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This is the first dream I've been able to recall in weeks, so it's quite fuzzy...and really random...

In dreams, things happen all around us and we take it in for what it is, unquestioningly so. The situation around me in my dream tonight was
so wholly absurd that I immediately was aware I was in a dream, yet I went with the flow of the dream anyway

There was a studio, filled with dancers. The dance instructor told them that I would be joining them this class, and we went straight away to
practise. It was ridiculously apparent that I was not cut out for this, but everyone kept going, including me. We ended up doing standard
stuff, stretching out, going 'round in a circle to practise jumps and spins, and eventually do a mad free for all that seemed to completely pass over my realisation - I only
remember the moment that it ended.

Through this rehearsal session, I became increasingly aware of a particular petite girl with blonde hair. We both ended up doing the same move in time with the music, and
that seemed to enlist laughter and practise in close proximity for the rest of the rehearsal. When we were in-between sets, she would come over and wrap her right arm around my waist as we walked towards the rest of the group. I can't recall any distinct features about this girl other than her stature and hair colour; however, she doesn't seem like anyone I know in particular.

During the free for all, apparently there was supposed to be a sort of group pose at the end of it all, where we were to hold hands and do something crazy. Completely oblivious to this fact, the last precious seconds of the song were filled with me scrambling towards that blonde girl. As we held hands and posed for the last beat of the song, it all felt really surreal. There was no real purpose to this dance rehearsal. I'm haven't been a dancer since I was much younger. The absurdity of a dance studio dream made me quickly realise I was dreaming, but for the life of me, I went along with it.

As soon as that final pose ended, the blonde girl ran over to her stuff, packed up in a flash, and said, 'see you around.' It was a nice voice. Delicate and not too high in pitch, but wholly impossible to place. I can't really say I've heard a voice like that before.
As people start walking away I find myself alone very quickly. The studio itself started to fade to black, and I woke up.

This was an extremely random and confusing dream...Why would I even dream of something like that?!
On top of it all, I did no reality checks during the dream, which frustrates me a bit.

I'm still unaware of my particular dream signs, and thus I'm trying to improve dream recall. The biggest annoyance is that I haven't been able to recall a dream since my first semi-lucid dream a couple weeks ago. Maybe this is the start of better dream recall. Let's hope for the best during tonight's adventures.

The one thing of note in this dream may be the fact that I was very much aware of her touch. I really felt it, and it seemed so real; at the same time, I knew I was dreaming. Despite all of that, every time she was with me as we were walking back from a set, it was the most grounding experience to have her wrap her arm around me. Not particularly sure what it all means...

Alright, this is my first Dream Journal entry.
I've always been interested in doing Lucid Dreaming, but for some reason I've never really sat myself down and said I was going to do it.
This is super rough, but hopefully this'll help me get on the path to properly LD.

I could tell i was really really excited to get to sleep by the sheer fact that it did take me a little longer than normal to fall asleep.
I had the mantra going through my mind as I was drifting: The next time I dream I will realise I am dreaming.
I said this over and over, and from what I can recall, it was the last thing I thought about as I fell asleep.

The night was rather interesting. I distinctly remember series of dreams. Multiple ones in fact...not just one long one that I woke up to.
I remember having one individual dream, followed by a short interval of me shifting positions to something more comfortable, and then going
on to a new dream, slightly related to the previous series, but not wholly the same.

Throughout these series of dreams, however, it was not like I could move from my bed. I was conscious of the fact that I was dreaming though.
Doing quick Reality checks like counting the number of fingers on my hand and pinching my leg. Both of which did change whilst I was dreaming: I had six fingers
when I was asleep and could not register the pain that normally accompanies pinching. Despite me being aware that I was dreaming, it was as if
I was seeing my dreams in first person view, in a body that was not completely my own. I did not feel as if I had control over what the body was doing, rather I
was just along for the ride. I did, however, seem to be able to choose what events were around me during my dream. It did feel like I was making a conscious
decision in directing the story line of the dream as it progressed through the night.

Now on to the series of dreams: they all had some theme in common...namely I sort of followed something straight out of a Final Fantasy game. There was always a party of
characters, and I was in the body of one of them, the newbie as it were. There was a sort of mentor dream character, but I was unable to tell who it was or have any of my senses aware of what he sounded or felt like, only that he was gently guiding my character through the tasks they all had to accomplish. That's it. My series of dreams were each like a different quest that I had to go through.

The first of these quests is rather fuzzy as a whole. I do remember something about a room full of bulls and rams, and that we needed to use them to get used to a concept of controlling something. This is all rather strange, as I was born and raised in a city, and my only real "contact" with these two types of animals has been through my newspaper, as I was born on the Cusp of Power between Aries and Taurus.

The following series were much clearer on the fact that I knew what was going on. I grew more aware of the fact that I was dreaming, as my reality checks showed I clearly wasn't awake, but at the same time I'm not entirely sure what I was doing while I was dreaming. Through the series of dreams after that bull and ram episode, I was essentially guided by the mentor dream character and the rest of our "party" to fulfil quests. Now, being all Final Fantasy like, I have the feeling that those quests that I did should have been something to do with fighting monsters or something. But that's just it, from what I can vaguely recall, it didn't seem all that violent. More like, the quests were a sort of trip to help me grasp the concept of being aware that I was in a dream.

Before I officially started trying to LD (aka last night), I had always been very good about realising that I was in a dream. Throughout the dream I would always somehow know that I was in a dream, but I was not able to control the body I was in and was just along for the ride. This is essentially what happened last night. There was no speaking involved. There were no extraordinary senses going on. Just awareness that I was in a sort of party, being guided through the night in different series of dreams that were not directly related to each other, but were at the same time.

There was one particular dream of this series, the last one I can vaguely remember, so I assume it was the last one I had before I awoke, in which I tried to escape the room where the entire night of dreaming had taken place. During the dreams prior to this, it was like I was in my bedroom, but it seemed much larger in the dream, and things went on all around me, but I was only aware of one concept at a time. Anyway, during this last dream, I remember making a conscious effort to fly. Not so much fly, but get out of the room. There was a distinct sensation I had that was rather short lived, during which I felt like I was successful, but I was flying above my bedroom - still in my bedroom, or this room I've been dreaming in, but just hovering above it. It was a very interesting feeling. It felt like that feeling of falling you get sometimes during the night that wakes you up, but this time it didn't wake me up. One moment I was in the dream space I had spent the night in, and the next moment I was above it. Not particularly aware of exactly what was going on under me, but aware that I was above it and that it was different. It sounds rather silly, writing it out now, but hey, dreams are quite wacky and our senses are as fanciful and fantastic as they are whilst we're awake anyway, right?

That feeling of being above my dream space was short lived, as I then woke up like I did between each distinct dream of my series. During this interim, I would be aware that I was awake and no longer dreaming. I would shuffle about for a little while and then fall back asleep to the mantra I had said before I first fell asleep. When I awoke for the last time, I actually felt quite rested. This is surprising as normally I'm a bit groggy in the morning, even though I've had the week off this past week and have slept in til around noon for the past nine days I woke up, and it was really early for me to be getting up, just a little closer to seven in the morning. I wasn't aware that I had been asleep THAT long. Where I live is really dark in the mornings, and I'm still not quite used to the winter darkness that accompanies this area. So it was basically seven in the morning and pitch black outside.

Anyways, I'm starting to ramble. That was the recount of the events that happened through the night. I hope that I will be able to fall asleep quicker tonight and be able to do more research about LD. Maybe there's a class here or some tutorial where I can check to see if I'm on the right track with things, and what I need to do to be able to recall better.

Cheers.

I ingested a traditional tribal "flood" dose of Iboga, a oneirogen that induces a waking dream state for 12 - 48 hours & has been used for centuries by the people of Gabon as a coming of age shamanic plant. Basically you're Lucid Dreaming while awake. I decided to take the root when I found out about it & how unlike hallucinogens the visions you receive from Iboga are not vague or open to much interpretation. Many people see parts of their life replayed, they feel the pain or joy their actions caused. Some see deities or significant people in their life including people who've passed away. Some people claim it's the tree of knowledge of good & evil from the bible.

It was risky for me to begin with because I have a heart condition & Iboga is very intense on the heart. The idea is to experience complete ego death which is followed by all the visions. Going through hell to get to heaven. Knowing this I decided to take the root right before going into the emergency room so in case if anything happened I would be in good hands.

I was really yearning for a spiritual aspect to my life which had been lost. All my life I was told what to believe mixed with my own beliefs & thoughts about all these different possibilities. I felt as if it would be best for me to experience what is true for me spiritually myself. So I decided ego death & true transcendence along with visions of my life would give me some answers. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.



It started to come on subtlety at first, in the emergency room waiting area things became very dim & dead looking like all the warmth to colors was slowly being sucked out. I started to feel as if I was riding some giant wave of reality in isolation of everything around me. Like the world could swallow me whole at any moment. I started to get worried because the waiting room was full & only 30 minutes into a 2 day experience I could already feel some effects. I kept trying to stress the fact I had ingested something that could send me into a psychotic break, get sick, or kill me. That I needed to be in a bed with a heart monitor & people who could check on me & bring me water while I began to purge.

I eventually get to a room & there's a bed, I'm questioned by doctors nurses & staff constantly as I'm starting to trip. I tell them I ingested it for spiritual purposes & that I should avoid being overstimulated. I purposefully brought a long a sleeping mask & my phone to play music to help move things along. As soon as we made it to the room all this was taken as a precautionary measure to ensure I wouldn't try to hurt myself or someone with it. They kept questioning me for what seemed like an hour. The first part of the trip felt like my body was trying to escape reality, the conscious voice in my head got increasingly paranoid about death, going crazy, saying something wrong to the doctors or nurses. I increasingly was drawing a complete blank as I was being questioned, I kept saying umm more & more as thoughts escaped my mind. My consciousness was becoming consumed with fear as I lost the ability to think & create a coherent sentence. One doctor made me feel guilty saying I ingested a hallucinogen & I was wasting taxpayer money in my "recreational pursuit". This was a search for truth, for meaning. Eventually I asked to be left alone trying to avoid over-stimulation after I answered the same questions about 5 times to 5 different people.

I drank some water which was brought to me & my heart starts pounding like crazy, I hear this intense buzzing in my ears that sounds like I'm near a high voltage transformer or surrounded by beehives. My heart is spiking off the charts on the monitor & I'm told I went into VTAC Ventricular Tachycardia (where your heart beats so fast it could stop). I'm so nauseated & worried at this point I purge into a bucket this green liquid, it looks like I puked up part of the hulk or Nickelodeon slime. I start to feel this energy building at the base of my spine, like hot magma or electricity charging up. At this point my heart is going so fast I'm convinced I won't make it through this & that before I knew it I would be moving onto whatever's next. At this point my ego is just screaming in my head like it wants to murder me, "You're going to wake up insane, you're heart is exploding get ready for the pain, you're dead.. nice job".



Eventually after what seemed like hours of fighting between death & my mind I accept death. With acceptance I slowly start seeing with my eyes closed - red very strongly, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, then violet. As this is happening I feel that magma, that energy, that electricity building at the base of my spine slowly move up as I accept my fate. I kept thinking of mercury moving up a thermometer. With complete acceptance I jolted out into the universe a soul past the purple into an infinite white light. Being a part of it but there was no sense of "I" no me, no body, pure spirit & an overwhelming sense of connectedness & unconditional love overwhelming every ounce of being. Being one with the big bang, forget infinite energy, light, the realest thing you could sense in there was pure joy, bliss, unconditional love, complete peace. No thought, stillness, nothingness, the void.

I wake up sometime later after being moved to what I learn later is the ICU. I'm incredibly lucid & the personal visions are starting to come, I'm so lucid it's like the power of lucidity carried over into waking life. I imagine this medical light on the ceiling that looks like a mushroom cap stretching & changing shape. As I believe it stretches it does so & it really seems to work when I send it unconditional love from my chest. I imagine stretching it so far with love I eventually break through the ceiling into another room.



The first room I broke through into was like a dusty old worn down house with cobwebs all over, wooden floors, a broken window, & it looked like something no one would really appreciate. I notice in the dream I'm wearing clothes that appear to be like Link from Zelda. I'm greeted by two groups of people to my right. One of which is very happy, joyful, they have an inner-childlike sense to them. Curious, compassionate, encouraging, happy to be alive. They're cheering me on & saying great things about the room appreciating everything. I get the sense this is what I must do to move on. Love the room impartially, seeing the good in it. The other group of people seems miserable, they're void of color full of grays & find fault with the room saying things like "Ewww". I decide this is not the direction I want to take & I break down the wall by loving the place I'm at.

I end up in another room & another they're all very similar except each consecutive room is characterized by things of the chakra system. It seemed as though I was breaking down walls to move energy from the 1st chakra (the root) to the 7th chakra (the crown). The root is at the base of the spine & the crown is at the top of the head. A hierarchy of energy from the base of the spine to the top of the head; from the physical aspects of existence to the spiritual. Overall all the same lessons were to be learned. If I hesitated in loving a room, in breaking down a wall I was sent back to the beginning. It seemed like my visions were very influenced by the video games I played growing up. After a lot of tries I made it to the heart chakra (the central 4th & central chakra, the point where the physical aspects of our world become intertwined with the spiritual). Tibetan Buddhists believe the heart is responsible for the white light I saw, the white light people describe seeing before death right before moving onto the next life. Once I got to the heart alot of the questions I wanted answers to started getting answered.



I wanted to know who my soul mate was, what the meaning of life is, why we're here, what is truth for me. The first answer I got was about my soul mate. Right before the trip I was torn between this girl Windy & a girl Samantha I had just met who reminded me of Windy. Then it seems as though Windy had forgotten all about me but she holds such a big place in my heart I wasn't ready to move on. A free spirit, a soul that burns in the night with a deep passion for life, a fire within that you only read about. Her way of living inspired me to begin my spiritual journey which led me to this point. Little did I know there's a reason I dream of her almost every night, why I get Deja Vu around her so much, why when we first met I felt us both gaze into each others souls & I had this incredible sensation like we had met before. Iboga showed me we're soul mates & now I'm left waiting for the right time, for a chance to be her friend. If I ever get that chance I'll make it last until the end. In the vision when I reached the heart chakra I heard my voice boom out loud like I was asking who my soul mate was, it happened automatically like I didn't even have to think of it. It was like because I wrote down all my questions before taking the root the questions were already programmed into my subconscious to be asked later. As soon as that happened Windy appeared on a green lotus flower platform suspended in space & from there she yelled "Kenny! I love you! with such enthusiasm it warmed my soul. I heard her say "We're meant for eternity, our love will stand the test of time". The platform symbolized her heart chakra as I was on mine we communicated our love & our platforms moved together suspended in space until we were together & hugged & kissed with such passion I could feel a beam of love going from my heart to hers with such pure joy & ecstasy it was as if we became one in that moment & our souls were in complete bliss just combining with the others counter part.

Every part of this experience seemed more real than waking life & everyone I saw that I knew personally seemed to be their true self, like the inner child in them was fully out to be them-self, they were so creative & enthusiastic & passionate about everything they did or said. That alone was inspiring to me, passion is a big part of a joyful existence. Enthusiasm, joy, an inner curiosity & appreciation for everything. Every moment. Being true to yourself & not letting your mind convince you to hide or discard aspects of yourself. We have to laugh at the mind, our fears, doubts, insecurities, repression, limiting beliefs. They're all the enemies of progress & reaching our true potential I feel like I got the answers to my other questions through breaking through the walls & becoming one with the clear white light, pure consciousness, connectedness, bliss, joy, I'm a part of everything & everyone as they're a part of me. Unconditional love is the most powerful force in the universe & we have to learn to appreciate everything we do have. I live in America & have a car, a guitar. Do you know how amazing that is? We should all be happy when our basic needs are met because some people don't even have that luxury! Don't wait until you're nearly dead to start being grateful!

This by far was the most beneficial experience I've ever had even though it almost killed me it's like every day is a gift now. When the experience was over I was exhausted & slept for quite a while, when I woke up i saw the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen from my hospital bed & I was so grateful to be alive, I made sure all the doctors & nurses knew how much I appreciated them taking care of me. I still laugh because when I woke up the kept asking me all these funny questions in case if I had gone crazy.. You did this for spiritual reasons? You said you were selfish before? Do you think eating is selfish?



Beliefs shape our reality, lucidity will show you that so take what you learn with lucidity back to waking life & meet your true potential, that is my foremost goal. Don't be afraid to explore, reintegrate lost parts of yourself, face nightmares with love & see what happens. Lucidity is an invaluable tool. In my second lucid dream ever through belief I was able to experience that ego-less state once again & I woke up feeling great! I highly recommend reading "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self" by Robert Waggoner if you get the chance. I'm now completely committed to Lucidity for life. I ordered the Remee lucid dreaming mask & I'm so happy, this marks the beginning of my dream journal here & the beginning of my journey to the inner self. To reintegrating every last lost part of me. Healing what I rejected in the past & facing any & all fears. Going on adventures to space, Europe, Australia, Africa, Egypt, the Amazon all with my soul mate Windy who is still in my dreams almost every night (I bought an engagement ring by the way) & I'm saving it until the right time. Thanks for reading! I hope maybe I can inspire someone to strive for lucidity or to just go after their dreams I know my beliefs aren't for everyone. Happy dreaming

This time I was out in a big valley with a few people, they were friends but acting hostile.

When I found myself running and the repeating thing of feeling like running through molasses occurred. I asked myself 'am I dreaming?'

I looked up to find anything that would tell me that I am e.g., some writing or a clock but being in the outdoors with no urban signs around there were none.

Instead, upon looking around I decided this scene felt & looked so (beautifully) real that I couldn't have been dreaming.

My bladder (or alarm?) woke me up. Upon returning to sleep, I think I returned briefly to the dream but didn't recognise it so never stopped to check if I was dreaming again.

How do I check if I'm dreaming when in the great outdoors??

Technique(s): WILD - Failed, DILD - Success, DIELD - Failed, Awareness (Sageous)

Thoughts:I am happy with this dream. It was short but it was still progress. I don't remember all of it clearly because I tried other methods after waking. Plus it was a really boring and mundane dream until I was lucid. I think the biggest contributor to becoming lucid was the fact that I really concentrated on Sageous' idea of self-awareness all day. And my wife and I did in fact go grocery shopping that night and I practiced awareness all much as I could.

WBTB. Up for 5 - 10 min thinking about dreams and lucidity. Fall asleep during WILD. Turns instead into DILD

Shopping *LUCID* - 7:00AM
I am shopping with my wife. (The store reminds of a store in other dreams) It is supposed to be Wal-Mart we are in (the store seems darker or dimly light) I am doing the normal check out thing. Waiting for the cashier and then put the sacks in the cart. My wife forgets something and runs off.

The next thing I remember, I am pushing the cart in the parking lot to my car. It is night time outside. Then I remember my self-awareness. Then suddenly I realize. "Hey I AM dreaming!" I quickly think about what I wanted to do. TOTM. I reach into my pocket and pull out a glowing florescent green potion with carbonation bubbles in a clear glass bottle with a cork on top. (I have imagined this prior) But at that very instant the world goes black and I feel my waking body lying in bed. NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

DEILD - I enter SP and feel the vibrations. Then they fade and I move (or I think I move) because I feel uncomfortable and I wake up for good.

Italic Text = Personal Thoughts
Normal Text = Non-Lucid Segment
Light Purple Text = Partially Lucid Segment
Purple Text = Lucid Segment

The dream started non-lucid, in this random person's house with a friend. We were fascinated over the kitten that this person owned, it was really miniature, small enough to be cupped in your hand, and it frequently went into this "slug-like" pose where it tucked its legs under its body and and squinted its eyes. I was petting the kitten as my friend held it and eventually it got really angry, hissing at my friend and standing up before leaping out of her hand and running away as fast as it could with its tiny legs.

We laugh, and tell the owner of the house that we really should be going. She insists that we stay until her husband gets back with dinner that he's picking up from a restaurant as we must try this food before we leave. We agree, but state that we really need to have a shower as we hadn't had one for a while due to travelling.

We're pointed upstairs and upon reaching the top, I ask my friend why it is that every house I'm in always resembles the layout of my own house.

That's when I become lucid, I realise that of course it's a lucid dream and although my hand check seems to fail, I focus on my hand anyway to try and stabilise the dream as it's quite blurry all of a sudden. I walk into the bathroom where my friend is preparing for her shower and realise if I stay here I will probably get caught up in the dream and lose lucidity, as has happened before.

I walk out of the bathroom and to make sure I don't get caught up in the dream again, attempt to lock the bathroom door. There's no lock on the outside, so I look away and make one up, soon enough I hear the sound of the door locking and try to decide what to do next.

I remember I wanted to practice scene transitions, something that I'm not too good at it. I walk into a bedroom when I realise too late that I could have used the door as a method of scene transitioning. At this point I also remember the Task of the Month, but I'm too intent on completing my other goal to really focus on that.

I walk up to the wall in this bedroom and decide I will phase through it into a new scene. The wall is solid at first, but after some trying I eventually start slipping through. It isn't like when I usually slip through walls in my lucid dreams, I usually just get a "tight" feeling as I squeeze through the wall and appear on the other side. This time as my head approached the wall and started going through it my vision became blurred, everything was going fuzzy but when it came back into focus I had passed through the wall and I was in my new scene.

Just like a previous lucid, I was picturing my "Mushroom Valley" photo-manipulation, and while I didn't quite achieve what I was picturing, I came pretty close. I was in a desert-like environment, only there were patches of dead grass dotted around. In front of me were multiple "pyramids", but they weren't really pyramids, they were giant cubes.

As I'm inspecting the scene it starts to change colour in front of me. Instead of everything being a shade of sandy beige and browns the cubes change colour to a deep red. I want the previous colour back so I lift my hand and sweep it over the scene in front of me and as it passes over, the colours return to normal.

I take flight and fly towards the cubes. I've become infinitely better at flying now, with none of the turning issues I had previously. I think it was because I wasn't particularly trying to fly and just let it happen. As I approach the cubes they seem to turn a reddish colour again, but as I go in between them and start flying throughout the "streets" that these cubes had created, I noticed that the cubes seem to be made of loads of sheets of paper all stacked on top of each other. I could see the thin lines, just as a stack of paper of would like, only in giant form.

As I near the end of the passageway between the cubes I think to myself, "I hope I recall the details of this dream" because everything I was seeing in that moment was so insanely vivid.

I land on the other side of the cubes on some of the grass. There seems to be a "cutaway" here where the dream scene didn't quite stretch out to this point because the grass I was standing on was normal, green grass instead of the dead grass like I had imagined in my original scene. I kind of stretch out the dead grass, changing all the green I could see into dead variety by lifting my hands up and willing it.

As I turn around though, I notice behind me that everything was a lush green, it was a park of sorts, I noticed people in the distance and I recall laughing from somewhere. The trees were unique, they were the shape of palm trees with palm-tree style leaves, only the leaves and branches were arranged in a way that a Christmas Tree would be.

As I walk closer to this lush landscape I decide I want to try another colour-transition, I want to make everything green into a vivid blue. I try swiping my hand across the scene but this proves harder than simply making things dead as nothing happens.

I then try to focus on a single tree to begin with, I walk up to it and place my hands on the trunk, only to be stabbed by these tiny, sharp pieces of bark that were poking out all over the tree. I rub my hands in pain before finding a safe space on the trunk to place my hands. I look down to the floor and try to imagine the tree leaves being blue, but when I look up I had only turned them yellow.

Things become slightly less clear here, next thing I know I'm walking away from the tree singing a song, which seems to be a combination of two songs. One of the lyrics in the song was "A million miles down below" and this sprung the idea in my head to try another scene change to at the bottom of the ocean.

Alas, before I got a chance to try it the dream faded more and more until I was in "the black" and eventually back in the waking world.

Italic Text = Personal Thoughts
Normal Text = Non-Lucid Segment
Purple Text = Lucid Segment

Prior to this dream I had been taking Sageous' advice for WBTBs from his WILD class, as well as dream incubating and generally telling myself that I was going to recognise that I was dreaming next time I was in a dream.

The dream before this I also achieved another milestone, I was successfully able to "chain" two dreams together after incubating the previous dream. I didn't become lucid in that one though.

I was at some sort of theme park with my mum, my sister & her children and my brother & his girlfriend. I forget large portions of the beginning of the dream, there's fragments of us going around the park on all sorts of different rides and doing different activities. Although, I'm not entirely sure if they are fragments or just drastic scene changes, as drastic scene changes are a common occurrence in my dreams.

Near closing time for the park, me and my mum depart from the group to go find our car as we couldn't remember where we parked it. We were walking up this hill, which upon waking I realise how realistic it was. I could feel my legs getting tired and struggling to walk up this hill after a day of walking around the theme park. Eventually we reach the parking lot, we look around for our car but there are so many we don't seem to be able to find it.

We meet back up with my brother and sister who we queue up with as we're going out the park, we all get in my brother's car and start driving off. I question what we're going to do about my mum's car because surely we can't just leave it at the park. I'm assured that it's fine and we can just pick it up next time we come to the park.

I start becoming suspicious, going to theme parks with my family isn't a common occurrence, but somewhat brush it off anyway. We begin discussing when next we would be coming and planning a date, when I realise we're no longer driving on the road. We're on the sidewalk next to the road, driving over patches of grass and rocks.

I do a reality check by counting my fingers, which fails, although I'm still suspicious. Awareness kicks in and I'm realising that despite driving over this rough terrain the car's driving along smoothly, as if it was flying above the ground slightly. I also realise there doesn't seem to be any sense of gravity of G-Force from the moving car.

I force my mind to get in the "Reverse Reality Check" mindset that Sageous has been teaching in his WILD class and begin "pulling" my consciousness into the dream world by solidifying my place in the dream, and realising what that truly means. I count my fingers again, but it still fails. I decide to try another reality check, I plug my nose and am shocked when I am able to breathe!

I'm still sceptical, I was thinking about jumping out of the car but after so many failed reality checks I didn't want to risk that just incase it was real life. I put my finger up to the window of the car and try to will it through the glass, but it fails also. I undo my seatbelt and definitely begin to realise there's no sense of realistic gravity here, there's nothing pulling me back into my seat when I sit forward.

I try to imagine myself floating and then going out through the roof of the car, I float up somewhat but don't quite make it all the way out of the car and fall back into my seat. I look at the window again and really try to will my finger going through, pushing harder and harder on the glass but with no luck, it seems solid.

I become frustrated, I know it's a dream but nothing I seem to do is working. I guess because of how sceptical my mind was after all the failed reality checks.

At this point the dream starts becoming fuzzy, I can feel myself losing the dream so I become calm and focus to the best I can. The dream fades back in momentarily but as soon as I drop focus it instantly goes to black and I find myself back in the waking world.

A similar music track played during the training part of this dream:


I'm some sort of private investigator, and I'm searching for evidence with 2 coworkers in an apartment.
I quickly realize that I don't seem to have any gloves on me and ask one of my friends to give me some.
After putting on the gloves I go to the kitchen and start opening all the cabinets.
I wonder what I'm looking for...

"Hey, what are we looking for again?"
"Are you serious?"
"Uuh... yeah..."
"*sigh* we're looking for a quantum accelerated pipe."

... wait what?

"Like, for smoking?"
"For smoking weed, yes."

A quantum accelerated... wtf?
I keep searching and end up finding the most glorious of smoking devices I have ever seen.
It seems to be made out of some sort of glass and it glows in all kinds of colors, depending on how you angle it against the light.
But then finally it dawns on me... a quantum accelerated pipe... yeah... right...

I rub my hands and further investigate the pipe.
I am sad to find out that it isn't loaded. I would have loved to smoke some weed.

I remember that Yuya told me that I should break out of the dream plot when I become lucid.
Oh! And she wanted to teach me about time dilation!
I become very excited and quickly teleport myself to Teraluna.

I end up in a flower garden. Yuya is attending to some flowers right in front of me.

"Yuya Yuya Yuya"
"Hi?"
"Hi! Time dilation and stuff!"

She grins.

"Calm down! You're going to wake up."

Right...
After attempting to get myself into a calmer state I take a look at my surroundings.
The flower garden is beautiful. All of the flowers are very colorful and they smell great.
I touch and smell some of them until I decide that the dream is perfectly stable.

"So... the thing you call time dilation."
"Yes!"
"Well, for starters it isn't really time dilation."
"I guess. I couldn't think of a better word to describe it."
"Right. So, there's quite a few ways to approach this."
"I'm pretty sure I know which way works best for you, but first of all we need to work on something else."
"Oh?"
"Well, it's sort of directly related."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Your awareness in dreams."
"I've noticed that you sometimes are extremely aware when you're here, but only for short periods of time."
"You experience awareness in short bursts rather than continuously"

I quickly realize that she's spot on about that.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, it's pretty bad."
"Good, so first of all I am going to show you a technique to hold a certain level of awareness."
"Great!"

She drops the flowers.

"Let's go for a walk!"

We walk through the flower garden and talk some more about time dilation.

"Alright, stop!"
"Hm?"
"I want you to tell me the color of each flower on the plant we just passed, without looking."
"Err, sure? Let's see... it was green, yellow, blue, yellow..."
"No, you're cheating."
"I am?"
"You're using your sense of global awareness to tell what color they are without looking, what I need you to do is to remember what color they are."
"What? All of them?"
"Yes! I want you to remember every single detail of what you experience."
"Let's keep walking and pay attention."

This is going to be hard... like, really hard.
Is it even possible to do this?

"Sure it is, especially since you're dreaming. Remember when I told you the difference between focusing on something in waking life and in dreams?"
"Oh yeah, that's right."

I focus really hard on everything I see, even the smallest of details, and try to take mental note of them.
We walk past a similar plant, with approximately 50 flowers on it.

"From top to bottom, go!"

I try to remember and surprisingly, accessing my memories feels natural and easy.

"Red, red, yellow, blue, yellow... err, ultraviolet?, red, blue, blue..."

I keep going through about 20 of them until Yuya stops me.

"Hey hey, awareness!"
"What? Was I wrong?"
"No, but you're neglecting your awareness. Have you noted the details of the things we just passed?"
"Oh... oops. Wow, this is hard."
"Haha, see, just memorizing and remembering is easy."
"What I want to teach you is to remain aware of your surroundings, even if you are focusing on something else."
"If you can do that you should be able to continuously remain aware much more easily."

This makes so much sense!
Yuya is so amazing, why haven't I asked her about this before?

We keep doing this. I memorize all the flowers including other details and try to recite them from memory without loosing awareness of the new surroundings I encounter through walking.
It's really hard at first, but then it becomes surprisingly easy.
I feel like a genius, having such amazing memory all of a sudden.

Since I focus so hard on my vision, it becomes more and more intense.
I can see beyond the color spectrum visible to the human eye.
Ultraviolet and infrared, I can see them so clearly.
They aren't red or violet at all, they are entirely different colors.
The now 5 base colors start merging together to form new ones.
Everything is so beautiful.

It is so hard not to get distracted by this beauty. I have to remain aware of everything.
But it works! I can quite literally feel my awareness leveling out and remaining strong as I go along.

Yuya keeps asking me more and more difficult questions.

"How did this plant smell like?"

I can no longer answer these question with words, so I project my memories towards her, showing that I remember clearly.
We go on like this for some more minutes.
I feel like I have just achieved something major.
I have never ever experienced such an amount of focus.

We finally reach the end of the flower garden.

"And stop!"
"Okay?"
"Yep, time to relax, you cannot possibly keep this up much longer."
"Oh, I can't? It started to feel natural some moments ago."
"Still, if you keep that level of focus up for too long your brain will just spontaneously break out of it."
"You'll either loose all your awareness or even wake up."
"So it would be a bad idea to try and do this all the time?"
"Yes. You can do it for a limited period of time, for example during a battle where you need the extra focus."
"What I'm teaching you is to remain at a constant level of awareness."
"The important part here is that it is constant, not that it is on a level where you have surreal perception and memory."
"The goal is to never let it drift below a certain threshold, this way dream stability should remain high."

I understand her so well, her explanations are perfect.

"It's just more efficient for you to learn it this way."
"Not everyone is capable of achieving such a level of focus."
"It's something you often find in dreamers that are experienced with dream battles."

Dream battling has so many uses, how amazing.

"So dream stability is directly related to your level of awareness?"
"Well, yes, sort of. It's complicated."
"It always is."
"Actually, it is really simple... like most things."
"Yeah right."
"It's the painfully simple things the human mind cannot comprehend."
"After all your mind is trained to understand the complexity of the waking world, not the simplicity of the dream world."

Wow. That is deep.
I have never thought of it this way.
Yuya never ceases to amaze me.
She just drops these mind blowing ideas on me, as if they were the most obvious things in existence.

"Should I try to do this awareness technique in waking life?"
"No. At least not right now. You said you have constant headaches."
"Yeah, probably a bad idea."

She smiles and gives me a big hug.

"We'll continue this next time."
"Wake up and write this down so you don't forget it."
"I will! Until next time!"

Wake up... Have I ever tried waking up from a dream that wasn't a nightmare?
Heck, even a nightmare I haven't tried to wake up from in forever.
I close my eyes and command myself to wake up with my inner voice.
I feel a tingling sensation all over my body.

I open my eyes.
A quick nose plug RC confirms that I am awake and I start taking notes, excited to have taken my first step towards properly long dreams.

I can't say my dream was fully lucid, as I was not able to control anything, but I did tell myself that I was dreaming in the dream, so I was at least aware of the situation.

I'm driving in my SUV, and for once it isn't pedal powered. I think I left that behind with my old vehicle, which was such a pain. I'm in familiar surroundings a few miles from home, driving down one of the main roads which I have driven hundereds of times in the past. As I pass through a major interchange I find I'm paying a lot of attention to the radio where a CBS anchor is describing a storm situation ahead of me. As I listen to this suddenly available XM station I see the storm ahead of me, and something I have never seen before, a tornado touching down about a half mile ahead of me. It may have been closer(or further) for a tornado but the scale was off in my dream, one of the most annoying qualities of the dream world. I thought to myself, "Cool! I've never had a tornado in my dreams, before, I'll have to tell Jen about this." My thoughts being that Jen used to tell me about how she always used to dream of tornadoes that frightened her and I have never had one in my dream. I'm still driving closer to the phenomenon (unusual because this area is not frequented by tornadoes) when I realize I had better slow down or I'll drive right into its path. I slow and watch as the tornado crosses the road ahead of me, then procede ahead. The announcer on the radio is describing people getting hurt and tossed around and as he says this I see him with a victim of the tornado along the side of the road. He is an older man dressed in a suit, holding a Bob Barker-style microphone and kneeling down next to a man who is broken and hurt, still talking to his unseen radio audience. I drive on by, not worrying about the situation because it's not my problem (I guess) and continue another perhaps mile down the road. I find I have now gone around a curve which is not normally part of the road and I find I am also in another state, perhaps Washington, and I don't know where I am. I wonder how I got there but it doesn't seem to matter much. I'm too busy hiding from my son's friend on the side of my house. I crouch down behind the yard waste bags my neighbor has placed on the edge of my property instead of his and my son's friend, Seamus, is walking up my sidewalk. I know my son thinks he is smelly so I hide, and peek around the bag at him. I think he may see me and feel stupid so I stand up, only to discover it is not Seamus but Samuel, and I can now see my son coming up behind him. They want to play games on the PS3 and I am resistant, and this is where I lost my focus and can't remember how I got from there to the classroom I find myself in, taking a test that somehow relates to driving but doesn't. I am in a classroom with a lot of strangers, mostly Hispanic, and I feel like I don't need to be there because the test isn't required and besides, I don't really belong in this class because I didn't do anything wrong. I don't want to be there but I know that somehow I have to be there because I am required to. Fine. I'm hungry, so I venture into the adjacent room where my stuff is (backpack?) and I pull out a snack. Upon returning, I find a woman has taken my seat. I know her, somehow, but I don't know her at the same time. She is polite, and asks me something about who I am, but the answer is now lost.

I know I had more dreams but I can't recall them. I do note that my standard themes continue: Storms, driving, being in school (with clothes, thankfully). I have noticed that I become edgy when it hasn't rained for a long time in the real world, and that's when the storms in my dreams become most severe. Today it IS raining and I seem fairly calm.

Colors of text and what they mean:
Non-lucid
Lucid
Notes
Comments

(These were inspired by KingYoshi's DJ entries)

Dream info:

Lucid/Non-lucid: Lucid (lost lucidity at some point)
Type of induction (if lucid): None (Aware from the start)
Duration: 1/2 minutes
Vividness: Not vivid

Dream:

I had this dream a long time ago, but decided to post it now. I was lazzy
I'm lucid. I don't know how, I just am. I know my family is near me, so I ask my mother "Am I dreaming?" She says negative. For some reason, I ask her this several times (I probably asked others the same too, I can't remember) and always get "No." as an answer. I still know I'm lucid.

I try to change the dreamscape. I close my eyes, and then open them. Doesn't work. I try it several times, but it was fruitless. "It's amazing how aware I am," I note to myself (Which is ironic, because I was far from being totally aware). I remember I always wanted to start a lucid in a car, so I tell my mother we should use it to go somewhere. "Sure," she answeres, and we go out of the building. I, trying to change the landscape for the last time, close my eyes and shut my ears with my palms, but there is too much noise. I am not concentrated and I can't do it. I try to calm everyone around me to no avail.

(I believe I lost lucidity at this point, I just know how this continued)
I was in a shopping mall, near a restaurant in it. I look to see where the plates should be (It's the kind of restaurant where you take a plate and move in the line to get food from several places) and instead, there are caldrons. I don't know if I took one, I just know I am in the line. While I don't see the person next to me, I know she is my online friend from Romania. She is taking some delicious meat. I decide I should take the same. I eat the meat and find it delicious (I felt taste, which is rare for me).

This was probably the end of the dream. I wake up either then or a bit later, being very enthusiastic about having my first LD that lasted for more than a second!

I was at Jack's house. Steve had a bottle of sleeping medicine. I read the label and it said for him to take it in the morning when he woke up. I told him that Chelse had the same sleeping medicine and that you're suppose to take it at night before bed. He told me that after he took it in the morning, he wouldn't be able to get himself out of bed until 4 p.m. I explained to him that it was supposed to be taken at bedtime. He rationalized it and agreed with me.

I walked outside onto the porch facing Jeff's house. I saw him standing in the driveway talking to Pat and Sarah who were in the driveway with a black SUV. The back drivers door was open and he was leaned inside the SUV talking to them. Penny (his mother) was standing at the entrance of the open garage watching them. I yelled his name, he didn't hear me. So I yelled louder and I saw him glance over at me for a second but he continued talking to Pat and Sarah. Jeff always did this. He wouldn't divert his attention away from what he was doing when you tried to get his attention sometimes. It was very real. I called his name a third time even louder. At that point his mom yelled at him and said "Joey's hollering at you!" Jeff looked at me slightly irritated and said "what's up dude?" I once again (I dream about him 3 times a week) walked up to him in disbelief. I said "Jeff you're ok!" I put my hand on the side of his head and he flinched saying "Ahh! Careful dude!" because his head was hurt. It made sense to me (he died from blunt trauma to the head). I said "Jeff do you know what happened to you" He looked around cautiously and saw his mom, he gave me a look as to not disclose what happened to him. I said "Jeff, you died..." His mom had a look of realization on her face suddenly. She looked at me and I knew that she was also having the same dream. I realized she was lucid dreaming with me, but she was not able to handle remembering the reality of Jeff's death. She started crying and ran off. Jeff looked at me irritably. I kept grabbing him and hugging him. I told him that I was dreaming and that he was dreaming too. I told him that he was dead and he nodded his head agreeing with me that he knew he was dead too. He said "I know I'm dead, I've just been visiting you in your dreams to make you feel better." I told him that everyone missed him so much.

We started walking up Sheley road towards Marty and Kelsey's house. I told him how torn up Trevor, Kelsey and his own family were. He knew they were sad. I told him that he should look at his Facebook page at all the stuff that people had been posting. He asked me about it. I told him that he had several months of people writing on his wall saying nice things about him and how much they missed him. He said "I know you've been writing a lot about me, I have seen it. I know you were really my friend because of everything that you have done for my family and friends." I said "Of course your my friend dude, you're one of my best friends. You, Jack, Ben and Shawn are my best friends." He nodded in agreement. We turned right onto Harris street. I told him about how Ben moved to Hawaii and that he was happy and successful with Cara, his wife. I told him about Jack and his departure to basic training and how he had also got married.

I started to cough. My mouth was salivating and I was coughing up a lot mucus. It started to consume my mouth. I tried to spit it out of my mouth but it stuck to my lips like a insoluble slime stuck to my mouth. I was trying to grab it with my hand and it was getting all over my hands. Jeff laughed out loud at my struggle to get the mucus out of my mouth and off my hands. He offered me gum. He pulled out four pieces of green spearmint gum that were not covered with the metal foil. They were slightly deformed from being in his pocket. I held out my left hand and he dropped two pieces that were stuck together into my hand. I started chewing. He extended his hand towards my right hand and was going to drop the other two pieces into my right hand. I held out my hand and received the gum.

I gained my composure again and told him that we should get on Facebook so he could see how many notifications he had from people writing on his wall about his death.

At that point we were back in the town I live in currently, up in my apartment in my office. He sat at the computer. RT was up on the screen and he started watching. I told him to check Facebook. He couldn't get out of RT so I helped him. He came to the Facebook main page and typed in his username (I don't remember what it was exactly) then he typed in his password and I saw exactly what he typed P******* R****. I took a mental note of his password so I could log into his Facebook page. For some reason he was not able to get logged in because he account had become dormant from his absence. He was going through the verification steps to get his account back to normal when several pop ups from various sites came up asking for log in information. He was putting his info into these websites. I realized that it was going to cause a problem for me to log back into those sites. A security certificate verification popped up asking to verify the page. He kept clicking on yes before I had a chance to read anything. I was getting anxious because I wasn't sure what was going on. My blackboard student website was getting messed with, and unnecessary messages were being sent to my professors. I saw a strange government warning pop-up in the window. I asked Jeff if he would let me sit down and fix the problem.

Chelse started yelling from the bathroom. She had just woken up from her nap because she worked the night before. I told Jeff to go show himself to Chelse. They met in the hallway as Chelse was walking out of the bathroom. She said "Jeff! What are you doing here?" Jeff said "I'm here to visit you guys." Chelse said "But you're dead..."

Then I woke up..

September 23, 2011

My recall isn't that great right now so obviously my awareness isn't either. I somewhat remember being in my room with a couple of my friends and they were all telling me I was dreaming. I remember being very confused and so I did a reality check. The reality check worked and showed I was dreaming. For some reason I didn't believe it and didn't want to get out of bed until I knew I was dreaming so I did another reality check and it failed. The rest is lost and I can't remember any of it.

I'm at a lake with 3 of my friends, D. S. and a girl. (I actually don't know the girl in waking life, but in the dream I thought I did)
We're just chilling, having a few beers, setting up the barbecue grill and lying in the sun.
The weather is rarely this good around here, this is nice.

We start discussing random things, until we finally reach the topic of the supernatural.
One of my friends, S. immediately insist that everything even remotely related to the supernatural is completely bogus.
D. on the other hand says that he just believes whatever it is he actually experiences.
If he had a supernatural experience, so be it.
I agree with D. and say that it is always good to be open minded, and have to explain to S.
that there is a huge difference between being open to ideas and actually believing that something supernatural has to exist.
The girl that is with us seems to agree with me, but she's not saying anything.

We argue about this a bit until I get the inexplicable urge to claim that I have actually had supernatural experiences.
This causes some silence, until someone finally asks what happened.
I feel odd, like I'm supposed to say specific things.
The feeling becomes so strong that I just decide to say them.

"The world is actually full of the supernatural, but our limited minds have a tendency to ignore whatever we cannot comprehend."
"This is such bullshit mate."
"If you say so."
"Yes, I do say so, the idea that anything like that could exist is just retarded."

The girl talks for the first time:

"Do you dream, S.?"
"What? no. Who cares about dreams anyways?"
"Then it is no wonder you do not understand."
"What the fuck?"
"She's right, S."
"Now you're just fucking with me..."

Sitting right in front of the lake, I start humming a melody.
This catches the girls attention and she sits down next to me.

"What are you doing?"
"I'm calling out to the mermaids."
"Wow... do mermaids really exist?"

S. is just shaking his head claiming that we've gone completely nuts.
But then my humming is answered by songs from far away.
They quickly get closer, until finally, a few figures emerge from the water right in front of us:


They are definitely mermaids, and they seem to be absolutely magical creatures.
The sound of their songs is heard from everywhere at once.
One of the mermaids emerges quite far from the water, in order to come closer to me.
You can clearly see her tail, covered in beautiful fins shimmering in all kinds of colors.
Yet through the outside transparent layer, you can clearly see that she has legs and feet just like us.
She is insanely cute.

"You're the one singing for us."
"Yes, I am."
"I am honored. Come with us to our lands and we will sing for you."

Then it sort of strikes me. Such magical encounters don't really happen in waking life, I'm dreaming, it's obvious.
The girl with us, whom I now realize I don't actually know starts talking to another mermaid, and asks her if she can come.

"All of you may come, but there is a price to be paid."
"A price?"
"We ask for no more than a kiss."

A kiss? what an interesting request.
The girl with us immediately kisses one of the mermaids, and she does so quite passionately.
The mermaid then embraces her and they both disappear into the water.

"You guys coming?"
"..."
"Oh well, suit yourselves..."

I kiss the mermaid in front of me... it is quite salty but very enjoyable nevertheless.
She embraces me and we fall down into the water...


... I'm at the bottom of the ocean, in some sort of habitat.
It is covered by a huge air bubble, allowing myself to breathe.
There's still quite a bit of water though, it is about knee deep, so it is easier to swim from room to room than to walk.
All of the rooms are decorated by colorful corals.
There are mermaids chatting and singing everywhere, it is such a nice place.
The girl who was with me is sleeping in a huge bed with two mermaids by her side.

A mermaid approaches me and puts a necklace around my neck.
It's a silver chain with a crystal tear on it.
It's really nice, but a bit girly.
Not like I'd care about that in a dream though.
I want to tell the mermaid how much I appreciate the gift, but whilst I'm doing it I realize the inevitable:

"... Faye?"
"Yes Hyu?"
"... why don't you ever say something?"

She just sticks out her tongue.

"If you were more aware during your dreams you'd notice it earlier."
"How can I be more aware?"
"Practice practice..."
"Yeah... I figured there was no easy way."
"Now, that wouldn't be any fun, would it?"
"To be honest, it probably would."

She laughs.

"Yes you're right, it actually would."

I play with her fins. They feel so realistic.

"Hey... shouldn't we be doing something?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know... like... like visiting Krista!"
"We could, if it'd take you less than half an hour to remember your goals."
"I really need to work on that..."
"Don't you have like... any tips for me? For remembering goals, to increase awareness, anything?"
"How about you'd start by stabilizing all of your dreams properly friend?"

Shit... I've completely forgotten to do that.
And the dream has already darkened quite a bit.
I start rubbing my hands in an attempt to stabilize it, but it doesn't seem to work.
I remain in darkness for a bit until I wake up.

I had three (possibly 4) dreams that I remember from last night. And 2 of them were lucid!

The first dream was pretty short. I was in my old house, looking at my desk. I realize that my monitor isn't there, and it should be. For whatever reason, that's what makes me lucid. So I calmly walk out of the house. I look around, and scrutinize everything I'm seeing. I'm also rubbing my hands together, just in case. I start walking down the long driveway, thinking about what I want to do. I make a couple feeble attempts to have a furred friend show up, by expecting him to be right behind me. Having had no practice with this technique before, it doesn't work. I get a little discouraged, but not much. Around this time the dream falls apart, though. I wake up and it's around 6 AM, so I roll over and go back to sleep.

The second dream is shorter than the last. I'm lucid again (well, semilucid, at least) with no recollection of a specific trigger. I'm wandering around this big house that looks oddly familiar, but I can't place why. Again, I'm carefully examining my surroundings. I don't remember too many details from this one unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure the house familiarity is a false memory. The house looks vaguely familiar to my parents' friends' house, where we stayed last week for a wedding. But the house is a lot bigger than that, and arranged differently. Plus it has an indoor hot tub.

The third (and fourth if you wanna count them separate) dreams kinda blend together. There's one where I'm going through a regimen for psychic powers not unlike the DVASA regimen, but more ridiculous. I remember watching an older man I don't know use "telekenesis" to mess with a light, or somesuch. From my perspective though, it looked more like a double came out of him, and the double fooled with the light. The double also goes over to a nearby desk and eats a pretzel from a can sitting there, grinning at me. I remember flipping through some pages of my training book, but some parts of the book are missing, or were specifically cut. The only specific line I remember is something about "Zeta Awareness", which I think is similar to viewing auras but... not? I can't remember.

At some point this seems to meld with another dream where I'm inexplicably waking up in an unfamiliar area. I can't remember a lot of the details. But like some other dreams I've had, I was out and about wearing nothing at all, with some boxers at hand that I'm hoping to find a secluded place to put on. (The logic fails there, but the choice of dress makes sense. That's how I sleep, so naturally it ends up in my dreams occasionally.) At some point I'm on a highway, sitting on the trunk of a moving car as if that's the best way to bum a ride these days. I notice my dad back there, chatting with someone else as he moves towards the car. That's when I suddenly realize, it's not some random car but my parent's car. That's good, I need the ride. I think I try to hop into the still-moving car or something, but the dream is just too fuzzy. This is all I can put down with certainty.

A friend of mine has gotten into lucid dreaming about 2 months ago.
He's been lucid dreaming naturally before that, but only learned about induction recently.
Both his and my friends are very uncomfortable talking about dreams, so he and I talk about our dreams rather often.
He has texted me on msn before this dream, expressing that he wants to experience more "spiritual things".
Things like visiting unknown worlds and talking to "intelligent" DC's.

I'm home, programming on a project for school. Things are not going well, I'm getting all kinds of errors that don't make any sense.
I'm tired of this, I want to do something else. How awesome would it be if this was actually a dream and I could become lucid right now?
Then I inevitably realize that I have no idea how I got here, and that the code indeed makes no sense whatsoever.
I'll be damned, I am actually dreaming! sweet!

I remember the conversation I had with my friend before going to bed and decide that it would be awesome to try and visit his dreams, they are quite different from mine.
I summon my phoenix wings, search for his aura, and try to teleport to him.
The transition is not as smooth as usually, I nearly loose consciousness, but then the new scene finally appears.
The heat is strong, and I am blinded by the strong sunlight.

I investigate my surroundings. It appears that I'm at an outdoors marketplace. It is very crowded.
It reminds me of the Bazaar in Cairo, except it's completely outdoors.
They sell all kinds of items, pretty much anything you can think of, from food over household appliances to souvenirs.
I hear people speaking Arabic and English, I must be in an Arab country.

Seeing how busy everyone is is very pleasant, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by it.
It is very difficult to navigate the marketplace, it is way too crowded.
I realize that I'm getting distracted and search for my friends aura and approach it.
At first I doubt I'll be able to find him in this crowd, but his aura stands out, making it easy to track him.

The crowd clears up a bit, and I finally see him next to some shop selling handcrafted and painted household items, such as many beautiful plates.
He looks slightly different compared to waking life, but the differences are subtle.
As I approach him I notice that he seems focused on a woman browsing some clothes a few meters away from him.
I get a feeling of what he's doing. He's attracted to the woman, and he's trying to put the thought of being interested in him in her head.
He's obviously lucid.
I've done this before... I can tell quite clearly what he's doing.

Should I intervene? I don't want to interrupt his lucid.
Err, what am I doing, he said he wanted to experience new things.
I sit on a desk belonging to the shop, right next to my friend, the woman is already approaching him.

"No wonder you aren't experiencing anything overwhelming my friend, you're being distracted by women all the time."

He turns around and looks at me very surprised. He looses focus on the woman and she goes back to browsing clothes.

"I don't blame you, some women are just irresistible."
"No kidding..."
"You're Hyu right?"
"Yep, you even used my nickname, how come?"
"I don't know, you told me you're called Hyu in your dreams."
"True..."
"Fuck... this is really you isn't it?"
"Yes, I can't prove it though"
"Well, I suppose that doesn't really matter. Tell me about dreams! How to go past the limit of my imagination, how to meet dc's that seem sentient! Tell me!"

I think for a few seconds, about many things, about what to say to him, and then I suddenly know exactly what to do.
I grab a spoon from the shop we're at and hold it in front of me.

"You've seen the matrix, right?"

I start bending the spoon around with my mind.

"Yes! The spoon doesn't exist!"
"Why?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Why does the spoon not exist?"
"Because it's not real. It's a projection of my mind, and because everything in my dreams is, I can control everything!"
"Right... so... how do you define reality?"
"Err... well, some time ago I would have said that whatever I can grasp with all of my senses is real, but nowadays..."
"... uuuuh man, this is hard... I'll go with everything that directly affects my waking life."

I'm positively surprised that he's thinking past his senses, but I'm not quite satisfied with his conclusion.

"So, everything you experience in waking life is real, because it directly affects you?"
"Do you agree that every action you take in waking life will change your future, the outcome of your life, regardless of how benign it seems?"

He thinks a bit.

"Yes, any action has an infinite amount of consequences, it's the butterfly effect."
"Very good! Now, tell me friend, when you look at this spoon, when you touch it, when you bend it, does this not affect your waking life?"
"No?"
"Does your brain not save the sensation and experience of holding this spoon? Does it not form neural pathways to remember this information?"
"Aren't many of your decisions in waking life based upon the past experiences you can access in your memories?"
"Can you really in good conscience tell me that this spoon is not real?"
"Sure, the experience of holding this spoon is very benign, but what about exploring your inner self, the experience of letting your creative mind run wild, do these things not affect your waking life?"
"Fuck..."

I'm pretty sure he gets it, and I feel surprisingly wise telling him all of this.

"Telling yourself that the spoon is not real is a fantastic way to improve your dream control."
"But if you really want to explore the unknown and go beyond your imagination..."
"... If you want your dreams to affect you, you have to understand that they can do so."
"And you've stated yourself that every experience will ultimately affect you."

"I see... that does make sense, and I feel like this will help me, but how do I create a sentient DC?"
"Don't you see the contradiction? Creating something sentient? I think that is your problem."
"You think that everything right now is an illusion created by your own mind."
"Tell me, what are you basing this assumption on?"
"I... well... Yeah, I have no fucking clue."

"Now, I'm not telling you this spoon is not a creation of your mind, but if you want this world to affect you, to overwhelm you, you have to understand that it actually can!"
"And if you want to meet a sentient DC, you have to understand that they may actually exist."
"Yes, I understand."

He takes the spoon from my hand and looks at it closely.

"The spoon is real!"

We had a discussion about this today, and I told him the same things in waking life, which ended in a discussion about
how our brains are awareness factories, and what it does whilst awake and asleep.
He feels that thinking everything is an illusion and nothing affects him (which he did) was indeed holding him back.