false awakening

Wow, I really need to go to bed less distracted if this MILD thing is ever going to work for me. My mind was working on too many things to stay concentrated on the visualization or mantra, so my dreams ended up being a direct manifestation of what I had been thinking over...and not about the mantra

1) I was in Israel for a friend's wedding. Never actually saw the ceremony; I was dropped into the dream right after it ended. As I was walking away, somehow I ended up talking to a Jewish girl and we hit it off pretty well. After we'd talked a little while I told her I had to go, and then turned and woke up...

Dream Signs: being somewhere without remembering getting there, being around people (particularly groups of people)

2) ...into a false awakening. I got up and was just about to walk out the door when I saw a big spider laying curled up on the ground. "Oh, I didn't think I'd actually killed that one last night. Guess it didn't get away after all." I was just walking past it when suddenly the spider sprung back into life and shot up into the air, simultaneously growing several times its original size. I tried to escape it, but it came down on my head and startled me awake, for real this time.

Dream Signs: FA (should have made me RC...but I didn't ), highly unusual events

3) When I fell back asleep, I was back in Israel picking up roughly where the last dream had left off. I had only one more day before leaving from my visit to see the wedding, so I was going around with a couple members of my family who were there with me and we just enjoyed ourselves (and I kept looking for a restroom in the dream because IRL I had to pee ). Somehow I ran across that same girl and her family, and we got to talking again briefly. Before I knew it, we were talking on the phone as I was heading to the airport to leave. It seemed like things might actually work out with this girl, so of course I didn't want to leave, but I was literally getting dragged away by my family, so I just had to say goodbye and wake up.

Dream Signs: being somewhere without remembering getting there, romance

Had a monster toothache last night and didn't really have a mind to work too hard on anything, even lucid dreaming...just wanted a good night's rest

Even so, I did have decent recall, given the circumstances.

1) It was Christmas, and I was being woken up early. Strangely, even in the dream, I felt very tired at getting up so early. So tired in fact that I shortly fell back asleep into dreamless sleep.

Dream Signs: Being around people, significant time lapse

2) I was working at a large factory, and several of my friends were there as well, investigating what they perceived as some conspiracy. They convinced me of its reality and I agreed to help, but I had to keep up my job as well so nobody would notice me. It was both a scary and thrilling experience to sneak around like that.

Dream Signs: Being around people, being somewhere with no memory of getting there, highly unusual circumstances

I'm going to keep trying!

I DID IT!! I finally was able to WILD from a fully awakened state!

I went to bed last night at about 11:30pm. Woke up (due to awesome dreams about being in love with this incredible girl) at 5:47am and decided to try a WBTB and WILD so I could visit that girl again. I stayed up for about 10 minutes, fully awake. I even splashed water on my face. But at the same time, I stayed away from things that would make falling back asleep a difficult thing to do (i.e. screens).

After that, I lay down on my back on the floor with a t-shirt wrapped around my eyes and ears to encompass myself in total blackness and silence. I was very alert at this point, and concentration was easy. I consciously relaxed everything, starting from my toes and moving up to my head, and then counted down from 10, telling myself that I would be very close to lucid dreaming by the time I hit 1.

It almost worked. I felt that beginning sensation of disconnection with the conscious mind, and knew I was close. But I still needed some help. So I visualized a hand reaching down out of the blackness and pulling at the center of my brain. That went far better than expected. Instantly, the hand drew back, but the difference was, now I was moving along with it! My eyes started to move rapidly; I was entering REM, the place of lucid dreaming. Unfortunately, my heart rate increased very dramatically at the shocking success of the visualization, and it was like I fell from the height the hand was holding me back into my real body, and my eyes stopped moving so fast.

I tried to just go back through everything again right there, but somehow I just couldn't. The hand wouldn't pull me back with it anymore, my eyes would never move very fast...I didn't even see HI anymore.

So then I got up (or at least I attempted to; one of my legs had lost its circulation, so it was like rubber and I couldn't stand on it, so I had to pull myself into bed with just one usable leg ) and tried the same thing in my bed. By now it was 6:30. Time was running out. I thought the change of location might be enough to get me in. But after a couple minutes of no luck with that, I just thought: "How often do I fall asleep on my back? Almost never!" And then I just got into the most comfortable position I could, re-relaxed (which was a bit more difficult to concentrate on this time, but I did it) and then watched the oncoming HI and waited.

In a very short time, things started to shake, I felt myself slipping away, and next thing I knew...

I was sitting up in bed. I didn't really need to RC; I knew where I was. But I didn't want to take any chances, so I did a check and found myself to be dreaming. I jumped down from bed and started going around the room slowly. I felt the walls, I looked out the window, I looked down and could see myself standing there...it was all incredibly realistic. I ran all over the house, then calling out for this girl, hoping to find her around a corner. But I never did.

BLACKNESS!

I was back in bed, wondering if I had woken up. Did a reality check, and tested to still be dreaming. This time I flew outside, doing a corkscrew simply to see if the dream world would continue to function realistically if I were upside down. To my amazement, it did. Once outside, and with my orientation corrected, I hovered in the air, looking around me. I laughed with pleasure when I saw how realistic everything was...there was even a road construction crew out in the distance, just like in real life. I was going to fly off to the girl's house, then, but...

BLACKNESS!

I was back in bed, and wanted to get back to work, so I did an RC as I threw myself over the edge of the bed and on to the floor. I remember thinking: "The people on DV are going to have a fit when I tell them my reality check was throwing myself on the floor to see if I fell through!" I did fall through, however, and attempted to teleport as my body passed through.

Where I ended up was not at all what I had intended. It was some kind of restaurant with old-looking wooden rooms. Many of my friends were there, and even some family members. One of them was asking me to go fill up three drinks. For some reason, this temporarily caused me to lose lucidity. I tried to get the drinks for them, but the soda fountain was made from obsolete equipment, the cups were difficult to find, and the method of payment was so strange I never did figure it out. It was something like this: you'd put a couple coins into a slot on the desk, and then there was this tube with rings around it. You'd slide all the tubes to the right to correspond with how much money you paid, even though it wasn't sufficient to cover the cost of the drinks. Everyone around me said that was all I had to do; they never compensated for the extra cost. I got annoyed with them for not understanding my point that it was a bad system, and for their annoyance with me for not being able to figure it out.

BLACKNESS!

Back in bed, lucid once again. Threw myself on the ground as a reality check. This time I ended up teleporting to some farm where two pirates were standing in front of me. They were threatening in graphic terms to tear me apart and kill me. I just smiled at them the whole time, and then used descriptive commands to transform them into girls about my age. "Shorter. Skinnier. A bit younger." With each command, they would automatically be transformed. (This is, by the way, a method of dream control I've used ever since I was 4, when I had my first lucid dream) It took a couple minutes to get them both looking right, but the results looked like they'd be good.

BLACKNESS!

Now I was getting a bit ticked off at my frequent blackouts and false awakenings. I did one solid reality check and then tried once again to stop all the nonsense and find the girl I'd come into the dream to find. I looked all over the house, tried to call her on a phone, but I just couldn't get her to show up anywhere! So again, I tried teleporting.

This time was very different, though. Rather than be presented with a new, weird location, all I saw in front of me was a panel of buttons. There was one for each location I'd been so far. I pushed the button for the farm and was dropped there immediately. The pirates were still girls, now also in normal clothes instead of the pirate stuff they had had before. And for some reason, one of them had aged about ten years, while the other remained exactly the same. I invited them to come to the restaurant with me. I'm not sure why, but I just had this feeling that they'd help me find this girl that I was looking for.

"No thanks." The younger one said. "I kind of like it here. So peaceful and quiet. Especially at the lake! I think I'll go there right now. See you later!"

The older one was fine with coming, though. "Good enough," I thought. I put a hand on her back and prepared to teleport...

BLACKNESS!

There was the restaurant...we were there.

BLACKNESS!

There was a static image of several dream characters.

BLACKNESS!

I was in bed, I did a reality check. I could still breath through my nose, but it was partially blocked now.

BLACKNESS!

Then I sat up in bed for real. It was 7:30am now...I'd been in a dream for nearly an hour.

The blackouts sure were annoying, but I'm really glad I've found a way that I can WILD from being fully awake! This could even work in the afternoons...which would be really awesome indeed! Then I'd have a couple chances for LDs every day!

I'd say WILD has now become my focus once again. Wish me luck! I'll keep you guys posted on what happens

Well I feel stupid for not going lucid last night...I thought about lucid dreaming multiple times, but I never thought about doing a reality check or even just questioning my surroundings' authenticity...even though I was in anything but normal places all night long.

Even so, my dream recall is improving once again, as I can remember three different dreams this time. None of them can I remember in full, but it's definitely progress! And actually, as far as detail was concerned, there wasn't a whole lot to remember...strangely enough, all of my dreams last night were very simplistic in colorization and geometry. Buildings were flatly-colored boxes that occasionally took upon a bit of a texture when I got close. Vast fields were flat planes with little shading, never mind individual blades of grass. There wasn't even much of a sky to speak of; just a solid hue that eventually faded into existence somewhere off in the vast expanse of the dreamworld.

Anyway, on to the dreams.

Dream 1: I found myself to be Peter Petrelli in a city that was in big trouble. Huge mechs with guns were approaching the city boundaries, and it was clear what they intended to do: wipe out anything that got within ten feet of them. I used my various powers to rally up soldiers and pedestrians alike to help in preparing defenses for the place, but the mechs struck before we could finish putting the last reinforcements in place.

Rather than let everyone be crushed with fear from the apparent failure, I used Mohinder's power (which false memory told me I had acquired) to jump across rooftops and freerun in impossible ways in order to reach a wall that was hanging in midair by a crane. In one motion, I jumped, pulled out a knife, cut the crane's cord, and then hung on to it as I watched the wall collapse on top of the approaching mechs.

That did raise people's spirits for a while, but it didn't exactly change the tide of the war. It took a long while, but eventually everyone had been killed...soldiers and regular people alike. They just couldn't survive without powers like I had.

So it was just me and the mechs. I refused to give in, even though it felt as if there was nothing left to fight for. Somehow or another I took out one of the remaining mechs, and eventually I got around to another. Then it was down to just one mech and me. But this last mech was the biggest one of them all. I hid around a corner and tried to peek around to watch its movements. All I got was a bunch of bullets nearly hitting me in the side of the face. Its reactions apparently were incredibly quick, too. I hid for quite some time, always dodging its presence...but sooner or later I got tired of waiting, so I jumped up onto the roof of the building in front of me, ran across the top, and then jumped for the mech, crying a vicious war cry all the way. We collided, and...

I honestly have no idea how that dream ended. Seriously, that's all I remember. I know there was more to it; I didn't wake up right then, but what happened is lost on me.

Dream 2: Had a false awakening. And a flood of false memories. My brain told me that I had been in a science test lab for a couple days and that they had developed a machine that could record your memories in full audio and video as you went to sleep. When I got out of the test bed and unhooked a bunch of sensory cables from my head, I went to the machine and started to replay the video from the beginning. I could hear my thoughts wandering and see a few minor images fading in and out of the blackness that began the sleep cycle. At first the thoughts made some sense, but then, gradually, they began to make less and less sense, and be less disorganized. Before long, my thoughts were all very scattered. Then things went silent, and the dream began to appear on the monitor.

What was really interesting about that one is that the video was accurate to real life. As it 'replayed' everything for me, I honestly did remember thinking some of the things it had recorded. I think I honestly did tap into some deep and hidden memory of what went on as I fell asleep, and was able to bring it back in full detail in the form of a monitor inside another dream. Fascinating, actually.

Dream 3: There was a huge family get-together. We went all over the place; restaurants, parks, possibly even a movie theater. And then we decided to go on a joyride in a big plane. Except as it turned out, only my dad and I were on the plane once we got on board. Other than that, it was totally empty. The plane took off and I looked out the window, and suddenly this great frustration grew inside me.

"Flying is so much more enjoyable in a lucid dream." I said. "You don't need an airplane to fly, then. You're just free. It just feels frustrating to need an airplane; to be flying, but not out in the open."

At first I tried to just enjoy the ride anyway, but I couldn't. I told my dad (who was also the pilot) to land, and I got off, angry at my inability to fly how I would prefer to.

Dumbo...if you'd just realized where you were, you could have flown!!! Argh...

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, I feel stupid! But at least I had a couple dreams last night!

I went to bed with headphones and an MP3 player set to a lucid dreaming MP3 called 'Lucid Spike', which begins with a 20-minute silence to allow time for falling asleep.

I'm not exactly sure what happened, then. I had a dream, in which I was going around in this huge building that a bunch of large, square rooms. At the middle of each end of the square was a hallway that led another such room. Down each hallway was a door on either side that led to a smaller conference room with no more hallways. Everyone I know or have ever known was in that building. I was going through all those rooms, finding people that in real life I need to talk to, accomplishing business with them, and then moving on to the next person. Suddenly, I realized something. "What the heck? Where'd these headphones come from? I didn't put these on!" And I woke up.

At least, I thought I did. I was laying in bed, with the headphones still on and all, as it should have been. But I didn't reality check, and I didn't realize it was a false awakening. I just tried to be still and get SP.

Then I woke up for real, and the headphones were gone. I was like, "Ok, that's weird, I was wearing headphones, and both them and the MP3 player are nowhere. This must be a dream!" So I reality checked and was disappointed to find myself to be awake. That didn't solve the headphone situation, though. I leaned over my bed and found them to be on the floor. When I saw that, I suddenly remembered waking up and for some reason I threw it all off the side of the bed. I wish I knew why I did that!

But for whatever reason, I ditched the MP3 player, which was supossed to help me become lucid, before it could even play anything, and then had a false awakening in which the presence of the MP3 player made me think it was real and not go lucid!

Figure that one out...

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Two dreams again. I should have gotten up and recorded the first, because it is mostly lost on me now. However, I remember seeing my parents again.

Second dream was a jumble. Pretty much everything I had thought about that day was in there. Eventually it all worked out to me walking into a room with a small conference of some sort; no more than 50 people. The conference ended soon after I walked in, but first I demonstrated this little sticky, square lightbulb thingy that I had, since the conference leader was talking about it. Maybe they wanted to sell the lights; I don't know. When it was done, everyone was to pick up their chairs and stack them in the corners of the room. One kid with blond hair and glasses passed by. "Hey." I said. "What's your name?" I can't recall his answer. "Where are you from?" was my next question. "The Ford." He replied. "It's just a few hours away from Missouri...have you ever been to Missouri? I've been twice." "I go all the time," I replied. "I live in Kansas and I can drive into Missouri in about 15 minutes!"

I was zipped away then to a false awakening. The thought of reality checking crossed my mind, but unfortunately, I simply thought back "I already did!" I got down out of bed and there were several parksabers.com lightsabers on the floor. They too were part of the previous mish-mash of a dream I had just had. All over the place my mind started posing questions. "How do you know you're not dreaming? What about this is real?" but these questions were very quiet and only managed to cause a bright light to blind me momentarily, multiple times, as if my conscious was trying to break through. But the questions never stopped. Eventually, as I practiced with the saber props, I thought, "Well, if these sabers are from my dream, that would make THIS too a..."

And I awoke, reality checked, and found myself to be really awake.

Several other instances throughout the dream prompted reality checks, but I either excused them with "I already did, just a second ago!" referring to what I did right before I fell asleep, or the posed questions were too 'quiet', like a small voice desperately trying to make itself heard, but in the end being ignored.

Oh yes, and my family members were throughout the dream as well.

I think I'm getting close.