lucid

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.

Another fragment recall last night, on to the classic of the day.

Dimension Portals
Date: October 13th, 2009
Lucid: Yes

Once again I was in a threatening situation. Some guy was holding me at gun-point and I hoped so intensely that it was a dream, that it turned into a one. All the sudden I teleported to my living room. There was no need for reality checks - I immediately realized that it indeed was a dream. I also had an idea on what to do right away - the challenge in our forum back then was to enter a tv-show's of your choice reality. My choice was South Park, as that was something I obsessed back then.

I did stop to talk to some random little girl that was in the living room, but then I proceeded with my plan. I went out, towards our barn. For some reason outside was mostly dark, but there were some illuminated flowers there as well. I just passed them by, but as I went by them, one yellow flower appeared in my chest pocket.

Once at the door of the barn, my brother was there. I am no stranger to asking help from DCs, so I told him that I need to get to the South Park. He gestured me to follow him inside. There were some rectancular, light blue energy fields - dimension portals. My brother lead me to one of them and told that it will transport me to South Park. He went in first and vanished. I followed him through the portal and... it didn't work. I just went through the blue field. I felt this odd, cold feeling, but it didn't transport me to anywhere. I was sitll in the barn.

I tried going through different portals, entering them in different postures, etc. Nothing worked. Finally I noticed that there was one port on the floor. I dropped through it and poof! I was still in the barn... something had changed though. I felt like I had travelled through time - in to the future... 1000 years into the future. There were some people there that put an odd contraption on my head, so that I couldn't hear or see anything - they feared that I would become distraught for being so far in the future. I guess that makes sense, give me some time to take it in before exposing me into the drastic changes of the civilization.

It would have been interesting to eventually see where the world had gone to in my dream's future, but unfortunately I woke before seeing anything more.

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.

Same old story with the recall, only fragments. I guess being biphasic at the moment is capping the limit of my recall. I'm staying asleep so short times that proper long dreams can't form. According to my Zeo Sleep Monitor my longest REM-periods happen a little bit after five hours, so it's no wonder that I'm not reaching my best with 3-4 hours at a time. I'll still keep this up, we'll see if it improves once I get more used to it.

In the meanwhile let's check back to one fucked up dream I had a while back. One that proves that being lucid and having a nightmare are not exclusive.

Killing My Mom
Date: July 27th, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: DILD

I don't remember what triggered the lucidity, but after confirming it with reality check I was semi-excited. I had read bunch of stuff back then about grounding the lucidity using touch, so I tried licking a screw that I found. I didn't notice any change in the quality of the dream.

Next I tried to put the living room's light's on as the dream seemed a bit dark. Obviously the lights wouldn't work. I called out my mom to put them on. I mean surely the dream character would manage to put them on? I don't remember what we exactly said to each other, but she didn't do it in the end. So I did the next best alternative. I started fucking smashing the lamps into pieces. I guess I am more random when lucid than normally in dreams. Surprisingly that was such a strong stimulation that it strengthened the dream. I think it also got brighter, ironically.

My mom got upset about the broken lamps though. This sent the dream into a downward spiral. Her negative emotions (that were actually mine, since this is my dream after all), made me angrier and I started venting it on the furniture, as I knew it was a dream. I don't usually smash the TV like I did then when I'm mad. No, really, I don't do that shit. So anyway mom started screaming at me for such behavior and I didn't want to hear that shit.

I went to my brother's room. There's a big window there. I jumped through the glass to get out. Yeah, I sure like destruction. Why take the door, when you can smash yourself through two layers of glass? I ran to the woods next to our house to get away. The atmosphere of the dream had turned into really dark and depressing. I was frightened and conscious of it. I knew that I had to get rid of the fear because I knew that it would affect the dream. Besides, what's there to fear, I knew it was a dream after all!

I tried joking around with my mom. I said to her that she is surprisingly agile for such considering how big she is (she is overweight). I guess that's not the best joke to say someone to calm him down in reality, but as it amused me and my mom was just a manifestation of my mind, that could have worked. But it didn't.

Confrontation was inevitable. The fight was short and I killed my mom with a simple hit on the head. I was relieved, but still thought how fucked up that whole thing was. Relief was only temporary though, as my sis came after me next and she wasn't happy. I was like "you gotta be kidding me?" Do I have to kill my family members one by one in a lucid? That's some fucked up shit right there. I tried to convince her to calm down, but I said the last words aloud in my bed, as I had woken up. Thank Lord.

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.

Poor recall continues, but at least I've managed to recall something every single night this year so far. But we have plenty of dreams to look into in the meanwhile from the past three years, so I'll continue with those. This one's very basic though.

Just a General Lucid
Date: May 23rd, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: DILD

I attained lucidity after WBTB by making a reality check after noticing something was off.

I was outside and it was winter. My brother was laying in the snow and I threatened to give him a snow bath. I didn't do it though. I looked inside through a big window in our house. There were some weird duded. They made the peace gesture with their fingers. I answered back with my hand, then turned it into \,,/ and then reversed the peace gesture into something less cordial.

The dream was fading though. I tried to spin to restabilize it, but it didn't work. Then I tried throwing myself into the ground back first. Boom! That worked and the dream got clear again. Crystal clear, should I say.

It was still dark and wintery. I went inside the house and it seemed like there was somekind of party or celebration going on. I presumed it was Christmas, but didn't delve into it any further, as I remember the challenge - as in the monthly lucid dreaming challenge in my own forum. It was to get my hands to one of my friends, Niko and ask him something.

I relied on the passive control to make him appear. I started shouting "Niko are you there?" to the toilet. "Yeah, I'm here", my brother answered sarcastically. Somehow he had managed already to get in.
"Have you seen Niko?" I asked, but I was given no answer. I kept going and trusted that he is bound to appear if I keep up.

Finally I found Niko near our shower. He seemed unnaturally happy. I went right into it.
"As you remember Niko, there's the challenge in our forum. So could you tell me some kind of advice for life or something."

I don't remember the exact answer, but the message was, that "if you do something, do it right."
"YOU BETTER CRAM IT SO YOU DON'T FORGET IT", Niko advised then, shouting manically. I went it through once in my head before moving on.

Now that the challenge was out of the way I decided to find out what day it was in the dream. I went to kitchen and asked my mom. She seemed tense, but finally answered to me: 5th of June 2010. What? It is summer? Then why is it so dark and why is there winter outside?

There was no signs of dream fading, but I wasn't used to dreams lasting so long. So I decided to stabilize it further just in case. I touched all kinds of surfaces and then found some bottle on the floor. I picked it up and took a sip. Eww, it tasted bad!

Finally I realized that just wandering around in the home isn't exactly what I want to do in a lucid dream. I can do it enough in the waking life as it is.

I went outside, started running and then just leaped off the ground. It was awesome. Gravity was in effect, but I could do long and high jumps, much higher than the treetops.

But by the time I dropped I had exited my body and I was losing my lucidity as well. No I was instead playing some game where the character flies with a hang glider. Soon he hit the ground and was surrounded by enemies. He was filled with arrows.

I then woke up from my game death in front of some kind of firing squad. I told the guy next to me that I'm not going out without a fight. I moved my hand to my sword. What, I had a sword now?

It turned out to be duel to the death. I was up against some kind of... maintenance guy. What the hell is up with these dudes? He seemed kind of tough, but I just told him to go fix a lamppost. The fight never commenced - I woke up before that

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.