Matt1

January 29, 2013 - 8.5 hours in - 30 seconds - WBTB, SSILD

Every 90 minutes starting 2 hours in I set an alarm and did a few SSILD cycles as I fell back asleep.

Pre-lucidity, I am at a nice tropical beach supposedly in Costa Rica. I think how much nicer the weather is here and try to remember what it was like when I left, but I can't remember.

I converse with my friend A. and he asks me if I got a permit for the clams I was gathering pre-lucidity. This memory prompt triggers lucidity - I say, "Oh no, this is a dream!" (I had wished it to be reality!) I look at my hand and it is distorted - this time, some fingers are short but alternate between being short and their normal length. I show A. and say, 'See? This is a dream.' He says, "Wow," in a realistic manner, as though he believed me.

The scene turns blurry and I rub my hands together, and it restabilizes. I see the surface of a trash can and it is a pattern of little white pebbles, like a real trash can you might see in a park. I look up and see the sunlight coming through the tall trees. I feel it fade and shout "Clarity! Clarity! Stability!" but the scene fades into my bedroom.

This later turned out to be a false awakening however.

January 23, 2013 - 5.5 hours in - 2 minutes - WBTB, MILD, RC

Did about an hour long WBTB and then used the mantra, "Look at your hands, you're dreaming."

I am laying on a brown-patterned carpeted floor near a wall, when I think to look at my hand. It actually looks quite normal. Then I plug my nose and can breathe - this is a dream.

I turn around and I am in a hotel room laid out like a corridor, with spaces set off to the left and the right midway down. The walls are painted dark brown. The ceiling is black. I go into one of these spaces and feel a wall corner (one not on the corridor) - it feels realistic, even with both hands and the side of my arm. The room is dark towards the door, so I turn a couple lights, which work realistically.

I go out the door and go right in the hallway. The color scheme is much the same and ahead the hallway goes diagonally left while another goes straight right, then goes straight again while another goes straight left. Straight ahead are high windows looking in to the indoor waterpark. On the wall corner is a sign in red letters directing towards a restaurant to the right. I forget the first word, but the second word was Sadler's, which changed to 5tadler's when looking away and back, which then changed to Bailey's (and all in black letters) when looking away and back again.

At several points throughout I look at my hands again; each time they look real, except for one finger being shorter than normal.

Inside the waterpark the water starts shallow, and nearby is a short construction with two green bodyslides, one which curves towards me. I think I may have to climb the slide but then I see stairs going up. On top two friends are there; I consider telling them this is a dream, but it is too loud from the water up here so I decide not to. I then go down the other slide and close my eyes at the bottom by habit - oops! I realize I may open my real eyes if I do this wrong. I open slowly and still see the waterpark. I then try to breathe underwater and it works. I again close my eyes accidentally, again being able to open them similarly. I look at my hand again, but this seems to trigger motion in reality and the dream vanishes.

January 15, 2013 - Less than 6.5 hours in - 20 seconds - WBTB, MILD, FA, RC

Used MILD mantra, "Look at your hands, you are dreaming" every alarm awakening every 90 minutes or so.

I 'wake up' in my dark bedroom in my bed and decide to look at my hands. In fact, they are distorted and I realize I am in a dream. I plug my nose and I can still breathe. However, I feel extremely sleepy and struggle to keep my 'eyes' open. Since I feel it may fade out soon, I decide to cut right to the goal of summoning B. I look into the darkness (which is sort of purple - like the patterns seen when you close your eyes) and try to visualize them there. It is difficult to remember them and I give up. I look again at my hand in front of the meager window light and it is still distorted. Despite feeling extremely lethargic, I try to get out of bed and head towards the light switch, since I don't like it being dark, although I know the switch may not work. With this effort, I wake up for real.

It should be noted that throughout my efforts at lucid dreaming, I keep a private dream journal with all of my dreams to increase recall. I also do reality checks every 90 minutes through the day as reminded by my cellphone. It took 16 days of trying before this first lucid dream.

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Format:

Date - How much of the night's sleep had passed when I woke up - Length of time lucid - Methods involved (CAT includes when I became lucid at a time when I would have woken up for the day, the day before; WBTB is when I woke up after some sleep but before the lucid dream for even a very short time; FA is any dream in which I became lucid from a false awakening; RC is any dream in which a reality check directly caused lucidity; DS is when a dream sign motivated me to question if I was dreaming; other abbreviations are lucid dreaming induction techniques)

Description of what I did beforehand that may have helped in attaining lucidity

Details of dream

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January 3, 2013 - About 5 hours in - 5 minutes - CAT, WBTB, MILD, RC

The day before, I got up for the day at the time I became lucid today. 1 hour before bed, I take 3,000 mg of omega-3 fish oil and a multivitamin which has, among other things, 100 mg niacin, 25 mg B6, 15 mg zinc, and 7.2 mg magnesium. At about 3.5 hours in, I get up, drink water, and use the bathroom. Going back to sleep, I use MILD.

This dream is set in my house, but it combined elements of the house I live in now and the previous one, and I didn't notice this until waking up.

At some point, for an unknown reason, I engage in reality checks. Either my hands or my nose was the first one done. My hands don't look noticeably different at first, but I think something is 'off' and it seems to take slightly longer to count my fingers. For the nose check, I can still breathe through the left side. I reach my left hand up to see how that is, and I can feel the air rushing around where my finger is blocking it (in real life the finger is of course more than enough to block all of it). I realize that this in fact a dream! I can hardly believe it. I look at my hand again and the little finger is expanding for some reason. I look at the clocks nearby, and they all read differently. Some say impossible times, something like 8:68. I make a clock's digit change by focusing on it and visualizing it as the other digit, which it fades into.

After this I am in the kitchen of the old house. While here I get the idea to try to summon a person, so I decide to make C. appear. I think of them and think, 'When I turn around, they will be there.' I turn around and nobody is there. I note the front door and closet door and think of opening them to see if they will be there, but I decide to move on. While in the kitchen I note it getting a little blurry and I look at my hand. It has about 6 fingers. (Another time it has about two sets of the 4 plus ones in between. Even though these hand distortions may sound creepy, they aren't at all. The hands work normally, they just don't show up right.) When I do this things get clearer and my mind feels 'freer'. I also test blinking to see what it does. It does the same thing as real life.

On the way out I go back in my bedroom, where I was pre-lucidity, which looks like the new bedroom but is in the location in the house of the old, and there I retrieve my phone to see if it has begun working again (it broke with sparks pre-lucidity). It turns on with the lock screen background, and the words 'Darth Maul' on it. I assume this is some sort of 'cool' sounding new operating system. I take the phone and leave.

I go out the back door of the old house. It is night and snowy. I think that it will be cold but then I remember that since it is a dream it won't be bad. I do feel it a little but it goes away. I jump on top of the fence of the old backyard, and I see the streetlights and the neighborhood, but then I see that the dream has decided that I have no pants on. I consider continuing on to explore, but I decide that even though it is only a dream I would feel more comfortable with pants on, so I go back in to put pants on.

While inside I realize that I can drive my car instead to explore. I go to the garage through the house somehow and am in the garage of the new house. I see a car in the middle of the garage, which I don't recognize as my car, but it looks similar. I look at the license plate, which says, "717-CIC" (which is nothing like it is in reality). Unfortunately I am stopped from starting the car, and the tension causes the dream to disappear.

At this point, I wake up.