LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5

Not such great recall last night...I was up later than I had planned on, and so when I finally got to bed, I didn't stay awake long enough to properly go through a MILD setup, and I never woke up naturally during the night for another opportunity to try, either.

1) I was running around with the characters from Inception, but I don't think we were doing any extracting business. Can't remember what we were doing, though. At the end of the dream, Eames leaned up against a rail and looked as if he was about to faint or something. I woke up as everyone went over to see if he was alright.

Dream Signs: being around people, interacting with fictional characters, being somewhere without memory of getting there

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!

Experimented with the "Brainhack" app for iOS last night since others on this forum reported that it gave them vivid false awakenings, which they could use as a dream sign and go lucid. I couldn't sleep very soundly with headphones on (since the only position where they didn't get in the way was on my back), and therefore barely had any dream recall, none of it vivid. I remember two different dreams, but all that I can say for sure about them is another case of being around several people, and in highly unusual circumstances. Gotta keep an eye out for those two dream signs, as they are by far my most common and recognizable.

And I think I'll ditch the app, too

Ok, so I'm going to try to get back into regularly lucid dreaming again, and so that means I need to write in my DJ again. However, the reason I stopped writing in it is because I didn't have the time to write 10-page entries...so I'm going to change my style dramatically and give only a summary and list some possible dream signs to watch out for. I will maintain my color scheme for lucid/non-lucid dreams.

As a starting-out night, last night was a good one. I recalled three dreams and one of them was lucid (though only momentarily).

1) Summary: Overall this dream was unclear; I was doing a bunch of random things in unfamiliar places and somehow ended up on Facebook...and when I tried to read the nonsense text I became lucid, but I only stood up and began walking off when I began to wake up.

Dream Signs: Nonsense text (though usually text looks fine in my dreams), being someplace I don't remember getting to


2) Summary: This was a weird one; I should have gone lucid immediately. I went into the garage to find my car missing, and my boss was in there working on a tank. A Nintendo DS arrived in the mail and my boss took it and wired it into the tank so I could control it by the DS controls. I tried driving the tank to work, but it was too big and powerful to drive properly on regular streets, and I was sure I would get arrested...

Dream Signs: Highly Unusual Events, being around people (HUGE dream sign--when I go to sleep I'm always alone), video game elements


3) Summary: I was looking for something (not sure what), and my search ran me into Ashley Cowie as he looked for the Holy Grail. For some reason I thought an ancient tomb/cave place was where I would find my thing, and that's where Ashley Cowie wanted to look for the Holy Grail as well. We found a pillar with something on top, but we couldn't get high enough to look at it at first, and then when we did a glass box covered the top. Ashley distressed over how we could get in there while I broke open the glass. Nothing was inside.

Dream Signs: Being around people, highly unusual events, video game elements, looking for an unknown something

So last night I had a brief, but very highly lucid dream. First one in a while; I haven't been able to put much effort into lucid dreaming, so any that I have right now are random and unintentional.

Someone was hunting me down, for reasons I cannot recall. I had been on the run from them, but now I was back in my house. All I knew is that I had to get out of there before they caught me, and before I got out of there, I had to get a very important email from my computer. It held in it some form of proof that would end my problems (details of the contents are vague). So I sneaked upstairs to my computer, and tried to turn it on so as to get the email, but my pursuer was too smart. They cut the power to my house which of course immediately caused my PC to shut off as well. I suddenly got a feeling that I only get in dreams--a feeling of being utterly trapped by some power that I cannot see, but that I know is there, without any possibility of escape.

That triggered lucidity, and I instantly realized that I did not have to be trapped any longer. I recognized completely that I was in a dream and could control it how I pleased, so I held out my hand towards the computer to channel my energy properly, and with minor effort was able to power it up with Electrokinesis. I had hoped that once the power got stable I could draw my hand back and the PC would continue to operate without further active control, but unfortunately it did not. If I retracted me hand and withdrew the effort, the computer would immediately shut down.

There was no time to fool with that, so I tried to keep the computer powered on with my left hand while navigating to the email with my right. Now, my PC is rather powerful, and requires a lot of energy to keep running. It was draining my own energy very quickly, and I was having to put more and more effort in all the time. (Pause here for a moment: I know it doesn't sound very epic, but picture what all this was really like: the room was dark from lack of electricity, I had someone drawing nearer trying to kill me, and I was forcing myself to do something potentially 'fatal'. Not to mention that sparks were falling from the ceiling as lights and other nearby electrical objects were picking up on the current and breaking. It was a very intense, epic moment )

I had just gotten the email to open, and was about to read what it said, when suddenly the effort grew to be too much for me. The electricity overwhelmed me, resulting in a shock that hit from the inside out, as if coming from my brain, which threw me backwards onto the floor, bringing my chair with me. At this point I knew I would be defeated by the dream if I remained inside, so I just tried to break the dream into a million pieces, and I was awake instantly (that trick always works for me).

It's been far too long since I've had lucid experiences like this one. Call me an adrenaline junkie, but I love intense circumstances like that where lucid dream powers come particularly in handy

Wow, it feels like forever since I last got on these forums! Hopefully I'm back to stay awhile...

So in recent months I haven't really even tried to lucid dream. If I did try it would fail every time; maybe things just got too routine to be meaningful enough to cause my brain to go lucid. I honestly don't know. But I think now that I have spent a decent amount of time away from lucid dreaming, as long as I have a goal in mind I can get back into it.

That goal came to me last night as I watched Inception for the second time. Of course I realized how much of it isn't true to real life, but a lot of things from the movie could work, with some slight modifications. So I decided that in the coming weeks I'm going to try to take as many concepts from Inception as possible and turn them into a real life, working form. At the same time I will simply be keeping a normal journal of my dreams to aid in recall. For the sake of those that dislike people using Inception for real-life lucid dreaming, I'll be including small sections that explain the reasoning behind each part, to prove I'm not mindlessly following a hollywood story.

Last night, being the first of this quest, I had to start small and simple, with something that could work without a few days' practice beforehand. That narrowed things down to none other than the kick. I went with Non je ne Regrette Rien, the song used in Inception, set to an alarm on my netbook (using Easy MP3 Alarm) so that it would deliver the kick right about 4:00am.

I don't recall a lot about the dream I was having, but I do remember that suddenly everything went black, and I heard the sound of a trumpet as if it had been recorded and then exponentially slowed down. It faded in and out, the blasts increasing in pitch and frequency as time went on. After a few seconds, the trumpet was normal speed, and I could hear Edith Piaf's voice in addition to the trumpets. I was successfully awakened by the song.

Why it works: This is up for debate, but I believe the reason this song in particular is effective at waking people up is because the trumpets function similarly to a beat in an isochronic tone. Because the trumpets sound off at a relatively high frequency, your brain's natural reaction is to adjust to match that frequency, which is too high for sleeping, thus waking you up.

After that, I got up, shut down the netbook so I'd stop wasting electricity (I'm no environmentalist, but that stuff isn't cheap! ), and then got back in bed, hoping I'd remain conscious enough to reach lucidity.

Next time my eyes opened, I was laying on a mattress without sheets, looking up at a roof of blue-tinted steel, and a very bright light. I sat up and walked out of my chamber, finding the whole building to be made of the same blue-ish metal. The architecture was odd--not based on squares and rectangles like normal buildings, but rather everything was based on a hexagonal shape. The hallways were also lined with screens that were embedded into the walls. They were displaying games and programs currently in testing. As I continued walking down the hallway, I passed a room where I could see the people who were actually doing the testing. I got the feeling that I was in the headquarters some software development company, or something of that nature.

When I got outside, I saw a group of my friends, but before I could even say anything to them, they had grabbed me and pulled me behind some weird structure, telling me that I had to be careful not to be seen by the police. Apparently I had accidentally committed some crime in regards to the software company, and false memory caused me to believe it. I also wasn't alone; one dream character had done the same thing as me, and had to hide as well.

After a while of just sneaking around trying to find our way home, I heard loud machine noises coming from behind me and turned to see a train driving along an elevated track. The track was horribly damaged and out of repair, and swayed back and forth as the train sped along, trying to cross the weak section before it gave way. It didn't happen; the tracks began to fall apart shortly ahead of the train, and within a moment the train had driven off the end and landed in a (very realistic) explosion.

Something about that explosion and its realism drew me very strongly into the dream, and everything took on a greater depth and clarity. I really felt like I was there, and perhaps I even had a sense of being in a dream, but it didn't register enough for me to truly be lucid.

At any rate, with the train drawing all the attention of the police, the DC and I no longer had to worry about sneaking around. In fact, we were primary witnesses of what happened, so the police and news reporters all wanted to ask us questions instead of turn us in.

I walked around and talked to some people after that, but the dream was pretty much over from that point; nothing very interesting happened thereafter. What I do find interesting is how my mind translated my desire to really be in the dream--as in, a dream that I'm in deeply enough for it to be clear and have the depth of consciousness to it--in the form of an explosion. Usually I would have thought such a thing would cause me to wake up, but it seems that something surprising and highly realistic does the exact opposite. I'll have to remember that...maybe it could come in handy if I'm ever lucid and the dream is fading! Just make something explode

Well, I'm going to work on a totem today and see if I can apply that principle to reality checking. Wish me luck!

NOTES/NON-LUCID/LUCID

Alright, so I consider this 'Day 1' of my attempt to have a lucid dream within the next week, since I am off work and can devote time to lucid dreams.

No lucid dream last night, but at least I have some recall. Hopefully that will improve throughout the week as well.

I was someplace far away from home with a group of friends, and it was time to go home. We loaded up in the car and drove off, but in only a couple hours (which passed like seconds, but the car clock said it had been hours) it was getting close to time to eat, so we started looking for restaurants to stop at. We attempted to stop at several, but something or another would cause us to leave. Sometimes they were closed, sometimes the service was deplorable, and sometimes we'd just plain decide we wanted something different. This went on for several more hours until finally we found someplace where we could actually stay and eat. The day was already ending at that point. I commented that we had not made much progress, and everyone kind of just nodded and kept eating . When we were done, and back in the car, we drove down the street the restaurant was on, rounded a corner...and then, to my shock, I recognized the road we were on. Somehow we'd made it back home while we were searching for restaurants!

The dream faded out then, and I soon woke up. I tried to DEILD or WILD, but no luck. Eventually I did fall asleep for another hour, but it was dreamless.

NOTES/NON-LUCID/LUCID

In recent months life has just plain been too busy to focus on lucid dreaming enough to keep a DJ. I'm going to try from now on to be less specific with my entries so that I can keep up a DJ even on days when I have little time, but regardless, I finally have almost a full week without work or a lot of other things, so I can spend as long as I need to on lucid dreaming right now.

Last night immediately before going to bed I listened to Stephen LaBerge's guided awareness exercise on MP3, and I kept it in mind while falling asleep. This resulted in the following dream:

I was at work, kind of out of it, doing my normal stuff absent mindedly, when a co-worker came up and told me something that had been going on and asked me a few questions about it to see what she should do. For some reason I did not directly answer her questions, but instead got up and found another co-worker and asked her about the same thing. She replied with a totally different version of the same story. I smiled, then, suspecting that I was dreaming. One by one I pointed out all of the flaws in logic with her story, and how it didn't match up with what I'd previously heard--which was now not sounding too logical, either. I determined that if I would hear a third version of the same story, I would know I was dreaming, so I found yet another co-worker and asked him for his take. It was, as expected, totally different, and logically flawed.

Unfortunately, that was the extent of it. I didn't really become lucid, I just laughed at all the logical flaws and stood there pointing them out to everyone, all the while knowing that it all meant I was dreaming, but without truly comprehending it.

I need to do much better than that, but I'm on the right track already, at least. With proper mental preparation, I already am able to identify logical flaws in my dream environment. That's step 1. Now I've got to move beyond mere recognition and into comprehension. If I can get that far, I'll almost certainly really truly become lucid again, as long as I can keep the dream stable. I'm good with dream control, though, so hopefully that issue won't raise its ugly head

I'll be heading to bed here fairly soon; will report back sometime tomorrow with whatever dreams I recall!

(SIDE NOTE: I'VE OFFICIALLY BEEN INTO LUCID DREAMING FOR A YEAR NOW! )

Well, I've kind of been absent from this DJ for a while again, but hopefully this time I'll really for real be coming back. I keep on saying I'm coming back but then stuff comes up, I know

Anyway, last night I had a really vivid lucid dream, that, although not very epic, was rather interesting. For one thing, it's the first truly lucid dream I've had in a very long time...one where I actually stopped what I was doing and examined my environment, amazed at how realistic it was, but fully aware that it was all completely non-existent.

The dream began as a nightmare-ish experience. I was in my house, but everything was darker than is natural for just being night-time. I could hear screams and the sounds of what I knew would be hideous-looking beasts in the distance. Watching. Waiting. For me.

But then I looked down, and saw that I was not myself, either. I was one such creature, with leathery, tar-black skin, and a voice that mutated and sounded creepy when I spoke. Instantly I realized it was all just a dream, and I decided I would get the heck out of there before something attacked and woke me up. Besides, I didn't like being an ugly monster anyway . I walked up to the nearest wall and tried to phase through it. Having been a while since my last lucid dream, I didn't immediately have enough sense of dream control to move through, but eventually I managed to force my way through the wall and out to the other side, where I suddenly was caught up into a vortex and sucked away from the house into pitch blackness.

I wasn't waking up, however, and I knew it. I was simply moving to another, better place in the dream world. I watched as the leathery black skin peeled away, revealing my 'real' self beneath. My voice returned to normal as well. Next thing I know, I'm falling into a large gray box of a building, and it was basically empty to begin with. I tried creating a few things in it, but I was frustrated to find that I could barely control anything. Whatever I changed would erase itself and just fade away to the way it was before.

"What's going on here?" I asked myself.

My answer was approaching fast...literally. My sister flew up overhead, creating things to fill in the space around her as she went.

"Oh great!" I called out. "How'd I end up in your dream?"

She just laughed and kept on flying.

"I don't know, but have fun!"

I shook my head and began to fly off, wishing I had a totem like the one in Inception that I could use in other people's dreams. All of a sudden, though, I fell to the ground.

"What was that?" I asked my sister, who was still flying around.

"I just made a rule." She said. "To fly in my dream, you have to be in a sitting position."

"That's stupid! Why'd you do that?"

"If you're going to be in my dream, I might as well have fun with you."

"Yeah. Real funny."

I flew off (in a sitting position) and basically just explored the area and talked to the DC's in my sister's dream. It was interesting to carry on a conversation with DC's that weren't from my own subconscious. They spoke very differently than I'm used to having DC's speak, and often didn't make any sense to me at all.

In spite of minor annoyances it was an enjoyable night, overall. Plus I think I've got something going with MILD now, so hopefully my lucids should return to being much more frequent.

Just what the title says. No, I haven't already quit. I just had to take some MORE time off from lucid dreaming unexpectedly thanks to getting sick. But now that I'm 99% better, I can start again with documenting my average dreams and work towards making them lucid once again.

I don't recall my dreams from last night, but I do recall an interesting dream from the night before, so I'll summarize it now.

The dream began as a false awakening. I got out of bed and was about to begin my daily routine when I decided to go back to sleep for a few more minutes. So that's just what I did; I got back in bed and lay my head down and I was out.

Now I was in a dream within a dream (notice the darker text indicating a deeper level?). I found myself standing on the edge of a vast canyon and exploring the surrounding area. Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't tell what. After about a half hour of looking around and finding nothing interesting, I decided to lie down and go to sleep.

Now in layer 3 of the dream, I found myself at a friend's dorm at the college he goes to...only the actual layout of the place was nothing like the real-world college. The dream explained it away as remodeling, and I never caught on that it was a dream. My friend was asking me about dreams, particularly lucid ones, and if it would be possible to share dreams.

"Sure it's possible, I've done it before." I said. "We could do it right now in fact, if I can manage a WILD."

"Well, want to give it a try?" He asked.

I agreed to try, so we lay down and went to sleep.

I was now in layer 4 of the dream, aware that I was dreaming, and in a white void. All around me all I saw was white. I couldn't move anywhere or speak, and when I tried, it simply woke me up into the previous layer of the dream.

"Did you do it?" My friend asked.

"Yeah, but I couldn't stay in for some reason."

In another moment, I woke up from that dream and into the layer before it. I was only at this one a split second before I shot up into the air as the dream faded out into the first layer, and I sat up in my bed.

"That was a crazy dream!" I said to myself as I climbed out of bed.

Then I woke up for real, and was totally disoriented from all the waking up

Ok, so I just woke up, and I think I finally discovered the perfect time for me to do a WBTB. Before, I was doing them at 5:20, because it had worked a couple times and gotten me great lucids, but the problem was, I often would just remain awake in my bed at that point rather than fall back asleep. It was just too late in the morning. So last night, I tried going to bed an hour earlier and getting up for WBTB at 4:00. Same amount of sleep beforehand, but it was still so early that I would fall back asleep easily.

Before I get around to those dreams, though, I want to mention something that happened at the beginning of the night. Now, when I first began to lucid dream, I would always see this eye staring at me when I'd close my eyes. I'm not sure when that stopped, but I just realized as I was going to bed that I hadn't seen it in a long while. So I closed my eyes and began to look for it. It didn't take long for it to appear. But what was weird this time was that it didn't stay just an eye forever. Pretty soon, it took on a 3D feel to it, and an entire face appeared around it.

"I am your dream guide. You have been looking for me."

Then the eyelashes on the first eye I'd seen began to grow longer and longer until they became almost plant-like vines extending out and encompassing me. Then the DG said:

"Embrace eternity!"

And all went black.

Then at 4:00 I woke up, went to the bathroom, and, as I said, fell back asleep easily. A bit too easily, perhaps. I had only started my mental preparation to get me ready to RC and recognize when I was dreaming when I fell asleep!

Dream 1: I was in a very rainy world. It looked as if it had been raining for quite some time, since there were floods everywhere. The only reason my house wasn't flooded was because I was living with several DC's in a house that was high up on a platform, just off to the side of an electrical tower.

Nowhere to go...pretty boring right? Well, it was, but then things started to get interesting. All of my DC friends and I were standing below the highest part of the tower where it was dry and we could see for miles, when we suddenly heard this deafening, sickening creak. It came from the structure we were standing on. And then...

*SNAP*!

*FZZT*!

We all looked in horror as to our left, a smaller tower that was connected to the main one fell down right on top of our little house! The house was not professionally made; it was just a bunch of plywood, really. The thing was totally smashed, and as if that weren't enough, the cord tied on to the top of fallen tower got enough of a tug (I guess it was caught on something under the water below) to pull it--and much of the house's remains--over the edge and out into the flood.

"That's...not good." Said one DC.

"We'll...we'll be ok." Another said, hopefully.

He spoke too soon. Another smaller tower in front of us snapped and splashed into the ocean next as well.

"We have to get out of here." I said. When they all looked at me with blank stares, I explained what I meant. "With those two towers taken down, there won't be any electrical charge running through the main power line up at the top of this station. We can ride it across to the next safe area, but we have to hurry! It won't be long before this whole place comes down, now."

We ascended for the top, I in the lead. Gathering up all my courage, I jumped, grabbed hold of the wire, and began flying through the rain on the high-speed zip-line. Then lightning flashed...

And I woke up. Even though it hadn't been lucid, the realism was simply incredible. All the rain hitting my face as I rode the zip-line, the sounds and sights of the smaller towers breaking...every detail was so accurate, and there were a LOT of details in this one, particularly with physics. So now I'm pretty confident that I've found when to lucid dream.

This knowledge in mind though, and it still being very early morning, I went back to sleep almost immediately, and the dream continued:

My DC friends and I had made our way to a kingdom which had also seen its share of damage (debris was everywhere), but at least it wasn't flooding...or raining at all, for that matter. In fact, the place was rather dry and desolate. We walked into the castle and explained our situation to the king, who was more than sympathetic.

"You may have noticed," he said, "that our own fair home has seen its last days. We've suffered many attacks from the ghouls, and I fear we must move to another location. The King of the West has agreed to take us in among his people, but we'll have no support in the transition. Join us if you wish, but be wary: it is a dangerous road that we travel."

"I don't think we have much of a choice." I said, as the unspoken leader of my little group.

Suddenly, a bit of one of the stained-glass windows that lined the border of the castle walls shattered in, as if a rock had been thrown through it. Only pure white light shone through behind it. I could hear ghoul war-cries off in the distance. Soon, other holes started to appear in the shattering windows.

"What's going on!?" I asked the king.

"The dream is collapsing!" He said. "What you see beyond is the great void. You never created anything beyond this castle!"

Something clicked, then.

"Wait, you mean all this is my dream?" I asked.

"Yes!" The king pleaded. "Only you can change it! Only you can save us from this oncoming battle!"

Empowered by this thought, I marched straight up the stairs to the balcony, where I could see out the windows clearly. Then I held up a hand and ran it across my vision, intending to fill in each window that my hand passed with the proper scenery behind it. It worked. What was left of the windows stopped breaking, and behind them, off in the distance, I could see the silhouette of the other buildings in the kingdom. They too were broken down as badly as the castle, it seemed.

"What shall we do now?" I asked the king, knowing full well what he'd say.

"We must defend ourselves from the ghouls! Quick! I have swords and armor."

Suddenly every one of us was wearing a suit of armor and holding a sword. Being lucid, the armor didn't weigh me down or make me less agile. It was mostly for looks, honestly, since I couldn't be harmed anyway. We all then ran out of the castle, swords blazing, and began attacking the ghouls as they ran up to us. There were hundreds of the miserable, scrawny, gray things, but we took them all out, and not too cleanly, either. I jumped and flipped all over the place, first using just my own sword, but later using a second sword I spontaneously created. I hacked off the heads of the creatures, often multiple in a single swing. Before long, the battle was over.

Unfortunately, something about that battle had caused my mind to lose sight of the fact that it was a dream, and I returned to being non-lucid.

The king had been wounded in the battle, so everyone decided it was high time to leave for this other kingdom that was going to take in all the people. We put the king on a sort of bed that could be carried, and then started out on our trek.

I can't remember how, but somewhere along the way I got separated from the rest of the people, and as I tried to find my own way back to the path we'd been following, I came across Gollum, and asked him to lead me where I needed to go (even though I wasn't lucid at this point, something in me still knew I couldn't get hurt, so I wasn't afraid of Gollum attacking me or anything).

"This way!" Gollum said, leading me into another broken down castle. "We must follow the path of the Gol-Keep, yes we must."

"The Gol-Keep?" I asked.

"Yes! Yes! The Gol-Keep! This way!"

False memory told me the Gol-Keep had a reputation of being the most evil place in existence. Sounded scary...which sounded fun. Gollum lead me into a tunnel that had been dug through the old castle. It wasn't very scary, though. I was disappointed.

"This isn't so scary after all." I said. "Isn't there something better?"

"This tunnel avoids the worst." Explained Gollum. "We don't wants to go through the other tunnel!"

"Take me there."

He did, but then let me go in alone. This other tunnel was totally dark, wet, and the home of a thousand creepy voices all around me. I could hear movement and occasionally feel a hand brush up against me, but I just kept walking, enjoying my invincibility in the midst of something that usually would have freaked me out.

I made it through the tunnel quickly and came out right behind the rest of the people as they entered the second kingdom. The king had died en route, so they were looking for a new leader to represent them to the King of the West. When they discovered that I had survived going through the Gol-Keep, and without any fear, I was chosen.

When we met before the King of the West, however, he was less convinced about me.

"We must have a duel to prove your worthiness." He said. "If you succeed, I will grant you continued rulership over these people beneath my rule alone, and a place to stay in my kingdom. If you fail to best me, however, then I fear I must turn you all away."

"I'm ready." I said.

The king fetched his sword and gave me choice of my own weapon. I settled on four swords, two in each hand, and then the sparring began. We went back and forth for quite some time, but no one really gained on the other. Eventually, I flipped two of the swords around and held them backhanded, so I was essentially wielding two double-bladed swords at once. This was indeed too much for the king, and I quickly knocked his sword from his hand.

I woke up right about then.

Had bad recall from last night. I barely remember anything. The only thing that sticks in my mind is a fragment that began with me being flung through the air in some futuristic city. But this wasn't a clean, coldly-efficient kind of place. It was a big, cyber-scum heap...and by 'scum' I'm describing both the environment and the people there. As I continued through the air I passed by multiple Minority Report-esque advertisements, all of them sensual, furthering the feeling of the place being full of low-lives.

I can't remember what happened to me once I landed, but I know that at a certain point in the dream, it would restart at this point when I was flung through the city. Then it would all happen the same up to that one point, and restart again. It did this for a dozen times or more before I finally woke up.

Something about that dream messed with my mind today, too. In spite of all my reality checks and awareness boosters I still feel kind of like I'm still in that dream...like at any moment, everything could restart to an earlier point in time again. My sense of time in general has been distorted somewhat...ten minutes will go by in what seems like an instant, I have difficulty remembering what day of the week it is, etc.

I probably just didn't sleep that great last night. Maybe I can take a nap this afternoon and have another lucid dream and set everything right.

Yay! The RC's and totem and all that are working! Unfortunately, I had to get up early this morning, so I didn't get to write down all the dreams I had originally recalled, and it's late in the day now, so I only have tiny fragments left, but you can be sure I wrote down the most important one in full!

When the dream began, I was at home, in my living room. The realism of the dream was high, so I didn't notice anything strange and never went lucid from observation. However, I did do a reality check out of habit, and the moment I pinched my nose and still felt the air go through, I came into the full realization that I was dreaming. I don't think I've ever been so incredibly aware before! For the first time in a lucid dream, I truly felt unlimited. Speed was not a factor; I could just as easily run around the world as I could across my backyard. My reactions were unbeatable...I could have won in a fight against Neo. Physics were also not a problem. I could bend or break the rules my mind would typically apply to the world without side effects.

Now, in the past, I've struggled to use telekinesis on more than one object at a time. It just required focusing on too many things for it to work. But this time I felt confident I could do literally anything, so I stepped into the middle of the room, clenched my fists, and then imagined every object in the room lifting off the ground the more I drew my fists in closer towards me. As I looked around, I had succeeded. Regardless of weight or size, everything was lifted up. The 54-inch TV, couches, the dining table, chairs...even the oven! And it was no more work to suspend it all in the air than it was to breath. I could have held it there forever or cast it all out the window with a thought, or who knows what. Instead I just set it down gently, satisfied that I was truly unlimited, and it. Felt. Great.

Sadly, though, I had breathed in through my nose for the RC just a bit too hard, and the dream began to collapse, then. Everything started to fade, and so I tried desperately to rub my hands and spin, but nothing I did could stop me from waking up.

I tried to DEILD, then. I rolled over, silenced every thought that attempted to come into my mind, and passed out again.

I found myself back in the previous dream, getting up off the living room floor, as if I had simply gone unconscious and now was waking back up...even though the exact opposite had truly happened. For a moment I had a grasp on the fact that I was dreaming, but very quickly this knowledge fled from me, and I walked off, thinking what an amazing lucid dream I'd just had...and then I woke up again, this time unable to go back to sleep so quickly.

It may have been short, but it shows promise. I'm headed in the right direction again, and that was just after a few days of putting real effort into lucid dreaming again. Who knows where I'll be able to go after a few more days? If I can manage to be that unlimited in all my lucid dreams...heck, I could perform Inception for real

As expected, my re-establishment of a RC habit has not fully set in yet...officially my goal is just to have a single RC-induced lucid dream by this Saturday, which will be one full week of nights since my return to lucid dreaming, although I am quite open to the idea of having more LDs prior to that date

Well, anyway, for the sake of improving recall and looking for more dream signs, here's what I remember from last night (it would seem I'm getting pretty consistent with remembering 3 dreams, eh?)

Dream 1 - False memory and what I saw around me both said the same thing: I had done an absolutely awful job cleaning up at work the night before. The place was a mess...particularly the bathroom. All of the toilets had to be taped off due to...misuse, shall I say...or overuse...hmm. But anyway I was just waiting to really hear it from my boss, when he stepped inside and said, "You know what, great job on the cleanup last night. I never thought I'd say this, but I have absolutely no complaints; I can't think of anything that needs done better next time."

I thought he was joking at first, but it became evident within moments that he was serious. "Sweet! I got off the hook!" I thought before the dream faded

Dream 2 - I was at the computer, trying to type something, and I noticed my keyboard wasn't working. (this occasionally happens IRL...I have a keyboard that isn't fully Windows 7 compatible, so I sometimes have to unplug it and plug it back in to make it work) I was about to re-plug the keyboard, when I thought about my old one. It was just as basic as you could get, but it worked. But I really needed the newer one for video editing, so I wasn't sure what to do. Then this little mental argument grew to a huge scale in my head to where I was losing focus in the dream and the keyboard in front of me flashed between the new and the old...the dream grew more unstable...then it ended.

Dream 3 - It was Christmas now, and someone got me an XBox 360 and a racing game to go along with it. At first it seemed really cool; the menus had great graphics and I was able to totally customize my car and all sorts of things. But then I actually got into the game and the FPS was really bad, not to mention the controller basically had no bearing on what happened in the game. Pushing buttons did things, but not always the same thing every time, and never what I wanted them to. Eventually I got frustrated and stopped, then took the XBox upstairs, opened it up, added some hardware (which conveniently appeared in my hand on the spot) and then tried it again. This time the controls were responsive, and the framerate was better, even though it still was a bit jerky.

I woke up wanting a PS3.

Not kidding. I know it was just a dream, but something in me really dislikes XBox now. Weird how that works...

So I've been heavily reality checking for a full day now, and I don't intend to stop yet. I've got a 'totem' (go see Inception if you don't know what it is) that I use to remind me to reality check and to provide another physical check for me as well, and I feel confident that it will work for getting me back into DILDs. But of course, in order for this to get into my dreams, it has to be a habit of mine, and habits take time to form, so last night I didn't go lucid, but I did notice myself observing my environment a bit more carefully in general, which is a start.

Dream 1: I was crouched in the mud with a full camo suit on. The air around me was dusty and the sky was a dim gray. No plant life grew anywhere. Everything about the place had 'Death' written all over it. After a short while, Scions began to approach with a couple of husks just a few steps behind. There was a gun in my hand, so I pulled the trigger. Turned out the weapon was fairly weak, but it had a very high rate of fire, so although it did little damage to the oncoming zombies, it was effective to tear apart their weak, dead flesh until they simply couldn't function anymore.

Suddenly I noticed two others, one to my left and one to my right, who were also shooting down the zombies. Rather than go lucid, my mind explained all this away by telling me that I was playing a video game, and these two others had just joined in. I wasn't fully convinced, and for sure, there was just something that didn't feel right about this explanation, but I didn't really have time to stop and think about it, so in the end I never caught wind of what was really going on.

Dream 2: This time I was engaging in something much more normal: a Skype conversation. And I was actually sitting at a computer rather than physically acting it out, too. I was only in a text chat, but I was talking and listening like it was an audio chat. Eventually, in a dream-daze, I wandered away from the computer and still I could talk even though I wasn't wearing a headset or anything like that. I never went lucid, but I did start to think that that was a bit odd, not to mention the person I was talking to was acting nothing like they do IRL.

Dream 3: Now I was at some social gathering, and a quick glance at my watch told me it was 7:00pm. I should have caught on to the fact that in the dream, one of the watch buttons that broke IRL was still there, but of course I didn't . Everyone that I know IRL was at the party, including those who I don't know personally, but whose faces I see regularly and would recognize. And then of course there were a few people there that were just complete fabrications of my mind.

Although the remembered details of what I did there are few, I do know that there were tons of other things throughout the night that I should have recognized in this one. For example, I quite clearly recall walking into a school building, but I walked out of a barn later on that night. Everyone talked about how good the food was, but I don't recall ever eating anything. And then the best part was when I tried to leave a couple hours later. False memory told me I had parked the car in one place, but it was simply not there (and of course false memory also told me I had driven there, even though I never did). There were about five parking lots to look through, though, so rather than reality check I just started looking through the different lots.

As I walked from one lot to another, I looked down at my watch and saw it was now 9:41pm. I had tried to leave at 9, so I'd been looking for my car for 41 minutes. I thought maybe I should just give someone a call and take a ride home, but I knew that wouldn't solve my problem, so I just kept on looking. However, I got stopped by a guy in a wheelchair that wanted to introduce himself. I didn't want to be rude, so I talked with him a couple minutes (during which time I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, he was no longer crippled, and the wheelchair was nowhere in sight, not to mention it was suddenly daytime when it was night only a few moments ago). This guy was one of those complete fabrications of my mind, but the visual realism was amazing; easily as good as my memories of real people, if not better.

When I had finished talking to this guy I walked off to continue to look for my car, but instead I woke up.

Interesting to me how that last dream ended. Since this guy was my subconscious, maybe he began crippled because I was in SP, but then as I began to wake up, the SP was removed, and light began to register in my eyes, causing those other particular effects in the dream world.

Hopefully I'll pick up on these things better as time goes on. It is my goal to keep on doing these RC's every day and have a lucid dream by this day next week. Wish me luck!