memorable

12.01.10

So I slept from about 3:30 'till 7:00, shared breakfast with my mother, read haiku and reviewed my DJ and goals after a shower and tea, then at 9:30 I return to bed and sleep until 12:30

3:30-7:00 Dreams
Dream of a man [which I fade in and out of perspectives] swimming in turbulent ice cold water near a cornered wooden dock, trying to retrieve an object fallen in the water of apparant great importance [grasping] He gets so close and then the dream fades. The scene switches to an army-esque situation with a bunch of men sitting in uniform in the back of a tan truck. Tom Hanks stands up and starts to talk directed at me, the man he saved apparantly "I had my papers and was all packed up ready to ship out, then this fat idiot here comes along [and I wind up saving him] so here I am now today.. I even read this damn book of yours too.. First one in 12 years." [apparantly he had been dismissed before and this meritious action got him his title back?]

Similar fragment travelling underground in a huge square tunnel constructed out of sandstone bricks, some other sort of army experience involving prisoners.

Fragment of a video game shopping mania! In some generic looking superstore like K-mart, and see hundreds of SNES and oldschool console games lined in white wired baskets.. I experience a mixture of seeing and also experiencing various facets of playing and being a character in many different games like donkey kong, kirby, megaman.. very cool actually.

9:30-12:30 Dreams
I wake in my bed and do a noseplug RC and it succeeds and I verify that I am dreaming. I repeat slowly and steadily to myself that I am dreaming. I walk downstairs and am in a house I used to live in.. in the kitchen is a boy named Ben that I was friends with during the time that I lived at the house. He sees me arrives downstairs and immediately walks out the back glass door without saying a word to me. I walk outside onto a short wooden deck, and Ben has walked up a sloping hill and walked behind a tree, kind of watching me from the shadows of the far side of the tree. Two dogs, one long haired with white brown and black colors and a slender face, the other completely white are trotting towards the woods and I consider following them but do not with to enter the woods at that time. Instead I tun to my left and climb up another steep hill on all fours, soaking in the remarkable texture of the grass and slight dampness of the soil beneath. Over my shoulder I hear Ben call out "HEY!" kind of like saying "Where are you going?" but at this point I forget my intention to ineract with DCs and ignore him, the call is far off sounding anyway and I assumed he would've only distracted me [from doing what exactly I'm not sure]. I get to the top of the hill and get into a hot tub. From a nice colonial style house a woman in a bathing suit comes running out toward me calling my name. A she comes toward me I try to transform her into a different character which vaguely succeeds, as my dream fades away.

At this point I am in what I believe has been labeled "the void", a transitioning point between dreams.. I hold onto my awareness in the dark, and focus on the fact that I am dreaming and another dream will arise. I open my eyes in my own bed and RC successfully and find I am still dreaming. I get up and go to leave my room as I did in the last lucid but my heavy oak dresser is halfway blocking the door, and I cannot open it. I take this as a sign. I slow down and stop trying to move and explore, I notice that my wall is completely covered from top to bottom in art works done by my sister who is a terrific artist and also my own drawings and paintings, most of them framed in black matte paper. I feel cold without a shirt so I open my closet and put on a long sleeved shirt while laughing at myself for layering up in a dream. I decide the dresser is a test for me to pass through walls. So I focus my concentration on walking through the wall, and visualize the space on the other side of it, and successfully walk through it with absolutely no resistance! I didn't even feel the wall at all. The bathroom light is on in front of me.

I look to my right and strangely enough there are two other Me, sitting infont of a balcony on a blue couch slightly lowered into the ground like a theatre. The two Me are just looking at me, and [I guess since I had "Bad Romance" stuck in my head for whatever reason earlier in the day] I think of dancing and start singing Bad Romance, and the other two Me also start to get down still sitting on the couch! haha! So we're all dancing together and that's very fun, I consider going over and actually dancing with myself breifly but am still focused on mastering passing through walls. I look back at the wall to my room and intentionally fail passing through just to see what that feels like, and I just kind of run into it.. doesn't hurt, bounce back a bit. Then I actually focus on passing through and this time run right through it.

At this point the dream fades and I have another FA, this time brief and I don't recognize it. I imagine my phone going off [and it looks completely accurate, even the numbers and background and the song]. I'm recalling all the dreams I've had in detail in my bed and then I'm suddenly sitting at breakfeast with my father who is talking loudly and it annoys me since it becomes harder to concentrate.. then another FA where I look at my phone and a website similar to DV is on the screen on my browser. I close the tab and the phone says I still have ten minutes till my alarm goes off... I fall back asleep then feel myself sink into my physical body.

Funny thing though - halfway through writing in my DJ I realize that the phone check may have been a FA, so I look at my phone and it says that I still have 10 minutes left before the alarm goes off.. totally weird huh? Just like the last FA.

After this I sleep again for another 90 minute cycle, and have a non-lucid that feels like it lasted for about 30 full minutes with almost no lapse in conciousness, and with complete recall. Longest dream I've recorded yet.

I also had another lucid yesterday during a nap, though it was very vague in my memory when I woke up, very little lucidity just walking through rooms alone. Had an FA I failed to recognize, though I was very suspicious the whole time and was investigating my surroundings intently and even tried to fly [crashed on my head hahah] but didn't believe I could. I was looking at the room for physics defying features and didn't find any, but failed to notice that the elevation of the second floor was only like a half floor, and that the main room was incredibly larger than it actually is though all the furniture was still there.

These lucids I've recorded here were MILD induced nap/WBTB. I also have been practicing with WakingNomads meditation technique given to him by his DG Zaphor involving cycling the power between your three states [astral dream and physical] while also adding my own twist of cycling and balancing the energy between the three dream states [lucid, non-lucid, deep sleep] within that outer circle. It has enabled me to feel my energy body as a distinct entity for the first time. Salutations to Zaphor!

So yup. Awesome. Seeing myself in dreams was really a fun experience. When I see myself again I will remember to place priority on interacting with myself.
Hope everyone had a great holiday and fabulous lucids!

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

11.16.10
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. ..

I've entered some type of sanctuary, in a place that's like a crevice in a sandstone mountain/rock, with a pool of water in the middle about waist deep with massive, beautiful trees with huge trunks growing out of the pool, with leaves like a willow, flowering. There's a stone path I can see on the pools floor, and a stone path around the side of the pool. I am walking around the path, and there are some people dressed mostly in black sitting against the wall that seem to be praying or contemplating. I get an intense feeling that this place is sacred, and walk slowly and act accordingly. I come across a type of gaurd, sitting cross legged dressed completely in black robes with a type of mask/head dress. The gaurd does not move as we pass, and just beyond there is a ledge leading into the pool, the stone path is infront of me, and I step in the pool feeling the gaurd's approval to my entering the pool in some sort of direct communication method. The people that I am with walk through the pool to the right along that path, underneath a stone arch in the wall that leads to another room. Wading in the pool I admire the beauty around me and walk to the left toward the trees, and I notice an unusual pattern in the rock wall infront of me, like icycles or the types of rock formations you find hanging down from caves like pillars or spikes. I see that the formation continues down into the water, so I take a deep breath and submerge. Looking ahead, the pillars continue down [only waist deep or a little more, and the place is dark, yet at the same time a reddish-orange glow radiates from the corner, and it seems to get deeper and deeper, and I am suddenly seized with panic and fear, and percieve the place not necessarily to represent hell or evil, but eternity, fear, inhuman, dark, perilous. I jump up from the water and look around to find my friends and tell them what has just happened and leave the place, but I am still curious, and master my fear and submerge again. This time I gaze into the abyss, between two tree trunks, and while it looks the same, I see it this time without fear, and it fills me with a sense of eternity, calm, orderly, representing death to me. I sit cross legged, on the floor of the water and breathe underwater, and just gaze into it and filled with a profound sense of calmness of mind, and nothing else.

This dream held a lot of meaning for me while it happened, and ever since it has happened I can remember the entire vividly. I've come to feel that the dream has some parallel toward my attitude about death, or attitudes, if you will. The gaurd and how we communicated is still has me struck dumb. I'm not big into dream interpretation but it seems to blatant to overlook.

I had a lucid dream! I was flying, and knew I was dreaming immediately because I was flying I enjoyed this immensely because I was not shocked, and it didn't hit me like many members report, I wasn't over excited, and I didn't wake up. That was one thing I have tried to focus my intention on, approaching lucid dreaming with a calm and stable mind. So, I'm flying with my arms at my sides, parallel to the ground gazing foreward, going a little too fast for me to control, but I do forget to stabilize before trying to accomplish my goals so they don't work unfortunately and I lose lucidity within probably fifteen to twenty seconds. I was flying over a hilly grass area near a very large and beautiful tree, it was daytime. I first tried to change my altitude and method of flight [like hovering, or doing somersaults, etc.] but was unable to, and then I tried to "Earth Bend" like in the animated series Avatar, but I don't recall being able to move anything with my mind. So my next area of concentration will be dream stabilization!
[Sorry for the long post about a 15 second dream, but I feel quite proud and exhilarated from my experience, and overjoyed that I am moving closer to understanding the dream state]

In the dream immediately following or connected to the LD, I meet up with people I live and work with, and we are driving through rolling countryside along the coast of some huge lake or ocean. It is sunset and breathtakingly beautiful, I feel comfortable and adventurous. We pass through several cities, some we pass around at a height while still in the car. The cities are filled with large buildings seemingly made of adobe or concrete, very circular like Indian temple-skyscrapers, with a feeling reminiscent of elven towns from Lord of the Rings. I ask the driver town names and she gives some names of towns in the state where I live, which I do not notice. We come to a building in a town and enter and it's a type of leisure club, semi circular in design and spiraling upward, long decorative diamond strings hanging down like a mobile in some art museums or libraries. It seems there are many live performers/magicians performing strange things [though I do not remember] One of them gives me some type of small cellular type device connected to a balloon that looks like a large lightbulb. Holding it causes me to fly again, and I am soaring gently over the many people, and fly up through the building, very dark and intimate feeling with red and black tones and candlelight , filled with mystique. I come down to the ground, grab another and fly even higher, and I seem to be the only one flying though I am not a spectacle and I don't mind at all .

After flying I sit down with two old men/magicians/performers with beards, like monks or gurus, sitting cross legged and excitedly tell them about the lucid dream I had just experienced, how it felt and what had happened. They look interested and listen attentively, but do not say much - they sit and smile gently at me. As I look at them I am filled with peace and comfort, they give me a sense of encouragement and approval. When I finish my dream, and finish telling them breifly about the concept of lucid dreaming, one tells me, "well, that sounds like a dedicated task."

I had several more but must leave now, will update more later in the week since I have no internet access except the library, and will also enter in some memorable dreams from the last few months. Thanks for reading, I'd be glad to get any comments or encouragment or advice.