only worthwhile part of the dream.
This dream had a rare ending, It faded back into sleep, instead of me waking up. Probably the reason for the lack of clarity.

I can remember achieving lucidity after some dream character told me that I was dreaming. But as soon as I did the dream destabilized, and I partially woke up. I was stuck in this nether world between being in this lucid dream and being awake.
I knew that I could either allow myself to wake up or attempt to stabilize the dream, but it was clear to me that stabilizing the dream carried only a very slim chance of salvaging it. I allowed myself to awake.
The outcome of the dream was not what interested me. Being in that "between" state for so long was what interested me.

So anyways, now that I am returning, I have come up with a strategy to achieve lucids. (And avoid crappy nights like this) And it is as simple as it should be effective:

I will do a Mantra session, sit and think or say quietly that I will lucid dream and remember it. I will do this based on time (Starting out at 30 minutes each night) I will document my time with DJ entries the following morning.

Once I can reliably lucid with 30 minutes each night, I will begin to reduce the time, a few minutes at a time. If I am struggling, I may increase the time that I do it.

My ultimate hope is to get myself to the point that I can lucid dream every night with just a few minutes of mantra sessions, or better yet, none.

So it is essentially an organized attempt on the MILD method.

I cannot remember this dream very clearly, but I found it so interesting that I had to document it online.

I was dreaming that it was the year 2080, I think, and I visited this company called Gen-Mate. The company charged a heavy price to grow you an artificial Husband/Wife or mate in a cloning vat. I was walking down a long hall lined with high-tech cloning vats. This employee was talking to me about the superiority of the clones; although I cannot remember why I was at the company's facility.
"The clones grow at an accelerated rate, then slow to a normal aging rate once they are fully matured. They are as healthy as normal human beings in every way. You can even have sexual intercourse with them and they will produce healthy children."
When I to the end of the hall, I made my way into this room with all these doctors. They were discussing the human genome and ways to make their artificial humans healthier. On a computer screen, there was a 3D model of someone's heart, being scanned and displayed.
The heart started beating, and the men analyzed it. One of them got really excited when he noticed that he had discovered a small valve that had never been discovered before. Growing off the valve was a small flap of flesh.
"That is what is called Jacob's Column. If we could find a way to remove it we could halt the aging process!"
The dream told me the entire thing though the back of my head. "Jacob's Column" was a small gland that was in your heart. It grew continuously until it filled your heart and you died, and this was why people died of old age.
Me and all of the doctor guys were really excited that we had made such a fascinating discovery. I woke up soon after.

My new sister

I was in a very distorted version of my room. I can remember it being very dark and very big. The only light came from the door that was open just a crack. The entire floor was covered with random clutter, most notably, dirty clothes. I can also remember my bed being sort of sunken into the floor.
I had false awoken because I had heard a strange noise. I got up and cautiously made my way across the room. I opened the door and found myself in a distorted version of my parent's bedroom. The only detail I can remember specifically was the fact that their wall was brown, and the room sort of had a lodge style.
There was nobody in there, and believing that it was safe, I started to make my way back to bed. I was about halfway back when a small girl ran past my legs screaming.
I sort of had an odd explanation put into my head, that this dream character was my sister. She was three or four years old and her name was Ebe.
I can remember very specifically that she looked sort of odd. She had a medium tone skin and yellow hair in braids. She had on a white tee shirt and shorts.
Although I was originally sort of frightened by her, I eventually got past it. She got into bed with me and I started reading her a bedtime story. After the story, we just sort of sat and talked about life. She gave me some good advice and seemed really wise. Unfortunately I can't remember what her advice was.
My dream recall sort of cut out at this point but I then remember arriving at some kind of hospital. Specifically it was a large hallway with a depressed floor in the middle, so there was a kind of elevated floor along the edges. Periodically , there were ramps up onto the elevated floor but most of it was bordered by a metal rail.
Beds were lined up along the lower edge of the rail on both sides of the hallway, about four beds between each ramp. In every bed, there were people shaking as if they were having seizures. They were also bleeding very badly.
A doctor explained to me that Ebe had given everyone some horrible disease and that almost everyone in my family would be dead soon. I can remember the doctor was a young woman, and she tried to comfort me, even though I was not particularly upset.

The Minecraft gods

Once agian, I found myself in the game Minecraft. I can remember that I had just finished building my house when this farmer character appeared. Soon after, a female character appeared also. I can't remember their intentions.
I decided to go mining, I set out to find a cave. Eventually, I found one. I went down deep inside where I found every mineral recourse in one spot. I was in a large, open cave.
Some of the mineral resources were glitched and they had lava in them or something. When I tried to mine them, I triggered something unexpected.
In the bottom of the cave were two pools, one filled with water, the other with lava. Each one sprouted into a large form. The water formed a female who's hair was tiny streams of flowing water. The lava formed a male figure with spiked hair. Both of these creatures were almost as high as the cave, though the water creature was bigger.
They engaged in some sort of duel. From what I could make out, the lava creature was friendly, while the water creature wanted to kill me. I started to weave my way between their feet as they fought.
I was almost away when the water being sprayed a mist causing the lava being to freeze into solid rock. At first, I thought he was defeated, but he broke out of the rocks and was still ok.
The duel continued for a while longer. I was still trying to get out of the cave when both of the beasts did a powerful attack and caused a massive explosion.
I was blown free of the cave entirely and landed a ways away from the now huge canyon in the surface. I decided to head back to my house. When I got back, I found that the farmer and the female had built all of these random structures. I was very angry at them for doing so and I told them that this was my Minecraft and nobody was allowed to build here but me. I eventually quit the game.

I was in the hallway at my school where I regularly go to my locker but for some reason, all of the lockers were in one of the classrooms in that hallway. I went into the locker room and there were a whole bunch of dream characters in there, resembling people at my school.
Specifically, my best friend Steve, my friend Aaron, and his girlfriend.
I cannot remember exactly how the fight got started, but I know that I was not the one who started it. Once a few people started fighting, It spread to all of the dream characters in the room.
It became important that I tell a teacher, I walked out of the locker room and was headed toward the classroom. I could sense someone coming from behind, and I grabbed them on the wrists from behind and threw them right over top of me.
When he landed in front of me, I saw that he was a large guy with short hair and a blue basketball jersey.
I looked into the door of the classroom, and saw my old science teacher from middle school. I told her in sort of a sarcastic voice.
"There's a huge fight going on out in the hall."
I think instead of going, she invited me to sit down and join her science class. I think we were learning about weather and the water cycle.

I haven't had any recall since my last DJ entry, six days ago. Then I had this lucid dream out of the blue.

So I was riding a bike in a large group of people, many of them being family members,friends and other people I know in general. We were riding though a forest/park setting. I can remember the sun was either rising or setting.
I can't remember many details of what happened during the bike ride or if it was a race. I can remember talking with some of my friends from school for awhile but I can't remember what we were actually talking about.
I can remember more clearly when we got off our bikes and got into some kind of vehicle. I could probably describe it as a mobile home or a semi-truck. I can remember it being all white with an orange stripe down the side, and a black windscreen. Some of the people that I knew got into it too.
I was the one driving, and I drove for probably ten minutes. I can then remember pressing a button on the dashboard of the vehicle.
It caused the front part to sort of collapse and crush me. The crushing was very uncomfortable and lasted about ten seconds. Out of pure stupidity, I pressed the button two or three additional times.
We stopped in a parking lot when I realized that at the very back of the vehicle (The interior was a long, plain white room without any seats.) was my (now dead) grandmother. She was kind of a monochromatic blue color, and sort of hazy. I'm assuming she was a ghost. She was holding a knife. The knife on the other hand, was silver, with a brown handle. (As it should have been)
She started killing everyone inside with the knife. Eventually, A friend from my school named A was the only one alive other than me, and he was wrestling with the ghost of my grandmother. It was obvious he would lose. My mind was racing. The first thing that struck me as odd was that I was seeing my grandparent again, when they have now been dead for almost a year. I questioned reality.
From there I got lucid, just as A was overwhelmed and killed. I put my arms across my chest, then forced them out, pushing out to the sides. The vehicle around me exploded into several large pieces. The ghost of my grandmother was nowhere to be found.
From here, I proceeded to stabilize the dream. I looked at a large oak tree at the side of the road, and tried to make out the details of the leaves, to some success.
Behind me was a small building, with entirely glass walls. It was kind of horseshoe shaped and very small, only one floor. In the middle was a counter with a cashier and people waiting in line, I'm assuming to make purchases.
I decided to try some dream control and went up to the man that was first in line. I can remember him having a sort of tall face, and being bald. I punched him in the cheek, while screaming "sonic punch". I had to reach up above my head because he was quite a tall man.
When I hit him he just sort of looked at me for about half a second. My hand was still on his cheek and he just randomly flew back and hit the inside wall of the horseshoe shaped building.
We got into a huge fight at this point. Knowing I was dreaming, I was doing these remarkable martial arts moves and the man that I was fighting was really no match for me.
Eventually, I wound up standing on a table, holding a coffeepot. The man made some joke, I think it was related to World War II, but I can't remember it. I poured the coffee on him. At this point the dream destabilized. I knelt down on the table and screamed "stabilize dream!"

I had a False awakening. I can't remember the details of it but I woke up, and went around my house telling family members and friends about the awesome lucid dream I just had.

I was leaving school and walking to my bus when for no reason, my backpack got insanely heavy. I started dragging it towards the bus and blundering around.
I was almost to the bus and I yelled to the driver to just hold on for a second. But they closed the door and drove off without me. My backpack was light again and I started running after the bus. They stopped and to turn onto the main road and I was almost caught up with them but they drove away.
I started chasing them down the main road when I fell into this small cave. It was made out of dirt. I had to crawl though it in order to keep following the bus. But I woke up at this point.
Then I fell back into the dream and crawled though the cave some more when I woke up again. This time I decided to try and re-enter the dream lucid. It took a little longer the second time, and I experienced some hypoganoic hallucinations that I can't really remember in detail.
When I re-entered the dream, this time lucid, I managed to crawl out of the cave, but I think that my recall cut out or the dream ended because I cannot remember what happened after that.

My dad was driving me to school. I kept urging him to go faster. We were already late but he said he was hungry. So he pulled into a McDonlads drive though and ordered some mcnuggets or something. They gave him his food and he ate it really fast.
I told him that he had his food and he needed to get me to school or I was going to be late. But right when I thought we were going to leave he drove around and went though it again, ordered more food and ate it.
After he did this a couple times, He told me that I didn't have to go to school he was taking me to see some artist guy that he knew when he was younger or something. He started driving, and soon we arrived at this house.
It looked sort of like Falling Water but was really big and had a huge porch with this big party going on. I'm quite sure several other family members of mine were there.
Then someone introduced me to a dream character that I remember vividly. He had black hair, thick square glasses, pale skin, and was probably around 20-ish.
He was very smart and happy and someone told me that he was an artist who owned this estate and wanted to throw this party.
For awhile, me and him just sort of talked about life. I told him that I was practicing to be an artist just like him.

This dream does reveal that I am a huge art nerd. I draw comic strips, write stories, paint, etc.

Also, I am really looking forward to getting my drivers license in a few months. I am tired of these anxiety dreams. Then again, I'll probably still have them, I'll just be the one making myself late.

Well I finished last this very long, boring dream. I might come back and do a few edits later to this DJ later. I wrote this in a rush.

Fragment- I was at a store like Walmart and I was looking to buy some electronics components for a project I was working on. I eventually Asked an employee if he had any and if so where they might be.
He led me into this secret den between shelves that had like a rug, a sofa and two fake plants, as well as a TV. He had all of these drawers full of the components I was looking for. I started getting what I wanted when I realized the components were way overpriced. But I do remember the vividness of the dream was very high, especially when I looked at the resistor color codes.

So I was in a very large hangar or warehouse-like building. Inside of it were these great futuristic buildings. They were a dark-greyish with blue lights all over them. I can remember one of them being shaped like a pyramid.
The building had this sports car on it that went up and down this track. There was a wealthy looking man and several attractive women in the car. I implied that the women wanted to marry or be with this wealthy looking man. The man started to complain that the ride was boring, but the women said he should keep going on it.
Somehow I wound up at a drugstore in my town with my friend. We sort of hung around, not really able to decide if we wanted to buy anything really. We sort of picked out things and decided that we did not need them.
Eventually my Grandparents arrived and took me and my friend home. I can remember them talking a lot in the car but I cannot remember about what.
Then we got home and I sat down on the front porch. My friend started hoeing our flower garden in the front yard. He had this very unusual device that was sort of like two long sticks with a saw blade in between them The sticks sort of ran perpendicular to the blade.
My grandparents told me to sit down, and all of these plates of food started to appear. I can remember one having corn, another rice, one had a muffin, and one had a chicken strip. The plates sort of hovered around me.
I was going to try and eat some of the food when my friend told me he needed my help hoeing the garden. I got up and showed me that his device was in a hole so that the blade would "saw" parts of the garden removing weeds and stuff. I started to move it though the garden. Despite it's apparent weight and awkwardness it was very easy to pull though the garden.
When I was finished, the dream scene changed again. I was back in the hangar with futuristic building locations. But now there was some sort of cafe and my parents and some random DC were there.
I think I started to talk about lucid dreams with the random DC. This soon triggered lucidity, but I immediately woke up...Again. This is getting very frustrating.

Fragment- I was on my parent's bed. I started doing all of these weird stretches. For some reason I was extremely flexible in the dream. I was able to bend backwards and touch my feet to the back of my head at one point.

Fragment (Recalled at school, so I added it later)- I was at some kind of boot camp, doing this exercise where I had to walk over all of these parallel logs imbedded about halfway into the ground. I can remember running along the tops of the logs.

I was on my way to school. I was with a grandparent who I think was walking a random dog with them. We walked up to the center of our town and they told me that it was 7:26 and I had to be at school by 7:30 when my school is two miles away!
I asked them to take some weird random thing I was carrying. I can't remember what It was. They started to walk away, and I started walking towards school. Something started to feel just-not-right about what was going on. I soon did an RC and became lucid. But the dream immediately ended.

I only recalled this dream after seeing a comic strip in the newspaper this morning.

I can only remember one part of this dream, the part where I won first place. My dad had entered me in some sort of Art & Comic competition.

I was in some huge auditorium. They called me up as the first place winner, while showing my "work" on a huge movie screen behind the speaker. While I was walking up I got really nervous, because most of the things appearing on the screen weren't actually my work.
I specifically remember seeing some rage comics from the internet, as well as a random photograph of a skyscraper. When the speaker gave me the microphone,he told me to say what I wanted to the audience because I was the winner. I thought about telling everyone that this wasn't really my work and that I should just be disqualified. I should also tell them that my father entered me in this competition, and it was his fault because he did not check what work was actually mine.
For some reason, I did not tell the audience that, and I really felt stupid after not doing that. I just sort of walked off of the stage.

In our backyard, we have an old sandbox from when I was a kid. I'm 16 now and I don't use it anymore. So this spring my mother and I decided to grow potatoes and onions in there, since those plants like sandy soil.

Fragment- I went into my old sandbox and everything had grown a lot. The plants were far from mature, but they were certainly a lot bigger than they were now. I took one out of the ground and saw that there were several peanut-sized potatoes dangling from the roots. I then tried to put the plant back into the ground but for some reason it was a real hassle.

Fragment-I was out in my yard holding a curved stick. I was in my yard swinging it around like it was a Katana. I was perhaps bored or a little angry. I just hacked away at imaginary foes for a short while.

I slept over at my cousin's house last night. I can remember having several dreams last night, but my cousin woke me up by screaming and jumping around so all that I was able to recall was this:

I was in my front yard. It was obviously summertime, because everything was green and the trees had leaves on them. There was this guy. I can't remember very many details but I think that he was very short and had a beard. He told me about this giant wasp that I had to fight or something. He told me that I should not kill it or let it sting me, just fight it.
The next thing I knew I was running though my yard and there was a giant wasp chasing me. I can remember it having bright red stingers and a yellow-and black striped body. It was about 2-3 inches long.
At first all i could do was blow it away. I seemed to have a really strong breath that could not only blow the wasp away, but it would create winds that were blowing some of the leaves off of trees and stuff.
Eventually I picked up a big stick and stated whacking the wasp with it. I didn't want to touch the wasp with my hands otherwise it might sting me. My plan was to whack it and stun it so i could get away. I kept whacking it every time it came close but eventually I missed and it landed on my neck and stung me.
I felt a slow, aching pain spreading from my neck and I woke up.

I suppose this dream sort of goes in with being in a park/forest as a dream sign.