false awakening

At least according to the text I have in my dream journal. That means we are going back to the past again - my current recall is still fragmented, but I just finished my first ever 100 % recall-at-least-something-everyday-month. Gotta be happy.

My Longest, Best Quality Lucid Ever
Date: November 2nd, 2009
Lucid: Obviously
Method: DILD

This might be the clearest and longest lucid dream I had, but it's also a bit weird and doesn't actually have that much happening. Again "I just knew" that I wasn't inside my own body. I was in this town with my parent, as in parent of the guy whose body I was inside. I wasn't sure whether it was his mom or dad, as it seemed to shift from moment to moment. We went to some shop and for some reason the parent cheated me out of 20 cents of my own money.

The point of the whole trip to the town was to get this guy to driving school. I just decided to run away from that parent and I figured out that I could go to the guy who was my real life driver's instructor. In real life he wouldn't have probably taken me, as there was an incident IRL, but as I knew I wasn't in my own body, I knew I could go there. At this point I wasn't lucid yet, even if it would make sense that I were if I already know that I'm not inside my own body.

I was running up some hill and alongside the street there were some houses that had a carefully decorated facade. I found this odd given that I knew the town where I was in and there shouldn't be houses like that there. I decided to RC and got lucid. Part of me wanted to go along with the dream's plot, just to see where it goes, so I started proceeding further towards this driving school. I ran right into the traffic, knowing that even if I get ran over, it can't really damage me. Damn, thinking afterwards I ought to have done couple more RCs just to make sure.

I come to the corner of some building and remembered the monthly challenge of our forum. First I still decided to try out my powers by stopping all the traffic. Everything froze like I would have pressed the pause button. I got drunk with power and started shouting "I! AM! GOD!!!"

My forum's challenge that month was to meet your dream guide. So I just walked along in the empty town, that was still frozen by my pause-button, and started screaming, that my dream guide better show up.

Ground started to rumble, like something was running towards me. I was behind a building's corner and I heard how it ran past me. "I'm here", I shouted behind it.

I had wondered before what kind of dream guide I would like to have, but in the end I just decided that I wanted my subconscious to surprise me. It certainly did it.

My dream guide emerged. It was.... WOODY FUCKIN WOODPECKER. Like what the fuck? How the hell did that happen? I never even watch Woody Woodpecker, yet it's my dream guide. That's messed up on so many levels. My mind created an incredible 3d version of it (or should I refer to it as him?) as well, I was impressed about that, but still, what a mindfuck. Needless to say, I obviously don't believe any of these dream guide nonsense anymore.

So anyway, I asked Woody whether he'd help me have more lucids in the future and help me know myself better, like it read in the Dreamviews (oh my god, this is comedy gold... I couldn't even come up with anything as good as this). Woody was similar to my DCs usually, he didn't talk much.

I don't remember what happened to Woody, but given that I already did the challenge and met my dream guide, there was only one thing in my mind - sex. So I found myself a girl and had her give me a bj. I wouldn't normally go into the details in these kinds of things, well, not here anyway, but it felt so good this time that I came in like four seconds and was more intense than anything I've experienced in real life. Normally dream sex doesn't feel pretty much anything for me.

But yeah, I had gotten off so that part of me was satisfied (and for those of you curious, NO, I didn't wake up with messy pants), but the dream was still going on. Next I tried to burn my own house just after getting a random idea. Again, might be wise to make couple of RCs before doing shit like that, I don't think "But I though it was a dream" is going to be satisfactory explanation for the insurance company after committing arson to your own house. Anyway, the house didn't burn very well, so that's a relief.

I had a false awakening and then the nose test didn't work as it should have. For some reason I wasn't able to breath through it despite still being in a dream. Nothing noteworthy happened after that.

Still, kind of sad that this still probably the best and longest lucids I ever had. I've had a couple lucids later that could challenge this, but I think this should be the average, not among the best.

I'm going to write a bit longer dream today from the past - the recall still isn't good, but at least I've returned to monophasic sleeping lately.

Mom's Diner - Just Kill Me Already
Date: August 21th, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: DILD

I thought I was at home, but there were some guys from the army doing some kind of ice...thingie. There was a pool made of concrete and the guys were pouring ice-cold water into it for it to freeze. For some reason I decided to jump into the water. I didn't feel the coldness, but the water started to freeze and resist my movement right away. I asked the army guys to help me up and luckily they did help me out of the pool. I was wondering whether I should help the guys in this freezing thing they were doing, but then they started talking:
"Have you tasted mom's delicacies yet?"
"Nope."
"Well go have a taste!"

I had changed into army uniform and the place overall resembled the garrison I had been a year earlier in reality. "Mom" was apparently some diner runner there. She seemed to be really liked. She actually looked like one lady that indeed did work in the army in reality. Nobody called her mom though.

Still I had not actually seen her in the dream though (just getting ahead of myself). I was at the door of the place and there was some kind of candle rack (is it said like that?) that I managed to accidentally cause to fall. Actually this resembles again a real-life situation - in the army I did back into a flower stand and the jar where the flower were broke. I guess that embarrassing situation left strong marks into my subconscious. Anyway the "Mom" was there looking at me like I'm some kind of madman. I apologized for tipping that rack over and was relieved that I didn't break anything.

I wandered around the place a bit. There were plenty of free tables, but I didn't find any place where to order anything. I ventured even further and then realized, that the "diner", wasn't any diner but more like a department store. There were a lot of small shops and stuff. For example there was Mom's kiosk, where you could get some food for travel, at least according to it's slogan. I kept zig-zagging the place. Finally I ended up in the other side of the place and went out from there.

People were going to some stadium outside. It resembled Berlin's Olympic Stadium, at least according to my notes, even though I have no idea what Berlin's Olympic Stadium looks like. The place was shutting down because Mom was going there. I gotta say that all of the people just talking about this mom made me very curious.

I went back into the "diner"/department store and looked for the kiosk. I planned to buy couple of chocolate bars to at least have something to eat, even if not Mom's acclaimed food. But no, the place was just shutting down. One of my former classmates was there gathering up things. What, he now works there? My brain works in a fucked up way sometimes... I felt like stealing the chocolate bars, because of this unfortunately timed closing time, but I ended up deciding against it.

That was when I realized, that I had been in the store for a long time. I started to wonder whether I should be back with the dudes at the concrete pool who were doing the freezing shit. Wow, amazing consistency in my dreams. This is the kind of dreams I'd like to enjoy while lucid, dreams where everything holds together, is logical and stays consistent. Too much to ask for, I guess.

Because even while this wasn't yet lucid, the logic and consistency of it sort of died right there. I went out of the store and where was I? At the local community center's front yard. I realized that this wasn't possible. Lucidity was inevitable at that point. The dream also (unsuprisingly) really started to lose it's quality.

There's a road going in front of it and I saw multiple trucks coming there. They really drove in wildly and had the trucks slide sideways because of turning too much, etc. Some tough-looking dudes came out of the trucks when they finally had stopped. The gang surrounded me. They were armed with assault rifles, though hilariously some of them had that red end that toy guns have at the end of the barrels.

They started acting all tough on me. Me being lucid I had zero fear, so I just acted tough back. Shame I don't remember the dialogue exactly. He was pointing his rifle at me and I just dared him to shoot me. I really pushed him. I ordered him to shoot me. I wanted to die. Yet he just kept threatening, instead of doing it. I realized he was not going to do it unless I do something more drastic.

I grabbed one of his gang members under my arm and threatened him. "Unless you shoot me, your friend is gonna suffer!"

Instead of shooting me like any sane thug would have done, he just reversed it. He said that my friend is gonna die if I don't stop - and as "my friend" he referred to the guy I had just grabbed. What the fuck? That's the worst illogicality I've ever seen in a dream. Dude, it's your friend, not mine.

I resiliently kept pissing him off so he finally obliged me and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked. It was empty. He didn't even have ammo this whole time? What a retard! Besides, this already happened in my earlier dream (I just realized this). I guess empty guns are a dream sign for me. Then again, any guns at all are a dream sign for me. Anyway, I figured that I'm not going to get killed here, so I tried to pull out a gun from my pocket using passive control, just "knowing" it is there. It didn't work.

I tried to throw myself into the ground again as I noticed that the dream was crumbling fast. I ended up into my bed in a false awakening. I did like a million reality checks and by all means I should have realized I was still dreaming, but I still went to the kitchen to look for some more evidence. Too bad I was in a tight timeframe anyway, as I woke up then.

My recall stays fragmented and I seem to not have any weapons against that. I usually only remember the last bit before waking up. Still, at least something every day. So let's head back to the past again. We have now reached July 2009, my best ever lucid month - 8 lucids in a month. To make that record, I had to have a lucid right on the first night of July. So let's delve into it.

Sex-filled Lucid with Bananas and Hairy-assed Fat Dudes <- My best headline so far.
Date: July 1st
Lucid: Yes
Method: DILD

My phone was calling people on it's own. It was possessed. It called to some unknown guy and then other unknown voice insulted the one who answered. Answerer got really upset for being called and insulted in the middle of the night. I was trying to explain that it wasn't me and that some unknown source is controlling my phone. I doubt he bought it.

I was panicking. I tried to shut it down. It restarted on it's own. I tried removing the battery. It didn't work. I was really getting desperate, until all the sudden I came to my senses. "Wait a minute... This kind of thing can't happen... I must be dreaming."

After the nose test confirmed that I was dreaming, and me being a raging dick, the logical conclusion was that I'd proceed to having some hot lucid sex. Unfortunately it wasn't that hot, in fact it didn't feel like anything. So after a quickie I decided that I'd try to do the challenge that was in effect in our forum. It was still the same as my last lucid - try to ask some kind of life advice, wisdom etc. from one of our real life buddies. So I decided to again get my hands to my buddy Niko.

Again I used passive control and just presumed that he would for some reason be in the room next to our shower - he indeed was. What's this thing with Niko and our shower? Why it seemed that I always found him near there? What was he doing there? Well, all I know is that he had a rake on his hands, so I guess he was raking the leaves... inside the house. Okay, it doesn't make any sense.

Niko's dream self was pretty annoying, far more annoying than his real self. When I started talking to him, he said jokingly that he could hit me in the head with that rake. I just calmly answered "you might as well do that, as this is only a dream." He didn't react to that. I lead the conversation to our forum thread and to the challenge so that it was natural for me to ask the question.
"So how you do you pick up a ton of women like you do?" I finally asked.
"Yeah, I certainly do", He answered smugly. That was no answer. Idiot.
"Yeah yeah, but why?!" I continued.
"Well", Niko started and got more serious, "it depends on the location etc..."

I guess that's true. To pick up tons of women, you gotta be near tons of women. Now that the challenge and sex were both done, I continued by simply being curious about the world around me. I tasted some bananas I ramdomly found. They tasted the usual, maybe a bit more lame than usual. Then I proceeded to have more sex. Yeah, I'm a raging dick. Some nude, hairy fat dude was wandering in the background during the act. I guess I'm fucked up. Also I started concentrating too much on the woman's breast and they turned into this mutilated mess of details as my brains kept twisting them. I needed to look away.

Finally I woke up. Well, that had lasted pretty long anyway, I consoled myself. I was also excited to go post this into our forum. I routinely still did the nose test. Wait a minute, I'm not even awake yet! I guess that's the difference between me then and now, I now struggle doing reality tests routinely straight when I wake up.

I wasn't sure if I'd remember the first instance with Niko, so I decided to be safe and go ask him something more. He was still there in the room next to the showers.
"So what are you exactly doing in here?" I asked to sate my curiosity.
"I'm cleaning", he answered.
"Yeah, but why are you cleaning here?"
"I'm cleaning!" He said with more force.

Dream ended there and I woke up.

Nothing particularly worth remembering last night, so we'll delve into "classics" again. In case somebody's confused, I do have a dream journal where I obviously write every dream down, in finnish - I just translate only interesting/lengthy entries into this one.

Dark Future
Date: January 28th, 2009
Lucid: No

This started with a fragment of me fondling some girl's breast, thus the header. The girl just laughed at me for being so gentle. I guess girls like it rough. Soon enough the whole dream transformed something completely different and one of the most memorable non-lucids I've ever had.

I found myself in some kind of electronic control system for laser turrets. My brother was in the cockpit of the next turret and in the sky enemy fighters flew all around. I've written that it was the final battle between good and evil, so perhaps that's how I felt about it at the time.

I managed to recall the controls of the turret quite accurately. Two joysticks moved the turret around, though I don't know why they needed to have two of them, one would suffice you'd think. Moving and firing was easy, but the problem for me was aiming - there was no way for me to actually see into the sky while I was in the cockpit. In the end I just decided to pull the triggers and keep the laser firing blindly into the sky. At least there's a distant chance of hitting something.

That wasn't a good idea though. I guess the turret's mechanics couldn't take such continuous firing, as the it jammed, or something like that. It ceased to fire. I pressed all the buttons, but nothing worked. It was time to bail out of there as I had no means of defending myself.

Outside the situation wasn't much better, as there were dangerous human-destroying robots looming all around. I just knew that, I don't remember actually seeing one immediately after leaving my turret. I was still wandering the streets and I thought to myself, that even if I hide into a basement of some building, the robots must have some kind of life-tracking device and they'd inevitably find me. I felt like I was already dead. Despair filled me.

I didn't see these terminators around, though. Somehow I still felt threatened. I soon saw and old, abandoned warehouse. A classic place to hide. I didn't hesitate when I walked in there. Maybe I should have, because there was some addict/drunk - a guy who seemed dangerous anyway. He wasn't angry though, but since I was in this threatened headspace already, I was suspicious of him.

We began talking about something. I don't remember what it was about. All the sudden I grabbed the guy's arm and tried to twist it. First one way, then I switched to the other. It didn't work. The guy just got upset and shot himself with some syringe. Then he attacked me. The details of the fight are out of my recall, but I did manage to knock him out - perhaps even kill him. Makes me kind of seem like a villain as I was the one who attacked first, but still, he did seem dangerous. Better to strike first then.

I wasn't out of the trouble yet, though. While fighting I had seen another addict in the next room, but he was apparently so high or something, that he completely ignored us. I was leaving the place when three other addicts came in from the same door I had come in. Well, now I was in trouble. They saw the body of their buddy behind me and they weren't happy.

The addicts surrounded me. I was scared to death by this point - remember I had no idea that this was a dream. It felt very real to me. I was only thinking that I had to survive somehow. I was thinking about performing some kind of wall-jump to go around them, but I guess I was a little bit desperate. This time they were the ones to attack first. One of them threw a punch at me. I managed to partially block him, so that my face only received a touch. Still I let out a loud "Oof" sound as the fist hit me.

The same guy seemed to stop and think for a moment. Then he threw another punch. This time it got nowhere near to me. Yet again I let out the "Oof" sound, even it didn't hit me at all. All the addicts started to laugh at me. I still felt very threatened and rightly so. I guess the laughing distracted them enough and I took the chance; I ran out between two of them.

While I was running I already knew I had survived, unless they have guns or something. I was, and still am in at least a solid shape. I can outrun some addicts any day.

The outside of the warehouse was similar to what it was when I went in. I've described it as being similar to the opposing side of counter-terrorist's starting point in the map cs_compound in Counter-Strike: Source, without the containers. Wow, that was a terrible sentence. Anyway, let's move on. I was going around the warehouse clockwise, but I again ran into trouble - two addicts coming right at me! I supposed they were all buddies of each other. I turned back to round the house counter-clockwise. The addict still at the door of the warehouse behind me shouted to them: "Throw a bottle at him!"

The other of the two guys that just came at me turned around and started going around the warehouse clockwise, apparently trying to meet me at the other side and surround me again. When I emerged from the other side of the house, I continued straight after the wall ended. The guy coming from the other side appeared a little behind me. He threw a bottle at me. It was a small bottle of 7up, you know, plastic bottle. Seriously? I doubt plastic bottle would have caused much damage to me. There was even some liquid in it still, so I even considered picking it up so that I'd have something to drink. I decided against it in the end.

"Hahaha, you didn't hit me", I mocked him while I continued to run away. I shouted some other insults as well to him, but I don't remember those anymore.

So I got away. While I was easing my step, I was visioning myself returning there to revenge. Someday... Apparently I thought myself as some kind of action hero.

I ran into the "City". Now City was an interesting place. Only the Chosen People were let in there, and I wasn't one of them. So as I approached the place, the special forces started firing me. Gee, I'm really not having good luck. From danger to danger. From addicts throwing plastic bottles at me to special forces firing with guns at me. Some "getting away".

Somehow I survived being fired at. All of these Chosen People of the future dressed exactly alike. They had long black leather-coats, sunglasses and they all were bald. The coats were open and the clothing beneath it was dark as well. So it was hard for me to mix into them. I wonder how the hell I didn't get found and shot.

I figured that if I just shaved my head (I have long hair) and dressed alike, I could fool them. That was my long-term plan.

I don't remember why - or how - but I went to some hospital. There some professor started telling me all kinds of things. I guess he was the exposure needed at this point so that I'd know how this world works. The professor told me about "The Perfect Race of Humans", that they had created. Apparently the Chosen People. On the monitor there was 3d-model of the head of these humans of the future. They had long skulls and small noses. Big forehead. Those were the details I noticed particularly.

For some reason I started to think about what would be the perfect amount of humans from which the current (as in future as the dream was set there) segment of the humanity had descended on. For some arbitrary reason I figured 10 000 would be good amount. Then I proceeded to think that that's why the killer robots were probably around. They were used to get rid of rest of the humanity, so that the Chosen People would be all there is eventually.

That's pretty grim vision of future, but at least I survived. It was nightmarish dream, but at the same time it still was totally awesome. One of the best I've had ever.

It ended in a false awakening where I was in my room, but after that that part is boring. So let's end it here.

Hi. I'm Jakro. That's it, let's go into the dream... No, really maybe you want to know briefly who the hell is this.

I've been dabbling with lucid dreaming since about 2005, but only started it taking more seriously in 2009. At first my results were encouraging, peaking in July 2009 when I had 8 lucid dreams in a month. I was like "holy shit, this is awesome, and it's only going to get better. Fast forward a couple of years and I'm like "what happened? It was supposed to be awesome!" During the past year my total lucid count was 14. That's pathetic! Worst thing is, that they've all been short and poor in quality. My last quality LD was probably back in 2009. So what did really happen?

Simply put I started coasting more and more and didn't put in as much effort as in the first few months. I was lazy. I've not made concerted effort for lucid dreams in a while. I've kept dream journal and still am keeping, but my recall has been only so-so. The times I've actually put in some effort have been mostly frustrating due to lack of results.

But that's about to stop. This year, I'm going to have my best year of lucid dreams ever. To support that effort I'm starting to write a DJ here as well. I've been lurking in Dreamviews for quite a while, occasionally posting here and there, but not really being active. I have had a DJ in my own forum in Finnish, but I'm going to make a habit of writing here as well every evening to get my minds focused back into lucid dreams in night.

For the most part I'm going to write last night's dream here, but I still have often nights, where I don't remember much. So then I'm going to instead revisit some of my "classic" dreams from over the years put them up on here.

We'll start with one of those right away, as I didn't remember much from last night.

Jakro "Classics" - My First Recorded Lucid
Date: January 31th, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: WILD

It's funny that my first lucid was WILD because I've only had three of them over the course of last three years. This is not really that special dream except that it was, you know, the first one. There have been some short ones before that but I've not recorded them, so this is what you get.

What happened prior it was that I was seriously sleep-deprived from staying up over 24 hours. My sleeping rhythm was completely upside down, so I had to stay up for a long stretch to fix it. In the afternoon I tried to watch soccer while tired, but fell asleep. I woke up four hours later and get up to move to bed to get the rest of my sleep in. I had been reading about lucid dreaming a lot and I was aware of WILD technique. I knew that I was so tired, that nothing was going to stop me from falling asleep (and given that it was still kind of early to go in bed, I wouldn't even had minded if I wouldn't), so I tried my hardest to stay conscious through the stages of falling asleep.

Luckily for me they were pretty short and I did indeed fall asleep. The hypnagologic stage was short and I soon found myself in my bed in complete darkness. I had stayed calm, but a bit excited during the experiences in the hypnagologic state, but I didn't know whether I woke up or not. I had felt shaking during the hypnagologic state and then as it ceased I had seen pictures and thought to myself that "I'm totally tripping balls" (that's the exact wording on my journal).

But yeah, I was laying in my bed in dark room. I got up and felt how everything seemed real enough. I tried turning on the light. It didn't work. A-ha! I had just read that often in people's dreams lights don't work. I was becoming increasingly sure that I was indeed dreaming. But I'm always very careful with this, as the stuff you often do in LDs is either illegal or lethal, usually both.

Not this time though. Looking at the clock and away and then seeing the time transform completely confirmed for me that it was a dream, but I wasn't prepared for this. I didn't expect to become lucid so soon after starting seriously trying! I was so in awe of the dreamworld, that I mostly just observed. Not that there's anything bad in that, I've done that often since and it's fun on it's own, just to look at the vast and complicated world and detail that your brain has created.

As for reality checks, I wasn't done though. I did one final test - the nose test. All the doubt faded... Well, almost all. I ventured to our kitchen and everything looked like there someone was amidst of cleaning the room. Everything was stacked up in one place. I went to my parents bedroom, still not 100 % sure that I was indeed dreaming.

I walked into the room. My sister and my mom were there. They were watching television. Both of them had matching camouflage jeans on and I've never seen anything like that on either of them. My sis was also a few years younger than what she really was at the time. 0kay, finally I was sure that I'm dreaming, stuff like that just doesn't happen. Then I woke up.

Nothing spectacular in the end, but an encouraging start to my lucid dreaming journey that stalled a year later and started stagnating. I have some more awesome dreams to share later and hopefully I'll start dreaming ones as well. Anyway, I'll go to sleep now. This post at least put my mind into the right place for sleeping.