LiveInTheDream's DJ v2.5

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

AVATAR FANS: Even though this one isn't lucid, you'll probably want to read it.

Blast! This morning I got woken up by someone knocking loudly on the door, so I didn't have a chance to work on dream recall. Fortunately, I woke up earlier and recalled my first dream of the night, but that's all I get this time.

So here's my one dream:

I was a Na'vi (well, a human in an Avatar) in a Na'vi camp. The odd thing was, I, along with several other Na'vi around me, had tan skin at first. Also, Pandora looked more like New Zealand than Pandora, but a short walk fixed that. Everyone's skin turned blue later on too; I'm not sure when.

We were preparing for war, and it fell to me to scout out the land and set up a few traps designed to stop the initial wave of human ground attack. I did so by running across the thick tree branches like pathways. I had to jump between them and maintain good balance, but somehow it was very easy to do. When I had a good idea of the surrounding territory and good, defensible positions, I went about placing traps. As I placed the last one, an exploding plant they called a 'hermit bud', I heard the footsteps of someone approaching from behind. "Oh no! He heard us!" A Na'vi voice said. It sounded like they dove behind a bush then, so I had a good idea of where to look. When I found the two runaway Na'vi, I grabbed them by their braids and threatened to cut their neural connectors off if they fought back (capitol punishment for a Na'vi). They were cowards, which is why they fled the fight in the first place, so my threat kept them quite cooperative on the way back to the camp.

The Na'vi chief was very impressed with me. I had scouted out the land and set the traps in the best possible places as well as captured and returned two deserters. As the deserters were tied to a post to await punishment, I was given a promotion, effective immediately to...well, I don't know what the Na'vi word for it was, but basically a general. This was great news for most people, but one general, who hated the Avatars, did not take so well to it. He was willing to fight with me as a subordinate, but not an equal. This general happened to be watching as he sat on his Ikran, so in his fury he simply took off and proclaimed he was going to join the humans. The Na'vi chief ordered the archers to take him down, but they were so shocked and flustered that they couldn't get armed in time.

A sinking feeling hit my stomach as I watched the general ride out of sight, unharmed. I imagine everyone else felt it, too, because the chief put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him. "You are both human and Na'vi," he said. "Only you can save us now." I didn't like it, but I understood his reasoning. Without their best strategic leader, they would need someone who understood well how human machines worked--and therefore how to break them--to balance out the gap in military strength that was left behind.

"My Name is Lincoln" started playing, as if it were a movie. I was suddenly in red general armor with warpaint (and blue skin now), leading a Na'vi team on Ikran. The sound of hundreds of approaching aircraft rang loud in the air, and it was only a few moments before what we were all dreading appeared: a Dragon Assault Ship, with a swarm of Samson fighters shortly behind. We had little time to think of what to do, as the Dragon's forward guns began picking off Na'vi and their Ikran. Most of us managed to get past the guns, but there was no way we would be able to defeat all of the aircraft with what weapons we had. Thinking quickly, I jumped off my Ikran, drawing my dual blades at the same time, landing on the back of the Dragon, near the back propellers. My blades couldn't instantly pierce the metal of the ship's hull, but they could dent it, and so after several strikes to the propeller's joint to the ship, I was confident I had a weak enough spot to do some damage. I raised both blades over my head and thrust them down, piercing the metal and the machinery beneath, disabling one the propeller. The Dragon lurched, suddenly losing its balance, but I knew the pilot was skilled enough to keep it in the air as it was. There was no more time; we were beginning to near Na'vi ground defenses, and if I took the ship down, it would kill too many of my allies. In a desperate attempt, I ran to the front of the ship and did a flip off the end, throwing one of my blades through the cockpit window and into the pilot inside. My Ikran flew by at just the right moment to catch me as I fell, and then flew away before any damage could be done to us. I looked over my shoulder and watched as the dragon lifted upward and tilted due to the imbalance in propellers, forming a wall for the Samson fighters. The bulk of the fighters couldn't get out of the way in time, and either collided with the Dragon or other Samson's. The few remaining fighters soon found themselves caught in the flames of the resulting explosion, finishing off the human air support with one blow. All airborne Na'vi let out a cheer, but our celebration was cut short. Through the smoke came the defective general, both his Ikran and himself clad in RDA armor. "Go help the ground troops!" I ordered my Na'vi subordinates. "I'll take this one myself!"

Sadly, I can't remember the details of that fight. It was a whirl of spinning, colliding, and exchanging blows, and I was slowly losing, being in the weaker armor. I do remember how the battle ended, though. No matter what I did, I couldn't do damage to the general...until I noticed one single weak spot. I drew my remaining blade and threw it right at the defective Na'vi, cutting his braid (and thus his neural connectors) in half. He was stunned, and so was his Ikran, who now was out of the general's control. It was only a moment before he lost his grip on his ride and fell to the ground, hundreds of feet below.

I could feel my Ikran getting weak, and I myself was bleeding, so I took us back to the camp, where upon landing, I was informed that even with the humans knowing our ground strategy, we had managed to hold them off once my Ikran-mounted soldiers had arrived. That had not been in the original plan, and therefore it surprised the human soldiers and ended up destroying their whole operation. Pandora was ours! Everyone began celebrating, and I soon woke up.

It's really a shame that wasn't a lucid dream, or it would have been really awesome. However, for not being lucid, I had an usual amount of mental presence. Not being lucid is to be expected right now, anyway.

While Naiya's reality checking tutorial is good and worked for me, it only did so because I had a couple days where I had the time to give myself a mental workout. I don't have that kind of time anymore, so I'm tweaking a few things and I believe I've finally found a reality check that is both mental and physical, quick and solid. It's just going to take a few days for it to become a good enough habit to break into my dreams.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Wow, my dream recall EXPLODED last night! None were lucid, but I came pretty close a couple times. Memories from real life got in more than once, and as each dream went on I started to question how it was possible. I didn't get any farther than that, though. I think I need to slightly tweak how I'm reality checking...


Dream 1: Well, I did it. Remember the girl I had flown around in my previous dream? I saw her again, and this time asked if she would go out on a date. She accepted, and we made plans before going our separate ways. That night on facebook we both changed our relationship status, and I started to be in disbelief about the whole situation. Questions started to arise concerning the impossibility of all of this, but I just accepted it as a fact that these things always work out in unbelievable ways and didn't RC.

I woke up for a short while after each dream, but basically rolled over and re-entered the same one.

Dream 2: We were actually going out on the date now. Sadly, I don't remember much of what happened, but the restaurant was nice and the food was good.

Dream 3: A few of my friends and I decided to make a movie, and I guess my church building was the best location for it, because we decided to take a night and film there all night long. When everyone was there and we had laid all of our stuff in one of the rooms, I remember one of my friends commenting that he saw my relationship status on facebook. I told him it was true, and even talked a little about the date. Once the camera was set up and ready to go, however, I sort of put that aside for the sake of making the movie. Everything was going well and we were getting great shots, but when we went outside to do some outdoor filming, there was this weird guy lurking in the shadows. The parking lot lights were on, so we caught a glimpse of his face beneath the black cloak he was wearing. The man was a bit heavy, with a rough-looking goatee, and what looked like brown warpaint on his forehead. He said nothing, he just watched us. We didn't notice him for a long time, even though several of us made comments that we thought we heard something. Of course we decided outdoor shooting was done for the night and we ran inside, locking all the doors to the building. "That thing on his forehead looked like a clan symbol or something," I said. "Who knows how many others he's got out there, hiding? Surrounding the building, even?" It seemed best to stop filming then, so we decided to turn off all the lights and hide in the storage room. It wasn't long before I fell asleep in there. No, I do not remember dreaming in my dream. When I woke up, it was light again, and all of us were safe. For a moment I felt like sleeping had been a good thing, but when I realized I had only gotten about three hours of it, my mind changed. I felt awful; really tired, weak, even shaky. My friends and I attempted to resume filming our movie, but just couldn't act anymore. We ended up calling it a day and heading home to sleep.

Dream 4: I was back home, and apparently had caught up on sleep, because I was feeling fine now. That didn't last long, though. The weird guy in the cloak burst into my house and declared that he was from the government. He had a couple other guys in cheap gray suits with him too, but they were more for threat factor than anything. Seeing I was outnumbered, I let the guy talk. He began by handing me a paper. "You sir," he said, "have been convicted by the federal government for piracy of video game music." "What!?" I shouted. "I legally own the game, don't I? I paid for the music, and I have shared it with no-one. How is ripping it from the disk for personal use piracy?" That stymied him a bit. But then one of his buddies spoke up. "Where did you rip the music to?" "Well, my hard drive." "Oh," the cloaked man said. "The hard drive...tsk tsk tsk." "How does that make it illegal?" A third guy spoke up. "Those songs which you have ripped to your hard drive were available on iTunes for a low price. I believe this game of yours even included links to places where these songs could be purchased for the sake of personal use." "Yeah, well I don't use iTunes, and I paid for the game, which includes the music, so what's wrong with me converting it to MP3's for personal use?" They didn't answer, but just pointed at the paper. "Your court hearing is in three weeks." The cloaked one said. "We'll see you then." He smiled wickedly and then left with his goons. "This is impossible." I said. "This doesn't make any sense...how would they even know that I converted the music?"

Dream 5: Now I was at Walmart, and I just had this knowledge about the fact that I had simply given in and paid for the music to keep from going to jail over it, and that had cleared everything up. Now I was going to pick up a Wii Motion Plus attachment, go home, and use my video games in peace . I walked up to the shelf and saw that there were no Motion Plus's there. "Wait a second, this seems familiar...didn't I already do this?" (Yes, I did, IRL...other than the government coming after me for converting video game music, that is)

Dream 6: My siblings, my parents, and I were on a vacation as a sort of personal family-reunion. We went on a vacation to this weird city...the entire thing was like a massive factory. Oily smoke billowed out of the rooftops of every building there, construction didn't seem to be finished on anything, as pipes and concrete and rusty metal beams were exposed everywhere. It was really a very dirty place...but something about it was attractive, too. I can't remember a whole lot of it as one continuous memory, but I recall first driving into the city by tightly winding, one-lane roads that were mounted up above the city buildings, and then spiraled downward until they reached the ground level. We drove around a bit from there on, checked into our hotel, and then looked around for a good place to eat. The buildings were actually pretty cool from ground level. Most of them were in a style that would have been retro were it not for the pipes and metal patches that made it all look modern. Inside the buildings was pretty cool as well, since all the appliances were steampunk, and the decorations and furniture looked to be a couple hundred years old. It would have made a very cool place for a movie.

So yeah, 6 dreams recalled last night, and never once did I go lucid. There's just something not right about that.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I'm not sure how I didn't go lucid last night. My guess is that everything was just so normal, and my dream memory just barely bad enough to keep me from reality checking in full, that I never even noticed the possibility that I was dreaming

See what I mean in these two dreams I recalled (I was able to remain still when I woke up and think about the dreams this time!)

Dream 1: All was as normal as could be; I went about my day as I would go about any day. That kind of makes a long story short, because the dream was long and vivid, but hey, it was normal, so why waste time on that stuff? Anyway, at one point, I stopped to tell my brother about lucid dreaming. When I got to reality checking, he was kind of confused. "Why would I ask myself if I'm dreaming when I know I'm not?" "You want to ask that when you are in a dream. The only reason you ask during the day is so that you'll remember to in that dream." After that I had to leave and run some errands, and the normalness returned, but I kept thinking about reality checking.

So close...but not close enough.

Dream 2: My mom was telling me how she had been unable to get to sleep lately. "I don't have that problem anymore." I said. "I just put myself into sleep paralysis and I go right to sleep!" "Oh really?" She replied. "How do you do that?" "Well, it's simple." And then I went through the process, mentioning the possibility of lucid dreaming with the WILD method.

Honestly that's all I remember from that second dream...it wasn't very clear to begin with. But the fact that both dreams have a lot to do with lucid dreaming tells me that I'm close. I had other dreams, too, (I just couldn't remember them because I slept all night long instead of waking up three or four times as usual) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had similar content. I guess today I better beef up my RCing and see what happens!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Wow, last weekend must have messed up my LDing worse than I thought

I kept moving last night and letting my mind get distracted with other thoughts when I woke up, so I kept forgetting my dreams. I remember having at least 4, but I haven't the slightest idea of what the first three were. I'm positive none were lucid. Fortunately, with that last one, I was able to catch myself and remain still and silent to think about my dream. Not that it's much worth recalling, but hey, it's better than nothing.

I was keeping up with a house owned by a family that I know (IRL). They were on vacation and asked me to check their mail for them and do a couple other little things. Their daughter (who I have an...interesting history with) stayed behind, but she had to be out all day, which was why they asked me instead of her. Several days went by just fine, except for a strange woman who kept coming and asking if anyone of that family was there. When I told her 'no', she acted like she left, but I caught her stalking the place several times. A couple days, the daughter got home early, and actually was there when the woman (whose name, I learned from the daughter, was Maggie) asked if anyone besides me was home. Feeling a level of responsibility for protecting the daughter (if for no other reason, to help make up for our complicated and not-so-positive past), I still told Maggie 'no'. Somehow she knew I was lying; she persisted this time, but I refused to let her in. Eventually she left, but I knew there was trouble soon to come.

Finally, it reached the last day for this family to be on vacation, and for me to be at their house. Every time the daughter got home early, it was awkward between us. Neither of us really spoke. I decided to make the best of this last day. When the daughter got home, I looked her square in the eye, and cheerfully said, "Hello! Sorry I'm always at your house...I guess this is it, though!" She didn't respond as positively as I had hoped. "Yeah...I guess so." I didn't blame her, considering what we'd been through. I started to gather up my things. "Actually, I'm pretty much done around here, so I can go right now." "Ok." The daughter said. After a moment, she stopped me. "Hey! Um...thanks. You did a lot of work this week, and...well, I appreciate it." I smiled and prepared to leave. But just then, Maggie burst into the room. "What do you think you're doing!?" She shouted at the daughter. "After what he's done? You're just going to let him go? And thank him!?" and then Maggie prepared to spit out a bunch of dumb ideologies and philosophies about life. I can't remember exactly what they were, but think along the lines of "embrace your anger; make the dark side your ally." I had had just about enough of Maggie. So I grabbed a nearby PVC pipe, watched as Maggie turned to rant at the daughter, and then, when no one was looking at me, I took a swing at her, landing a blow right on the head. She turned around and glared at me something awful, then grabbed at the pipe as I swung again. She was incredibly strong, and snapped the Pipe in half like it was a toothpick. Unfortunately for her, this left a jagged edge to my half of the pipe, turning it into a very vicious weapon. We went back and forth, exchanging blows, blocking each others, and even though Maggie was unarmed, it took me a long while to land enough damage to weaken her. Eventually, though, I took a spin and plunged the sharp end of the pipe right into Maggie's stomach, knocking her back onto a nearby bed. She knew she was done for, so again she resumed spitting out dumb ideologies. The worst part of it was, that as I glanced at the daughter, I could see she was giving in and beginning to believe Maggie's words. "Can't you see he hates you for believing me!?" Maggie shouted. The daughter dropped to her knees and began to cry. I stood motionless for a moment, the PVC pipe raised and ready to finish off the strange woman. I had her incapacitated for a moment, so I lowered the pipe and carefully approached the crying daughter. I gently laid a hand on her shoulder. "I really don't hate you." She looked up at me. "I hate the devil; I do not hate the deceived." I extended a hand to help the daughter up, but it was also as a way to declare her side in the battle, and all three of us knew it. Maggie resumed her rant, but it didn't stop the daughter from taking my hand and standing up. "Go." She said. With that, I smashed the PVC pipe down on Maggie, which turned her face blue, and the next turned all of her skin blue, and the next turned everything--teeth, eyes, hair--blue, and then one last blow made a light shoot from her eyes and mouth, and then disintegrate her, just like Smith on the third Matrix. Actually, somehow I knew then that she was Smith, just in disguise. I woke up soon after that.

Just as a sidenote to this dream, I don't generally go around and beat people up with PVC pipes

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Two lucids again last night, and I remembered to remain bodily still and mentally calm long enough to recall them!

Dream 1: I was talking with a small group of friends (including a girl who shall remain nameless) when I did my reality checks and found myself to be dreaming. Suddenly that impulse to go to Pandora returned, but it was instantly counteracted by a desire to remain with this girl in particular. "I'm really sorry," I said to her, interrupting the conversation. "I really have to leave." But then I had an idea. "But...wait a second! You can come with me!" "Really?" She asked, puzzled. "Where to?" "Come here and just hold on to me." She did, so I picked her up and flew right out of that building, right through the roof, out into the world. She smiled and laughed as I soared through the air, holding on to her the whole time. It felt so real it was incredible. Every sense save taste was fully employed. I could feel the wind on us and see it blowing her hair, I could hear her laughter, see her smile...it was...well, incredible, as I said. When I saw how much she enjoyed just flying around, I totally lost my desire to leave her and go to Pandora, so we went everywhere either of us could think of, the whole time building up a sort of romantic feeling. Eventually, after flying over rushing seas, forests full of trees, mountains, plains, and every other beautiful scene on earth, that feeling reached such a climax that we couldn't hold back any longer. So I turned and looked at her, and she at me, and right there, over the earth, late at night, in the air, below the stars, we kissed. And oh boy did that ever feel real and amazing! I was suddenly filled with such a passion that I shot straight up out of the earth and deep into space. I showed her the moon, nebulae, stars, the whole way feeling her head pressed against mine. If ever there was a dream that I did not want to wake up from, this was it, but unfortunately, all dreams must come to an end, and so I soon woke up. How I stayed calm long enough to recall it all I don't know, but I sure am glad I did!

Dream 2: I'm not sure where I went lucid in this one, but I was lucid, and that girl was nowhere to be found. Rather than look for her, I decided that I would go to Pandora again. However, my lucidity was not as strong this time, so attempting to teleport there failed. So I tried flying. After all, Pandora is part of the Alpha Centauri system which is visible off the earth's southern hemisphere, right? So all I really had to do was fly there. I shot out into space as fast as I could, flying superman style, my hands out in front of me. It was pretty amazing, because I could see light reflecting off of my arms in incredible realism. However, before I could reach Pandora, I came across a Star Destroyer and a Rebel frigate, among hundreds of smaller star fighters that were all engaged in intense combat. "Well I can end this before going to Pandora!" I thought. Dodging tie fighters, I flew right up to the Star Destroyer and landed on the nose of it. A burning tie crashed onto the destroyer right next to me, causing the metal to dent and burn, all reflecting light as if fully real. It also knocked me down. But I got up and kept moving forward. Eventually I found what I was looking for: empty escape pod tubes. The weird thing was that as I went down the tubes, it turned out they were very long and windy. "These aren't escape pod tubes..." But I soon found out what they were. Flames shot through the tunnels, coming up after me. Of course I wasn't afraid, because being lucid meant that I was aware that none of what I was seeing existed. The fire swirled all around me and shot out of the tubes in the form of a laser, leaving me totally unharmed. I had a moment of third person, seeing the laser destroy multiple rebel starfighters and do considerable damage to the frigate as well. When I returned to myself, I decided that was enough. I gripped the sides of the tubes, took a deep breath, and then ripped the destroyer in half. That finished the fight, but unfortunately also caused me to lose lucidity. I have only faint ideas of what happened after that, but I never made it to Pandora

If only I had rubbed hands before all of that...it was an amazingly clear dream; all that was missing was full control, which I could have had if lucidity were just a bit more intense. I probably could have made it out of that battle still lucid...oh well.

I had a third dream, but it was non-lucid. I also don't remember a ton about it.

Dream 3: Somehow, I had learned in an old castle that I had family ties to King Arthur, and that the whole King Arthur myth was not a myth, and that the magical sword Excalibur was a rightful part of my family inheritance. All that I had to do was find it, and other great treasures, in the castle. Of course with a fortune like that, there was a villain trying to find it first and pose as a descendant himself. He nearly did, too, but eventually I beat him in a sword fight and took Excalibur as my own.

All in all, a decent night of dreaming. I'm starting to feel good about consistent DILDing!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

FINALLY I WENT LUCID AGAIN!

TWICE!!!

Shout out to Naiya...I totally owe this one to you, since everything I did to go lucid was from your guide!

Ok, so here are the dreams. Not only were they lucid, but they were the most fascinating I've ever had for other respects, too. Unfortunately I forgot to try the TotM because I was too preoccupied with creating an entire world, but surely now that it's constructed in my mind I'll be able to just go there again without having to start from scratch, and I can do the TotM then.

Dream 1: I found myself in a lot of pain. I didn't know why, at first. I was going around some large facility, people everywhere, not understanding why it felt so weird when my feet hit the floor, or when my sleeves brushed up against my arms. But finally, for some reason everyone had to sit on the floor. When I did, I saw that my body was covered with very deep cuts covered by blackened skin. They looked awful; like I'd been through battle or something. There was no blood, though, interestingly. Suddenly there was a bottle of lotion next to me, and I started to put it on with the hopes of it at least easing the pain while we had to sit down. I simply loaded several of the cuts with lotion so that it was filled to the skin level...at least it sort of made me look whole again. Didn't help the pain, though...it actually stung like nothing else! Something happened then that I can't remember, but it made me look up, and then back down again. When I saw myself again, the cuts had been filled in, not with lotion, but with skin, and the pain was gone from those places! Of course I then did the same thing to the rest of the cuts, and before long, the pain was gone and so were the cuts! Even though I was glad, I was having this weird feeling...like something wasn't exactly right.

I found myself in a bathroom then, putting the lotion bottle back in its place. It was then that I realized what that feeling was, and the impulse to reality check broke through. The first one (asking "what was the last thing I did?") failed; I answered mentally not with "I went to bed" but with all the things I had done in the dream. The second one (asking "how did I get here?") puzzled me a bit, but still didn't make me lucid. The third one (asking "what makes me think this is real) ultimately succeeded, because it prompted me to do other reality checks, like pinching my nose, which made me go lucid!

"What!?" I shouted. There was genuine surprise in the words. I totally did NOT expect to discover that I was dreaming. But I knew for certain that I was, now. "Finally I won't be wasting time in my dreams! See you later!" I said to my reflection in the mirror. I turned to the bathroom door and walked out, thinking "Pandora" in my mind. But where I went was far from Pandora, and it is possibly the most fascinating thing I've ever experienced in a dream.

I was in a colorless room; the walls, floor, and ceiling were all simply shades of dull gray. Hundreds of doors lined every wall of the seemingly endless room. There was no light source in the room, yet it was not dark. People were everywhere...real people. Not one fictional character, not even a real person who was misrepresented in bodily form. But they were, from what I could tell, all 'bluepills', all dreaming without being lucid. Somehow I knew they were dreaming, though. As I went around the room, I saw the dreams of numerous people going on, in the many corners or alcoves that were available. Each place had a little set up as if for a school play, only it was what was making up each person's dream. Everyone was so dream-dead, they never once got the chance to turn around and see the truth about where they were. "Ok, time to go to Pandora." I said, after concluding that this was definitely NOT the place I had intended to go. "When I turn around, I'll be in Pandora." I said. But it didn't work. Suddenly I saw someone come tearing out of the crowd of people and rush for a door. They were moving too fast for me to see who they were. But I could move fast too, and so I got to the door and put my fingers between it and the frame as it closed. Just barely kept it open, too. "Ok. On the other side of this door is Pandora." I opened the door, but what I found was not Pandora, but this guy who had run through the door creating his own world, vastly different than anything from Avatar. "I must need to find my own door." But I didn't want anyone to follow me, so it was a while before I found a suitable door to use, without people crowding all around it. "On the other side of this door is Pandora." I opened it then, and found my words to be true. I shut the door behind me as fast as I could, but a couple of my friends made it through. Since they were friends I didn't mind; but I wasn't going to let bluepills into my Pandora. "Ok guys, you need to go lucid." I said, stopping them. "What do you mean?" They asked. One of them rolled his eyes and went back through the door. The other one, Josh, stayed behind. "You're in a dream. You need to be aware of that fact. Here. Pinch your nose and try to breath in. If this is a dream, you'll be able to do it. If it's not a dream, you won't." Josh tried it, and his eyes lit up. "Woah! I'm...what did you call it? Lucid?" "Yeah, you got it!" Josh cheered and ran off. I just laughed and went about my business.

I was definitely in Pandora, but as I ran up to the Hometree, I was disappointed to find only the stump left behind. Smoke rose from the charred vegetation on the ground. It looked as if the climactic battle had taken place there. At first I tried passively changing that. I turned my back to the tree and said, "when I turn around, everything's going to be good again; there will be thousands of trees, and amazing plants, and everything from the Pandora that I know!" But it didn't quite work out like that. The smoke was gone, but Hometree still was a stump, and though there were trees, they were not even close to the right kind. I gave up on that and just tried controlling it. I held out my hand. "Trees!" I said, and trees rose up from the ground. "Flowers!" And flowers bloomed on all the trees, growing their vines around the trunks instantly. "Vegetation!" And all the cool Pandora plants that I don't know the names of rose up from the ground where they belonged. In this process, I also noticed that Hometree had become whole again. Knowing it had been a workout, I rubbed my hands together to bring back full clarity. "Well that's more like it! Now to find Neytiri." I took a step forward and imagined myself turning instantly into a Na'vi, particularly the Na'vi that I had photoshopped myself to be IRL. As I passed by a pool of water, I looked at my reflection, and saw that my face matched that picture perfectly! I was fully Na'vi, but it didn't remain so for long. After searching for Neytiri for a few minutes and not finding her to be where I expected, the dream faded, and with it faded my Na'vi body. Soon, I woke up.

That dream has so much possible shared content it's unbelievable. Do all dreams really take place in that room, and if we could only go lucid enough to look away, we'd see where we truly were? And I had very little dream control there...I couldn't usurp the dreams of others, even those who went through the doors. And did my friend really go lucid when I told him to, or was he just a DC who did what I expected? Of course...why then would my other friend have left, when I expected him to do the same as Josh? I'll have to ask a few people about their dreams and see if any of what I saw sounds familiar to them.

Dream 2: I was walking through a row of bunkbeds in a dark room, when again that urge to reality check came to me. I was short of time, so I just pinched my nose, but was surprised when I was able to breath in. "What? Really?" I tried it again, and was thrilled to realize that I was indeed dreaming again! I wasted no time; I teleported myself right back to Pandora, and was happy to find it exactly as I'd left it. "Now to find Neytiri!" At first I tried doing passive control again, but that resulted in a 1-foot tall version of Neytiri! "You've got to be kidding me!" I tried just to make her bigger, but that turned her into a stack of boxes. "This isn't going so well...time for force control!" But then, rather than create Neytiri, I created an entire horde of Na'vi! They started running all over the place and doing their daily stuff, which was great, but I still hadn't succeeded. So I started looking around, and finally I saw her! Her name appeared above her head, and things sort of went non-lucid again. I think the nametag made me think too much like a video game, and suddenly I found myself in an armored human vehicle with a turret mounted on the back. They were shooting at the Na'vi. "No! Stop!" I shouted, beating the soldiers with whatever strength I had. I killed the driver, which effectively let the Na'vi get ahead, but I couldn't take out the gunners before one of them knocked me on the head and put me unconscious...also waking me up.

I sure hope the Na'vi were ok... I fully intend to go back there very soon. I guess if any of them are hurt I can just patch them up with lotion, since apparently that heals everything

Dream 3: I lost my video camera. When, where, how, I don't know, but I lost it. And I knew I had lost it. I was on a tram going on a tour through the universe, and asking everyone if they knew where my camera was. No one did. When we reached Pandora, I wanted to either cry or kill whoever made me lose my camera; I couldn't decide which. "We're in Pandora and I can't even get a video of it! This is awful!" I kept going around, but no luck finding the camera. The DC's weren't very helpful, since none of them were people IRL. One of them kept taunting me and saying that my camera was stolen, and I was right there when it happened, and yet I didn't do anything about it. That just made me angry.

I don't know when exactly I woke up, but eventually I did. Thank goodness...dumb non-lucid dreams...

Other than the non-lucid junk at the end, this was the best night I've ever had! Dream control was better than ever (even though there's room for improvement), clarity was fantastic, and it was in Pandora! I'm definitely going to keep on reality checking...let's do this again every night!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Day 2 of the reboot on my lucid dreaming schedule. No LD's from it yet, but that is to be expected, I suppose. It takes a while to make a habit. But the good thing is, I was successfully able to maintain decent dream recall last night, with the addition of reality checks during the day. Last time I tried doing those two things at once, working this hard at it, it took me days to be able to do one without forgetting to do the other equally as hard.

Three dreams again. So far I've had no need to set alarms; my mind wakes me up after each dream that I remember.

Dream 1: I was at my church, but for some reason the service was not in the main auditorium. Only a handful of people were there, my brother being one of them. The funny thing is, he goes to a different church closer to where he lives. All of a sudden, one of my sisters stood up in the middle of everything that was going on, ran over to my brother, and started crying. And I mean really bawling. IRL, my brother is thinking about moving to another country, and even though nobody mentioned it in the dream, I just knew that was the cause of my sister's tears. The entire service was cancelled because she was making such a big deal, and everyone walked my brother out to his car. Pretty soon, everyone but him and me were crying. He wasn't crying because he was the one that was leaving, so he couldn't miss himself, and I wasn't crying because I understood his purpose for going, and as a guy, going somewhere far away for fulfill that purpose isn't a sad concept to me.

I'm not really sure what to think about that one. Is there a part of me that feels that saddened over him leaving that it got into my dreams? Or is it instead that I see myself as the only one not feeling that saddened over it? This I am not sure.

Dream 2: I was part of some Zune hacking forums. My project: run Windows XP on my Zune 30. It's technologically possible, I suppose. Impractical, since my Zune 30 has no touch screen, but possible. It took the forum guys and me a while, but eventually we figured we were really close to success. I had to go on a trip, so I took my Zune with me and played around with the codes on-board. Not sure how I did that, seeing as there's no keyboard, but somehow I just pressed buttons and the right letters were typed in . Eventually, I actually got it to work! It booted up and loaded properly. I even opened Windows Media Player 11 on it and was able to import all of my Zune's music to it. "Yes!" I shouted, drawing the attention of everyone else in the plane. "Look, look! See! I got Windows XP running on my Zune!" I showed some random guy. I listened to a couple songs, watched a couple video clips...and then woke up.

There's not much question about my mind with that one. Yep, that's how it works, for ya. Always taking handheld computers and using them for things they were never meant to do. I haven't done anything on my Zune, but I ran Linux on my Tungsten E2, so maybe I'll make this dream a reality someday.

Dream 3: I was afraid I was forgetting my previous dreams. I had fallen asleep too quickly to take down notes, or even come up with some catchy phrase that reminds me of the dreams as I usually do. I was in my room, so I woke up my computer (which happened to be running Ubuntu at the time) and OpenOffice was there, with full descriptions of both dreams. I read back through them, and found them to be completely accurate. I finished reading none too soon, since right after I was done I woke up.

Pretty handy dream, I think. If only I could do that every night as my last dream...it would make recall SO much easier

Whelp, those were my dreams from last night! I'll keep working on dream recall and reality checking as I have recently learned from Naiya's excellent tutorials!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Well, I figure it's time for me to have a consistent LD schedule. Ever since I started lucid dreaming, it's been really inconsistent. Everything was still an experiment, so I suppose it was appropriate for the time. But now, I know how the different methods work, and it's high time for me to go for one and stick with it for a while.

So hit reboot on the operation...I'm starting over from the beginning with the hopes of enabling myself to LD more frequently and consistently.

The first thing to work on is dream recall, so I focused on that last night. Rather than start thinking about something as soon as I woke up, I remained still and thought back through my dream. When at first I felt I couldn't remember anything, I turned to questioning. "Ok, who was in my dream?" That one worked the best, considering my dreams last night had several people from real life in them. By the time morning came around and dreaming was done, I had successfully recalled 3 dreams!

Dream 1: There was a storm coming. A big, bad one. Even during the day, the sky was darkened with clouds to the point of looking like night. No one knew exactly when the storm would come, but the one thing that was for certain was that when it did, no one would be able to get out and shop for necessities. So I found myself riding from place to place, helping my mom stock up for the storm (I don't remember ever stocking up for myself, though ). The weird thing was, as we drove, it wasn't on normal roads. All of the roads were stacked up vertically, one on top of the other, and each country had its roads located at different heights. We were, of course, in the USA section of roads, but we nearly fell through a hole in the road one time, on our way to a library. "Why are we stopping at the library to stock up for a storm?" I asked. "Because if the power goes out," my mom replied, "we'll need something to do." "Great." So we went inside, and parted ways to look for books that interested us. As I rounded one corner, I saw Brad (a friend IRL) standing there. "Hey!" I said. "Are you stocking up for the storm here, too?" "No, I'm just checking out some books for a chemistry test. Doesn't matter if the whole world closes down; school's going to keep going." "Yeah, that stinks. So did you get a chance to try out the mod yet?" (I made a game mod for Brad IRL) "Yeah, that was awesome! It worked perfectly! Totally changed the way I played the game. Thanks for that!" I don't remember what we said after that, but it wasn't long before I left the library and told my mom that I would drive her back home...she hadn't driven too well on the way there, which is why we nearly fell through the hole. Didn't do much good, though, because not long after we got going, a lightning bolt struck the road next to the car and knocked it clear off the edge of the road! It fell, down, down, down, until we landed on the roads of Russia. There was no elevator that would simply take us back up to USA roads...and the Russian authorities were not too happy with us getting there without Visa's/passports/anything like that. Off the side of the road, I saw a staircase that looked like it went up to the USA roads...so I began to fight off the Russian police and make my way there, but I woke up too soon. What fight there was was pretty epic, though. It was dark, raining in torrents, and I knew Jujitsu.

Dream 2: This dream was just plain dumb, but for some reason I dreamed it, and I have to recall it, so here it is. Somehow I met up with the replicator man (from recent episodes of Heroes.) Somehow I also found out that he wasn't evil, and had an attraction to Claire Bennet (also from Heroes). He also was afraid that Claire would never like him in return, "Because," he said, "I've been weird around her in the past...and my room is all messy." "What?" "Yeah, I live in a loft...and there's no way a girl would like coming over there with it like I've got it right now." "Well, how about this:" I suggested. "I'll organize your room for you, and then you'll be able to convince Claire to come over and give you a chance. When she sees what's been done, she'll know that you're making honest efforts." "Except you'd be making the effort, not me." He pointed out. "Umm...yeah." "Go ahead and do it." So I did. He wasn't kidding that it was a mess. But magically, I achieved great organization skills and got the place looking really nice. When I had him come look, he pointed to his coin collection. "I had those stacked by value, and you just put them all in a jar! You call that organization?" "Whatever..." So I took the coins out and put them in a coin sorter (I guess I pulled it out of thin air). "There. Happy now?" "Yep." But then, rather than invite Claire over, he got some punk buddy of his to come and play cards and listen to junky music. I mean, seriously, it sounded awful. There was nothing musical about it. "So...when are you going to invite Claire over?" I asked. At first I had no response, because the 'music' was too loud. So I literally killed the stereo with a smash of my fist, then repeated the question. "I did this so you could have Claire over, now when is she coming?" "Alright, alright, I'll call her already...sheesh." He sent his buddy away and pretty soon Claire was there. The stereo was suddenly fixed and he had his crap music playing again. (I cannot believe how dumb this dream is...) He and Claire were sitting on the couch. "So, do you like what I did to the room?" He asked. Claire looked disgusted. "You know...yeah, I like what you did to the room, but...I just don't feel the same way about you as you feel about me. Sorry." So she left. "Ok, whatever, man." He said, totally unhurt. "Hey, turn up the music, will ya?" He said to me as he turned on the TV.

Dream 3: This was kind of dumb, but it was at least entertaining because it was funny. A bunch of extended family members were dropping by one day, pretty unexpectedly. Well, dropping by at my parent's place. I, along with a couple of my brothers and sisters, were already at my parent's house, and that's also where the extended family was dropping by. Everyone seemed pretty worried about the food situation. "All we have is meatloaf!" My mom said. "Well, why not just make more of it?" I suggested. "You just can't do that with meatloaf!" "Why not?" "Because meatloaf just doesn't work that way." "Wow, ok..." and I backed off. Everyone else started to join in on fretting about the food, and it was bugging me, so I went upstairs and checked my email on the computer. I don't remember what was there, but it was enough to keep me busy until everyone was at the table and ready to eat. When I came down, every seat was filled, so I was going to head off to grab another chair, when I heard someone comment about the lack of food again. "Just try making more!" "No! But you just can't do that with meatloaf! It won't work!" everyone shouted at me. So I just went to grab the chair. When I got back to the dining room with it, I was told there was no room left. "I'll just go to the corner...I can hold the plate in my lap or something." "No! No!" They shouted. "There's just no room!" "Oh, so it's like the meatloaf?" I asked, frustrated. "GAAH! You just can't do that with meatloaf!" my sister shouted angrily. The thing was, I found out they were right about the chair situation. I really couldn't get my chair around to the corner because I kept on bumping everyone with it trying, and that made them all the more upset (and with each bump, the dream got weaker and weaker). "FINE! I'll take my plate upstairs." "No! No! You can't do that." But I did. I walked right into the room with the TV and turned it on. "Can't do that with meatloaf....ha! That's just nonsense." When the TV came on, it was a commercial. "Figures." But I watched the commercial anyway. It was some weird thing about a medicine to fight depression in teen girls. For some reason, its jingle was "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee". Finally, the dream ended and I woke up.

The dreams were obviously nothing special, but hey, I remembered 3 dreams very well in one night of trying when lately I've been doing good to remember even 1! If I keep this up, as well as other aspects of setting a LD schedule, I'm sure I'll start LDing again in no time!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I think trying a different method of induction every night is messing me up. I haven't done the exact same thing even twice in a row for a while, and actually, the last time I did the same thing twice in a row was the last time I had a lucid dream

So if you haven't guessed...no lucids. Again. I remembered one dream pretty well, though.

I was in some building with great architecture...it looked to be a couple hundred years old, at least. And this was a huge building I'm talking about. I went in there because of impression and because it was rigged to look like some store. But as soon as I got inside, I realized it was far different than what the outside made it out to be. I was denied exit; guards and hovering robot cameras all watched me, and if I tried to leave, they would see to it that I didn't make it out. I tried every traditional exit, and when that failed, I tried windows and rooftops as well. Still I was caught every time and forced to stay. Eventually admitting defeat, I sagged against the wall and slid to the floor. But then I felt something...the wall was giving way. After waiting for the hovering robot to pass by on its patrol, I pushed in on the brick wall, and found several of them to be loose. Pretty soon there was a hole just big enough for me to go through, so I did, and then I ran. I was in some sort of sewer system, but I just ignored the flow of...water, on the ground. Of course the robots found the whole and started to chase after me, so I hid every place I could as I went along. It took me hours, but finally I found a manhole cover that got me out of there. My first reaction to being free was to warn others not to go inside, but they either ignored me or told me I was crazy. Once, I noticed someone walking up the steps to the building's entrance, and I ran up to stop her, but she just looked angry and told me, "I come in and out of here all the time! What makes you think you have any business telling me what not to do, beggar?" "Beggar?" I thought. Then I looked at myself. Running all over the place, (and through the sewers) had left me dirty, smelly, and with holes in my clothes in several places. I cautiously followed her inside, and I noticed my dad sitting on a bench next to the door. "Dad, come on, we've got to get out of here now!" "Where have you been?" My dad asked. "I was waiting for you; I thought you were in here." "I was, but they wouldn't let me leave!" "What?" Just then, that woman walked by and straight out the door, and the security guard tipped his hat to her. I grabbed the guard by the neck, feeling as dirty as I looked. I wanted to strangle him for having stopped me, but now acting like it never happened so as to make me seem like the madman. There was a short scuffle, but eventually I was thrown out the door, and everyone thought I was crazy. I ran off, and woke up.

Very frustrating dream.

If only I had realized it was a dream, then I could have changed it! I really want to lucid dream about Pandora...a five-second non-lucid dream about it just isn't good enough for me.

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

(Sorry there was no entry yesterday...really there was nothing to report, but what really happened is I just totally forgot )

Tried to WILD last night...it was my first attempt to do so for a little while. I figured that by taking a short break from trying, I'd increase my chances of success. I was right.

It wasn't long (about half an hour) before I was in SP in full, seeing tons of increasingly vivid HI, and feeling myself slipping into the dream state, still maintaining the proper level of consciousness. But then something weird happened. My eyelids started to quiver, and then they nearly opened--for real, not in the dream, like I was expecting--I successfully stabilized them, but not without losing the HI, and weakening the SP a bit. I tried just waiting for more HI to come, but when it did, I never reached the dream state, and it just disappeared within a few seconds.

When I opened my eyes and admitted defeat, it turned out that a couple hours had passed in this dreamless sleep paralysis, which felt really strange, because even though I had been conscious the whole time, it felt like I had actually slept for a while. I mean, it was kind of cool, being conscious while being asleep, but I'd much rather have lucid dreams than spend all night just waiting for the night to be over!

It was doubtful that WILD would succeed after that, so I tried just to DILD. Problem was, my sleep schedule was so messed up by that point that it took me a very long time to get into a dream state; I kept just slipping back into that waking sleep. When I finally did dream, it was like my vision was blurry and my hearing was bad; all that I could get out of the dream was a couple people standing in front of me, telling me things that I couldn't hear well enough to understand. I couldn't make out their faces, either. But suddenly, one of them put their hand on my shoulder and turned me to face a holographic image. In that moment I saw that I was in some science lab like the one from Avatar. "I suppose you're one of them, now." The person said, pointing to the image, which I saw was a group of Na'vi. "You better get in your body."

That's all I remember. I guess I've officially jumped on the bandwagon of Avatar dreaming...maybe I can actually go lucid and visit Pandora again sometime

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Last night I went to bed with the intention of doing a TotM; namely, to complete the basic challenge of drinking a glass of champagne. (As a side note, in real life I wouldn't drink that stuff, but it's a dream for crying out loud! ) I fell asleep too quickly to do a good MILD, and had a nightmare that I don't remember anymore. When I woke up from that, I tried to MILD, but again fell asleep before I could finish up with the visualization stage, so no good came of that. I did have a long and memorable dream after that, though! I wasn't far from succeeding at the TotM, seeing as it took place on New Years, and multiple times I saw glasses of champagne in the background, but I never went lucid, so in the end, I never actually made use of them, and failed at the TotM this time. I'll keep trying, though!

Here's the dream. It was more like a movie than a dream, though. Most of it was in third-person, and what I was seeing changed like a camera in a movie, moving from shot to shot, angle to angle. I wasn't even physically present the entire time, even though I knew I (or my character in the 'movie') was elsewhere and active.

We were having a new years party at my house and all was going well when police burst in and started taking everyone out. I ran all over the place, trying to get other people out of the house and to safety, but the police had surrounded the building and so no one escaped. Eventually it was just me, standing in the middle of the place, with the front door to my left and the back door to my right, knowing that police were on both sides. I was considering which would be the best possible escape when two clones of Agent Smith (from the Matrix films) walked in the front door. I chose right then to escape through the back. Police were there, as expected, but I was scared enough of Smith that I was able to take down both of the officers in my way and make a break for it after climbing over the fence. Smith watched the whole thing from inside, and said not a word. His two clones simply turned and looked at each other, then at the unconscious police on the ground.

Next thing I knew, I was at a dream friend's house....which was more like a mansion. I told him my situation, and he took me inside and promised that I'd be safe there. I turned around and saw a bunch of girls who were sitting around a counter. I thought about joining them, but just then I saw something through a window. It was Smith, circling the house with his many clones, looking for me. My friend saw it as well. "Quick!" he said. "Come with me!" He pulled my arm and led me down a few stairs in a staircase. "Why are we stopping?" I asked. "9...10...11." He said, counting the stairs we had descended. "Yep, this is the right one!" Then he pressed his hand against the wall, and it slid inward, then moved aside. It wasn't a big gap, but turned sideways we easily fit through. Once inside, my dream friend closed the wall and then led me down a few more stairs into a small, unlit basketball court with a very low ceiling (about seven feet was all). The wall on the right was a solid tinted window overlooking a full-size court with goals and a scoreboard and everything. "Wait here." He said. "I'll take care of Smith." I nodded to him and watched him leave. Having nothing else to do, I proceeded to examine the secret room. Machines were lined up against all the walls, standing about three feet tall and two feet wide. I couldn't tell what exactly they were for. My puzzlement increased when I made it to the end of the small court and found a passage on the left wall that led to at least 5 other courts just like this one. I took a couple steps backwards after peering in at the other courts, and bumped into something. Turning around, I saw the biggest of all the machines. It was around 5 feet tall and 6 feet wide. At the top of it was a tall screw with wires wrapped around it. A nut sat on the very top, barely screwed on at all. "That won't make a very good connection..." I thought as I began to screw the nut down closer to the wires. When I was just about to screw it all the way down on the wires, my friend returned. "Wait! No!" He shouted. But it was too late; the nut was down hard enough on the wires to make them connect. Lights came on in the small courts and in the large court. A buzzer sounded, and I knew Smith would hear. "Oh, no..." I said. Then I noticed something out the window. "Hey! That's me down there...on the big court!" "It's a hologram." My friend explained. "This room projects holograms from the small courts onto the big ones!" Just then, a few Smith clones burst into the large court. They saw my hologram standing there. "Going somewhere, Mr. Anderson?" one of them said in Smith's usual, devious way. They all ran at my hologram and tried to take it down, which obviously didn't go very well. While they were distracted, the real me ran for the exit. Unfortunately, that caused the holographic me to do the same thing, so Smith knew which direction I was headed.

As soon as I reached the stairway outside, I could hear another Smith talking to the girls at the counter, asking them if they knew anything about me. "Good thing I didn't talk to them!" I thought as I crouched low on the stairs, waiting to see what Smith's next move would be. When he concluded that the girls honestly knew nothing, he pulled out a radio device and told the other clones. It was then that I noticed he had a couple suitcases next to him, one on each side. Somehow they just couldn't be good. Bombs, perhaps? I took one look at those innocent girls and knew that I could not let anyone be hurt or killed because of my presence there. While Smith was on his radio, I ran up and swiped the case on his left and made a mad dash for the door. Smith and his clones all started to pursue me, of course, but somehow I managed to escape into a forest before they could catch me. Being night, I was totally hidden, and eventually they gave up the search and left. It was then that I had the chance to open the suitcase and find out what was inside. "Robots?!" Yep; the suitcase was filled with a bunch of little robot toys. "This must not have been Smith's...it was leaning up against the counter's base...I just assumed it was his, too, since he was right next to it!"

Meanwhile, Smith brought the other suitcase back to his boss. I never saw the boss's face, but his hands and voice sounded like that of an old man who was still incredibly strong and powerful. "A bomb?" He said. "You kept the bomb in my box? This was supposed to be used, not returned!" "I know, sir," Smith explained, "but he got away too soon." "How could he get away? You will go back and try again!" "Yes, sir."

It was then like someone hit rewind on the dream, and I was back in the small basketball court. The dream played itself out exactly as before, same 'camera' angles, same lines, same everything. I took the wrong case again and fled again, all exactly as before. Smith's boss even said the same things and told him to try again. The dream rewound again, and played out just the same. Smith's boss rewound it after that, too, setting the dream to play from the courts up to the part with Smith and his boss. The dream rewound one more time, but this time, something was different.

When I saw the big machine with the screw on the top, I decided not to screw the nut down. So my friend came back, and not in a panic. "Ok, I've done all I can." He said. "Smith doesn't believe me when I say you're not here. There's another passage similar to this one, on stair 23. Only it will lead you outside, and to a car. Here are the keys; get out of here, go wherever is safe!" "Thanks. I've just got one thing I need to take care of first." I went outside and waited for the Smith who talked to the girls to get on his radio. Then I ran up, grabbed the proper suitcase, swung it around and smacked him in the face, and then ran down to stair 23. I was inside and closed the wall behind me by the time Smith was up and chasing me again. He ran right past the secret passage in the wall. I made it safely outside, got in the car, and used the toolbox that was in the back seat to deactivate the bomb.

The next thing I saw was Smith talking to his boss. Fortunately, things worked out a bit differently this time. "Toys?" The boss said. "You brought me back a bunch of geeky robot toys in my box?! Smith, you are FIRED!"

And then I woke up. It wasn't lucid, but hey, it was pretty nice for a regular dream, imo

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I'm not sure if I MILDed or accidentally WILDed, but either way, it gave me an awesome lucid dream last night! The best I've had yet, by far! The only thing I'd say was disappointing about it was that for some reason I was pretty near-sighted in the dream...I couldn't see anything in the distance, just a solid color that the terrain and all would blend into. I probably should have slowed down a bit and tried to fix that...I'm sure rubbing hands or spinning would have done the trick.

Oh well, here's what happened!

I went to bed a half-hour early so that I wouldn't feel like I was losing sleep if I spent a while relaxing, repeating mantras, and visualizing. I did all that, but as half-expected, was not able to pull it off at the beginning of the night. I woke up at about 2:30, however, and just repeated the whole process. I felt the onset of sleep paralysis, which made me want to swallow, but I just started breathing through my nose with my mouth open and was able to swallow and ignore it without hurting my progress any. As soon as I reached the visualization step of MILD, I started seeing a bunch of flashing lights, and then it was just one pulsating light that seemed to fly around. I just followed it, and it was like it led me out of my body and into my dream body. Within moments, I was in bed, looking out the window, at the moon. It was only another few moments before I realized something. "Wait a second..." I thought. "I can't see the moon out my window! This must be a dream!" I got out of bed and walked over to the window. I was determined to fly this time. "I know that I left the window locked...but it doesn't exist!" I reached a single finger down and opened up the window as if it weighed nothing. Same with the screened pane. Then I leaned out and flew off! I had absolutely no struggles, knowing that gravity was nonexistent and that it was just like walking in a dream; the only reason I moved anywhere was simply because I believed I would. Now the only question was...where should I fly to? "The moon!" it came to me, almost instantly. "Just like Neo..." I thought, aligning myself towards the moon and shooting off at a ridiculous speed. I arrived at the moon within a couple seconds. I flew low to the surface and looked at the craters and put my hand in the cold, gray sand. But then I realized something else...that was pretty much all there was to do on the moon. So I flew back home the same way, shooting through space and reaching land in about 2 seconds. I didn't target any specific place in the world; anywhere was fine with me. By chance, I ended up in a city, and I landed on the first building I felt compelled to. There was a roof access door that led directly to a deserted office level. On the walls were some black and white pictures of businessmen that I didn't recognize...probably employees of the month or something. "Ok," I thought. "there's always this list of things I want to do in a lucid dream, and now that I'm here, I can't think of anything else to do! Let's see...oh! I know. This ought to be fun! I'm going to go on a date..." I began to walk down a short hallway. "...with the girl around the corner." As I rounded the corner, I saw this really pretty girl standing there. Unfortunately, I didn't just accept that fact and move on. "I did it...I really did it!" Now you have to understand the significance of this action. I had been partially successful with flying before, and had figured out how to do that one pretty certainly, just never had a chance to actually do it until now. So it didn't surprise me to have success at that. But every attempt at this kind of dream control where I try to make things appear around the corner had previously failed. The thing about lucid dreaming by MILD is that even though I was aware that I was dreaming, I wasn't thinking 100% logically. Rather than accept success and move on like I would have thought to do if I was thinking fully clearly, I once again had a little lucid-dreaming-success party that very quickly began to wake me up. I felt the dream fading out too late, though, so my immediate attempts to rub hands didn't work. I should have spun around, too, but it didn't cross my mind at the time.

And thus the dream ended. Still, I believe this was the longest lucid dream I've had yet, and I exercised dream control unlike I've ever been able to do before. Not exactly sure what to label this one as in my sig, since it was kind of a WILD-MILD-DILD, but since I was shooting for MILD I guess that's what the label will be.

Bottom line is, I had another lucid dream!

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

Again I find myself in a situation where I recall dreaming several times; at least 3 this time. Unfortunately, because I didn't stay awake long enough to think to take down notes, all but one is lost on me. And that one is, again, so strange that I'm annoyed with myself for not realizing it was a dream in the first place!

The dream I remember clearly was one of the strangest things I've seen in a very long time. I went to Walmart, picked up a copy of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" for Wii, and then drove back home. But then, when I walked inside, several dream characters (none of them people from real life) were there, and waiting for the game. We went to play it...by going upstairs and putting the disk in the shower! No kidding. Instantly, platforms and contraptions appeared in the shower, and a bunch of pieces (which were divided into groups like heads, torsos, feet) appeared on the sink. Each person playing the game put the pieces together to form a really odd kind of animal thing. All of the animals were remote-controlled, and we put them down into the shower, which was now a SSBB level. And so we controlled the animals and made them fight that way. As we played, the shower kind of faded away and we saw forests or waterfalls or any number of things moving past the platforms as we made our robotic animals smash each other to pieces...literally. I also noticed that the remotes we were using never seemed to stay the same...every time I'd look down at mine it would be totally different. It didn't seem to affect my skill level, though. After what seemed like hours, it was down to just me and one other DC; everyone else had been KO'd. The DC hit 'pause' and the shower came back. She said the animals needed to rest.

While they rested, we went to a different store and shopped around for I-don't-know-what...everyone split up into groups of two or three and it was a bit difficult to find them all, so it seemed to take another hour or so. Whoever had anything to purchase did so and then we left. Back at the house, the animals were still there, and interestingly, neither the animals nor the remotes had changed since I last saw them. As I had gotten there first, though, I made some last-minute modifications to my animal with the spare parts that were lying around. It ended up looking like a crayfish with a porcupine body, cow legs, and robotic arms. When everyone came in, they commented about how ugly my animal looked, but I was apparently pretty confident in how it would perform, because it didn't bother me.

We put the animals back into the shower, which resumed its state of platforms and scrolling backgrounds, and duked it out with the animals on the final round of the competition.

I woke up before I could see who won

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

I remember having at least 6 different dreams last night, however, most of them were very unclear, and upon waking up I was left with only a hazy image of what went on. I remember two pretty well, though. Neither of them were lucid, but I expect this is due to the fact that I threw off my usual WBTB schedule by trying to wake up at 4:21am instead of 5:21am and thus allow more time for lucid dreaming. I learned that that was a bad idea, as it produced no lucid dream, and also that I don't need more time for dreaming, as I was able to enter REM well into 8:00 this morning. Obviously the thing that has made my DILD's be short is the things I do in them that tend to wake me up.

Anyway, on to the dreams.

In the first dream, things began pretty normal--just going about one day with some dream characters that I seemed to know as long-time friends. When we passed by the neighborhood park, however, I saw something strange coming out of it. It was a giant hedgehog that was missing its back legs! "What in the world is THAT?" I exclaimed, pointing. "Oh," replied one of the DC's, "that's one of the flying hedgehogs. Don't get too close, or they'll..." the DC was too late. I had already gotten too close, and it leaped off the ground and flew right into me, knocking me down. I decided I wanted to get out of there, so I turned and ran, the DC's shortly behind me. Suddenly, we were all in this sandy place, like a small canyon, with some buttes scattered throughout. Wooden beams had been laid down to connect the buttes together from the top. How anyone got up there in the first place I'm not sure. But we didn't pay much attention to the scenery; we just ran around the corner of one big rock and ducked. Peaking around the corner, I saw that the single flying hedgehog had alerted his buddies, and now millions of them were flying through the air in our direction, all of them missing their back legs. "We're done for." one DC whispered. I turned around and saw a Warthog (the Halo vehicle, not the animal) across the way from us. "Maybe not..." I said. This one girl DC and I ran across to it. I climbed in the front, and she took the turret in the back. At that moment I remember thinking it was kind of funny for a girl to be taking the turret, but she had some kind of warpaint on her face, so I figured she had probably done this before. Apparently she had, because she was a pretty darn good shot! I drove that warthog out there in the midst of all the flying hedgehogs and as I ran the low-flying ones down, she picked off the rest of them with that turret. It was pretty intense...I saw the muzzle flashes like real light, felt the heat from the turret...everything! I guess we won that battle, because I never died or anything, hedgehog bodies were everywhere, and I woke up.

The second dream came soon after that...my 4:21 alarm had not gone off yet, so I didn't try to stay awake.

I was at some peaceful lake, in a valley, the only sign of inhabitance being a small lake-house nearby. I was talking to that girl DC that I had fought with, and according to her, we totally destroyed the hedgehogs, but one of them had flown into my head as a final move of desperation and knocked me out. I had been unconscious until that point.

I don't remember anything else, save for a few images from the other dreams I had that are too vague to even put into words, really. Tonight I'm definitely not going to play with the WBTB time, since I know that 5:21am works for me. I'll also be sure to think more about weird things happening in my dreams as a sign that could make me go lucid. Flying hedgehogs missing their back legs...why the heck didn't that make me think I was dreaming?

Originally Posted by LiveInTheDream

The dry spell is broken!!!

Yesterday I made sure to reality check all day long, and before bed I told myself a million times "I WILL lucid dream!" and "I WILL reality check!" but I didn't feel very good about it. I mean, in past dreams, I've though in the dream, "I should probably reality check...nah, I'm sure this is real." I needed something more; a sure dream sign I could use to force myself to reality check. Then it hit me, and I repeated to myself a million times, "The moment my eyes open, or I realize that they are opened, I WILL reality check!" Then I unintentionally practiced it myself. I opened my eyes (by mistake), and followed through with my saying. I felt good about it, and soon was asleep.

My dream began quite long, I was in a place that looked a lot like 'the real world' from The Matrix. Unfortunately, I think it went too long, eating up all the REM that would better have been lucid. I'm not sure what happened in this place, but I had a mission, and I remember someone handing me a device like a large thermometer, only it was not for measuring the temperature. I walked through a doorway and suddenly found myself in my room. "Oh! My eyes are open. I need to reality check." I was sure all of this was real, but I pinched my nose, breathed in, and was shocked to find that I was dreaming! "Yes! I'm lucid!" I said, throwing aside the device. This time I got down to business, without wasting any time celebrating. I tried to fly. Initially I did little more than hover, but then, remembering the Matrix theme to my dream, I told myself, "There is no spoon," reminding myself that none of this actually existed, and I could affect it how I wished. That got me up to the ceiling, but of course that wasn't good enough for me. I looked out the window, and decided I would go right through it. "There is no spoon." I flew right for it, preparing to fly right outside, and...SMACK! I hit the window and was knocked to the ground. It kind of hurt. But I got back up and tried again...slowly. I just stuck out my thumb and pressed against the cold pane of glass. "There is no spoon." Slowly, as I convinced myself of the window's non-existence, my thumb pressed through the glass, until I could reach my entire hand through without a problem. I watched as the glass in the window rippled like water around my arm. Then I pulled my hand out, and jumped through the window, flying as I had originally intended. Unfortunately, I never once stabilized the dream, my REM was running low, and I flew too fast. Therefore, I no more than glimpsed the outside before I woke up, reality checked, and found it to be real.

Although it was a short lucid, it was very significant, seeing it broke my dry spell and I made headway in getting around my mind's strict laws of physics without forcing control!