Snacks From the Butler's Pantry

I lie on my back and relax myself by imagining my feet sinking into the bed. I alternate "pushing" my face and my feet deeper into relaxation. I replay a memory in my mind from earlier in the day, riding my bike through the grassy hills with my little brother. When I feel relaxed enough, I roll to my left side and begin feeling my body hum with energy. The humming gets stronger, vibrating my body until I feel like my head will explode. I encourage the vibrations to get stronger, while keeping my breath even and calm. I imagine the feeling of swaying back and forth, loosening myself from my body.

I am still imagining myself bike riding through a grove of sycamores. This visualization starts to flicker, flashing back and forth to another scene that feels more vivid. In this new scene, I am rollerskating, swaying back and forth down a city street. It feels completely real, but I am still aware of my real body back in bed. I keep myself breathing evenly in the dream, and can feel my real body doing the same back in bed.

I am moving fast, half-skating, half-flying over the steep hills of San Francisco. Buildings flash past me, as I soar inches from the ground, flying faster than a car on a freeway. There are crowds of people all around me, but I weave in and out of them with ease. As I enter the towering skyscrapers of the financial district, I throw out a long cable or rope, hooking it onto a nearby building. I pull myself up on it, launching myself into the air like spiderman. My swing sweeps in a wide arc along the street before shooting me high above the nearby rooftops. Once airborne, I fly around the skyscrapers, admiring their realism and detail.

After several minutes exploring the city from above, I stop midair, and just admire the view I have of the whole city. As I focus my vision on each part of the city, buildings seem to appear and disappear. Each building I look at seems to gain detail, while the others fade into obscurity.

I am still consciously metering my breathing to keep the dream stable. I can feel my body breathing, back in bed. By shifting my attention, I easily return to my body. I use this technique several times to "reset" the dreamscape. Back in bed, I simply fly out of my bedroom, and smash out the front window of my house to fly to a new scene. I explore several different scenes, including some old neighborhoods from my childhood and the picturesque canyon lakes from Twoshadows' photos.

The last time I fly out of my window, I just fly around my neighborhood a bit. It looks like the sun is just coming up, illuminating the bare branches of the winter trees in crisp sunlight. I hover slowly around the neighborhood, even with the tops of the trees. As I watch their swaying branches, they start to sprout buds, then flowers, and finally leaves. The seasons seem to pass before my eyes, and soon the trees are covered in lush green leaves.

I explore some streets I have never been down before, curious to see what they look like. Strangely, they all seem to be from the early 1980s. The cars are stereotypical of the late 70s and early 80s (including some pinstriped Chevy vans that make me laugh). The streets are full of children, playing outside. I land to play some playground ball games with a few of them. I show off a little, throwing the ball impossibly high in the air, then leaping up to catch it. The sight of so many happy children playing outside and enjoying life makes me very emotional. I laugh so hard, I start crying tears of joy. I can feel my real body back in bed laughing and crying, also. It distracts me a little, and brings my attention back.

My girlfriend gets out of bed and starts stomping around the house. She keeps yelling at me to wake up, saying she is making my favorite breakfast. I try to stay in the dream, mumbling to her through my sleep paralysis. She turns on a loud movie called "Order of the Phoenix", apparently a sequel to the movie "The Water Horse."

I finally give up, and open my eyes. Instead of my bedroom, I see an out of place scene of a mirrored closet door. From my viewing angle, I see a strange purple glow reflected from the corner of the mirror. There is something glowing just out of my field of vision. I try to move my head to see, but I am paralyzed. I relax, and let my consciousness drift away from my body so I can see what is glowing. My point of view floats to the side, and I am startled by an unexpected sight. A beautiful, half naked woman is dancing wildly in the corner of the room. Her skin is glowing purple, like a neon sign, and her body is clothed in massive amounts of gold jewelery. I think to myself that she looks like some sort of Hindu goddess. In response to the thought, her dancing and spinning reveals several more sets of arms.

Interrupted, my vision snaps back to where it should be, and I feel like the dream is over. I get out of bed, but notice I am still in the strange room with the mirrored closet door. This must be another false awakening! I see a naked, teenage girl inspecting her reflection in the mirror, unaware of my presence. She is crying, obviously very unhappy about her skinny teenage body. I float over to her, and give her a hug before floating out of the room.

There is a party going on in this house. It seems like a fraternity. I turn visible, and create a body for myself. People are surprised to see me appear, naked, in the middle of their party. They start lightheartedly teasing me and joking with me. I laugh with them, explaining that I am a model, and am doing a photoshoot in this house. A group of guys shows me out to the courtyard garden, where there are tables set up with a catering company. It looks like a wedding reception, or reunion of some kind. We sit down and have some drinks at one of the tables, waiting for our food to come. I explain to them that this is all a dream, and show off some cool tricks. One of the guys throws plates into the air for me. I use my telekinesis to make them fly around and do flips before landing in a stack in my hand.

I slip in and out of lucidity at the party. Eventually, I realize what a long dream this has been, and decide I should wake myself up to write it all down. All together, the dream lasted at least 60-90 minutes, and was incredibly vivid. There were parts I didn't even record in my bedside journal, and parts I left out of this writeup. I wish I had time to write it all down, or explain how much fun it really was.