The Mind is Power; My Dream Journal

I realized I did this in the wrong forum so I'm reposting it here. The other thread is in "Lucid Dreaming Discussion" I believe. It can be deleted.

So I've been trying since I joined this forum to attain my first LD. I stuck to the regiment most people put on here for learning how to DILD. I bought LaBerges book and read it and did everything by the book. I kept a DJ as religiously as I do anything.

And I gave up and for the last four months I've spared little to no thoughts for LDing. I kind of pushed it out of my head. Until this morning.

I was dreaming I was walking down a hallway in school with a friend of mine that had passed away. I must have realized that's impossible and I yelled out, volunteerily (I remember thinking to say it), "I'm dreaming!" and immediately I did a nose pinch reality check. It was the weirdest feeling I've ever had. I could breathe through my pinched nose and closed mouth. That feeling alone, something impossible to replicate in waking life, was worth all of the work and desire.

But I wanted more and I knew I was getting ridiculously excited. There was this weird duality where I could feel my real life hands and body and I felt that it was numb but I was literally shaking in my dream body with excitement. I decided that I needed to stabilize the dream so I tried to rub my hands (And I'm amazed I even remembered to to do this) but everything seemed like it was moving in slow motion. So I gave up on that and tried to fly and that too felt like I was swimming against the current and under water. Everything was so slow. And then I must have fallen back into the dream because that's all I remember.

And the craziest thing of this all? I didn't even REMEMBER I had a lucid dream until I was halfway to school. I almost swerved on the road with the sudden complete vivid memory and it totally changed my mood and my day. I feel better than I have in a long time.

It's unreal. It really is. I used to always ask questions on this forum like: "How does it feel? Do you remember it in real time?" And that's really hard to answer because I now know how it feels. It's just an otherworldly ethereal feeling.

So I'm really excited. I'm hoping this opens the floodgates and makes it easy for me. But the only thing I'm worried about is that this was a random DILD. I did no exercises for it. I haven't even been doing reality checks. Should I get back on a regiment?

Or You Could do it the Easy Way...

Okay, here's my biggest secret. You really don't need any techniques at all to have a lot of DILDs! (I bet some people who read all that stuff are gonna be mad now. Haha. Sorry you guys.)

Even if you're not a natural, you can teach yourself to think like one. If you can do that, you'll have LDs all the time without really trying.

The thing that works best is simply awareness. And I really mean awareness.

Most people go through their days thinking about where they need to be going next, and what they need to be doing, and wondering where they should be eating. They spend very little time being truly aware of their surroundings.

This is where that meditation stuff really helps, by the way! Meditation teaches the kind of awareness I'm talking about.

The easy way to LD is a state of constant awareness. Make your day one big long reality check. Only instead of a specific RC, begin to question everything around you at once. Quiet your mind, and simply be aware of your state of consciousness. Be aware of the FEELING of LIVING and being AWAKE. It's a much different feeling than being asleep or even astral projecting.

I believe that many natural LDers do this unconsciously. They just "know" when they are dreaming because they know it feels different. This also may explain why naturals have a hard time explaining exactly how they get lucid. They don't really GET lucid...they ARE lucid every moment of the day and night.

Also, during the day, remember that reality, too, is subjective. In a way we human beings are always dreaming, because our minds are always interpreting what our senses are gathering, trying to make sense of what's around us. Is reality objective, or is reality simply the interpretation we get in the end? Human beings are truly unable to examine the objective world completely.

By the way, if you already have problems distinguishing reality from a dream, or have schizophrenia, or any other serious mental conditions I DO NOT advise you do this, because if your mind is unstable the last thing you should be doing is questioning reality or considering reality a dream.

The best way to learn about awareness is to pick up a book on meditation, Buddhism, or Taoism. Meditation is a tool that can teach you what true mindfulness feels like. The real trick to getting lucid is to keep that feeling of awareness going on all the time, even if it's not always completely conscious.


Awareness Addendum:

The key to constant awareness comes from the fundamental idea that all reality is another facet of a dream. Time is illusionary. Today will soon fade and cease to exist. Everything you know in this world can be changed in an instant, at any time, for any reason. This is just the same way your dreams are. This is what Dream Yoga teaches. All things are illusionary, all things change, and all things fade. This is the reality of existence.

-Everyone has some ideas as to what they want to do in their lucid dreams. So think of a lucid dream that you want to have tonight.


Got an idea? Now that you've thought of a good dream, try visualizing it. It helps to use real memories....for example, imagine that you're tasting the chocolate, and at the same time remember how chocolate tasted the last time you had some. Decide what the buildings look like, who will be there, what you will do, and make it all as detailed as possible. Basically, daydream.

-Remember that every moment today passes, becoming nothing but memory, as a dream. All things are illusionary, and all things in constant flux.

Keep in mind that right now, this reality, is only another form of dream. Keep this in mind as often and as long as possible. So when you do reality checks (hopefully frequently, since RCing a lot during the day can help ease you into a constant state of awareness), try to think about some of these things.

The day before yesterday I had zero recall/too lazy to remember to write it. Last night however I did remember a dream:

I'm in some sort of church with my buddy Phil. It's very empty and there's only a few of us per pew sitting around. We're all kids. A man is walking up and down the aisles telling us to perform some sort of psychic test. Our first test is to lay back and go to sleep while staying conscious (Ie: lucid dreaming! I don't know why this didn't kickstart me to being lucid.) and in my dream I do it and I get super excited.

Flash forward to Leah and I walking down these steps into a sort of greasy basement/kitchen. We walk around and as we are doing so I'm trying to put the moves on her. Needless to say: I am rebuffed.

I've been scrapping around for ideas to begin some creative writing and I had this dream last night and it was awesome and actually gave me some ammo to start writing again.

My dream opens up with me playing football in my living room. I keep going out for passes but dropping them. Finally I demand one grown to me and I go up for it and get destroyed but almost catch it.

I dreamt that Leah and i were hanging out in our house when Caleb and Sasha came over. For some reason when they knocked Marc answered and told them I busy. I ran past him and let them in.

Immediately i could tell something was wrong. Caleb looked agitated. He asked me immediately why I hadn't been taking his companies phone calls or emails or paying my bill on the new grill I bought. I told him I hadn't bought one and that I don't know what he's talking about. He seems reluctant to believe me but he eventually seems to. Sasha leaves and I head back to the bedroom to explain to Leah what happened. Caleb says he is going to use our restroom but I don't hear or I ignore him.

So then for some reason I start explaining to Leah the issue and that something is very wrong. I'm suspicious of Caleb and I tell her so, loudly. I hear the bathroom toilet flush and curse at myself thinking he may have heard me. So I walk out to the living room with a small bat in my hands and nonchalantly confront him. He ends up leaving but I know it isn't for good.

And then I know that I have to do something. Some sort of test or the consequences will be terrible. Leah walks into the dining room and sits on the floor only to cut herself on a toothpick. She insists it's no big deal.

There's a dream time jump and suddenly I'm with a group of people but I know we are in the alternate world. I know that while here we have to perform a certain number of tasks before we head back. If we head back without finishing them then people will die. One of these tasks is for a man to slowly flip cards on a wall. I watch as he does it and I'm struck by a flash of images. In an other world every time a cars flips this demon gets stronger. I demand he flip them back. As he flips them back the images flash again but it's of the demon turning less and less dangerous.

I then turn around to keep track of the other people with me and it's then that I realize the double edge sword of having more allies with me. With more people there's a better chance of failure. While I'm looking around I'm trying to keep track of where Caleb is. I'm sure he has something to do with everything going on.

For some reason I'm holding a saber and I realize that it truly isn't real so I set it aside. I see a scimitar hanging in the air and I snag it. It feels pleasantly heavy. Real. I put it through my belt loop and continue my rounds. I return back to this big conference room and ask of everyone if they are ready and absolutely positive they finished their tasks. I'm sweating and freaking out but everyone says yes.


And then Mike and I are pulling up to Kyles house. He is the drummer for SIB. I pull into a gravel road that splits the collection of houses down the middle. It's dark out. The lights are on in the house but something feels off so Mike agrees to go check it out while I wait in the car. He does. I wake up.

I've pretty much figured out that I'm able to have my most clear dreams within my last two hours or so of sleep. So perhaps I should WBTB then...

Went to a big music festival Saturday night and I ended up staying out until 3:30 and not falling asleep until past 4am. I got up at 9:30 and couldn't remember anything but I'm not too surprised or disheartened. I feel like any given night could be the night

Last night I had a dream (after WBTB) that I had gone into the restroom. Once in there I go to the urinal and behind me I notice two guys just sorta watching me... Whatever. I finish my business and head out of the bathroom and as I round this dividing wall (that separates the bathroom from the hallway to the door) some dude jumps me and starts beating the crap outta me. I wake up and I can't move for a split second and then suddenly I'm throwing myself up and almost off of the bed as the SP loosens.

Trippy stuff.

Last night I didn't really even bother trying to recall my dreams. It was my last night with my wife before she left to go on vacation with her parents for a week so I just didn't bother. I had a small fragment that I did remember enough to jot down on my iPod though.

Hopefully this next week, as I'll have the bed to myself, I'll make some great strides.

I don't know what I did right last night but I woke up three separate times and each time I had a really lengthy dream recalled. Lengthy at least for me, that is. I hope this is a precursor to things to come. I would love to experience my first LD.

I come to in the back of some truck on some highway. We are speeding down it and I notice we are being chased by another truck. This one has a yellow cell in the bed of it and it says "jail" on it. A friend of mine with black hair (who I've never met) is driving. We race away in an awesome chase and manage to pull over and we both jump out and run.

Now we are in some sort of cafeteria and my friend looks depressed. I'm trying to explain to him that they chased us because we don't belong in this world and that it isn't the normal one. He keeps getting more and more mad even though I'm trying my hardest to be nice.

He finally eases up on me and we make some sort of amends and before I know it we are driving back on this highway. This time we aren't fast enough and we get caught by the people driving that yellow jail truck. Once caught I demand to know what we did and they tell us we are an abnormality and we don't belong here and it's their job to catch abnormalities.

So we are thrown into a weird yellow prison and locked there. I don't know how it happens but some woman comes and helps us break out. We steal the jailers truck and speed back off on the highway. We pass by one of the big jailers and he knows we aren't real jailers because of how fast we are driving. He says the speed is irregular. We pass a semi with him in pursuit and pass one that's laden with tires. As we pass it we slam into it causing it to unload it's tires on the people chasing us. The dream fades.

I'm in some sort of underground cavern. Again Pastor Li is there and he seems to be running everything. There are crowds of people there and a bunch of kids about my age. Lawrence is there and I go join him.

It looks like Pastor Li is hosting some sort of summer event where the kids all play games. This event has a bunch of kids partnered up in doubles and staring at a row of big statues with televisions on them. Each television has an album cover and a song and artist name.

The Pastor explains that the point of the game is for him to play a song and we have to guess who's it is. Whoever does it the fastest wins that point. The first song is clearly by The Who but we have trouble matching it up with the title. Literally as soon as it starts playing Lawrence mouths the artist name to me. I raise my hand to guess and I'm wrong. This goes on for a little while with each group guessing until finally I get another chance and I nail it. The next song is some sort of heavy metal song and I have no idea. My team guess all of the album covers with heavy looking fonts.

Eventually this part of the dream fades and now I'm separated and somehow upstairs in a different room in the cavern with different kids playing different games. I don't like it because I miss people that I know. So I leave and try to find my way back. On the way I stumble by a staff bathroom that has all of its info written in Spanish. I go in anyway and go to a very narrow stall. It has someone else's name on it and there's a man in the one next to me. I don't feel like getting on trouble so I leave and find my way back to Pastor Li and everyone else.

He is underwater with about 18 kids and they are playing some sort of game involving some sort of religious dance underwater. Julie walks up and notices this and says mockingly "Are they really doing a holy dance?" I turn back with anger in my eyes and say that they are and of it bugs her she can leave. Now she looks mad and asks me angrily why she would want to.

I watch for a little bit until Pastor Li notices me and invites me to play. The dream fades from there.

Pastor Li buys a Borders for 14 mil
--says he can make 14k a day with it

Lawrence and I want to buy the Borders
We drive over make an offer
-The place is under renovation since my Pastor had just purchased it. We walk up, through the doors, and see Li there overlooking the process.

Larry says he wants to offer
They act shocked and say just by virtue of owning it they've made 10000 bucks in a day.

We leave with a crowd of people down cement steps. It's sunny out. I make a zombie noise and everyone laughs and runs. I catch a ride with Lawrence but he doesn't wanna drive me cause he's nervous around me cause he's shy or something. I don't get it.

So I woke up this morning and had a faint idea of a dream I had... But I just never got up and wrote it down. I got lazy, no excuses. I also noticed I'm getting a little lazy with my reality checks. I've been trying pretty hard to make progress for the last two months and I haven't lost hope. I just wish I had experienced even the tiniest thing to, you know, help me keep my spirits up.

Good nights beget good nights, maybe? This is my 51st entry into this DJ and I can say, proudly, that I've had over 100+ dreams recalled since starting it up. That's pretty wild. No LDs yet--not liking that ratio :/. My wife is leaving for a vacation with her family for a week so I'll have the bed to myself. I'm going to go all out in trying different techniques I normally wouldn't be able to try, then. Til then here were my dreams from last night.

I'm at some sort of rest stop and I seem to be staking out some guy. I'm in the bathroom and I see his clothing hanging on the knob. He has a pair or black pants and a fell phone inside of them. As I'm in there the phone loudly goes off with a rock n roll ring tone.

Now we are in the parking lot to some business. It looks kind of like the shogun lot. An Asian man comes out of the building being tailed by police and reporters and me as well. The Asian man, Randy, had just used his inside information to lock away someone I believe is innocent. So I catch up with the man in the lot and demand to know how he came to his conclusion. In a broken American accent he tells menus refuses to answer.

We reach his car and at this point I get angry and throw the man against if and get in his face. He finally tells me what I need to know and then two men, who had been hiding in a car and watching Randy, open fire on the two of us. I sprint off and Randy tries to as well. The men get out of the car and mutter something about how they can't believe be thought they'd let him live. As Randy is almost free he gets hit in the hand and in the back. I wake up.

I'm watching this guy as he's pulled over. He has a beard and glasses. He's on the phone with his lawyer and in the background i see people going through his car. He tells his lawyer that the people that pulled him over found out that his new song has stolen rhythms in it. The lawyer is telling the guy angrily to cooperate in anyway possible.

I'm talking to Phil about his curfew when he lived with his friends and how he had to be home by 10 if he expected any phone calls. We also talk about this other song that I had been working on prior.

I found this LDing app on iTunes called "Dream Sign" and I'm toying with it. Basically what it does is send you alerts while you are sleeping prompting you to "do a reality check" while you are in your REM sleep. We'll see how it works.

I'm inside of some sort of game that I was told to play by some guy. Chris plays too. It's some sort of rts mixed with action. All I remember is that part of the game requires buying and reselling and everyone is trying to swindle you. Especially the guy that invites me to play. I get chased around the game bring called "little twit" and all I try to do is hide. I end up so tired and scared of being chased I quit and as soon as I did I woke up. It was an interesting variation on the "being chased" dream.

For some reason I'm bowling with my buddy, Austin, and we're going back and forth throwing strikes. He has a house ball, I notice, and I know to think that that is odd because he has his own equipment. I'm using my old bowling ball. He throws a great strike and then I'm up and I roll my ball and do it poorly but somehow still get a strike. I remember shaking my head in my dream and knowing I got lucky.

I'm in some sort of gas station and it seem like I work there. Crizza is there. He's showing off some ring tone the Angels were giving away. It sounds lame but has Autotune and doesn't even mention the team. Alex is there too and I bring my guitar for some reason to try and learn while at the gas station.

So, I'm at an impasse. I've been faithfully DJing, as you can see, for the last 50 days. Nearly two months, now. My ability to recall dreams is much better than it has ever been before. I can say that I have progressed that much, at least. Lately my DJ activity has dipped (in terms of # of dreams per night) but mostly because I've been too lazy/tired to write them down during whenever I wake up. I feel like if I were to read over my entire DJ I'd see that I'm way too scatterbrained in terms of my efforts and attempts at induction techniques. The only thing I've done consistently is DJ and RC during the day. I think it's time for me to quit messing around and finally pick a technique to work on.

So I've strained all of the excess techniques and left my two favorites: The CAN WILD technique, developed on this forum, and the MILD technique by the big man himself, LaBerge.

Pros of CANWILD:
-LD at will, essentially.
-Seems like it'd get concrete results quicker.

Cons of CANWILD:
-Sleep Paralysis. I don't like the idea of the hallucinations. Though my fear of SP may create a self defeating mindset. If I quit fearing it and just rolled with it I may be OK.

Pros of MILD:
-No sleep paralysis.
-Seems more organic.

Cons of MILD:
-A bit harder to actually do consistently with all of the steps through the day that are required.

Suggestions?

And my fragment from last night:

I dreamt about this remnant that had been passed down a million different times abs touched a bunch of different times. Each time it got touched the person touching it imparted some sort of detail upon it.

For some reason I'm walking down the street of some more urban city trying to find my way to some street that I've never heard of. Along the way I pass a bunch of kids playing at a park and one of them joins me. He's a poor kid, I can tell, and he tags along for awhile.We bond a little bit. The kid has to be around 10 years old. Anyways, I ask the kid to help lead me to where I need to go and in return I give him a few bucks and offer to let him play games on my iPod touch as we walk along. He readily agrees. I had him 6 bucks. Think for a moment. And then I take the 5 dollar bill from him. He leads me for awhile and I'm pretty sure he's leading me astray so I head out on my own. As I leave I walk by a mail lady who I ask for directions but she's never heard of the street I'm looking for even though, according to google maps on my iPod, it's right near me somewhere. So I keep looking. Somehow I end up even more lost and somehow I end up strapped to a door in some abandoned house. My wife comes by and finds me but she isn't the first person to find me. The kid was. I tell Leah deadbeat that she's lucky she wasn't around to see what he did. The little kid stole my money and my iPod.

I don't know why I'm having trouble with multiple recalls all of a sudden.

Just wanted to update this and get it out of the way for today:

I dreamed today that I was talking to my friend Nate over text messaging. He is also the guitarist in my band. He kept insinuating that he wasn't able to practice (a thing I'm afraid of every week ) and he finally told me he can't come because he can't skip out on work because he's gotta make some money. I remember feeling heartbroken and telling him right away: "Hey don't worry about it. Just make sure to come I'll pay for you to practice. Like 50 bucks." And I remember that he was still reluctant. I also remember asking another person who works at Pizza Hut if he had to work today and that person saying "No." So I was upset that he was bailing on me for no reason.

Man. I haven't had a good string of recalls in awhile. I need it.

A little bit better of a night of dreaming. I got two decent recalls and I suppose that aint too shabby in the long run. Here they are:

I am witnessing this dream in 3rd person. There is this woman and she's a new employee in some sort of office environment. Everyone works at computers and I THINK it's some sort of call center. Anyways. She's massively disrespected by this one guy who seems to be the leader of the group. He's almost 30 years old, I remember him saying, and pretty disappointed with his life. Anyways. this dude is sort of a dick to this woman but she wants to be the best so she doesn't just give up. There's some sort of competition coming up, I'm not sure what they're doing, I just know that the man has a day or two head start on her because he cheated somehow. Somehow she evens up the score and manages to catch up. And then I flash forward in the dream to find out that the woman was tricked AGAIN and somehow still lost.

And then I'm in another dream. I work for some sort of grocery store but my shifts are awesome. I only work for a few hours every day and then I go to school. But my "school" is the same hours my REAL LIFE work is. Anyways I'm at work for some reason and I'm discussing hours with my manager. She looks like Sarah from Super Valu (my first job) and she's describing that somehow my hours got switched around and I'm allowed to take off whenever I want today. I appreciate that and decide to myself that I'll cut out about an hour early to give me time to eat a nice breakfast before school. For whatever reason I now am taking a tour around the store with Sarah in tow and we're going through all of these different meat sections and I'm describing them to her. We come across an aisle dedicated to already cooked bacon (that isn't in a package) and it's just hanging on different hooks. We do the same for turkey and ham, as well.

I hope I'm getting closer. Those two dreams were more vivid than I typed out but I, of course, was typing from a shaky memory as they were delayed recalls. Tonight I ate some banana before I hopped into bed and I'm taking my RCs more and more seriously. Hopefully this pans out some.