LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Had an interesting experience last night. I may have discovered a sleeping position that significantly increases my chance of lucid dreaming.

As some of you know, I've been attempting for some time now to WILD right from going to bed rather than employing WBTB. Last night I finally did it, and this is how: by laying down completely flat on my face. I propped up my forehead and chest with two pillows so that I wouldn't suffocate, and then put my arms to my sides and began the WILD attempt. Surprisingly, I didn't hear or see much during the entry. For a brief second I felt a tingly feeling, but I completed my attention-switching at that moment so my bodily sensations were no longer being registered. Then the darkness of my eyelids seemed to expand far beyond my field of vision. The blackness took on a depth despite the fact that it was all dark and there was not really anything to give it depth.

And then I saw a tower. It was a purple-y color, as all of my beginning hypnagogic hallucinations are. I was looking down at it from above, and slowly drawing nearer to it. Whether I was moving towards it or it was moving towards me I do not know, but my mind got the cue, and I thought, "Oh! It's time to enter the dream now!" I then was rushed downward, past the building, into further blackness.

Next thing I know, I'm standing up in my room next to my bed. "That's weird, I don't remember standing up." I thought. "Better do an RC just in case." I pinched my nose several times, putting it in between several different sets of knuckles so that I knew I couldn't possibly duplicate the action in real life (if I were dreaming) and thereby ruin the RC. Every time, I was able to breath just fine. "Woah, that's cool! It's a dream!"

Even though I was fully lucid by this point, my mind was strangely unclear; it was like after so many failures at WILDing directly after going to bed, it was surprised to have succeeded and didn't exactly know how to handle it.

I could think of none of my goals. As I thought, I idly moved my hand past my shoulder...and it warped. I remembered my first attempt at shape-shifting in a lucid dream, and how far I'd come with dream control since then. I thought I'd go for it again and see how it went. There was absolutely no problem this time; I never lost the dream from shape-shifting, nor did it seem to fade or cause me to lose lucidity. So I turned myself into various people: video game characters, movie heroes...and I even switched genders a couple times (which was a very weird feeling indeed ). I didn't do it all at once, either. I treated my dream body like a 3D model that I could reshape and recolor at will, which seemed much more enjoyable than just declaring myself to be a different person and finding it to happen exactly as I say.

My success, however, would prove to be the loss of my dream. I got excited thereafter, so I threw open the nearest door and ran through whatever fantasy world was on the other side. My dad was there, and talking to me about stuff I can't remember anymore. I replied back, but with the intention of actually speaking out loud. This is another place where my mind was unclear. In the dream, I thought my dad was actually there next to my bed in real life, talking to me, and I was hearing it in the dream, and responding to him with my real voice even though I was completely asleep. It's an interesting concept and probably possible in the right circumstance, but this was not the right circumstance. I never figured out that it was completely impossible for my dad to be there since the door was locked and he couldn't have gotten in if he wanted to.

After I was done talking to my dad, I realized my excitement had caused the dream to slip a bit, so I rubbed my hands before going on. But the damage had already been done; I was losing lucidity. I tried to summon people and objects and it didn't work. Further attempts began to weaken the dream's clarity. Before long, I was not lucid any more. All I recall of the dream after losing lucidity is discovering that I had a huge range of notes that I could hit with my singing voice.

Kind of a weird lucid dream for me. How I got into it was unusual, my mental state during it was unusual, and what I did was unusual. Oh well. At least I had another WILD! It wasn't nearly as good having it right off the bat, but it was still better than 90% of my DILDs in terms of feeling real. I'd sure rather WILD like this every night than spend all day RCing just to get a couple half-decent LDs a week.