All DJ Entries

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• BT: ~23:19, OOB: ~09:41, fitbit score: 81 (8:41 asleep, 1:41 awake, 1:45 deep, 1:23 REM), med right before bed
• Wakings:
  
  1. 00:58 b/r, no recall
  2. 03:25, b/r, no recall, basically awake until about 06:00?
  3. 06:30(?) woke from LD #191! brief but fairly clear and a bit amusing
  4. 09:41 final waking
• Drank a glass of wine in the evening with dinner. Definitely impacted sleep negatively. Long waking period, several hours, maybe dozed a bit here and there.
• all content from memory, no notes taken during the night or morning, written 20:00 the evening. Some of the details of the long near-epic have faded.

---

W3: LUCIDD LD #191 Chinese Restaurant
I'm outside on a city sidewalk with a small group of colleagues, we're going to lunch, and several of them enter in to a restaurant. I follow them. Inside is a medium/large room filled with tables and people sitting at the tables eating. It is a Chinese restaurant. I'm looking for evidence that they have my favorite dishes. I'm looking at the plates on the tables, I see my colleagues sitting and eating. The food is all chopped sauteed meat with various sauces, notably red sauces. I'm walking among the tables, and I decide that the cuisine is not to my taste and I want to leave back to outside. I turn around, but there are people sitting at tables all around me, and there is no path back through the room. I'm blocked [DS!]. I try several times to squeeze past in between the chairs but there's just not room. I try several different paths and I can't find a way out. I move to the side of the room (left side with back to street entrance) along the wall where there's a couch. (I ask the staff to help me clear a path?). I half climb on the couch and I see on the ground where have to step next, two bathroom scales on top of each other. I think then that people will be able to see how much I weight and I'm a bit hesitant. I step on them and look down, one of them shows nothing notable, but the other one displays my correct waking name (slightly misspelled with graphics and rectangles in place of some letters), and I'm really surprised by this, how could this scale know my name? I get the idea it may be a dream, I do a nose pinch, and get lucid.
I'm very amused that the scale knew my name! and then I fade to awake in the same pose I fell asleep, with my arms around my wife. [Short lucid period, but I'm very strict about counting my lucids, there must be an explicit affirmation or firm knowledge of recognizing the dream state, so, "lucid is lucid!", and I'm counting it]

W4: Long near epic
Escape from shooter

Outdoors, it's some sort of adventure/thriller plot, there are (3?) of us rushing through a city park-like walkway with some trees on it, we're in a rush, I feel semi-lucid, but I decide to go along with the plot. Half-realizing it's a dream, and hearing the sound of a helicopter flying nearby, I tell one of my cohorts to "call <some guy> in the helicopter to meet us and pick us up!". Then I'm alone and trying to dodge/avoid providing a free shot from a shooter who's stationed on about the 6th floor of a large/long ~10 story building. I move quickly to the base of a large building opposite his position, all the while hoping he won't shoot me. I make my way around the back of the building on the site away from the shooter, and am on a higher level now, on sort of a platform. I do the Clark Kent action "pull open your shirt with two hands to show the Superman Logo" and decide to take off flying and attack the shooter (?).

Ordering Food in the Stadium

[these mini-scenes may be out of dream order]. I'm in a steep stadium seating area, open rows are all around with people sitting down, with a central stairway leading down. At some point I place an order for food: tacos, pad thai, and something else [This is from an incubated plan to eat these things when lucid!]. Then later, I'm walking down the stairway, and I have the order in hand in a brown paper bag. I open the bag and look down into it: I see what looks like an order of nachos (tortilla chips with melted cheese), and some blob of food that I think is the pad thai. (I'm surprised they were able to fulfill the order?). Back down at our seating area, I think something may be missing from the order that I've already paid for. I ask a waiter to explain the bill to me. He mumbles something incoherently and walks away from me. I'm still confused about the order and follow him, calling out "Hey! Answer my question. HEY, WAITER!!!" he is not responding to me and I'm getting very upset. He doesn't want to deal with me, being a "problem customer." Then, I'm wanting to walk back up the stairway, but I have to first enter through a kind of turnstyle and take a different path.

Lose the dogs, memory wipe

I'm meeting my wife L, (she asks?) where are the dogs? I was walking them, and they're not here! I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of having walked them, and I'm very upset that I've both lost the dogs and have a totally blank memory about the situation. This goes on for a while with me being totally astounded and concerned at the blank period of memory. Then somebody holds up a mobile phone for me to see, it's playing a video that shows a man bouncing crazily out of control off of walls on buildings, and I can see that this is me! I have no memory of doing this. I'm very concerned. In another scene (?), I'm indoors and there's something about a game console (?). I think perhaps that there were people who used a device against me to wipe a portion of my memory? And got me to do something?

Pulling up to CD on the street

I'm driving in a car with a guy in the front passenger seat, and I see that ChrDw (company 3) is standing on the side of the road, at a point where parking is allowed again, but his car is in the way, and so I'm waiting for him to move his car so I can park there. But my passenger then gets out of the car and moves to CD and starts talking with him. I think that CD doesn't want to talk to me [hasn't for many years in waking], so I'm hesitant about this course of action. (I think CD may be involved in the plot that wiped a portion of my memory?

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• BT: ~00:10 [too late!], OOB: ~07:46, fitbit score: 83 (6:48 asleep, 0:38 awake, 1:24 deep, 1:01 REM)
• Wakings:
  
  1. 02:18 b/r, no recall
  2. 05:28, b/r, recall,
  3. 07:46 OOB no recall
• Light recall, very short content, low vividness, presence not very high
• BTS at W2 took a while, but apparently did sleep eventually. Another victory, yay!

---

W2: Naval battle
Mostly DO. Starting with an overhead view of a map, it shows the position of a naval battle (historical?), then real ships are sailing, and they are firing their cannons, the entire long broadside of one ship fires, I think that's a lot of canons. Afterwards, a team of scrappers arrive and their job is to dismantle the big ship in to parts (for sale?). We go to one end of the ship and they say that they have found objects including an old car hidden inside the structure of the ship using x-ray imagine. They give an estimate for the complete dismantling job.

W2: Bad check con
There are two people, a man and a woman, who run a bad check con. The woman is inside a store and I hear her talking with the owner, she has bought the entire inventory of the store and wants confirmation that everything there is hers now. The man is walking outside on the street.

W2: Observed by woman
I'm inside a room in a house/building talking with people. I see that there is a woman peeking at me around a slightly opened door. I want her to go away. (I push the door closed?). After the door closes I watch the gap underneath the door to see by the shadow/lighting if she is still standing there or not.

1. Sky Full of Moons (LD)
I'm in a dark downstairs area of a large home. I search my memory for the girlfriends in the dream scene, but nothing comes to mind...it doesn't make sense, and I become lucid. I'm in a dark room that resembles a large kitchen with a large set of cabinets against the far wall and a counter in front of me. I walk toward the laptop on the counter in front of me, and begin opening the screen. I consider looking something up, but decide I don't want to lose focus on that. I see an opened cabinet ahead of me, and consider searching for some food, but decide that's a distraction as well. I head to the front of the house toward the door and begin thinking about how long the dream could last. I walk into the door, and my vision goes black as I phase into it. I begin imagining the scene of the The Village. I suddenly appear on a driveway with a black SUV to my left. It's the middle of the night, and as I look up, I see two small moons, and think of Woue. I look around the sky to see if I can find the large planet with the ring surround it. Suddenly, the entire night sky fills with large crescent moons, hundreds of them glowing in yellow and filling the entire sky. It's an awesome scene, and I continue to gaze across the sky. The song 'A sky full of stars' pops into my head, and begins to play in the dream. I think of my nephew getting excited about the song and find it funny. A couple purple portals begin appearing in the sky above me, followed by black webbing soon after, which stretches further across the sky. I wake up

2. The Cargo Hold (LD)
I'm in a large area which resembles a cargo hold of some sort. It appears to be an elevated area within some large vehicle - possibly a flying fortress of sorts. The situation doesn't make sense to me, so I quickly nose plug and I become lucid. I drop below to the ground through an opening on the floor of the room. As I hit the ground, my vision darkens. I begin spinning, and wind starts to form around me . I think of element manipulation, and flick my left hand counterclockwise, trying to summon a tornado around me. Wind starts to surge around me in a vortex, and I see the walls of it churning. I'm picked up off the ground, but the dream fades.

3. Intro Screen (LD)
I'm in a large dark first floor room and I'm instantly lucid .In front of me, a computer monitor sits on a desk in the middle of the room. I watch the screen and it seems to be loading an RPG of some sort and I think it could be Diablo. It seems like an intro scene, and has a dark center with a gold border. I continue to wait for an interesting scene to load so I can possibly phase into it, but it seems like the same image and sound keeps repeating. I decide to ignore it, and explore the scene a bit more by exploring further ahead into the room. I enter a hallway, and consider heading to The Village, but it's very dark and I don't feel like losing the dream stability or teleporting from that location. I head to the front of the house, and there are blinds like in Serrano, which I pass through to enter an outdoor lanai area with a pool. I continue further, expecting The Village beyond. I end up on a stretch of pavement which seems to be on a campus that extends down the side of a stadium area. I black trucks appears to my left as I continue walking and my neck starts hurting. I try to alleviate it, but realize it's probably my real body's neck. I start hoping that it doesn't interfere with the dream, and actually think it would be annoying to be in that pain for the entire dream. I start thinking of some dream goals, but the dream fades and I wake up.

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• BT: ~23:55, OOB: ~07:37, fitbit score: 83 (6:39 asleep, 1:03 awake, 0:41 deep, 1:25 REM), med right before bed
• Wakings:
  
  1. 01:16 b/r, no recall
  2. 05:18, b/r, recall, brief MILD. << check it out, 4 hours of sleep in a row! Look maw, no wakings/pee trips!
  3. 07:37 OOB
• Long time initially falling asleep at BT as wife was reading on her phone and then settled down to sleep, sort of keeping me awake
• After a bit of recall and quick recording at waking #2, I felt drowsy enough still to fall asleep quickly. I focused quickly on relaxing completely. Did just a bit of MILD. Fell asleep pretty quickly! Fitbit shows awake only 17 min (including b/r, and summary recording in journal)
• wrote two dreams on top of each other! One is completely illegible/lost it looks like... ah, a later phrase brought one back. I remember thinking there were 3 dreams.

---

W2: Call Center
I'm in a phone call center. Banks of operators on phones arrange in several wide parallel rows. I take a call from Nazi Germany. I do not speak German, but I am pretending to know how. There are a couple of women observing me, (one is my manager?) I'm saying and thinking words, trying to make sense, but the only thing I can think of are words in <foreign language not German>.

W2: Business meeting
I'm sitting in a large room, a man (our manager?) is standing at the front berating us (me?) for not getting out changes in on time. This goes on for a while, it's hard to get a word in, I'm finally able to blurt out "I got everything checked in yesterday!" (They say, "why not earlier"?)

W2: Girl on the couch
I'm lying on a couch with a girl who's apparently my girlfriend. The couch is located on an external corner (it "turns" around the corner) between two rooms. I want to have some private "fun" with my g/f, I grab her (ahem) from outside her clothing, and pull us both around the corner so we're out of view from the first room. She tells me she doesn't want any more wine (as a gift) because she has too much of it already. I say "yes, me too, but I was planning to share it with you!"

W3: Animals at night
I'm on my deck outside my house outside the city. I'm walking towards the door into the house, when I catch a glimpse of two little dots of light in the yard of the house across the path from the deck. I do a double take and bob my head around to get a bearing on them, and I decide they are animal eyes reflecting the light. I shine a spotlight and I see a large, orange cat standing there. The longer I look, the more animals appear, all dogs and cats. I think they're all local, not wild. Then a dog jumps the fence of that yard and easily sails over my fence to land in my own yard.

W3: LUCIDD LD #290 Massive LD
Flying at LHS

I'm outside on the path to the LHS parking lot from to gate spot where the asphalt ends and the dirt trail begins. I'm standing there looking down into the valley. There are now a lot out houses there, they are very colorful. They're arranged in a nice little neighborhood. I really want a closer look, so I lean out over the hill and take off flying/gliding. There's a guy, ClnCse (company 3, previously at company I) there on my left as I take off, he's walking towards the LHS parking lot. I know he doesn't approve of me flying, so I mischievously say S/L "Hey C, don't look at me!" while I fly out over the valley and look down to appreciate the view of the houses from above.

Get Lucid

[I forgot the part in between Flying at LHS and my first strong notion of lucidity]
I'm quite sure I'm dreaming, but I nose pinch to be sure, and while there is some resistance, the air is definitely moving, woohoo I'm dreaming!

Reflecting on vividness

In in the upper hallway of CH, facing the b/r, my room is to my right. There is a table with colorful objects on top of it there in the hallway, they look like pieces of art glass, with bright orange, red, brown colors. I decide to take a moment and really reflect/take a reading on the level of vividness of the dream, since there was discussion about this recently on reddit /r/LucidDreaming. I look closely at the art glass objects, and at the scene around me. I quickly conclude that yes, this dream has vividness and clarity easily equal to (or greater than) waking experiences. (I think I touch them as well, and the sense of touch is waking-like as well?).

Checking out "my package"

I move in to my sister's room, and recall that I sometimes like to checkout what I'm packing in my pants in the dream. I pull down my pants and take my (ahem) into my hand and look at it. It looks non-waking, not familiar shape. MEO. "Time for some goals!" I think. I feel like the dream has been really long, like an hour at least, and I look at a clock on the wall to confirm this.

Fun with the fairy, mom & dad tease

I move in to my room, and I am having a sexy time encounter with a little fairly (MEO). We're on the bed that is closer to the door.

Spoiler for sexy time:

it starts with oral on me and I move to intercourse with her.

Then I hear my parents coming up the stairs. I think that this is waking life sound manifesting into the dream, that my parents are coming up the stairs in waking life [false, impossible, don't live in CH, mom passed away], and that this is an interesting phenomenon. I don't want to be discovered so I turn away from the door with the fairy underneath me. Mom & dad both come into the room, dad (standing? getting on to?) the foot of the bed (don't see him), and my mom right in front of me, leaning over, getting right down in my face. I'm trying to fake sleeping. My mom finds the fairy and is teasing me about her, I'm trying to push my mom away from me and hoping she'll go away. My dad says "You're squishing her!" (the fairy).

FA, fly through window

I wake up in the same bed in the same room from the last scene. I suspect I'm still dreaming. I do a nose pinch and I'm still dreaming, woohoo. I see my window in front of me, the blinds are closed and the room is dark-ish, but a lot of white light is coming through the window. I decide to fly / phase out through the window. I take a few steps back (do another nose pinch to confirm I'm dreaming?) then run at the window and launch myself at it horizontally arms out in front of me. I move through the window, but very slowly, like it's made of some think liquid. I come out the other side...

"FryingMan" bus, Red River Valley w/girl

... and I'm outside in daylight, there is a long white bus just in front of me, perpendicular to me, right its front to my right. There is blue/green-ish text along the side of the bus. It says "FryingMan <something something>", several times, and each time "FryingMan" is misspelled slightly, in a way that I find highly amusing and laugh out loud. Like, "FryingMauk" or "FryiAuMan", incorrect letters inserted into the middle of the word. I decide to board the bus. There are a couple of girls walking by and I take them along with me. We all sit down right next to the driver. I start singing "Red River Valley" with the girl closest to me. She's following my lead, as she doesn't know the words. I sing the raunchy "boy scout" version: "Then come sit on my face if you love me.....do not hasten to give me a screw....but remember the Red River Valley...and the cowboy who loved you so true." I'm watching her face while we're singing. I notice she has sharp little teeth, like a puppy. I'm "interacting" with the girl while we're singing (hand), there is a woman back behind us a bit to my left, she looks disapprovingly at the scene. I don't care and keep singing and "interacting".

The scene fades and I'm really happy that I've had a great, long LD, first like that in a long time.

Plan schedule is posted here: https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ilu...proving-95975/
With blue color I marked goals with "working in progress" status
With green color I marked reached goals
With red color I marked failed, missed or deleyed goals
G2g - Goal-to-goal
PoA - Point of Awarness
PoA' - Corrected Point of Awarness
(More about g2g and PoA here: https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ilu...warness-96103/)


Dream Recalling
In this two weeks I started writing down my dreams but I don't have many of them. Good news is my dreams are starting to be much more aware (but not lucid) and recalling is slighty better. I call this "High Aware Non-Lucid Dream" (HANLD)
Funny thing is once I was aware of my own snoring. Saddly it didn't make me lucid.

Recalling at beginning: 0-1 at good quality and/or 0-3 at any quality
Goal: 2-3 at good quality and/or 4-6 at any quality
Month 1: 0-1 at good quality and/or 0-3 at any quality
Month 2: 1 at good quality and/or 1-3 at any quality
Month 3: 1-2 at good quality and/or 2-4 at any quality
Month 4: 2 at good quality and/or 3-5 at any quality
Month 5: 2-3 at good quality and/or 4-5 at any quality
Month 6: 2-3 at good quality and/or 4-6 at any quality

Meditation
Nothing special to report

Goals: 2x20 minutes
Month 1: 2x5 minutes
Month 2: 2x7minutes
Month 3: 2x10 minutes
Month 4: 2x12 minutes
Month 5: 2x15 minutes
Month 6: 2x20 minutes

Day awarness
My goal-to-goal system made me aware how difficult ADA is. It is not a problem with being disciplined nor motivated. The big deal is with awarness by it self. I can regulary come back to ADA but I can't keep my awarness more than 2-3 minutes. It really piss me off, but now I know where is my problem and that mean I can try to fix it.
Also I thought about g2g system and PoA and I think it is good system but I need to make correction factor to make PoA more accurate. More about goal-to-goal and Points of Awarness I will write in second DJ entry.


Goal: Reach “very high awarness” level
]Month 1: “Non-zero” (> 0 PoA)
Month 2: “Occasionally” (> 48 PoA)
Month 3: “Low awarness” (> 144 PoA)
Month 4: “Moderate awarness” (> 240 PoA)
Month 5: “High awarness” (> 336 PoA)
Month 6: “Very high awarness” (> 432 PoA)

To make everything in order and easy to read I decided to write seperate entry what "goal-to-goal" and "Point of Awarness" are. So if somebody start read my "6 month plan" entries in middle it is not nessesery to read every prev entry for better understanding.

Goal-to-goal - It mean I'm not trying to be aware all time on waking day. I splitted ADA for smaller parts - "from goal to goal". Every single activity have start and end. So if I decided to be aware during that activity I know how much time I was aware. And more importat - if I lose my awarness I can estimate when I lost it

Poit of Awarness (PoA) - It is Time of ADA Session multipling via Difficulty Factor
Difficulty Factor (D/F) is as follow:
Automatic activities (like walking, daydreaming or anything else that doesn't requires my attention so I can keep my mind clear) - 0.5
Regular activities (meditation, chit-chat with other people or anything that requires normal level of my attention) - 1.0
Distracting activities (Watching film, plying games, studying or any other distracting activities) - 1.5
During my ADA session I discovered that my awarness isn't "pure". I'm able to keep my attention for few minutes and after that my mind drift off for next few minutes. That mean my True Awarness isn't equal with ADA session. That forced me to create "Correction Factor"
Correction Factor (C/F)
It is estimenting twice per week (it will be monday and thuseday). In this time I will make accurate meansurment during series of very short (circa 5-10 minutes) ADA session. For example - If my series are:
6 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
3 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
5 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
4 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
4 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
5 minutes of aware per 10 min of session
That mean my correction is 0.45 (because 27/60)
Corrected Point of Awarness (PoA') - It is PoA multipling via Correction.
I think using C/F is a little bit to harsh on my level so I will use PoA and C/F as seperate values and seperate goals.

Why it is important to me?
Because it is much more easier for managment. I don't need to think "how much I was aware" and I don't need to be scary if my subjective feelings are accurate or not. Even if my calculation are not 100% accurate, I have fixed procedures and I can compare my results

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• BT: ~23:55, OOB: ~07:20, no fitbit score
• Wakings:
  
  1. 02:30 b/r recall? chess position
  2. 06:24, b/r, main recall
  3. 06:59, brief recall, tried for sleeping until 07:30, didn't fall asleep, got up at 07:20
  4. 07:20 OOB
  
  
• Recall quality: weak, not high presence, details faded. But I woke initially with no recall at all, and the detail came back to me while I was resting quietly, so that seems like a success!
• I did manage to fall asleep somewhere between 06:30 and 07:00. The dream was super short, but "evidence" was that I was asleep briefly. A small but incremental success in BTS.

---

W1?: Chess position
I'm analyzing a chess position, (trying to attract a piece into a fork?)

W2: Pizza Restaurant
Inside a restaurant, there are a number of different pizzas on display on a counter. I'm looking at them to see which one I'd like. They are small, individual-sized pizzas. There is a server there, and he is handing me a couple of the ones that looked really good to me, just the ones I wanted, I think this is a lucky coincidence. One was pepperoni(?), and one was a combination with Italian sausage

W2: Assassin drama
I get in trouble with a group of assassins, (by killing one of them?), and now they're coming for me. There was a long, intricate scheme of how to pull off a murder.

W2: Breakfast Crowd
DO daytime outside view of Shtck S in B at the intersection of Rs street (where the pharmacy and the Safeway are across from each other where Shtck street splits) facing South looking towards downtown. It's early morning, and I get the idea of going for a pasty in a nearby cafe. I go in, and there is a massive crowd. I think it's a bit strange for there to be such a large crowd at such an early hour, but then again it is a university town, so it makes sense.

W3: In CH dining room
I'm sitting down to a tiny desk/table (like 1 foot square) in the middle of the CH dining room. It's dark, like the only lights on are from the living room. My mom is in the living room and she's coming to help me with (some paperwork? my taxes?). I feel like I'm "at attention" and reach down to more comfortably adjust myself, and I do it quickly because I don't want my mom to see this.

1. The Village (LD)
I'm aware as a scene forms of my dream arms outstretched, holding an opaque large bottle. I realize a dream is forming and at first wonder if I'll be able to successfully transition into a dream. I ignore this thought and immerse myself in the dream, working with it to develop. I begin walking, then running and the scene of a house, then a door develops. I exit through the door at full speed and begin flying, taking in the few of a massive downward slope of a grassy area that extends far into the distance. The rolling hills travel downward to a town at the bottom which is lit up in dim red and yellow lights as the sun begins to emerge. I fly toward the village and shouting with excitement, happy that I'm lucid. I laugh and say out loud that I hope the alarm doesn't go off as I know it's probably about time to get up. As I draw closer to the town, the dream starts pulling me upward at a rapid pace. As I ascend higher, I worry for a slight moment that I might lose the dream. I remind myself, however that it's just a dream and that I'm in control. I imagine my dream body drawing closer to the village, and inversely, the village drawing closer to me. I descend rapidly and land. As I land, I stomp my foot twice as the dream is a bit dim. Two massive shock waves emerge from the stomp, sending quakes through the ground. I begin walking back up the hill quickly and consider where to head to next. The dream begins to dim a bit, and I instinctively begin spinning. A tornado forms around me (1), and I can see the wind gust all around me, carrying leaves within it. After a short moment, I emerge in a scene in the middle of the night with a white house containing a small extension to the right with a small staircase leading to a doorway. I think of dream goals and remember trying to head back to The Village. I decide not to head into the room in front of me as I feel it won't bring me where I'm trying to go. I turn around and see behind me a small gray structure somewhat resembling a mausoleum. I decide this won't be the right place to phase through either. I turn to my left and see a small fence next to the extension of the house, and to the right of it, a large one and a half story gate with a curved top, stopping just before a metal bar. I decide to go into the area and fly through the separated portion. I enter into a dark area which is essentially a rectangular room that seems to have a body of water - possibly a pool - within it. I decide to head to The Village through this area. I continue ahead and phase through the wall. --
I'm in blackness for a short period of time and begin imagining the scene of The Village along with it's cobblestone streets and buildings on either side. --
I quickly emerge into an area which resembles a suburb development. It's the middle of the night, and the houses are modern and contain intricate stone paver structures in the fronts of the yards. I notice that it's not exactly The Village from the previous dream, yet still a very interesting area and I hope it'll be persistent. I decide to head to the first area: the chocolate maker. I turn to my right and see a two story house and head toward the front door and enter. As I make my way into the first room, I sense that there's a kitchen toward the back left and that a DC is within. There are two pillars with a small wall separating the area, and I peer around to see if the DC is there, yet no one is present. I turn to my right and see an elderly lady, probably in her early seventies, roughly 5'2" with blonde hair and defined wrinkles. Behind her, I notice that there are some chocolates on top of her cabinets. I ask her if she has any chocolate ready (2). She tells me she didn't realize I was coming tonight, but she could get something ready really quickly. I insinuate that I'm in a rush as I don't want the dream to collapse by stagnating, and begin looking through her fridge. I don't find any, but remind myself that I can just imagine it there. I take a bar of something which seems to be vanilla flavored as well as I square muffin with a top containing waves of chocolate. I say "Thanks Gen" (3) instinctively as I eat the muffin and begin exiting her house. I enter back into the street, continuing to chew, and my mouth is very full. I then begin to think of more areas of The Village I want to explore, and think of The Clockmaker. I realize his house would be just a couple houses down and to the right. I reflect on how eating something may help to engage my senses and ground the dream. Suddenly, many of my sense - mostly sight, hearing, and tactile sense - kick more into awareness and I roll with it as if I'm practicing ADA in the dream. I then see a girl go by me on a blue scooter as I make my way down the street. I suddenly wake up

Notes.
(1). I've worked a bit with tornados as element manipulation via visualization practice. I wanted to use it as a means of teleportation and it seems like it kicked in automatically.
(2). I really like chocolate if you haven't already noticed.
(3). The name came very instinctively. It's probably because my grandpa used to call my grandma Gen, and I made the association with her being an elderly lady with blonde hair.

2. The Stump (Lucid Dreamlet)
I'm aware as I notice a stump in my field of vision. I notice it as the beginnings of a dream scene and want to stay with it as the dream develops. Suddenly, a tree appears behind it along with some grass. I then see a fence in the distance and some dark ground in the periphery. I consider moving my dream body, yet feel tentative as I don't want to disturb my waking body. I think I'm waking up, yet it ends up slipping into a non-lucid dream.

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• Wakings:
  
  1. 02:02 b/r no recall,
  2. 04:57, b/r, recall?
  3. 07:04, b/r recall, tried for sleeping until 07:30, ended up sleeping or drifting until 09:00
  4. 09:00 almost no recall
• BT: ~00:09, OOB: ~09:00, fitbit: 83 (7:48 sleep 1:09 awake, 0:50 REM, 1:39 deep)
• Recall quality: generally poor, not vivid, little presence
• I seem to be getting a bit better at falling back asleep, I've had a lot of success this week

---

W2: Final Fist Fight
I'm entering a room indoors, there are 3 guys there, they are my enemies. As I enter the room two of them are securing the door so nobody can get in or out. I say, "So, this is it, eh? OK, let's finish it!" and I immediately put up my fists and assume a boxing position. I'm fighting FrstGrd (WFP). This is a serious fight. We're circling each other. I periodically land some quick jabs: some to his body, and some to his face. [I don't think he ever hit me]. I'm keeping my guard up with my fists in front of my face.

W2: Archery Teacher
Outdoors (?) in some large open area, I'm an archery instructor talking to a group of people about archery, the different sorts of bows and arrows (?).

W3: Roller Coaster
I'm on a roller coaster at a theme part with son S2. I'm saying something about how there are convenient entrances to this ride at different points in the park. We're getting in to the cars, and I'm reaching back and pulling down the safety harness from behind my head down over my body. It's not clear which train we're getting in to, there are two trains there, facing in opposite directions. We're getting in to the last car of a train.

W3?: Button down shirt
I'm (at work?) putting on a button down dress shirt. I think I'll be getting too hot in this shirt.

W4: Woman teasing
There is a man who fell unconscious because the woman he loves doesn't love him back. He is lying on his stomach, and this woman is lying perpendicularly across his lower back and facing me. She unbuttons her blouse flashes her boobs at me. I become aroused and think about going behind her and interacting with her.

W4: Several Brief Fragments

• outside a building, looking up, through a glass wall [DS] I see a naked woman (vague)
• a guy is drinking coffee and walking with his boss

Type: Lucid dream.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
This was an immensely vivid WILD that happened near the end of REM. I tried to DEILD back into another dream upon waking, but it failed. I imagine this was because the REM period was over, and because I was too rested to fall back asleep afterwards. I spent the dream observing dream behaviour, rather than doing more intense activities.

The dream began with a false awakening. I had not experienced full-blown hypnagogic scenes during the WILD transition, and I had not wanted to manipulate the subtler visuals into an initial dream scene; this may have been the reason behind the FA. I was in the same bedroom I had fallen asleep in. The room was dark, but there was some subtle blue ambient light. I knew that my eyes were initially closed in the dream, but I could see through them somehow, as if I had no eyelids at all. My blankets were pulled up around my neck and in front of my face, which filled most of my vision. I could barely see the room past them. Then I opened my eyes, and nothing about the scenery changed.

I knew I was dreaming because of the eyelids phenomenon. However, I decided to confirm a second time by holding my hand out and expecting a random character to take it, to help me sit upright.

"Hey, can you help me up?" I asked, expecting Chris Pine to be there.

"Sure," someone said, and I felt them take my hand. The voice sounded fairly accurate to Chris Pine, but not perfect. I sat upright in bed and stood up, and the motions felt light, as if gravity was less powerful and I did not need to exert as much effort to get up. I saw Chris Pine in the darkness of the room, standing in front of me. Even without prior visualization, I was pleased to see how close he looked to the actor's likeness. However, his brown hair was longer and more unruly, like he had let it grow out and hadn't gotten a haircut in some time. It reminded me of Bruno from Encanto. He also looked a bit sad or worried. I did not dwell on this. I chalked it up to the random nature of dreams, where they sometimes filled in details I had not consciously accounted for.

I left my bedroom and headed towards the hallway that connected my bedroom to the bathroom. It seemed wider than in real life, but just like real life, both walls of the hallway had sliding doors with full mirrors on them. I had not expected to see anyone in the hallway, but I saw my mother standing off to the right. I cannot remember what she was wearing, but she looked convincingly like my mother and I didn't notice anything "off" about her.

I approached her. Wanting to see her reaction, I said, "isn't it amazing how we're in a dream right now?!"

"Yes, honey!" she replied, enthusiastic.

"Yeah, it's great. Well, I'll see you later! We can play Uno, or something," I finished, knowing full well that I would not see her again. I walked past the bathroom, paying little heed to the contents, and into the living room of my apartment. It was dark like the bedroom and bathroom. The size and shape of the living room, and the overall furniture setup, was similar to real life, but I didn't pay attention to the minor details. I headed straight for the opposite corner of the room, where in real life, there was an access door to a balcony. There was no door in the dream, though, just an empty doorway that led directly outside.

Outside, it was daytime. While the apartment should have been illuminated by the light spilling in from the doorway, this wasn't the case. There was a very stark divide between indoor and outdoor lighting.

Outside on the balcony, things were unusual. The balcony had no railings. The balcony was also much longer than in real life, reaching about 40 feet long compared to 15 or so. The floor of the balcony was incredibly smooth, and looked almost like gray linoleum rather than painted/sealed concrete. I looked out from the balcony. I saw the wall of a very tall building with very plain, glass windows. It looked like it came from a low-res video game, and the building was fairly close. Then I looked down and I saw a long, straight pathway running across the bottom of the building, below my balcony. It continued past where my balcony ended, then curved around the side of the building, to a place I couldn't see from my vantage point.

Oddly, the pathway was not concrete or asphalt. It was made of fake snow that had been compacted or glued down. There were small hills in the pathway too, and large, snowman-sized snowballs scattered here and there, all of which were made from the same fake snow.

My focus returned to the balcony, then I turned around and looked at the exterior wall of my apartment. The windows were well-defined and realistic, and I could even see the blackout curtains that I had installed in real life. Fascinated by the definition of everything, I looked down at my right hand. My hand seemed incredibly sharp and defined too. I counted my fingers on both hands, and saw five on each. This was unusual, as I typically saw different numbers of fingers, or small fingers branching off from the main ones. I looked up, away from my hands for a moment, then I looked back down at my right hand, imagining there would be small fingers this time. I saw one small, finger-like appendage sticking out of the middle of my palm. I touched it with my other hand, and I could feel it, like it was actually connected to my hand.

Then I became grossed out, so I looked away.

I turned around and noticed that the snow pathway was still present, so I stepped off the balcony and floated down onto it. The fake snow should have made noise under my feet when I landed, like crunching, but there was no sound, even when I pivoted. It was like the ground was smooth wherever my feet were. The rest of the path was still covered in fake snow. I continued walking down the path, turned the corner, and ended up at a large mall entrance. The building was massive and seemingly square-shaped. The walls were made of smaller semi-transparent, triangular glass panels, which I couldn't properly see through, but there was a large set of glass double doors that were completely transparent. I walked towards the entrance and the doors opened for me, which I found interesting.

Inside the mall, it appeared to be a single massive room. The building should have let in a ton of outdoor sunlight, because it was made of glass, but it seemed like the glass walls were completely blocking all outdoor light once I got inside, so the lighting became warmer, as if the space was mostly lit by incandescent lights instead of natural sunlight. I saw lots of glass pathways and tracks winding all throughout the room. The path design and overall complexity reminded me of the ramps during the lightcycle battle from the movie TRON: Legacy. I saw some above-ground concrete pools that were very shallow, perhaps two or three feet. There was water in them, and in the water, I saw some random dream characters lounging in swimming attire.

I decided to summon someone to see what my dream would choose, and said, "okay dream, pick a random person and have them appear behind me".

Then I turned around and saw two people. One person looked like Ororo Munroe from X-Men, portrayed by Halle Berry, and one person was my third grade teacher from school. Ororo was wearing jeans and a black sweetheart top with a black cardigan, which seemed practical. My teacher was wearing a very bizarre outfit. Her top was a 2000s Lululemon hoodie, except it was cropped. and made of a very coarse pink velour fabric. She was also wearing shorts made from the same pink velour fabric. It looked funny.

The dream ended.

The dream started in a house that was a mix of my house, my guitarist's, and my fiance's houses. My girlfriend and I were getting ready to go to a concert for a band that doesn't exist. We ended up just walking through some suburbs in fancy goth outfits but it was still nice. We then went outback, where there was a super nature-y neighborhood (mainly trailers and tents and stuff but also some houses) where she wanted to check out a listing for a 3 bedroom trailer. We got there and it was a one bedroom/studio trailer with a giant pylon installed through it. Needless to say, she needed to keep searching.

Later, I show a friend (either it was Edynn or one of my headmates, hard to tell) the listing, and it was gone. We continued through the neighborhood and saw drive in theaters playing sci-fi movies about robots and 3D models of trailers. We then came upon an exact replica of my childhood home.

Upon entering, my grandma was in the kitchen. She was talking incoherently and on the stand in front of the back window was a small paperback cook book she authored after she lost lucidity. The book was page after page of incoherent nonsense with illustrations of recipes made from ingredients that don't exist. Think AI generated food but it looked as if they were actual photos. I go up to her and ask "hey grandma, what made you decide to make a cook book?" And she responded by taking it out of my hands, mumbling vaguely about regret, and beginning to tear it up page by page. I panicked and took it out of her hands, to which she responded by screaming at me and chasing me and my friend out the front door.

Before we could fully leave, she stopped and began to apologize to her late husband, which we soon connected the dots as representing an attempt to apologize to me directly. For a moment, we saw a glimpse into the memories she was living through in that moment, sitting on a recliner in front of a shadowy, warped figure. It was like it was projected in front of us and the grandma that was in front of me temporarily vanished. When she came back, we hugged as she talked, and an illustration of a lion showed up behind us, after which I audibly said "oh my god, you're still alive" and began crying in her arms. The whole time I should mention that sad symphonic movie music was playing. I don't remember if I told her I loved her or not. I suppose this whole scene was my brain's roundabout way of saying she was still alive in my heart or something like that.

I woke up crying for the first time ever about my grandmother's death since it happened in September 2019. I suppose I deliberately prevented myself from saying goodbye in the waking world so as to not have to handle emotions that I was still afraid of at the time. I don't know if she would have approved of me being trans or any of the other stuff I came out as since her death, but she tried her hardest to raise me even as her dementia got worse, so I have something to thank her for regardless.


RIP Martha Flinchum, 1933-2019

Legend

Colors: Lucid, Semi-lucid, Non-lucid
[comment from waking] in angle brackets
(comment / clarification from dreaming) in parentheses
Abbreviations: DS = dream sign, CH = childhood home, S1/S2 = sons, S/O = someone, S/A = something about, [f] = fragment, b/r = bathroom trip, Wn = waking #n, BT = bedtime, OOB = final out of bed time in morning, DO = Disembodied Observer

Summary of the Night

• Wakings:
  
  1. 01:25 b/r no recall,
  2. 04:18, b/r, recall
  3. 05:11, b/r recall?, long hard BTS (starting now or even at waking #2?), pretended to sleep and after some time it worked and fell asleep and dreamed some more
  4. final waking: 06:51 (maybe one more period of sleep? Possibly more mini wakings before 06:51
• BT: ~23:06, OOB: ~08:00, fitbit: 88 (7:04 sleep 0:41 awake, 1:57 REM, 1:36 deep)
• Recall quality: summon quite vivid w/presence & semi-lucid, dept store girls fairly vivid, sex toy w/ presence
• Got close to sleep and maybe did fall asleep between 7 and 8, very relaxed

---

W2/3: Car outside CH
With some people getting in to a car on the street outside CH, heading up S street?

W2/3: Pool Privileges
Begins with a DO scene from a high height looking down on an outdoor daylight scene of a large swimming pool and building complex. My dad and sister are commiserating that some woman, despite not having earned it through years of work like my dad did, has free access to this pool complex. Then I'm down in the pool and there is a sort of race or training class, with tons of swimmers (all guys). They are crowding down in to the pool making it almost impossible for me to pull myself out. I manage to pull myself out and sit on the edge there looking at them all in the pool.

I'm walking outside along a path/road above coast line, there is a building and parking lot here, there is a car (?) we need to get into. A bit farther own, (down a flight of stairs?), there are a couple guys talking about a car there, what the did to modify it, and it's special design.

W2/3: Hallway
I'm walking through a long hallway looking into rooms. There are also closed doors. At the end of the hallway is a door leading to a 2nd/3rd story outside exposed (no roof) landing, twilight lighting. Back inside there is a large room and people are meeting and discussing something (it's a control center?)

W4: Summoning Sons
Outside city urban sidewalk, there's a guy there and there's a parking meter. I grab some coins from my pocket (for the parking meter?) and then I'm thinking what can I buy with these coins in the vending machine inside the building here: (water?). Then I hear piano music [ambient sound RARE in dreams, and I've been thinking about this recently], it is the music that my son S1 used to play in his childhood piano lessons [ probably false but I thought I recognized it ]. I enter the staircase that leads down a story to the room below street level in the building, expecting to see my son S1 playing the piano. There is a large open white featureless room with a young boy in the middle (playing the piano? [don't remember seeing a piano]), who is not my son S1. I want to summon my son S1, so I walk further into the room turning to the left, where there is an alcove, expecting to see S1, but when it comes into view, there is no one there, just a large pile of objects strewn around (toys?). I turn back on my path and retrace my steps to the main opening area, now I want to summon son S2 as he was as a very young child. I'm getting very emotional and lose my semi-lucidity, and instead of summoning S2 I'm pleading for him to appear. "S2! Baby S2!" I really crave to see him, he does not appear, either.

W4: Department Store Girls
I'm in a department store scene, a display area (like for clothing or housewares) with a "living room" open area around a central circular low coffee table, and display shelves all around it. The area is packed with girls, sitting on the table, sitting on couches, chairs.

Spoiler for click if you really want to see, slight sexual content:

A lot of them have skirts hiked up around their legs and I'm maneuvering around to get some good views of their panties. I get a few glimpses. I do not belong in this group. It is a meeting of some sort and there are organizers (older women?) on the other side of the shelve barrier around this living room area. They're talking and discussing things. I wonder how long I can keep checking out the girls without being detected.

W4: Sex Toy
I'm lying in bed, my wife L has gone to the shower. I find a red male sex toy in the cabinet next to the bed and am surprised that it's there. I wonder how my wife didn't see it or comment on it.

Spoiler for sexual:

I feel "randy" and put my (ahem) in the thing, I'm not really ready for it, but move it around. Then I see an "on" switch and wonder if the batteries could still be good. It starts vibrating, intensifying the sensation. I start getting really into it.

Then I realize I can't hear the shower any more -- L could walk in at any moment I quickly stash the toy in the cabinet, on the far right back under a pile of cubical boxes of spare light bulbs that we rarely use.

W4: Tickling "Tina"
I'm lying in a room next to a girl, "Tina". I think it would be fun to tickle her, so I reach over and start tickling her sides, she immediately objects, "No, no! Don't do that" I immediately stop. I reach to touch her tummy to see what is wrong with her, she says "My stomach hurts!" I think about lifting up her shirt to see what's wrong with her stomach but decide it's better just not to touch her any more if she doesn't feel well.

Final waking?: Car monster
Sort of vague and short, but the idea is that some monster thing like a Vampire is attacking cars and stabbing a weapon through the roof [day residue: the mosquito attack from the movie Jumanji

A very long, completely non-linear, nonsensical dream. I won't try and make any story out of it, just writing as I remember things...


It was around Christmas time and millions of people had gathered to see a Christmas play in a theater. All of the people, including myself, were large nesting doll type things. I was much older, maybe 40-50, and had a husband. The line to the theater was inside a dimly lit hallway, and was so long it seemed to stretch out forever. By the time we got to the theater, the play was ending. We were the last to leave, the stage and hallway so eerily empty now. At the door to the exit a receptionist told us we needed a key to leave, which would have been given to us during the show. I tried explaining to her that we'd got in late and weren't given a key. The three of us talked like old friends for a while before my husband pulled out a key and placed it in it's lock, and we left the theater.

Then, I was in a shop that had tables and chairs set up like a classroom. Outside it had been snowing heavily, and I was covered head to toe in winter gear. I was also my own age again, human, and had no husband. I'd wanted to go out to ski, but didn't have any skis. At the entrance to the shop was a row of pigeonholes with different footwear in each hole. As I thought about stealing a pair of skis, my inner monologue in the form of a pink fairy flew around me and told me not to, but I did it anyways. Then I went outside and skied up and down a large hill of snow for a while. When I reached the bottom of the hill for the last time, I walked into white light.

Now I was in a shopping mall at night, putting on an interpretive dance performance. The mall was covered in a faint purple glow. At some point in the dance, I had a flashback.

In the flashback, there was a large green hill above a small town. At the top of the hill was a giant oak tree. Under the tree, I saw hundreds of bubbles, every bubble containing a moment in someone's life. In one particular bubble, I saw a young girl asleep at her schooldesk. Underneath all the bubbles is a field of roses covered in thick thorns. I had the knowledge that the girl could either return to her life at her desk and wake up, or remain asleep and pop the bubble, falling into the endless field of thorns.

Then I was in a bustling street, and it was the middle of summer. At an intersection in the street a famous band was performing, and thousands of people were packed tightly around them to watch. I was with a friend and wearing a shirt that had a quote from one of the band members on it. The person in front of me turned around, revealing to be the member of the band that said the quote. He saw my shirt and laughed. After the show was over, everyone dispersed into the city. I was walking along a row of shops with my friend and realised I was wearing shorts, even though I hate wearing shorts in public. We went into a clothes shop and I asked my friend to buy me a pair of pants as I went to hide in a changing room. At the back of the shop where the change rooms are, I saw a row of stalls and 2 bathrooms, each with very specific signs above them. The signs had strange requirements like "for very smart women" or "for hat people". I decided to go into a few of them to see what could set them apart. In each of the stalls, every surface had a fullbody funhouse-like mirror that reflected different versions of myself depending on the sign outside. I saw myself with long blonde hair and a purple dress.
There weren't any bathrooms or stalls labeled explicitly for men, so I went into the bathroom labeled "for very smart women". Inside, instead of mirrors there were screens. As I sat down on the lid of the toilet the screens lit up and started to tell me facts about myself. My star sign, my favourite foods, how likely I am to do certain things than other people in my lifetime. When I stood up, the tiles under my feet lit up. The screen told me my height and weight: 4 grams. When I left the bathroom my friend gave me a pair of pink leggings, and we left without paying.

And then I woke up.

The night before last, I visited an alien planet. There were no plants and no breathable atmosphere. The ground was covered in gray sand (which had the appearance of ash).

There was no life outside, but civilization existed within an indoor city. Because indoor space was limited, the city was very compact with buildings being closed together and no roads for wide vehicles.

It resembled a shopping mall, but with more businesses and residential buildings all packed together.

Because this planet wasn't naturally habitable, it had no native life. The economy was sustained mostly through tourism.

I explored the city for a bit, then turned into my dragon to explore outside in the uninhabitable parts. Eventually woke up in the morning.

The following night (last night), I came back to this planet and applied for the local college. I’m not sure what I'll be studying yet, but I took a bus to the campus and enrolled, so I'm a student now!

The admissions office directed me to a grassy indoor field, which had a large spiraling staircase smack-dab in the center of it. The staircase looked like it was once heavily polished and adorned with artwork, but it was now an archaic relic that had been restored.

This was where I would be taking a test. The admissions office told me to climb the stairs as high as I could to test my eligibility for classes. Weird, but alright. I followed the instructions and started going up the stairs. At first, it was just stairs, nothing peculiar. Maybe the test was at the top, I figured.

Then, as I got higher, creatures started emerging from nooks and crannies. They attacked me.
There were spiders, rats, bats, bugs, and other critters I had to fend off. It was mostly just an annoyance and I jogged my way through them.
As I went up further, more creatures came at me. Bigger ones. Tigers, wolves, alligators. This was more challenging, but I got through them, too.
Then I encountered human soldiers with military grade weapons. They attacked me on sight and I had to use my dragon to shield myself and get past.

I began to realize this was the test. Every student who climbed this stairway would face these increasingly difficult challenges.
For a while after passing the soldier level, I wondered what the next one would be... and I walked with more caution, looking around every corner.

The next trial wouldn't be around any corners, though. Instead, it was in my head. I heard a voice.
The higher I went, the louder and clearer the voice became. It cackled and taunted me demonically, threatening me with the trials ahead. It told me that it knew my greatest fears, and that's what I would soon face.
Knowing this is a dream, I don't doubt it. I seriously thought about going back, but decided that the voice in my head wasn't a deal breaker.
I continued up the stairway, ignoring it.

Eventually, the voice faded as I ascended beyond it.

But it was true that much worse things were higher up. The creatures that came for me next were supernatural. Zombies, ghosts, demons, and hallucinations of blood and other horror that personally disturbs me. However, I had already mentally prepared for it thanks to the warnings. I was determined to keep going and ascended past the supernatural scares. 


After getting past all of that, I stopped and looked up to try and see the top of the staircase.
There was no visible end. It seemed to go on infinitely, actually.
The stairs disappeared into gray fog in the sky.

I saw a glimpse of the stairway reaching into space and past the boundary of the universe.
This terrified me more than any other horror, so I stopped and jumped down from the stairway, declaring that I was done with the test. That's as far as I went!

Date: 24/07/2023
Bedtime: 3.40am
Awakening: 9.35am
Return to bed: 10.30am
Method: deferred direct
Attempt: successful
Final awakening: 12pm
The Suffocation Experiment

DREAMING

I'm out with my father Donald Trump, who wants to bond with me despite our political disagreements. We are sitting outside a café in broad daylight when people walking past recognise the former president and start mocking him for his mannerisms and indiscretions. Trump smiles nonchalantly as if he's not bothered by the negative feedback but I feel uncomfortable. The more I look at my father, the more I feel sorry for him and my emotional compassion wells up. I realise I still love him and want to reassure him that not everything about him is bad. 'Cheer up, dad!' I tell him. 'I am very proud of everything that you have achieved—I mean, you managed to become president of the United States of America!' His smile widens. Trump is happy.

WAKING

I wake up realising the glaring identity anomaly: Donald Trump is not my father. Maybe a part of me wants to empathise more with disagreeable people and wishes to truly understand them to the core; as I write down the dream I wonder if it was the result of having looked into metta or loving-kindness meditation a few days ago when I decided to study Theravāda Buddhism. I let the dog out to do his business and use the loo myself. Then, I read my dream journal before returning to bed with the intention to have a wake-initiated lucid dream. It seems to take me a while to relax and I wonder if I spent too much time awake. Have I blown my chances? I toss and turn before settling on my side.

LUCID DREAMING

I hear a pulsatile hiss in my head and recognise there's a strong possibility here that I might succeed. I wait for this sound to peak to be sure that a good connection to the dream world is established, like I'm tuning into a different channel. Suddenly, I acquire a horizontal perspective of my bedside cabinet and I can see my mobile phone, on its stand, with a bright and colourful interface; crystal-clear vision switches on even though my eyelids were shut throughout induction. I reach for my phone, which feels solid to the touch, and bring it closer to my face to find that there is no text on it; gripping the object with both hands, I decide to try to bend it. The phone becomes malleable and I watch the multicoloured light on its supple screen stretch and bend. I am now quite sure I'm dreaming beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I discard the phone and get up to scan the bedroom as I rub my hands. Recalling the suffocation experiment, I begin to hold my breath with the idea of maintaining breathlessness until I wake up. I notice an extremely tall man in black standing by the door, observing me; his bald crown and grey horseshoe hairline makes him appear to be an old man, albeit a strong one. At this point, the sensation of holding my breath feels absolutely real, like soon I will need to resume breathing because the situation becomes increasingly desperate with each passing second. The man turns to the door, indifferent to my experiment, and as soon as he swings it open, I chase after him, gripping his arm in the hallway. This doesn't stop him as his black-sleeved arm easily comes away from its socket and the one-armed figure disappears as he walks down the staircase. I am still holding my breath and can't do it for much longer; I desperately want to breathe.

WAKING

I am back in bed, relieved to be able to breathe again. It felt like I had been holding my breath in my sleep. It appears that the very nature of this experiment leads to a premature awakening as waking in this context is pretty much synonymous with being able to freely breathe. My dedication to this experiment made the wish to wake up win out over my usual desire to prolong lucid dreaming.