All DJ Entries

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #212: The Guadalupe Airport

I’m in a cafe talking to an art student in his early 20s as he walks out the door. I’m complimenting him on some piece of digital art that I saw in his online portfolio when I realize that I can’t remember his name. I ask and he says, “It’s Bradley,” as we shake hands. I think that this is a student in my 3-year-old son’s class, somehow all grown up.

Bradley leaves and I just stand there, confused about how this much time has passed. After a brief mental struggle, I realize that these facts just don’t fit together and I become lucid.

I spend a few moments looking around at the DCs in the cafe but they all seem fairly generic. I don’t have goals in mind and I’m anxious that I’ll waste the experience, so I head through the first door that I see, winding up in a bathroom. Somebody flushes from one of the stalls. I am not spending a lucid dream listening to people flush toilets, I think, and head back out through the bathroom, back through the cafe, and out into a mall.

I’m feeling less passive now and I try hard to remember what my goals were. Somehow I dredge up that a Task of the Month is to keep repeating whatever a DC says to you. I approach a balding, blonde-haired guy with glasses in his early 40s. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says something about the Windows registry and he’s looking at me like he wants to tell me something.

“Talk to me!” I say.

He happily launches into an explanation of something about computers, but he’s speaking too rapidly for me to follow. I eventually start catching him mid-sentence. “If you have a memory block that…” and I babble back “If you have a memory block that!”

He scowls at the interruption. “You know what? I don’t think you’re actually into this!” And with that, he turns and walks away, looking offended.

I continue on, drifting through the crowd. I spot one guy that’s unusually tall and for some reason get the nasty impulse to mess with him. I kick him in the right shin and he falls forward, stopping just short of hitting the ground. Then he rises back up, looking angry and annoyed. “Sorry, that was stupid,” I say, scurrying away from him. He floats after me for a moment but I make an effort to think about other things as I evade him, flying down an escalator to the first floor.

I move through a relatively empty hallway, worrying for a moment about whether I’ll be able to remember what’s happened in the dream and take a moment to reflect on how cool this is.

Now I’m back in the main thoroughfare with the crowd. I spot two attractive women nearby, both Indian, one in her mid-twenties, the other in her mid-forties. I fly past them and they say something about going to Las Vegas. I want to impress them for some reason so I boast that I’m having a lucid dream and could travel to Las Vegas instantly. They laugh nervously and sort of edge away.

I say something like, “Here, I’ll show you!” and start flying away, slightly out of control. There’s an open chunk in the ceiling and I pass through it, turning and flailing a bit. Somehow I find myself flying along an airport runway at night. I hear “¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!” by The Killers playing over what sounds like a clock radio and I worry that a morning alarm is going off. I fly up to a tall column of carved stone in the middle of the runway and reach out to touch it as the dream ends.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/16/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #210: Low Altitude Superman

I’m standing in a slow-moving line at a bank. The guy in front of me is getting agitated and he starts screaming at the teller to “Hurry it up!” He gesticulates wildly and shrieks “Goddamn!” I start getting a little stressed, thinking this could turn into a situation. I vaguely hope that it’s all a dream and lucky me, it is!

The angry man seems to calm down and I wander outside through a set of automatic doors. It’s nighttime and I’m in standing in a covered, circular entrance driveway like you might find in front of some hospitals and hotels.

I boast to the nearby DCs that “this is a lucid dream” and then start flying. I hover about two feet off of the ground, barely moving. I punch my fist forward Superman-style, hoping that this will somehow cause something awesome to happen because these DCs don’t seem especially impressed.

My speed starts really picking up and soon I’m rocketing around the circular drive at knee height. This tends to freak the DCs out as I get close. I zoom around, faster and faster, seeing how far I can push my speed. I have a great time with this until the dream ends.

I managed to hit another Task of the Year item! This one's from the morning of 5/11/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #209: Aladdin

I’m standing on a long stone pathway that cuts through the middle of a vast lake. People pass by me on either side, and as I watch them go, I think about my intent to have a lucid dream. It quickly dawns on me that one has just begun.

I look out over the lake,.seeing numerous Greek-styled marble columns sticking up out of the water. I take flight to get a better view of the water and it’s just as striking from higher up. I go up and up, preparing for some peaceful exploration, but I accidentally cut through some low cloud cover and lose sight of the lake. A flock of birds crosses in front of me and for no discernible reason, the frame rate of the dream briefly dips. I’m briefly amused that my brain seemed to have had trouble with that relatively simple scene.

I head back down through the cloud cover, regaining sight of the lake. I fly lower, studying DCs as I go. All of the flight finally reminds me of the Aladdin Task of the Year, and I land, mentally gathering the details of what I’m supposed to do.

First, summon that lamp. I try several behind the back summons, but I keep botching them. This is annoying me a bit, but I finally manage to get the sense of an object in my hand even though I can’t see it. I wiggle my fingers a bit like a magician and the lamp “paints” itself in from top to bottom as I watch.

I make my wish for a magic carpet, and immediately one scoops me up from underneath. I remember my first attempt at this task and again ask the lamp for a “delicious cookie”. Right away a cookie appears in my left hand and I don’t hesitate before cramming it in my mouth. It’s really good! The chocolate chips are just a little small for the “perfect cookie” but it’s still excellent.



I’m apparently stuck on a “delicious food” theme so I immediately wish for “delicious hot chocolate”. I bring my hand back into view to find it holding a china cup full of hot chocolate. I guzzle it down. It’s way colder than it should be and there are odd clumpy patches in it like it didn’t mix well, but still tasty. Okay, done!

I continue flying the carpet for a bit, staying about 10 feet off the ground. I come to a section that looks like the exit to an amusement park. There’s a woman waving goodbye to me and the other people as we leave. I don’t get much further before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #201: Copilot

I’m standing in a brightly lit cafe near the serving counter. There’s a row of three toilets placed directly next to a huge window that looks out onto a shopping mall. In spite of the people passing by just a couple feet away from the window, I decide that I need to sit down on one of these toilets.

As I’m sitting there I realize that I don’t really need to go after all. I wonder why I am even sitting on this toilet publicly embarrassing myself. Some kid, a boy of about 9 or 10, sits on the toilet next to me and starts talking to me about something. I don’t relish the idea of having a conversation while seated this way so I get up to leave (not having “accomplished” anything.) The kid gets up as well and I see that he’s left a horrible, putrid mess in his toilet.

He points to the awfulness he left in the toilet and tells me, “Eww, you did that!” I sputter with indignation and outrage until it occurs to me that this has to be a dream.

The kid disappears and I spend a moment taking in the scene. From behind the cafe’s counter, a guy in a paper chef hat stares back at me. I look to the left and see a staircase leading down, with a man in his early 40s standing at the bottom.

I decide to try teleporting by taking over the man’s perspective and it works almost instantly! Now I’m viewing the same scene from the bottom of the stairs. I run up, wondering if I’ll see another version of myself or the man I switched with, but there’s nobody there now.

I see my 4-year-old son E standing nearby at a table and walk up to him. “Hey, buddy!” I say, and walk with him out into the mall. We’re on the second floor walkway and across a sort of interior courtyard I see an atrium with a beautiful skylight. Daylight pours in through the glass and I think it looks like a great flying spot.

I scoop E up in my arms and he feels realistically heavy. He drapes his hands around my neck more lightly than he would in waking life but the grip seems firm enough to get started. I take to the air, flying with him over the balcony railing. The flight feels very floaty, like something that’d happen in zero gravity. E’s legs float out to the side and I realize that I’ve lost the feeling of his weight.

For some reason we’re drifting away from the skylight toward another section of the mall. I make a hard right turn, dragging E behind me, and we begin to travel down a darker, previously unseen corridor. Before we make it very far this way, the dream ends.

I appeared to be in my back garden[SP], this was somewhat unusual given this was a garden from my old house (37 Whitefriars Road)[ST], the garden was strange, there was no house present -- a little shack perhaps, the grass overgrown in the distance and fields vastly stretched out[SF].

In front of me stood a large apparatus, it seemed as though I was viewing it from a green coated deck-chair, it was hard to identify, it's shape matched that of a TV but it had features of a Sound-station, it towered over me - a giant rectangular obelisk[OF]. It was apparent that it was in poor condition the fabric - torn, dislodged and ripped. On the left side, the fabric had a patchwork hole, above it the silk had been unwoven causing a mesh screen to waver in and out like a curtain. In the center of the object, a CRT screen or mid-sized woofer reverberated [OF]. After that things were fuzzy, my thoughts were to fix or clean this object from it's poor condition, I had assumed purchasing it second-hand, in this regard it was likely a refurbish attempt. This was notable because early that day in real-life I had done something similar to a dirtied sink basin, restoring it to a clean condition. [S]

The next segment of the dream was extremely hazy, I think I was trying to clean the object, but it also involved cleaning the floor around the object for whatever reason[EA]. I was doing this by going over to a brick covered square block, the interior of which was filled with water, this block seemed to tucked away in a cavern by a lake. The dream objects continued switching in and out[OF], I remember there being a cave near this pebbled alcove, it was sealed by slotted rectangular bolder, for some reason the front of these broke off, or I hit it -- I can't remember. One of the layers shattered, crumbling in a distinctly odd fashion[OA]. I could see the other layered boulders in the cave, this was all strange obviously because this wasn't normal, more like a physics destruction system from a dated video game[OF] (Geo-mod -- Red Faction); This is probably how I justified it at the time as well. This section of the dream went on for a while, I remember being very panicky at this point. I was filling or transferring the water from this brick pit, over to the speaker but it was spilling everywhere[EA], I had the distinct idea of making a mess in two locations despite the brick pit initially being a well of sorts, the bricks were oddly arranged I was picking them up and a cement like-paste was wrapping them. The water was beginning to pool over the brick pit, sticking to the messy paste. Everything was incredibly messy, all I could think about was mess, mess - mess. I was panicking and extremely anxious. [E] [S]

After that there was a transition, the speaker appeared to have gone, and I was just in the garden normally. I could see what looked like black laborers in the distant hilly field above the shacked house[ST]. There was something odd about their appearance, my mind told me these were slavers, working on a plantation [ST][SF]. I saw my dad in the window of the shack [CP], he called over to me, something about eating food, or having food or perhaps just my food was ready. Something about tea as well, which suggested that he probably wanted one, I felt incredibly annoyed at this conversation for some reason [E]. I also saw Zakia outside [CP]. [S]

Then something more bizarre happened, I'd teleported slightly further back in the field, to a diagonal position overlooking a field Northeast. Above a plane soared, but it was all so odd, the plane was flying far too low [OA], there was nothing else in the sky, and the landscape was far too simply contoured and outlined, just solid color no fidelity [SF]. A Frisbee was thrown at this point, it seemed to emanate from my body [OA], I don't recall physically throwing it, but it instantaneously hit the plane, it hadn't even flown in the correct trajectory to hit the plane, nor had it flown high enough to do so. All that happened though was the plane exploded, not in a fireball but seemingly it just snapped and smoke expelled from the fuselage [OF] (at this point I felt shameful, stupid, clumsy, guilty, inept [E]), but rather than crash-land it seemed to almost frame skip, then crash-land, entirely non-audible as well [OA], and before I'd known it there were already policeman and others cordoning off the scene, all within the span of a second. [P] [S]

I was somewhat lucid at this point, I'd flown over to the plane wreckage, which now was on a road, in the middle of a street. The chief of police funnily enough resembled David Cameron [CP], he gawked up at me and I flew overhead, I felt somewhat rebellious, a cocksure lawbreaker [ER]. The chief was incredibly angry, flew up and begun to fly with me down the street [CA]. He chased after me and the scene seemed to squash into a small ventilation perspective of the street [P], with the Chief flying in a superman posture directly towards me. The scenery was all grey-scale and outlined now, and I was dodging billboards. I remember being pommeled by the Chief, he was much stronger, beating me into a pulp. I managed quickly to squeeze into a nearby doorway as he fluttered around outside, it took an incredibly amount of force to squeeze in (similar to that of pulling oneself out of a dream). I managed to pull myself inside looking out through a blackened corridor, a small black screen on what was a rainy grey street under a blurry visage. [P] [S]

Object Form = 5
Situation = 4
Object Action = 4
Perception = 3
Character Place = 3
Emotion = 3
Setting Time = 2
Setting Form = 2
Ego Action = 2
Character Action = 1
Ego Role = 1



Context = 10
Form = 7
Action = 7
Inner Awareness = 6

Object = 9
Internal = 6
Character = 4
Setting = 4
Ego = 3
Other = 3

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #197: The King

It's modern times, and I’m the king of a small nation. I’m sharing a smallish hotel suite with several royal guests. A few of the royal guests in the adjoining room are very upset with me about something and I’m pacing the room, dreading that I have to talk the issue over with them.

I inspect one of the hotel desks and see two narrow drawers. Somehow I realize that the drawer on the left contains a picture of the girl that my son E (who I think is a prince) is engaged to. I open the drawer and see that the future princess is a cute girl in her late teens with long brown hair. I think for a moment how odd this pairing is since my son is only 4 years old. I struggle with this for a moment, thinking I’ve forgotten my son’s age, until I realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk into an adjacent room where I think my kids are sleeping. There’s a crib here but instead of a child, the crib contains my friend R (who appeared in a few of my early lucids way back when). R is squatting in the crib, not doing much of anything, so I grab him under the armpits and hoist him out of the crib. I tell him that I’m having a lucid dream and that I hope he’s having one too (or maybe that I just hope he’s having a lot of them recently.)

He walks back to the main part of the hotel room with me, briefly exploring the kitchen area, before we turn toward a large picture window overlooking a lake. I invite him to come fly out over the lake with me, but he seems hesitant and apprehensive. He remarks that he doesn’t think he’s got the skills to pull this off.

I say some reassuring words, and when I turn back to the big picture window, the scene has changed from a lake to a large office filled with cubicles. There’s a woman with long, dark hair and glasses working quietly at a desk, and when she looks up to see us seems completely astonished.

The change is a surprise to me, so I decide to head out the other way from the hotel room. I don’t press the issue with R and let him just hang out in the hotel room. The hotel room exit takes me into a library with a high ceiling. I take advantage of the ceiling space by flying around. I help myself navigate around the room by pointing where I want to go, and it works great!

After a moment I remember that I need to pursue my goals, so I land and make an attempt at the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I produce a seed from behind the back and then plunge my hands into the industrial carpet of the library floor. I find that I can dig it up easily and all these little chunks of foam pop out of the hole I leave behind. I use them to cover the seed back up and start thinking about how I should water it to help it grow.

As I’m thinking my way through this, the scene goes dark and I feel myself lying in bed. I’m super hopeful that it’s just a false awakening, and I even hit the nose pinch. Too bad -- I’m awake!

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School

I’m part of a large parenting group that’s exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom’s houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room.

I notice that Andy Bernard from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, “Hey that guy who plays Andy Bernard sure looks sweaty and awkward in person.” I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is.

I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that’s in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin’s lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.)

Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I’ll spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that “This is a phase outside,” before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible.

I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is “0:98”. I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates.

Now there’s a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I can’t identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into… another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I’m pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I’m outside.

Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by “finding” it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I’m really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it’s just way too small. “Bigger… bigger…” and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It’s way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step!

I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, “A magic carpet. Make it rolled up.” A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why’d you ask for it rolled up? That’s just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward.

For my second wish, I quickly say “Delicious cookie!” and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It’s chocolate chip, not bad at all.

I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.

Last night, I had what was probably the best, most lucid dream I've had so far in my journey as an oneironaut. It was visually vivid, I was at a pretty good level of consciousness and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. If only I had been able to carry it on for longer!

I became lucid after having dreamt of having been in a terrible fight with my mother. This is something that, to my appreciation, has been a recurring element in my lucid dreams recently - my lucidity having been triggered by something so unusually negative happening that I couldn't believe how it ever could have happened and then realising that it was literally too bad to be true. (Sort of even makes me want to have more bad dreams than I do now, when I think about it. ) When it happened, I was alone in my bedroom. And so, when I started to suspect that I was actually dreaming, I took the same route as I had once before in the same situation - I checked the clock that's normally by the side of my computer. When I look back on it, I recall that it was a different form and colour from my real one; but these details were not necessary for me to have my suspicions confirmed by this reality check. In the upper-right quarter of the clock face, which is easier to inspect than the whole clock in a dream state, just for a moment, the numbers only stretched from 12 to 2 instead of 12 to 3. Then, they went to normal. Then, it stretched from 12 to 4. Then, the 2 and 1 switched places. It was enough for me to catch on.

I don't think I ever got so excited by the realisation that I'm dreaming that I immediately woke up or anything of the sort. All the more so, I wasted no time after coming to this revelation. Withdrawing from the clock, I could see that I was still in my bedroom; but this time, the lights were off and it was dark, as if it'd probably be evening-time outside as well. (Shame I didn't think to try flipping the light switch to see if it would work.) From then on, I would be playing a game called 'Let's See If This Dream Control Wish Works Or Not Depending On A Seemingly Random Probability of Success.' I wanted to change the dream scene to something more interesting so I decided to try imagining something different behind the bedroom door and opening it. I opened the door but only saw the rest of my apartment out there, in correct order. It was dark in there as well. I tried closing the door and opening it again. Received the same results. So I decided to try it again with the front door of the apartment. Since I didn't really have a particular scene in mind with the door portal spell I'd just tried, this time, I decided to try coming up with something specific. For no particularly superior reason, I thought of a plane in the Mario universe in first-person, 3D view. (I just wanted to get the scene change to work.) I looked around for a moment to check how vivid my surroundings looked. I made the evaluation that things looked pretty good. I opened the front door of my apartment. Unfortunately, I failed again and saw the gated community in which my apartment is located in real life. Again, in the right order; and with the door gate that was there in real life as well. It was evening-time, predictably dark outside as well.

I walked through the gate. Phasing straight through the gate, that is. I knew that this was normally easy and even effortless to do in dreams but I was still happy to see it worked. I jumped onto the guardrail and then jumped off it, having decided to fly my way to a new dream scene instead. I flew over the street and past the other buildings. Standing beside one, I noticed two disproportionately large people, one of whom was almost half as tall as the (six-story) building and the other being a bit more than half as tall as the first. I successfully flew over them without interference. They never really seemed like giants despite how close I got to them, since a dream is like a work of abstract art, but I still noticed that it was strange. I landed on the wall around my compound's swimming pool, taking a moment to look over it. There were a bunch of people there. I took off again. A bit later, after flying through my building compound, I landed on a plane of grass behind one of the buildings and resolved to try taking off again; but at a powerful, kryptonian-like super-speed. But instead, I only took off at my normal speed of flight - a kind of relatively swift and direct floating.

Next, I flew over to the pool again; but this time, I had landed right inside the pool, surrounded by dream NPCs. (I know dream characters are called 'DCs' for short themselves but I like using the term, 'NPC.' :3) I have no memory of the pool feeling wet. Although I know that confidence is the key to making it work out and things don't have to go badly, I have a natural apprehension in lucid dreams of dream characters surrounding me, being a bit concerned that they're going to mess things up and preferring to stay away from them until the situation is opportune. So as I caught myself thinking these thoughts in the pool, I went on to think that I was now making it more likely for the dream characters to turn on my with every progressing second. In a bit of a fuss, I then decided to deliberately keep thinking of the dream characters turning on me and wait for them to do so, seeing how it'd go and planning to defend myself with the retained knowledge that they couldn't do anything to hurt me. However, as there weren't any/many signs that they were going to do this in the next few moments, I resolved to take the opportunity to avoid that situation altogether and fly out of the pool. I did so.

I don't recall how the transition happened; but the next thing I knew, I had changed my dream scene. Of course, since dreams are so shifty and lucid dreams are normally still at a lower level of consciousness, all it really takes for the dream circumstances to change is for one to stop paying attention to them for just a moment. I was still flying, headed into a house I'd never seen before through the window. I phased through the window, either floated or landed on something to keep me close to the ceiling and observed from above the stranger's room that I had just entered. It was a messy room that seemed to be full of things cluttering it. Fairly broad in area. The room was deserted and the lights were off, as they had been in my own home, but there was a television set on a stand that was on at the end of the room. It was broadcasting something between football and commercials. This was another time when I stopped to just pay attention to the dream scene around me, enjoying the details and apparent vividness and whatever was happening on the TV screen that lit up the room and enjoying the fact that my brain had created all of this imagery for me, which I was now in a position to learn to control.

Still, I was just a bit concerned that the dream character who resided in this house could come in at any moment and cause conflict - as I have a schema that houses are usually owned by people and people are usually in their houses, especially when electronic devices are on (though less frequently when the lights are off), and people are usually unhappy and react aggressively to finding people whom they don't know in their houses. So I flew out of this house and on to another one.

As I was approaching the windows of the next house, I reaffirmed to myself that I was still dreaming, as I recalled that one should do that every once in a while to retain lucidity (especially novices like me). I also remembered BillyBob's dream control tutorial that I'd read earlier on DreamViews. I remembered that BillyBob had said that it was better to avoid using too many super-powers and reality-warping independently of a rational storyline in lucid dreams if one wanted the lucid dream to be stable and last longer and instead to use rationalisations for anything crazy that one may want to do. Therefore, as I was approaching the window, I decided to crash through it and break the glass instead of phasing through it like a ghost. I did this successfully but without any hindrance to my movement.

I landed in a room on a high floor of someone's house - a second floor, at least. I could sense that this was a big house. This time, the lights were on. The room seemed to be broad and clearer than the last one; but I didn't pay much attention to it this time. Instead, I had a thought. While I was having a good, clear lucid dream and didn't seem to have much to do at the moment, I could finally fulfill one of DreamViews' current tasks-of-the-month as I'd been meaning to do for a while now! Naturally, at this point in my lucid dreaming journey, I'd go for one of the basic tasks first. I resolved to find someone who wasn't wearing green and pinch him/her.

At that moment, I saw a child enter the room in his (not green) underwear. Upon seeing me, I think he cried and ran away. Probably downstairs, I thought. 'Well,' I thought, 'I was thinking the person I'd pinch would be someone more mature. But if I run into the kid again, whatever gets the job done!' So I made my way downstairs to check out what was going on there. I imagined there would be parents down there to whom the child had been running but I hadn't expected what I saw next. Hanging onto a white grate outside the room I was looking into, looking but hiding, I saw a couple of green-skinned, big-headed aliens populating the downstairs region. (I'm looking at you, Xanous.) I decided it was best to avoid them and get out of the house, moving onto another location with a dream character to pinch, but to play it cool if I ran into one of them on the way.* Which was good because I ended up having a passive encounter with one. Avoiding interaction, I willed myself to lift off the ground and phase through the second floor and ceiling, directly ascending out of the house. But as I did this, the alien followed me, staying on the exactly same level as I was. Yes, it all looked very video-game-glitch-ish. I was in a hurry. Also, as I moved through two ceilings expecting to wind up atop the house, I instead ended up on another, high floor, like the basement, still not having escaped the physically archetypical alien. I went on to phase through the ceiling of that room as well and wound up in another, higher room. I then phased through the ceiling of that room and successfully ascended out of the house and evaded the alien.

Another transition. At first, I may have been flying through the low skies or a wide-open room; or running into another building. But as I looked back and then again looked ahead, before I knew it, I was moving in a dim, wide-open tunnel space through/to a network of glowing, floating cubes, arranged with four forms opposite to each other, as if to connect a square, with the same pattern repeated forward, as if to connect a cuboid. I think this may have been reminiscent of the battle room in Ender's Game movie adaptation that I watched a week or two ago. (I noticed that this was strange and different, though.) I continued to fly through into a wide-open, indoor location, giant in all dimentions, where I landed and ran into the wall. Placed against the wall were four or five large cardboard boxes that were packed with something. So, to find a direction to fly further in, again I decided to play the form-a-portal game. I imagined that there was, behind the middle of these boxes, a hole in the wall. A doorway or window or tunnel. Which would make itself visible once I removed one of the middle boxes (or two, where one was stacked upon the other). I lifted the box and moved it out of the way. It felt heavy, though I knew it shouldn't have to. At first, I didn't see what I'd intended to. Just a wall behind the box. But, not to lost or swayed that easily, I put the box back and tried it again. The second time, it worked. I saw a black, rectangular hole shaped something like an open vent. It didn't look like it was big enough for me to fit through; but I knew that didn't matter and jumped through it.

Unfortunately, once I'd jumped through the hole, I found there was a problem. Again, I hadn't specified a location to which I wanted the hole to lead; and it wasn't a recognisable place leading to another predictable, recognisable place that I already had a map of in my mind, as it had been in the beginning of the dream. In the hole, from outside, I'd only seen blackness. And that's all I saw when I jumped into it as well. Suddenly, I was struck by dream blindness. And thoughts started popping into my mind of where I had gone - that I had jumped, through the rabbit hole, for no particular reason, to a webpage on a site that I used to frequent very long ago. I thought about whether or not this made sense. I knew that I should probably clear this darkness up and set a visual dream scene for myself. But alas, it was too late. For suddenly, out of the blackness...

I woke up. Jolted back into my waking body, in my bed, back at home. The darkness had been the bard of doom, the herald of the end. I felt my body profusely sweating for some reason, wrapped up in my bedsheets. With immediate memory and understanding of what had just happened, I only wished I could pop back in; but I have no successful experience with DEILDing whatsoever, so that was not the case. At first, I kept my eyes closed. But as I realised nothing was going to happen, I opened them, did a simple reality check and settled down, focusing on thinking about the dream I'd just had, knowing that I wanted to salvage as much recall from this as I could. After a few minutes or maybe half an hour, my morning alarm went off and I had to be off to get ready for school. So, although I hadn't gotten up to check the clock before that, I presume it hadn't been too long before my forced awakening anyway.

*Hold on. Could this... have possibly been... my mind unconsciously feeding my desire to also eventually fulfill the bonus task of the month for March of 2014 - be abducted by aliens and report what they do to you - without me ever realising it?? Wow. Now there is an idea. And, imagining that I would have had the right amount of dream control and stability to go through with it, what an opportunity missed! And I only just realised it. What a fascinating thing the subconscious mind is.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #189: Nice Throw

I have a false awakening in bed, but there’s something very static about the background and my hands look hyper-realistic. I know that it’s a dream. As I think this, a small statuette appears floating in front of me. I turn it with my hands and it floats serenely in space, unaffected by gravity.

I get out of bed and the scene starts to get dark. There’s a window on the wall to my right that’s usually not there and I decide this’ll be my way out of the house. I pick up a padded foot stool (that looks just like one from my parents’ house) and chuck it at the window. My throw is utterly puny, though, and the stool falls to the floor. The lame attempt kind of embarrasses me.

Instead of fooling with this any further, I phase out of the window into the side yard between our house and the neighbor’s. Everything looks realistic but way too dark. I run out into the street and decide to fly.

I remember the pointing technique I had used in the previous lucid and I employ it again here, pointing into the air and expecting to fly that way. Again it works great and I take to the air. I enjoy some flight for a while but it begins to feel like the dream is fading even more. I rub my hands and things snap back into focus.

I look out to my left and see a fairly vivid industrial cityscape. Bright fire is pouring out of the top of one of the buildings, which looks like some kind of processing facility. I fly toward it to investigate but the dream ends before I make it there.

Very close call on Task of the Year! I'll definitely have to go for this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #188: CL and the Beanstalk

I WILD into a scene filled with fleeting hypnagogic imagery which quickly fades into the void. I start waving my dream-hands in a repetitive motion, waiting for a scene to form. Nothing happens right away, though, so I start licking my fingers for a while to see if that works.

Nothing’s shaping up yet, though, so I try seeing how far I can stick my tongue out. I can feel it extending outward from my mouth seemingly on and on, and after a few moments I can vaguely see it extending away from my face into the distance. Curious how large I can make it, I will the tongue to expand and it balloons out in a huge, rectangular shape as large as a room. After a couple of seconds, I can see that yes, it actually is a room…

Now I’m standing high up in an office building, looking out over a city skyline through enormous windows. It’s late afternoon. I enjoy the sight of the skyline for a moment, rubbing my hands together.

As I’m doing this, a helicopter rises into view from below my line of sight, turns itself directly toward me, and opens fire with dual-mounted miniguns.



The office windows shatter and I feel myself being pelted with glass and bullets. There’s no pain, but each impact feels like a definitive hit. I know that it’s a dream but I can’t stop myself from shying from the window, crouching down, and nearly cowering. I hold my hand out toward the helicopter then swipe it quickly to the right, flinging it away from the building and out of sight.

The wrecked office is filled with random debris now, and I make my way past it to stand at the edge of the now-empty window. I recall Task of the Year (find and plant some magic beans, climb the beanstalk, and defeat the giant at the top.) My immediate goal is to get back to ground level, so I instinctively point to a lower rooftop perhaps 7 or 8 stories down and will myself to float to it. It works and I’m pulled smoothly down.

Now I’m really enthused about this pointing thing, so I point at the street below, once again pulling myself down. I’m filled with confidence after this, so I just start knocking out Task of the Year steps as quickly as I can.

I need bare earth, so I scoop the roadway aside, leaving a bowl-shaped hollow for my seed. I close and then open my hand, expecting the seed to be there. It is! (Looks like a pine nut.) I stuff the seed in the hole, cover it over with dirt and pat it down. A stalk immediately starts growing out of the ground and I jump onto it as it goes by. The stalk’s growing fast and since I hitched a ride so early, the plant’s doing the climbing for me.

I streak past the nearby buildings and head into the clouds. Immediately a shirtless, ape-like giant with a long beard comes loping toward me, about 100 feet away. I’m preparing to do something violent and decisive to make absolutely certain that I nail Task of the Year, but excitement gets the best of me. The scene collapses into a false awakening back in my bedroom.

I need to use the bathroom, so I get out of bed, head in there, and start peeing. My aim is terrible and I keep hitting the seat, the floor, the tank, everything but what I’m aiming at. This really frustrates me and I assume that I must be super tired.

Just then I notice a strange, robotic laundry machine sloshing water onto the floor. Its label indicates that it’s some kind of diaper-washing contraption. Our kids barely use any diapers these days so I wonder why we have it and why it’s here flooding our bathroom.

My 2-year-old son R walks into the room, followed soon after by a sleepy-looking Wife. Her hair is standing up in all kinds of crazy directions, including one nearly two-foot spike that’s going straight up. “Your hair is pretty awesome right now,” I tell her. She giggles and checks herself out in the mirror. We have a good laugh about this until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #186: Michael Scott Vs. the Zombies

The cast of The Office is sitting around in a big room that looks like a warehouse with a random bathroom stall stuck in the middle of it. Michael Scott is attempting to give a rousing speech to cheer everyone up but instead just makes everyone feel really uncomfortable.

“Cheer up, gang,” says Michael, flashing a toothy grin. Everyone slinks down in their seats. Stanley looks back disdainfully. “Everyone, you are about to experience one of the best things about my youth… the 1980s.”

The scene changes into a video game where I’m now playing as Michael Scott from a first-person perspective. I see some cash lying on the seat of a toilet. As I gingerly try to pick up the money, I realize that I can’t take it because my cash is already “full” in this game.

There’s an abrupt shift into the front of a restaurant. An unseen female voice narrates: “In this scenario, Michael must act violent and unstable so he can gather information about <something something>...” I see a zombie shuffling around at the base of a short set of nearby stairs. I vault over the rail and kick him in the face mid-leap. This is great fun. I remember my intent to have a lucid dream, so I decide that I can’t get too into this video game or I might forget. And it finally hits me that I’m dreaming right now.

A huge, balding zombie comes shambling toward me and I punch him in the face. I leave the room and move into another hallway, relaxing my mind until the zombies stop coming toward me and instead just pass harmlessly by without paying me much attention.

I reach a bend in the hall, rub my hands together, and move toward a large, open area. Just then, a female zombie puts a hand on my shoulder and groans. I’m relaxed about this and say, “You,” (I point at her), “are a dream character!” She smiles, her face changing until she looks like my high school English teacher. Then she walks away.

The room I’ve entered is a huge atrium with a glass roof, 5 or 6 stories high. Two young women, maybe college age, are seated at a table handing out some kind of literature. I’m mildly curious what they have to say but I see a nighttime street scene just through the door. I’m having huge trouble remembering my goals so I think it’d be better to get outside.

I get outside, start to fly, and then abruptly have a false awakening back in bed. I’m staring at the alarm clock. Oddly, rather than showing the time, it’s counting down from 9. I have no idea what this means. I hear Wife whimpering in her sleep next to me. She says, “If people look into my brain, they’ll steal my ideasssssss…”

The alarm clock hits 1, goes dark for a moment, and then starts at 9 again. I realize that I’m still dreaming, but it’s just a moment before I wake up for real.

In my journey as an oneironaut, which has been going on for about 3 to 4 weeks now, this is the first lucid dream I've had that I've been able or thought to exert control over. It happened on the night between the 8th and 9th of this February.
This lucid dream was a DILD, as well as a MILD. In the dream, lucidity was triggered by a hand-based reality check. I had just finished up some classes in my school that confused me and was standing outside in a long queue of students whose purpose I didn't understand. The yard outside was similar to the one from my previous school, rather than my current one; but in this entry, I'm focusing on what happened afterwards.
Suddenly and out of nowhere, I decided to look at my hands. They were white, as is the colour of my real hands; but when I counted the fingers, I had trouble with counting five on one hand. At first, I wondered if I'd miscounted; and tried counting up the fingers on my left hand a couple more times. There was no mistake. I had six fingers.
I recalled what this meant. I wasn't near full dream consciousness, so I doubt I remembered the significance of the event and I didn't remembered what I'd intended to do if I achieved dream lucidity this night. But I did think to control my dream as a result of this realisation; and naturally, my first thought was to fly. I found it fairly easy. I ran a few steps down the ground, kicked off it and took off. I soared high and fast above the heads of my dream characters, who now looked to be in my school's P.E. class.
With a bit of a challenge, I lowered to the ground incompletely, without dropping, and then heightened again. I flew over something that was like a tall wall or hedge or mini-mountain. (Since I wasn't at full consciousness, there were still a lot of things I didn't think to question.) I flew to the top of a giant basketball hoop on the other side and sort of stood on it for a moment before taking off again. My schoolmates still see me perform all these feats at this point. Finally, I decided to give flying a rest and try something different.
I lowered to the ground and attempted running at super-fast speed. I wanted to run as fast as I had been able to fly. Alas, I was not so fortunate in this endeavour, as running in a dream seems to often be frustratingly problematic. Once I was grounded, I struggled through a few steps and fell over. There, I saw a dark-skinned man who was a competitive runner and I wanted to pick myself back up and challenge him to a race, at which I confidently planned to annihilate him with my dream control. (I later discovered that this dream character was supposedly the fastest runner in the world, which indicates that he may have been based on Usain Bolt.)
But this time, I failed as terribly as the last. The man, who now had a crowd of supporters with him, mocked me from above. I tried to pick myself back up and race him again. On the starting line, he blatantly stood ahead of me before it was time to start. I got upset but let him do it in the end because I thought that if I was going to win this race, I would do it regardless of the difference of a metre or two. As we began running, I was still behind; but steadily so. Though I still struggled to run, I felt like I was doing it better than before. And we were running at both the same speed – which wasn’t actually saying much. I found myself wondering then how this character could be the fastest runner in the world. But before any official finish line was crossed, he was gone and I’d crossed into a new territory – the actual yard of my current school. By this time, I had been too immersed in the race to remember that it was just a dream. My lucidity was lost and I went on to dream about classmates and a broken water fountain.

Unfortunately this dream was the night before the night before last night, and I'm just now writing it down, so I'm heavily depending on the little keywords I'd written that morning…

I'm in the woods behind my house and I see a little hole in the ground by a tree trunk. I crouch down and look into the hole and I see many snakes of different species inside, some moving slowly. I get very excited. A hibernation den! Now I can visit snakes even in the cold months and I'll have them all to myself! I don't reach in to hold any, though, because I don't know if that would be harmful for them to come out in such cold weather. ((The day before I was reading a reptiles/amphibians book of Indiana and it talked about snake hibernation dens, and I hoped that I could find one. So that's where that came from.))

So I walk away from the den and I find another, much smaller one, where I can only see one or two thick, rough-scaled green snakes, like emerald tree boas, though I don't remember if they had pits. As I crouch there near it, a wet, tiny one comes out, and I realize that it's actually some sort of hatchery/nursery. A big one comes out right after, and I'm afraid to move, because I'm afraid that the bigger snake will attack me since it would want to protect its young if it saw me as a threat ((for the record, in the waking world, I know that that's not how it works with snakes)). I move a little bit, and the bigger snake freezes and draws his head in a little, while the baby retreats back into the den. Hesitantly, I stand up to walk away, and the bigger one also goes back into the den. I am relieved.

At some other point, I'm in the living room and I jump up and bend my elbows so that my hands are near my shoulders, and I flap my hands quickly. This causes me to hover, or difficultly fly a bit. I fly around the living room a bit, but that's all I remember from that scene. I think my grandmother might have been there at some point.

At some other time, I'm walking down the street to get to "the end of town", which were the directions which we had given to someone else. The end of town was apparently barren except for a few people living in poverty, with lots of dirt/mud smeared on the road and sidewalk. My Mom was ranting about how we had told someone to go to "the end of town" but we didn't tell them which end to go to, and now they had gone to this one, and now they won't want to go to the right "end of town". After this, we're walking back and a news man comes to interview me, holding both the microphone and the camera. He asks something that I don't remember, and I hop along while flapping my hands so the hops are big and drawn-out, like I'm on the moon or something. I say something sarcastic to him and refuse to answer his questions seriously.

At some other point, I'm standing in a room with a model wooden ship and a man. Out of habit, I do a reality check, and realize that I'm actually dreaming. Remembering the task of the month, I look at the man and say, "who's my soul mate?" He hesitates for a moment, and, disappointed, I think that he won't answer. Then he looks at me and says, "you should sell all your plates." I'm amused, and I don't ask him further. I walk past him to examine the model ship, reminding myself that Im' lucid. However, next, something happens which I don't quite remember, which is so interesting and engrossing that I forget to remind myself that I'm lucid, and I fall back into a regular dream.

At some other point, I go downstairs in this house to find three rooms: a bedroom with a desk, a living/game room with a couch and a TV, and another room with more games and another bed. The living room/game room are connected with different carpet, but no walls or doors. The first bedroom is closed off with a door. Inside the bedroom I find a snake, rough-scaled, with dark green and blue stripes. He's hanging from a stand that you'd give a parrot to perch on. I pick him up and say, "aww" and "you're such a baby" and the like. However, next, I have to put the snake back because my mom calls down from the stairs and says that she's about to show some people around the house, and if I don't lock every door and window before they get to the basement, then she will proceed to show them around, even though I am naked. I frantically go to lock and close doors and windows, and there are suddenly more doors and rooms than there used to be. I managed to lock nearly all the doors, but there is one room that I don't get to in time, so I have to go close the door and lock it while my parents and their friends are in the room. They all stare at me awkwardly while I go in, naked, to close the door. Later, I've locked every door, and, I thought, every window, but my mom leans in through the top of a window to say that I hadn't locked the upper third of that window, because apparently that window folds open and closed and requires three locks.

At some other point, I'm flying through a jungle in the treetops, flying the same way as before. I see some cool snakes, and I get scared by some creepy bugs, and I'm trying to get over the tops of the trees, and at the very top of the trees I find some dopey, fat caterpillars with yellow underbellies and green(?) tops, and they cheer when I go past them above the trees, and they rejoice, saying something like, "finally! a person who's as pathetic as us! Friend!"

At some other point, I'm standing on the top of a tall building, with another man in front of me. Out of habit, I do a reality check, and, again, realize that I'm lucid. Since the last time was sort of unsatisfactory, I ask again who my soul mate is. The man, the only one in the vicinity, looks at me and says, "that guy" without pointing or otherwise indicating who "that guy" might be. Giving up, I jump off the building and try to fly just by thinking about it, but it isn't working, so I flap my arms (my whole arm, like a bird, not just the hands, as it had been when I wasn't lucid) and go higher and higher, and I try to shape shift into an eagle or something, but it isn't really working, and either I fall back into a regular, non-lucid dream, or I wake up. I can't remember.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #181: Big Band

As I’m leaving a shopping mall, there’s an announcement that the mall is under lockdown because someone has stolen a baby from a stroller. This all seems too strange to me and I become lucid.

I’m in a large, empty room that looks a bit like a warehouse, a bit like a mall entrance. It’s only half lit but I can make out the ceiling maybe fifty feet above me. I remember that I wanted to make the dream as vivid as possible so I slowly rub my hands together, nothing how real they look and feel. The one difference I notice is that they leave visible streaks across my vision when I move them.

I can’t remember any goals beyond vividness, so I raise my hands to the ceiling and say, “I’ll take whatever you have to give me.” Nothing happens, so I add, “Show me something amazing! Anything!” Again I wait, and I start to feel a twinge of nervousness.

“I think we need more light,” I say, and the light comes up a bit. Now I hear music behind me, like something from a band. I turn and see a large open-air exit from the mall with a big band playing on a set of risers near the exit. I make my way over to the band, only partly able to hear the music. The risers go up about 3 levels and there are maybe 20 or 25 band members there. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how they’re organized.

The band members are wearing these cool suits with thick, vertical black and white stripes. “Nice suits,” I say. “I’m wearing one too!” And when I hold out my arms, sure enough I’m dressed like I’m part of the band.

On the top level I spot the only female in the group, a woman with dark, curly hair drawn back in a ponytail. I can’t remember what instrument she plays, but she has a cool vibe and smiles at me in acknowledgement. I float up to her level on the riser and we briefly kiss. Afterward I probe at her temples, forehead, and scalp with my fingers as a sort of vividness-enhancing thing. She wrinkles her nose and squeezes her eyes shut when I do this.

Looking out past the risers I see the ocean. I pick her up and carry her with me, floating toward a strange beach where some huge metallic device has somehow permanently trapped a wave just as it crests. A dozen surfers stand happily atop the wave, gliding back and forth while moving neither forward nor back.

As I reach the edge of the water, the woman from the band shifts uncomfortably. “Do you want to go with me or stay here?” I ask. She says that she wants to “stay here”, so I set her down at the shoreline. I float/swim further out into the water, my feet dragging along as I go. Eventually I start swimming, and the visuals fade from the dream. The sensation of swimming continues for a while, though, before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #180: The Dome of Stars

I have a false awakening in my house where I’m trying to do something as quickly as possible. What is it? Oh right -- I’m trying to get out because I’m having a lucid dream.

I move through the rooms as quickly as I can. The layout is similar, but just different enough to throw me off. I wind up in the garage and there’s a new hallway off of the south wall that wasn’t there before. I follow the hallway into what appears to be a bordello. Five or six women who look like Victorian-era prostitutes are standing or sitting near a set of mirrors. One of the seated women is reading a magazine, a couple of them are applying make-up, and some are just standing around not doing much of anything.

I feel like this is one of those LD scenarios where you’re supposed to be thinking sexy thoughts but the women mostly just seem like they’re relaxing on break. I really don’t feel like bothering them. I start asking them something about why they’re running the bordello in my house, but they start moving around and the scene feels a little confusing. I go ahead and phase out through the wall to clear my head.

Now I’m out on the street. Across the street I see a man standing under the branches of an oak. He looks Hawaiian, heavy-set with a salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. I remember the Task of the Month, and approach him asking, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”

He’s incredibly eager to answer, and a smile spreads across his face. “To make the most of things, <something something>, and…” He grabs one of my hands in both of his and finished triumphantly: “To cook with more cinnamon!”

His enthusiasm is contagious and I joyously shout, “Thank you for that great answer!” I pause for a moment. “But could you repeat that part in the middle?” He doesn’t seem interested in doing this, though, and wanders away.

Task done, now I just feel like exploring. I fly up past the top of the tree, reminding myself that “The world is yours…” I move up past the treetops and look out at the stars. It’s a beautiful night and I take a moment to enjoy the unfamiliar constellations. I notice one set of stars is exactly the same as a set in a different part of the sky. I laugh at my brain taking this “shortcut”. But then I wonder… did it only do this because I expect it to?

I fly up higher and higher until I can see that the sky is curving above me. In fact, there is no limitless sky but rather just a huge dome that I can reach the top of if I just fly high enough.

And I do! When I reach the very top of the dome, I see a small, glowing control panel! There’s a single flashing green button sitting there at the top of this dome of stars. But as I reach for it, I start losing altitude. I tell myself that “this is all mine” but I can’t shake the notion that I’m just not going to be able to reach that button to find out what it does. I reach up and up, trying to reach it, but the dream fades.