Dreaming on my feet

11.28.10
Type: Lucid, Memorable
Lucidity: 8/10
Vividness: 9/10

I'm just going to write this one as a pretty direct translation from my dream journal.

Library with my Dad.. return to the library later with my friend alex. I'm sitting on the couch with my cousin L and also J.Z., a girl I used to like and respect in highschool, in the same library, playing guitar. I think we are all playing music together and the sound is incredible and everything just flows together like water in a stream, really beautiful. The dream changes and we are exploring a massive basement in a house, supposedly JZ's, concrete floors and generally abandoned. Feels like a warehouse almost. One room we enter has a big worksmiths metal cabinets with boxes of junk and tools, as JZ passes by she laughs and pulls a joke by pulling out in succession boxes with rocks paper and scissors out- very funny and cute. We leave and go to 2 other rooms, one is dilapidated like one of those rotting/falling apart old abandoned houses I saw quite often in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, also massive and completely empty, like a house inside of this basement. The other we enter and close the door, steel push handle pretty classic big heavy door. There's a huge AC/furnace in the room big enough to power a hotel, and there is a massive storage unit which JZ jokes that she might use if only she were tall enough to reach it, and indeed it is about 12 feet tall with no way to access it.
Now here's the really incredible part of this dream - I realize that I'm dreaming when I experience a sort of dream overlap which I haven't ever experienced before, I described it upon waking like this:

Somewhere along the line I realize that I'm dreaming because I feel LIsa's foot moving next to my ear. It is like my view is 50/50 in the dream state, half of my perception is occupied by feeling her foot moving and see the foot/ my head interacting in some sort of architecture rendering mode, all grey and blue lines like a vector model of the scene mapped out - on top of that or simultaneously I see the dream scene, the room and L and JZ on top of that. It's like a ripple in the dream state.

I tell L this and she says that we should wake up since it isn't good to leave out your instruments while we sleep since the temperature change at night could ruin them [lol..s igh] but I insist that it is okay, trying my best to convince her not to wake up, which I do wind up convincing her not to. I feel this sensation of overlapping dreams several times. Lisa jokes that she can't open the door as if we are stuck in this dream room, and JZ and I are like wtf you're joking and she is, we all run out of the room laughing and vault up some big concrete stairs with yellow large painted railings like you see at loading docks at supermarkets. At the top of the stairs we walk into the same library that I have already visited twice tonight, and though I don't realize it we are all sleeping in some corner of that very room [so I believed at the time]. L asks what I want to do now before we wake up, I think about it and recall some hilarious joke images I saw earlier in the night [ or maybe in waking life] that I wanted to enjoy again or recreate.. I feel the dream starting to fade, so I touching things and focusing on their texture- clothes, large leaves on a potted plant nearby, stone of a raised circular sitting area, and finally the carpet on the floor, which has tiny raised squares and is soft with a very pleasant active texture which brings my dream back into full vividness [sweet, first time I've remembered to use this and it as very successful].. at this point though I lose some lucidity and walk over to the library computers and pull up the images which are displayed in some sort of WoW/WC3 program, some of them are funny internet type joke images and just weird, but after going through a few I get bored and feel that L is waiting for me so I log off and find L and tell her we can wake up now, and I actually do wake up : )

SO.. pretty incredible and exciting experience for me. When I woke up I was totally blown away by what had just happened. Becoming lucid in a dream within a dream shared with other dream characters! haha! I realized I was dreaming when my perception was interrupted/expanded [I wrote down this phrase "interruped/expanded" in my DJ and I feel like it describes the sensation perfectly- has anyone else also had this experience?] to the view of the food near my head on the pillow. I wasn't fully fully lucid though I don't think, since I had confused my situation in that the last dream I had exited to be waking life, instead of just being the last dream I had experienced. Also, this lucid had a much different feel to it than all my other lucids.. in those I became totally aware that I was in my head and imagination or whatever, and thought only about my control over the situation and what sort of things that I should do, almost like I'm set in that white loading dock in the Matrix movies where you can summon guns and everything, but with nothing really happening around me.. But in this dream I was aware that I was dream while simultaneously enjoying the freedom of interacting with a fully formed dream scenes and stable dream characters.. I really enjoyed this a lot. In the other lucids I was so focused on my own ability, my own power, that it felt almost crippling, like I was trying to grasp desperately onto what I might be able to do, my lack of capability for control, etc. This dream felt so free and revitalizing in comparison.

I think that perhaps the overlapping perspective may have been an actual awareness of my physical body, my head on the pillow, and the foot may have been a hallucination that my mind used to compensate for a stable world environment.. what tricks the mind plays in order to keep itself afloat! Really beautiful experience though. I hope everyone is waking in their dreams, and having liberating experiences.

Sweet jam I just found, not anything to do with dreaming but fun to write a DJ to hah

11.18.10
Type: Non-lucid, DS
Vividness: 7/10
Lucidity: 1/10

I'm in a small carpeted basement of this girl's house, and there is a stack of pillows against the wall which I immediately think is a grow room for whatever reason, and it turns out I am correct. There is a rather small square shaped crawl space in the wall which apparently leads to a grow room, but she says [some name] the guy who actually takes care of it doesn't like her showing people. Then I see the shadows of his footsteps near the entry of the room and decide that I want to spy on him, so I run up a flight of stairs that are incredibly similar to a childhood house of mine, but then the stairs continue, and are very windy and massive, going up a down in ways similar to a roller coaster but not so extreme , I crouch down and wait for him.. He comes up the stairs and walks over to a computer desk, and I realize that he can plainly see me and I'm actually quite close.. not a very successful ninja. He calls me down and asks me to check out this projector- apparently he is producing and selling a new movie and is going to project it in a room and wants me check if the screen is large enough, which I affirm it is because it's massive. There are a bunch of oak desks with cell phones and other weird paraphernalia that are apparently related to the movie. Other DC enter into the room and the dream fades

This dream is important to me since it is another occurrence of a suspected common dreamsign of mine- huge spiraling/twisting staircases, paths, or roads which are an incredibly obvious impossibility in waking life . I will use this as a visualization for becoming lucid this week.

Jim Carrey
I'm riding on a bike in a city [similar to Boston which I just visited], riding through many shops, restaurants, a writers guild [?], all of them are empty and incredibly elegant decked out with hanging glass and crystal lights, dark oak woodwork on the benches tables and walls, white drapes and large windows. Made my way to a main road, and now there are cars and people walking about normally. I ride down the sidewalk but feel out of place.. the shops I just rode through felt like they were from another time period . I felt like I was experiencing two time periods simultaneously in the same city. I ride away from the buildings and wonder what it would be like to attend a food market/buy food in the older times as I cross a large road. I come across a large open area, with green grass and some sparse trees and what seems to be a market of sorts. There is a pretty huge hill next to the market which is also incredibly thin, [definitely physically impossible, looked like a poorly rendered video game environment] and I decide that I'm going to instead ride to the top of the hill to collect some rare fruits instead of shopping at the market. So I'm pedaling my butt off up this mountain while hearing the people below playfully joking at me since it's so silly. The terrain changes quickly under my wheels from grass to rock to dirt to snow, I'm so high up I can't even see the market. I reach the top of the hill, there's a small area next to the path and I find Jim Carrey looking like a bum laying in a pile of leaves! [haha!!]. He's unable to move for some reason [faking injured?] and I think "Well, I didn't find any fruits but if I save Jim I won't look so foolish", so I pick him up and put him and his bags on a nightstand which is now behind me instead of a bike [looks just like the nightstand next to my bed, probably appeared as I wondered how I might transport him on my bike] He's in some weird sort of character acting completely pathetic and demanding and ridiculous, so I let him fall off of the shelf that he's laying on and he looks up at me full of mock hurt/ offended.

Hilarious and fun ending to a very enjoyable and abstract dream. Funny that I missed the DS of my bike morphing into my BEDSTAND. hahah.

11.16.10
Type: Lucid, DS
Vividness: 6/10
Lucidity: 6/10

Hide and Seek
Walking along a cobblestone path, the same on that I was walking on in one of my first lucids, this time walking with a girl I don't recognize.. I do a nose RC because of the surreal landscape, and perhaps because I just came out of a nightmare I think.. anyways noseplug RC succeeds and I affirm that I am dreaming to myself. I remember how last time I was occupied trying to fix my fading vision and thus woke myself up, and recalled that in fact touch is the most prominent stabilizing factor in dreams, so I directed my attention toward my body, my posture, the weight of my jeans on my legs, the smell of the grass and forest we are approaching.. the path ends and we enter some woods with trees with rather large trunks, perhaps cedar.. the girl playfully hides behind some trees and I'm trying to find her, and cannot locate her anymore. Vision starts to fade and I focus on my body and remain conscious, and maintained consciousness through the fading dream into waking, awoke feeling incredibly refreshed.

Well I was happy when waking from this LD because I maintained lucidity for approximately 2min, longest achieved thus far that I can remember. Also, I remembered to stay calm and do what I had intended to do which is also a first, rather than try to immediately jump into the sky without thinking or sex up the lady that I was walking with.

11.14.10
Car Nap

I don't remember what the dream was about, but I remember taking a nap on the drive back from Boston to Detroit.. I suddenly became aware that I had slipped into the dream state while experiencing HI, the first time I've ever accomplished that. I then tried to run and was incredibly excited and immediately woke myself up. ..

11.11.10
Type: Lucid, fragment
Vividness: 2/10
Lucidity: 5/10
Nap DILD, napping in the room, get up and get in the shower, washing my hair, very warm in the shower. I go to rinse out my hair and when I feel my head the hair is dry, so I do a noseplug RC and it is successful. I realize that I am dreaming and decide to stabilize the dream so I rub my hands and say "stabilize my dream".. I try to look at the floor, off white tiles, very white/light bathroom. I get out very slowly for some reason, but I cannot open my right eye too well and feel uneasy. I cannot get my vision to adjust properly so I try to force my eyes to open up really wide and wind up opening my eyes and wake up!

Okay. I'm gonna sit at this computer and record these dreams! I feel like the computer drains me of vital energy, and feel reluctant to stay at it.

11.04.10
Type: Lucid, fragment
Vividness: 10/10
Lucidity: 7/10

Had a lucid dream but forgot it once I woke up! first time that has happened to me, and I get the feeling that it was the greatest lucidity I have attained so far in the dream. Near the end I recalled an incredibly vivid scene recall of skateboarding on the roof of a large school building with some other people, brick, sunny day, in some sort of small city scape, one massive tree in the front yard and some sidewalks.. Headed around the roof shaped like a large L and made way to a glass roofed sloped section of the roof, where I heard DC down on the street below talking about gangs in the school, then I feel the dream fading so I spin with my eyes closed, slowly and completely, with the only sensation I was experiencing of my body slowly and powerfully spinning. I think to myself "my bedroom, my bedroom" and opening my eyes find myself lying in my bed!

I do a nose RC and it is successful, FA! So I go to get up, propped up on my arms, but I focus on the muscular activity of pulling myself up too much and experience and a very intense pain/spasm in my right shoulder, and I remember that my physical body is lying down with my arms back behind my head since it was a WILD attempt/induction, and I can't shake off the pain since my physical body probably used a combination of muscles which put strain on the shoulder trying to imitated the movements of my dream body. Since I couldn't gather the will to get past the sensation I woke myself up and shifted positions and tried to enter back into the dream but couldn't fall back asleep.

After spending two nights with intense WILD attempts I decided that WILD would be an excellent and direct method for me to develop, and have resolved to schedule a practice regiment for this pursuit.

Hi DV

Been away for two weeks, moved back home from upstate Michigan and then took a trip to Boston.. I've got so many pages written down though that's intimidating to sit down and record the dreams I've had.. I've been having consistent lucids though and have been continuing in my dedication and progress to cultivating dream state awareness! Hope everybody has also been enthusiastic in pursuing this common goal.. have awesome lucids tonight!

Goal of the week: Get on DV and record all the LD's I've had since my last post, plus a good memorable dream or two with insights.