Recent DJ Posts

Recall: 1/10. Another night of shitty recall. It looks like 3/26 was the last day where I would say my recall was up to par, so this has been going on for a little over a week now. I was sure it had been a lot longer before I checked my DJ... being cut off from my dreams night after night like this is unpleasant to say the least.

I've tried variations on bedtimes, alcohol, caffeine, and supplements, with no effect on dream recall either way. It's starting to look like stress might be a critical factor, though, and not the way you might think. I've heard some people say that stress kills their dream recall, but for me it seems to be just the opposite. In the past I've noticed that my dreams become intensely vivid at times when I'm under a lot of daytime stress—and some of my most amazing lucid streaks have occurred on nights when I had absolutely no time or intention to practice because I was under so much pressure WL. Conversely, during periods when I'm under very little stress and I think I'll be able to devote my full attention to dream practice, I tend to end up in a dryspell.

This pattern holds true for my dream experiences over the past month. Early in March I was under unbearable stress at work, and yet I had my best lucid streak ever, with ten distinct lucid incidents in the first half of the month. The last night I dreamed vividly was March 26, an extremely stressful night due to daytime anxieties. Since then, WL pressures have eased and I've been much more relaxed and mellow... and at the same time my dreams have become wan and elusive, despite firm waking intentions to remember them.

Last night the terrible recall was made even more obtrusive and aggravating by the inexplicable failure of my attempts to counter it. I went to bed and set a strong intention to remember my dreams, and here's the kicker: I actually do recall a point before I was actually awake, where I still remembered the dream I'd just had and was going over the details to fix them in memory... and then somehow on the transition to waking all the details dissolved anyway.

Went to bed at 2:45am, cat woke me for his breakfast at 6:30am, then I went back to bed. I had a few more minor wakings, but wasn't doing any particular dream practices as I needed to get up by 9:30 and wanted to maximize my sleep. However, at one point when I woke up—around 8:30am as it turned out—somehow things felt different.

I woke up, or thought I did, and there wasn't anything to distinguish it from all the other wakings over the course of the morning, except that for some reason the thought occurred to me that I might be able to DEILD. I didn't even have any particular impressions of having woken up from a dream, but somehow I felt instinctively that it would work. So experimentally I tried to move one of my hands, very small movements at first until I was confident that I was moving my dream hand and not my real one, then I reached up to touch my face. The sensations were lifelike but somehow I was certain the DEILD had worked. "Why don't I do this all the time?" I thought. "This is the easiest thing in the world!" That's how it seemed then, at least, as I got up out of bed to explore the dream.

I walked down the hallway and passed the cat. In my dream logic I assumed that this encounter was really happening, that I was walking past my real cat even though I was dreaming, and I was curious how he would react to seeing me in my dream state. How would I appear to him? Ethereal? Responding to my expectations, the dream cat reacted with an air of uncertainty to my presence. As I continued into the kitchen, I felt like dancing so I did a few random steps, pleased with how well-intregrated I felt in my dream body and in the environment.

As I approached the sliding door that leads out to the back patio, I thought I heard the neighing of horses from somewhere outside. "Could that be real?" I wondered. "Where could it be coming from?" I had to remind myself that not everything I hear in a dream is bleedthrough, and that a real horse in the vicinity of my house would be highly improbable. Looking outside, I saw a dinosaur skeleton that resembled a triceratops go ambling by. I didn't think much of it, though it was a pleasant reminder that I was definitely dreaming. Eagerly I went outside. It looked nothing like waking life: instead of my fenced-in back patio, I was in a wide grassy space bounded in the distance by trees and low hills. It resembled a bright and sunny day, but still felt dreamlike in that the bright sunlight did not aggravate my eyes the way it does when I'm awake. I looked around and felt pleased to note that my visual perceptions were crystal clear, since during my long dryspell even my NLDs had become murky and vague, at least in recollection. What was the source of this marvelous clarity? "This really is a third state, neither dreaming nor waking," I thought to myself.

I had not expected to get lucid so I had no real goals or tasks in mind; I was just thrilled to be lucid again. I walked forward through the landscape, wishing a DC would come and greet me after my long absence, but I couldn't see anyone else. As I walked I found myself spontaneously singing a little snatch of song. The pitch I was singing was too high for my voice, even in dream, and I could hear it cracking on the high notes. I hadn't put any thought into the words, but I noticed that I was just singing, "I love you... I love you." There was no one on my mind; if I was directing those words to any particular object it must have been dream itself. The melody was simple and I was sure it was music I had heard before in waking life, as I could anticipate how it should continue, and even recall some words ("...any night, any day...") but I couldn't remember what the song was. After I woke up I thought about it for a while and then realized that the melody I was using closely resembled the opening bars of the song "Bali Hai," from the musical South Pacific. The only reason I'm familiar with the song is because I was involved in a school production of the musical many years ago, when I was in seventh grade. I ambled on through the environment a bit further, still with no real purpose and nothing much happening, just delighting in the dream.

My dream recall has become atrocious of late. I wake up and have the impression of complex narratives, but often can't even piece together enough specifics to write even fragmentary accounts. The impressions simply refuse to link up with concrete words and images.

I woke up recently and promptly tried to recollect what I was just dreaming about. "Was there a... a... there was! There was a place!" I felt a glint of triumph until I woke up a little more and realized that this was not exactly the start of a compelling dream narrative, however fragmentary:

I was in a place.

At least I was able to find humor in the absurdity of it. Yet effectively this is the sum of what I'm able to articulate about most of my dreams lately, despite an unmistakable feeling, an impression that is almost but not quite visual, of so much more depth and detail.

I was in a place. There were people around. We were engaged in activities.

I wasn't practicing seriously for the last couple weeks as I felt too busy with work to devote much time to journaling, so my motivation to LD was also low (because successful attempts commit me to hours of writing if I'm going to record them right). Last night I felt more motivated so instead of playing video games late at night I went to bed early (11:30pm, early for me anyway) and put in a solid WILD attempt, with a full two-hour WBTB (from 1:45am when I woke up naturally until 3:45) followed by 14 minutes seated meditation and the usual counting ritual on returning to bed.

The attempt felt promising as I didn't fall asleep too quickly but maintained liminal awareness for awhile, and it was around 4:15am when I finally went back to sleep. However I did not achieve a WILD, and experienced nothing but an extremely vague NLD (something about a shoot-out, I was a young man in Vietnam I think, maybe during the war, the guys on my side had a sort of built structure to take positions in but it was full of rats, and my character felt very uncomfortable about the rats).

I woke up again at 6:30am and was desperate enough to take galantamine, even though I hate the after-effects and it hardly works for me anymore. This was followed by another vaguely-recalled dream which involved distinct manifestations of dream control (elaborate flying and levitation, which felt like I was deliberately testing the limits of my abilities) but very little dream awareness. At the end I was having what felt like a very meaningful conversation with a DC, but I don't remember what we talked about. It felt like there was great complexity to this dream as well as the previous one but my recollection was not sufficient to preserve it.

At 8:30am I woke up again, realized I had another bust, and as a last resort tried my vibrating alarm. I felt it go off three times but each time it jostled me out of sleep and I didn't feel like there was much I could do dream-wise, nor did I remember any dreams of note. The last time I at least remembered to try to DEILD but the REM atonia was apparently already broken, so it didn't work. I've always been able to instinctively DEILD-chain my WILDs, even before I knew what it was called, but for some reason that is the only situation in which I've been able to pull it off. Woke up for the final time at 9:30am and now I'm frustrated enough to declare a dryspell. Writing a report anyway because it was a deliberate attempt and also so that my mind can't use the break from journaling as an excuse for not dreaming properly.

It goes mostly without saying that I haven't had a lucid dream in a while! This is primarily because of my tendency to lose motivation for periods going on months. The funny thing is, I've been in one of those periods for the past month; i.e. not recalling any dreams, and generally just having no will to do so. Then, out of complete no where, I had a lucid dream last night. It really was the most random thing. Not that I'm complaining! It's been so long since my last lucid that I forgot how good it felt.
I was in a mall with most of my mom's side of the family. My baby cousin, Presley (who is a little over 2 years old), started speaking full, sophisticated sentences and running around the mall at speeds not normal for a human being. For some reason, THIS of all things is what caused me to go lucid after a couple of years of no lucids.
Seeing Presley act like this caused me to think that this couldn't be happening. This must be a dream. The clarity hit me like a truck, and the excitement came just as fast. I stood stock still for a moment and told myself to calm down, and to help stabilize the dream, I held my hands in front of my face and examined them closely while trying to relax. It seemed to work, and the dream gained even more clarity. From this point, my mind was racing on all the different things I wanted to try and do. Rather than do something crazy though, I decided to explore the mall peacefully, seeing what I could find. I remember a vague thought crossing my mind, 'Maybe I should go to the world from my comic,' but I didn't end up doing that.
The mall was quite big, and looked very similar to the main lobby-like area of Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea: Episode 2, the area where the Big Daddy roams around. Luckily for me, there was no Big Daddy. ...As far as I know. I ended up finding a store where a bunch of teenagers were partying. Can't remember what exactly the store was, but the inside was flashing with neon lights, strobe lights, pretty much all the lights you can dream of. I approached the group of people...
And then that's all I remember from there. Not sure if more happened and I just don't remember, or if I woke up at that point, but I'm leaning towards me waking up. This is probably the longest lucid I've had yet, clocking in at about 3 or 4 minutes, whereas my other lucids have been anywhere from 5 seconds to 1 minute. Not only that, this is the first time I've ever stabilized the dream (which could have something to do with the longer time, now that I think about it... ). Not sure how I thought to examine my hands for further clarity, but I have read that tip before in the past, so it must have come to mind.
Definitely exciting though! A random lucid dream after two months of no recall whatsoever. Now if I could just stay motivated towards it all.

NOTE: Here I am! I now have 10/12 tasks done! I was so happy to break my 17 day dryspell. This has been one of my top three worst dryspells since I joined DV.

Lucidity: 3

Vividness: 3

Here I am...a slave. A prisoner. Trapped. Hopeless. Doomed to be slaved forever. Working for these worthless bastards. The work is harsh, as well as the Sun. Having a family to manage(I don't actually manage a family in real life though) doesn't make it any easier. With low food supply and too many hours of work, a family isn't easy to manage by yourself. I'm sick of all this bullshit now. I have decided to make plans to escape with my family and get to safety...away from this hellish place. A man comes to the home I'm slaved at, and he gives me $700 to give to the female owner. He leaves, but I go upstairs to my room with the money. I hide it in my clothes drawer. I have a surprisingly good room for a slave though. However, a man comes to inspect my room. He finds the money, and man is he pissed. I sure ain't no indentured servant, so I shouldn't have any money! This man decides to snitch away to the house owner. But, I now suddenly become lucid! Oh bitch I time this shit just fine! I run up to the window now. I appear to be in my brother's room now at my real life home. Um...okay. So, I now jumped through the window, and I drop two stories onto the parking lot. Aha! I know what I need to do! The Grease TOTY! I now use the turn around method to summon myself a black Mustang, and Greased Lightning. John Travolta(I think his character's name was Danny though...) is sitting in Greased Lightning, ready to race. I now get into my Mustang. Now, we begin the race. I am easily speeding past that piece of shit he calls a race car. Our race progresses for quite sometime, but the dream began to become a lot more vivid. I do recall winning though. But just barely. I soon awake.