lucid

Awake/explanation
Normal dream
Lucid dream

Gonna start giving my dreams names, because it's more interesting than "WILD Attempt 13."

But, last night I was so worn out from going out in the morning, doing a bunch of homework afterwards, and then acting in improv for a couple hours that I headed to bed about to pass out at 11 PM. I set alarms for 2, 4, and 6 AM, but I slept completely through the 2 AM alarm, woke up at 4, and just turned the 6 AM alarm off (it's already sunny outside by like 5:15 anyway, I need to get a sleeping mask).

This dream also is not well remembered because I didn't voice memo it as soon as I woke up-- I actually fell asleep again for a couple hours and am typing it from memory.

Anyway:

11:30 PM - 4:00 AM

Knocked out. Hard sleep, don't remember any dreams, lol.

~4:15 AM - 9:00 AM

I wake up, turn my alarm off, and lie in bed for about 5 minutes staring at the ceiling lost in thought and drifting. I eventually force myself to get up (I really don't want to), use the bathroom, and then lie back down and try to WILD. I effectively just fall asleep instantly.

At some point however, I'm dreaming about being in my front yard again. I just can't really remember, but I think I may have WILDed into my bed, but not caught the false awakening, and as usual began walking out of my house, but not lucid. I'm not sure, but at some point I just had the thought, "this seems like a dream."

With this realization, I reached up and plugged my nose and blew a breath of air and was, like yesterday, kinda surprised that air went through. I turned to my right and looked over the fence to see there was a huge Pidgeotto (the Pokemon) and reached into air expecting to find a Pokeball. I did indeed come up with one, and lobbed it at him. It hit him, barely, and wobbled once as I was walking up, and he instantly popped back out. I didn't have another and he began charging me, and I took off running into my field-- starting to regret my attempt a little.

I heard a familiar "Pika" noise, and turned and noticed that a Pikachu was also running up the field, and there were further Pokeballs scattered along the field, I bent and scooped some up as I was running trying to avoid the Pidgeotto, and hit the Pikachu with one, caught it, and then sent it back out yelling at it to "Thundershock, or do something, please! Quick attack!?" (lol)

I think the quick attack command was the one that worked, and we defeated the Pidgeotto, which I then threw another Pokeball at and caught, sticking it in my pocket when it became tiny again. I found myself walking down the driveway holding the Pikachu in a bucket next, and I said something to it, and it started talking back like in Detective Pikachu. I can't remember what it said either, I just remember it presented me with a bow, and two quivers of arrows (which I somehow knew had 50 a piece inside them).

I fastened a quiver to my back, ignoring the ominous words of Pikachu, which I can't remember still, and headed into the street holding my bow. I didn't really know what to do now, and I recalled the mention from DVers that you could ask your dream characters things and sometimes get surprising answers. So I looked around me and found a friendly looking blonde man walking down the street (he was wearing khaki pants and brown shoes, had a blue-ish button-up shirt, and green-blue eyes), and ran up to him, saying, "Can you tell me where I can use this bow for something?" He kind of waved his hand and acted like he was apologetically dodging the question, and I said again, "No really, any idea at all, where can I use this bow?"

He mentioned there was a place down the road, but didn't say anything further, so I looked around again and found an Indian woman (as in, actual Indian, not Native American) walking on the other side of the street the opposite direction (she had a long multi-colored dress down to her ankles and black top, and black hair, with brown eyes). I walked across the street to her now and said, "That man said something was down the street where I could use this bow, do you know what he meant?"

She more quickly answered, "There's a war camp down the road about a mile where a bunch of warriors are stationed."

I thanked her and jogged down the road (the mile went by in probably 5 seconds, so I must be a record speed jogger), and found a dirt road offshoot of the main road and headed inside. The fact that I was brandishing my bow quickly set everyone to arms, I guess thinking I meant them harm. I shouted out that I didn't, but they didn't listen and began encroaching on me en masse, probably 40 people, and I started backing away and nocked an arrow in the bow.

In retrospect, almost as soon as this fight began I was drawn into the dream and lost my lucidity. I began quickly nocking arrows and shooting people around their various shields, in the legs, neck, whatever, but never fatally (not that I wasn't trying, I just wasn't very good with the bow). I eventually dropped the bow entirely and picked up a wooden shield, which elicited a laugh from someone nearby that I had picked up a shield being worked on instead of a finished one. A couple people laughed in response and I felt more threatened.

At some point, a person came up to me and swung a short sword at me, which I bashed away with my shield. It fell out of their hand, and I threw my shield down and set to work punching them in the face through their helmet, repeatedly, until they were backed up against the wall and I punched them a couple more times, brutally. I gave them a pretty bloody nose, and they slumped to the ground, but they weren't dead either.

This display of aggression seemed to set everyone into fear, and when I turned to face the rest of them, they backed away. Soon, people were lowering their weapons and simply eyeing me warily, as if they no longer wanted to fight. Amazed that this had happened, I set out to find the chieftain of the camp and ask him how I could participate, which is why I had come here in the first place.

When I found him, there was someone already speaking to him, and I guess charged with the anger and aggression of the previous moment and now lost in the dream (and my perception of myself as a gruff warrior following those events), I just pushed him out of the way by the shoulder.

I woke up almost instantly afterwards though. I went back to sleep for a little bit without recording the dream (oops), and then

Finally a WILD success to report! WILD 12 did the trick, and was followed by a DEILD of its own! Let's get into it:

Awake/explanation
Normal dream
Semi-lucid dream
Lucid dream

12:00 AM - 3:00 AM

I fell asleep so late last night I decided to abandon my first 2 hour alarm at 1:30 AM, because I knew if I slept only 1h30m, I wouldn't have had any dreams. When my alarm woke me at 3:00 AM however (approx. 3 hours of sleep), I remembered a dream!

I was trying to go into some kind of swimming pool/resort place, but I realized my phone was losing charge and I wouldn't be able to listen to any music/books, so I decided not to stay after all. I was in my car driving home, when I crossed through the parking lot of some place called Cafe... something. I can't remember the name, but as I was looking at it, I thought-- that sounds pretty nice. I could go for some coffee. And it also was the end of my work-day and I was driving home anyway, so I pull over into the parking lot.

There was a lady in a phonebooth nearby who was arguing so loudly I could hear her screaming, but I couldn't understand what she was saying specifically. I locked my door and started to walk away from my car, and as I got about halfway there, two people came out of the store, a guy and a girl, and I suddenly remembered I left my wallet sitting in the passenger seat of my car. So I went back, unlocked the door, pulled it out, and headed in-- while still listening to phonebooth woman yelling at someone over the phone.

I go into the store and notice it's much larger than I expected, with a full first floor, and also an escalator that goes up to a second floor. I'm a little overwhelmed because I really don't know much about coffee, though I like it alright, so I just start walking around in a counterclockwise circle looking at the walls. As I pass the escalator I see a group of 4-5 children with a woman watching over them, who seem to be getting something for themselves, like decaffeinated coffee, and they're all picking various flavors and creamers while she watches. I walk past them and notice I'm in a "kids' section" of coffee, and just sort of glance over things there and keep walking.

As I'm walking near the back aisles of the store, I hear a woman say, "everything alright?" and I just ignore her for some reason, thinking she's not talking to me I guess. She says again, "Can I help you with anything?" and I turn and look at her a little startled and say, "Oh, no, I'm just enjoying looking around," with a little laugh, and then say, "all this coffee is making me almost want to buy something." She laughs too and says, "Imagine how I feel working here." I notice she's an older lady, probably in her 50s, a little chubby and wrinkly and she seems nice. I tell her, "I just was on my way home and saw the store and decided to come have a look," and she says, "Oh, you're on your way home, did you stop downtown?" I tell her no, and she says, "There's an film festival happening there, you should have went and looked around!"

Someone had mentioned this to me earlier in the dream I remember, but I can't remember when, but as I was telling her, "yeah, someone mentioned that to me earlier," I woke up.

When I woke up, I decided to do my WILD, and as usual I fell asleep without transitioning.

3:00 AM - 4:30 AM

I woke up again before my next alarm which was set at 5 AM, and I think because my alarm has been set at 4:30 I didn't comprehend this, because I got up as usual, peed, and laid back down. Here I began thinking about King Yoshi's WILD Guide which I have mentioned before. In it, he mentions that a technique for stopping dry-spells is to pretend that you are an expert at what you're doing, and very confident you'll have the lucid dream.

Taking this a step further in my groggy state, I first start saying to myself, "Oh, yes, I know exactly what I'm doing," in my head, and, "I'll definitely succeed at this WILD, I do it all the time, it's very natural to me, like breathing." I'm kinda amused by this and suddenly while adjusting myself I'm just playing along with the idea and find myself talking to a fake audience, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to see a lucid dream performed live on stage for your entertainment-- I'll be lying here and for the next two hours you'll be utterly entertained by the world of fantasy unfolding on the screen above your heads, whereon you can see everything I can see..."

I continue running with this mind-voice, promising them that it will be fantastic, as I comfy myself, then saying, "Now, I need absolute silence from the audience as I enter into one of the most difficult parts, wherein I must fall asleep comfortably," and I chuckle at this and get comfortable on my side and begin trying to count down in my head with each breath in and out.

4:30 AM - 5 AM

Suddenly, I'm awoken by my actual alarm going off, and I roll over and shut it off and lie back down, mentally saying to my fake audience, "That was a close call, ladies and gentlemen, what you saw was almost me failing for the entire night, but fear not! The alarm has caught me and now I will roll over and begin anew, and once more I need total silence please." I laid down on my right side now, and began counting down again, and quickly, I found myself lying in my bed in the morning with the sun shining through the window and the smell of breakfast from the other room.

I sat up, thinking, darnit, I messed up again! But then I reach up and plug my nose and find that I can breathe. I'm baffled by this, because I feel 100% awake and as if this is the realest, most regular awakening ever. Everything looks normal, sounds normal, feels normal. I plug my nose and try again and can still breathe. I'm so confused I think something is wrong with my nose, I can't understand how I can breathe.

But, I think, I have to be dreaming! There's nothing else that it could mean! So I basically leap out of bed and look at my hands, which look normal, and I start rubbing them together to increase the stability of the dream. I walk through the kitchen where my dad's making breakfast, and tell him I'm going outside. He seems puzzled by this but I open the door without waiting for his response and walk down the sidewalk and into the front yard. I'm still telling myself, "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming!" because everything is so real I'm afraid I could lose it at any time.

As I'm walking into the front yard I remember my goal of "splitting a mountain with my aura" for the lucid dream tasks of July. So, wondering how to even do that, I begin screaming at the top of my lungs trying to somehow "charge up" like in DragonBall Z or something. Nothing really happens and I feel my voice becoming raspy, and have a faint moment of hoping I'm not actually awake and screaming in my front yard at the top of my lungs, lol.

But, to quell my fears, I immediately run an acre or two into the yard as fast as possible, and I'm able to run so quickly I know that it can't be real life. I stop again, and begin yelling again, trying to do... something, and my next idea is to stomp on the ground so hard it sends my aura out and splits the mountains. So I stomp on the ground, and nothing happens. Next, I bend down and punch the ground as hard as I can, then stand up and look around. Suddenly, I notice something falling and look up, only to see the moon has turned dull grey and is falling through the atmosphere breaking into pieces and falling to Earth, lol. So, I think, I can destroy the moon-- surely I can destroy a mountain. (Also I don't know why the moon was directly overhead during the day, don't ask questions.)

Again I punch the ground as hard as I can, then look up once more, and in the distance I see a mountain breaking into pieces and crumbling into dust, and I feel self-satisfied that I achieved my goal. When I woke up I feared I had failed, thinking the goal was to "split the mountain," but it turns out the goal was simply to "break a mountain," so I think I passed after all!

Content with this, I remember I had wanted to explore the mountain after it split. It kind of just crumpled into dust, but I figured it still might be worth seeing what was there. So I head over that way and find some small lumps of tiny mountain still standing next to a house. What's more, they seem to be lightly glowing, so I begin kicking at them and trying to see what's underneath. Eventually I take my hands and slash the air in their direction, as if cutting X's into them, and soon one begins to erupt, as if it were a tiny volcano. Without thinking I reach out with my hand and catch a piece of lava, and find out it is unbearably hot and drop it on the ground (not sure what I was expecting). I pull my hood up over my head (suddenly wearing a hoodie I guess) and pick up a piece of rock that has some lava sitting on it, and throw it at the nearby house, just to see if I can catch it on fire (I guess I'm kind of destructive, huh?).

It doesn't, so I head over to the house; I somehow teleport inside the house and don't know how. This confuses me and makes me worry I'm losing control, so I begin rubbing my hands together again to reassert control and stability in the dream, and then I decide to exit the house by holding onto a banister and kicking my way through a window. I do so and slide out onto the ground awkwardly, but get out nonetheless, lol.

I walk away from the houses and notice that I'm on a hill, overlooking a golf-course, and there's another hill above me-- and people are hitting golf-balls off the hill into the course as if it's a driving range. I head up on the hill and at this time, a friend of mine, Brooks, comes and begins talking but I don't listen well, and soon after a girl he used to date comes up and begins complaining that someone has broken the window out of her house. She questions him, and then me, and remembering that I don't have to stay here for this and have better things to do, I smile at her and then turn and jump off the hill and begin gliding down into the golf course with my arms out like wings.

However, I'm not satisfied to glide, and think about how I always have trouble truly flying. I remember how on the forums here at Dreamviews, someone said that the key to dream control was to simply know that it would work. As a symbolic gesture, I simply drop my arms by my side and begin saying to myself, "I don't need to worry, I'll simply lift into the air and float. This is my mind; I control everything here."

Surely enough, I begin rising into the air, fairly rapidly, up above the trees, until suddenly I see a cliff overhang I hadn't noticed before. I float along underneath it and land on a small platform and notice there is a nametag on it, and a ragtag house. The nametag says "William" something or other, and I turn around to see a little anthropomorphic mole (standing on his hind legs) looking up at me. When turning around, I accidentally bump him and he falls off the platform, like 10 stories, and hits the ground. I look down after him trying to ascertain that he's okay, and when I see him get up and brush himself off I decide he is.

I start walking into his little house (uninvited, lol) and soon encounter another little mole person who is pointing a shovel at me warily, and I tell him, "Sorry, sorry, I don't mean to intrude!" and he threatens me with the tiny shovel again, and I say, "Your friend is okay, he's coming, look!" and I point down at him coming up in a little elevator. The one pointing the shovel at me continues holding it out but looks down at him.

And suddenly, just like that, the lights go out. I have no idea what time it is, but I realize I've woken up, and I hold my eyes firmly shut and just lie there. I feel like I'm struggling to fall asleep again. Eventually, I open my eyes and I'm in my room, but now it's dark. Once more I think, "Darn, the DEILD attempt didn't work," and start to get up, thinking it's the middle of the night still. Then I stop, and plug my nose again as I'm getting out of bed. And I find I can breathe! Once again I'm baffled by how real the false awakening feels, and how quickly I dismissed it as being real life, and am glad I did another reality check before taking it for granted. I stand up and go over to my door in the dark, and think, "When I open this door, I'll be overlooking the rings of Saturn," which is the first thing that comes to mind. I open the door, and instead I'm looking at my hallway, and my dog is at my feet wagging her tail. I close the door in her face (lol), and think, "When I open this door, I'll be somewhere fantastic!" and I open the door again. Once again, I'm in the hallway and my dog is at my feet wagging her tail.

I say, "alright, fine," and walk through the door with my dog following me. It's now light as I exit the hallway, and my dad is in the kitchen making breakfast, and I say, "Good lord, how long have you been making breakfast?" and he says, "About an hour," (LOL) and I walk past him and go out the door into the yard again. This time I stop and bend down to pet my dog, and I notice her eyes are shut and her face is even more greyed than in real life, and I sympathetically say, "Oh no, you're getting all old girl!" and as I say it I realize I've made a mistake. She starts bending down and coughing up phlegm and stuff and I think, "Oh no, I set the expectation that my dog is old and sickly and now she's gonna die in front of me," so I start backing away from her and saying, "No, just kidding, you're young and spritely! You're even younger than real life! I've never seen you so energetic!" but I'm also backing away from her because I don't want to get distracted with this and want to go do more lucid dreaming stuff.

As I'm heading into the driveway, I look back and see my dog is indeed young and healthy again like when she was a puppy, and she comes bounding down after me into the driveway. I start jumping in the air repeatedly, thinking to fly again, and then I stop and think, "Oh yeah, there was that other dream task of milking something!"

No sooner did I think this than I suddenly found myself trapped in some strange, half-awake state, unable to move. It was like one of my eyes was seeing my bed in real life, and the other eye was seeing the dream, and the dream was suddenly "locked up." I was just stuck there floating in space, and I closed my real life eye (this was purely an illusion/dream, not reality I think) and still I was stuck in the dream, but now I was back in the mole house sitting on a sofa, unable to move. There was a man there talking to me about lucid dreaming in theory, and I told him, "Actually, I'm lucid dreaming right now, I just can't move!"

He went bug-eyed at this and then began scoffing at the idea, and I said, "No, no! I really am, I'm just stuck!" and while ignoring his scoffing I somehow accidentally found myself awake for real.

I did another reality check JUST TO BE SURE, and then laid down again in my bed and patted myself on the back. Finally, at least one decent LD after a week of work!

Edit: listening to my audio logs I also discovered I reported a dream fragment I had forgotten, but I don't know when it happened:

I had a dream I was playing Runescape (lol) and came across these two guys swarming around this emerald lying on the ground as if they were protecting it. I walked up to them and watched them for a bit and then just ran up and took it off the ground. They both ran after me telling me they were trying to protect it and I needed to drop it, and I just said, "No, that's okay," and logged out and changed to another world (lol). Once I got there I used a spell to go home and then walked away still holding the emerald, but I accidentally wandered into a dangerous area and got the crap kicked out of me and died, dropping all my stuff.

Panicking a little, I ran back there again and picked it all back up and tried to run back to the home town, but again got killed and dropped everything again, but a little closer back to home.

But I woke up shortly thereafter.

Awake/explanation
Normal dream
Semi-lucid dream
Lucid dream

This is a collection of 3 dreams. This is the first attempt I've made to become lucid in several years, and it was successful! But not through the method I was trying.

Sometime before 2:30 AM
I dreamed that I was an official content censor for some kind of fascist regime, but even as an editor of content was victim to extreme regulations. I worked in an open office surrounded by other workers and was encouraged not to move from my post or stop working. I remember trying to move unsuccessfully a few times but only small bits of this dream stayed with me.

2:30-4:45 AM
I dreamed that my school had a 'software hit-list' of things they wanted coded for them (I'm a CS major) and one of these was a more secure meeting method. Someone had coded this and randomly instated me as a moderator because I was a CS major, and I realized that all CS majors were given such honors for reasons unclear (we are not generally known for our people skills, lol). Anyway, I hopped on a bus, the physical representation of this new forum for students of my university. I also decided that if I was a moderator, I'd try to be a good moderator, and make sure nobody was doing anything wrong. So I scoped out the area around me.

Next to me a guy was sitting in a trench coat and sunglasses, and I tried to look past him to see what was on his other side without bothering him. There was just a window, and in the end he did see me trying to look around him and gave me a funny look, so I apologized and looked forwards again. I sorta realized in that moment that I was being stupid trying to moderate just because it was written on my name, and started behaving normally riding the bus again.

It gets a bit fuzzy here, but I recall a friend from high-school being on the bus, and lying in the floor. I woke up again later.

4:45 AM-7:30 AM
And here's the meat, the lucid dream. I woke up, used the restroom (I had drunk a glass of water so that I would wake up in the middle of the night), laid down again, meditated for a few minutes while counting my breaths. When I lost count I rolled on my side and began counting my breaths again, trying to fall asleep. And then I did fall asleep! But not lucid.

I can't remember this dream back all the way, but the first thing I remember was playing baseball with a bunch of kids. I guess I was a kid too, I'm not really sure. At one point, we were playing on an abandoned lot, and the pitcher's mound was in the middle of a partially constructed scaffolding (inconvenient), and I was pitching. Batting was a girl who I went to high-school with who was well known for throwing hissy fits when things didn't go her way (no offense to her, I'm sure she's more adult now, but we were all probably 12 or 13 in this dream...). She was indeed throwing such a hissy fit because I was pitching too fast at her. So I lobbed one slowly to let her have her way.

She immediately smacked it and sent it flying into the scaffolding I was standing in, and I picked it up and tried to turn to look to throw it to first base, but I couldn't see first base. I then turned and saw second base was also obstructed, so I turned some more and threw it to someone who was running up from near third base. Of course, when I threw it to him, he missed it, I felt silly for throwing it too hard, and he turned and ran after it. Within those precious moments, two opposing runners had run up to my scaffolding and were standing at the edge yelling at me. I turned to look at them and hear what they were saying, which was that they were complaining that 1st base was a pit, so they had run to the pitcher's mound instead, and that should count as a home-run.

I'm not sure why I was allowed to decide but I shook my head yes and agreed, and the game was over (I guess they were already ahead). Soon, everyone congregated around the pitcher's mound/scaffolding and we started discussing that playing baseball here sucked (gee whiz). I suggested, from nowhere, that nearby was a series of under-construction houses where nobody lived, that was sure to have some open air nobody was using that we could play. It occurred to me we might accidentally break some windows or something, but I secretly figured we could probably get the heck out of there without getting caught if so (sorry construction workers, I was a kid in this dream, I swear!).

So off we set into this nearby construction area, and me and one other fairly small kid who couldn't have been more than 8 ended up going into a nearby house, and walking around inside, because nobody was there to stop us. As we were walking around looking I suddenly made a joking comment that the house was so empty, it almost seemed like a dream...

And the saying of such a thing is one of my well-known triggers (anytime something seems like a dream in real life, I tend to reality check reflexively just as a habit because I have said it in dreams many times and woke up frustrated I didn't become lucid). I reached up and plugged my nose and blew air through, and found I could breathe. Ta-da! My first night back at lucid dreaming a success, I felt pretty proud of myself and thought back to posting on Dreamviews the night before. I remembered reading an article about lucid dreaming to hype myself up and them talking about how realistic your hands are, so I looked down at them.

Then I set out after my small friend who was with me, and told him I was having a lucid dream! He looked at me like there was a giant spider on my head and began fast-walking away, so I walked after him saying, "No, really, look!" and tried to summon a baseball from thin air to show him. I tried several times, but my dream control has always been a bit wonky, and I couldn't get it to happen. I tried looking away from my hands and looking back. I tried closing my eyes and thinking "BASEBALL" (lol) and opening them and looking back, and nothing. Soon me and the kid were outside of the house standing in the grass, and I still didn't have a baseball. He looked pretty skeptical, and I suddenly feared me losing my lucidity to this goal of getting a baseball, so I said, "aw nevermind," and walked away from him.

Still marveling at all the weird wrinkly detail of my palms, I walked off towards the nearby woods. As I was walking along, the whole group of children I had been playing baseball with came to where we were and began asking if I had found a place to play baseball. I told them I wasn't looking anymore, really, but they could probably play somewhere near here if they still wanted to. They set off into the woods also (for some reason) so I followed them nearby, but quickly got distracted by a humongous ravine going down hundreds of feet, and instantly was taken with doing what I always do in lucid dreams: jumping off stuff and trying to fly.

I jumped off the edge into this enormous canyon and hovered my way down with my arms out, but as I stuck my arms out I was suddenly bothered by the feeling of my sheet on my bed (lol) and the feeling that it was like a wall blocking me from sticking my arm out all the way. This bothered me and also again, worried me I was waking up, so I pulled my arms in-front of me in more of a Superman position instead. I alighted down on a giant metal tower, crawling with futuristic soldiers.

My lucidity started to degrade a little here. I was no longer doing anything I wanted but getting sucked into the current of the dream, while aware I was dreaming somewhat.

These soldiers all began shooting at me, and, aware that I was dreaming, I stood my ground to see what they were shooting. As if in slow-motion, the shots came as a multitude of lasers, followed by a few canisters that looked like grenades. I started smacking these canisters back, and hitting various things on top of the tower and destroying them, eventually succeeding in knocking the soldiers off the tower I was on. Then a large docking bay door opened on the side of the canyon and I was being shot at once again. I once again tried hitting or grabbing and throwing the canisters, but they were far too far away (easily 100 meters). I settled on another plan, which was to forcefully punch parts of the tower towards that loading bay (ambitious).

And of course, as with my dream control, I punched them so lightly they simply limply fell off the tower. I tried harder, and harder, and soon was greeted with a (phony) percentage number indicating my percentage of full power that I was using (which I took for a real measurement, hence why I marked this lowered lucidity). I could only get this number to around 20%, which launched the things I was hitting a decent ways but not quite there. I heard someone call me a fool, and looked to my left to find, who else: Darth Vader, sitting in a chair.

I don't even really like Star Wars which makes this stranger, but anyway, he told me that I would never summon my full control in such a way. Suddenly finding myself curious at what he had to say, I think my lucidity started to come back up here.

I figured, who worse to steer me wrong than Darth Vader in a dream. But at the same time, maybe he would say something useful, so I urged him to continue and sat down next to him. He spoke cliches, telling me that I should 'let my emotions rule me,' and 'use my anger to summon my full power'. I nodded amicably and then noticed that I was now sitting beside him in a flying vehicle. In an act of defiance towards Mr. Vader but also in the interest of trying what he said, I screamed at the top of my lungs (haha) while grabbing the side of the car and pushing, and surely enough, I ripped off the entire right side of the car and part of the roof, and dropped it as we flew along. He didn't really say anything-- he didn't seem threatened but rather like I was acting like a child, and I felt mildly embarrassed (again, haha).

We soon rolled up at a small garage that I felt I recognized from another dream, and I simultaneously felt the dream was coming to an end. It was as if this was a final destination for me, and I could tell this by looking at it. I don't recall what the sign said fully, but I do recall it used a nickname of mine people have given me ("Loaf" a missaying of Life), and I looked around and at Darth Vader again. He didn't have much else to say, so I thanked him for his advice and said maybe I'd use it again later. Then I hopped out of the car and walked up to the shack, and as I was in the process of doing so...

My eyes opened and I hopped out of bed to get my coffee and write up this journal!

Lucidity <0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10>
Horrid Nightmare <10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10> Lovely Sweet Dream

[[Double brackets means that a part of the dream is cloudy, and I cannot remember it well.]]

This morning when I woke up, I remembered my wish to have a lucid dream. I rolled over and decided to attempt a WBTB method that I had read last night. It involved imagining yourself running from your back-yard to your front, in your mind, of course, and just running until you eventually ended up falling asleep and dreaming about standing where you had run to.

I imagined myself running; I hopped my neighbor's fence, and ran down his driveway. Eventually, I was placed in a dream, as I ran down his graveled drive-way. It wasn't, however, his driveway. It was a long, twisty driveway, and I was watching a 20 or so year old woman ride a bicycle. She contacted me through a cell phone and said, "Mr. Ayers, this town is just lovely."

I spoke back through the cell phone, replying, "Yes, I imagined it would be."

She rode along beside the river and made a right turn to drive farther into the city, and I continued watching her... I wasn't quite asleep as my eyes were still opening just a little bit in real life...

Eventually, she said, "I think I'll grab some of those flowers you wanted, now."

I didn't say anything, and she said loudly once more, "Mr. Ayers?"

I didn't speak.

She said once more, "Jordan?"

And I said, groggily, in my dream, "I can't... talk... I'm... dreaming."

And suddenly, I was watching a scene very similar to a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (1) scene. (I played through the campaign of the game recently to get some achievements, I think that's the reason.)

The scene was very small, as if it were not stretched all the way out on my screen. I was looking at my guy, standing in a building, holding an AK74u, and he was simply pointing it at a stack of lumber inside. I was aware that I was dreaming now. I began to listen to my com chatter in the dream. There was a man in the building with me. We were pinned down, and he was leaning against a wall on my left, shots being fired through the window.

I was trying to stretch the window out, make it seem real. I was trying to 'enter' the dream, as I've heard people say. I started getting closer and closer to the window. As soon as it reached full capacity and had taken up my entire sights.

The sound and sight swept over me like an earthquake. The vision became my own, and as real as any day. The sound blurred out and then back in, louder than ever before. It was an amazing feeling.

I moved my gun to the left, aiming over my own guy, out the window. I pulled the trigger and shot, but the resounding BOOM, BOOM, from my gun was so loud that my eyes shot open in real life. I was extremely happy with this progress, however.

I thought this scene would be perfect while I was dreaming it, because I'm so comfortable in this game-like scenario. Over the years I have played so many first person shooters that I thought I would feel extremely comfortable being placed in one. Sadly, the noise from my gun was just a little too much. I also think that adjusting my covers a little bit would have helped, as I was slightly uncomfortable after I rolled back over in real life.