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I came across a 2015 post by Sensei about active versus passive control:
https://www.dreamviews.com/dream-con...esson-1-a.html

In there, he makes an analogy about walking to the fridge and how that is a simple learned behavior for us, but challenging to his son who was taking his first steps. In a similar way, confidence and skill to achieve lucid dreaming goals can be attained.

Memory control is a similar idea, but has an obvious flaw: when one is doing something new there is no memory to pull on. Sensei suggests (if I am understanding correctly) to essentially pretend there is a memory of yourself achieving whatever goal that is.

My idea to execute on that is to visualize myself practicing something like Firebending from Avatar: The Last Airbender while meditating normally. This can then serve as the memory needed to achieve actual dream control in a lucid dream.

Thanks Sensei!

The first step to having lucid dreams is to remember your dreams in general (if you can't remember your lucid dreams, what's the point?). It's a common misconception that lucid dreaming will automatically cause you to remember. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Lucid dreams can be easily forgotten, even if the experience was significant and meaningful. This is just the nature of dreaming and how our brains work while we're asleep. We're physiologically wired to forget, regardless of our awareness.

The good news is, there's easy ways to train your mind to start recalling your dreams. Once you start training yourself to recall dreams consistently, it gets easier and more "natural." This is a skill you can develop to override the brain's default tendency to forget, allowing for permanent, effortless recall habits over time.

This guide will teach you different ways (besides just journaling) to remember dreams and experience them presently in vivid detail.
If your goal is lucid dreaming, recall guides should be paired with lucid dreaming method guides. Here's two good ones I recommend:
MILD: https://skyfalldreams.net/guides/skyfalls-mild-guide/
WILD: https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ner...d-guide-94340/


But what if I don't have dreams at all? It's not that I can't remember them...
You'd be surprised what can be forgotten in sleep! Most people who say they have no dreams simply have poor recall. Once recall is developed, they report having dreams!
If you suspect you are a rare case and that you literally don't have dreams at all (nothing to recall), talk to your doctor. Lack of recall is normal, but true lack of dreams is a serious medical concern that this guide can't help with.

How many dreams should I be able to remember?
It's recommended that you get yourself to a point where you can remember 1-3 dreams per night. It doesn't have to be every single night (it's normal to have lapses in recall sometimes), but consistently remembering 1-3 dreams on average gives you 1-3 chances to have lucid dreams on average. The more you can remember, the more opportunities you'll have for lucid dreams.

How long will it take?
It may take days or weeks to start seeing results from your recall training if you have low recall to start with, but once you get the ball rolling, it gets easier.

What can recall help with?
Recall does more than just improve your memory of dreams. Here's a list of other benefits:
1. Makes your dreams more vivid and detailed. Many people notice significant improvements to vividness of dreams after developing better recall. It turns out that their dreams were always highly vivid and detailed—they just couldn't remember those details! Lack of recall is one of the most common causes of non-vivid dreams.
2. Increases your sense of presence in the moment during dreams. Instead of feeling like a memory, you will start to experience dreams more like real time occurrence just like you experience your waking life.
3. Increases your chances of becoming lucid. As your perception of dreams shifts from past memories to present experiences, you'll be primed for higher rates of present-moment awareness (aka lucid dreaming). Even though recall isn't considered a lucid dreaming method, it can greatly enhance your practice.
4. Allows you to notice dream signs that can be used for MILD (a lucid dreaming technique). If you're working with MILD, recall can help you apply this particular lucid dreaming technique with greater effectiveness.
5. Allows you to improve dream control of both lucid and nonlucid dreams through better understanding the way your dreams work, rewriting dreams, and incubating what you want to happen in future dreams.


How to Develop Recall

Recall Upon Waking
The first and biggest thing you can do for recall is to make it a habit to always think about your dreams the moment you wake up. Dreams will be fresh in your memory in the first few minutes (even seconds) upon waking. So before you get up to journal or go to work or school, devote a few minutes to thinking about your dreams in as much detail as possible. You should also make a habit of thinking about your dreams every time you wake up in the night. By training yourself to attempt remembering dreams 100% of the time when you first wake up, you can vastly increase your recall and even encourage lucidity close to these times.

Many people say it helps them to stay in bed laying in the same position they woke up in. This can help tremendously, but is not a requirement if you need to get up and do things. The important thing is that dreams are on your mind. I personally have a strict routine of thinking about dreams first thing when I get up. Though I may brush my teeth while doing it, I remain actively thinking about dreams for the first few minutes. When this is done consistently, you can remember hours worth of dreams without journaling or interfering with morning routines. It is by far one of the easiest hacks for dream recall.

If you only remember a fragment at first, that's okay! Most beginners start with fragments. Try to expand on it. Did anything happen before that? How did it look or feel? Sometimes memories can be recovered by slowly working your way backwards, or reflecting on various different senses, thoughts, and feelings. Approaching your memory from different angles can also help. See what you can dig up, as if you are trying to remember an important childhood memory or a crime scene. You may not instantly remember every detail, but they will slowly unravel the more you think about it. Writing it out can help, which is where journaling comes in.

Even if you don't remember anything at all, just the practice and intent of doing this every time you wake up eventually encourages your mind to start paying attention to dreams and, consequently, to actually start remembering them. Intent to remember itself is very powerful, and when intent is backed by consistent action, it's strengthened.

Dream Journaling
Dream journaling is a popular method of recall and supports the process of thinking about your dreams and unraveling the details. Best of all, it allows you to record dreams for later. Anything that you don't want to forget should be journaled. Journaling should be done after you wake up for the same reasons. You should first think about your dreams upon waking, then write them down, or think about them and write at the same time.

You can journal with any medium (pen and paper or your phone, it doesn't matter). The crucial part is that you think about your dreams and remember as much as you can. The physical way you go about this task doesn't matter as much. This is a mental practice.

It's recommended that you write out as much detail as you can remember, but if you can't do that in the moment, just writing down keywords is a powerful way to retain dream memories. Instead of writing a fully detailed entry, you can put down key words and phrases like 'ran outside, slayed dragon, ate peanutbutter' and then leave it at that or flesh out the details later. This can be helpful with WBTB (wake back to bed) or when you don't have time to dream journal right away.

Intention to Remember
As mentioned above, intention can be a powerful tool for recall. Before going to sleep, tell yourself that you'll remember your dreams upon waking. Imagine remembering your dreams the previous night, and what it may be like to remember them the following night. Walk yourself through the process of remembering dreams in your mind, and remind yourself that you'll remember to go through your dreams immediately upon waking up. Hype yourself up with the possibility that you might have a really good dream to recall.
Setting intention to remember your dreams can be done in the same way you set intention to get up early in the morning or do something like a household chore during the day.

Daytime Dream Recall
For even greater boosts to your recall practice, you can think about your dreams at any time of day (in addition to morning and nighttime wake-ups). Sometimes you can remember details of a dream in the middle of the afternoon. This is a great way to develop better recall! The more you remember to think about your dreams, the better. You can even combine this with lucid dreaming day practice such as ADA, SAT, or daytime MILD (works the same as regular MILD).

Daytime Waking Recall
If you still have trouble remembering any dreams whatsoever, it can help to develop better memory of your every day life. What did you have for breakfast? What were you doing ten minutes ago? Ask yourself about little things like this throughout you day to develop better recall habits that will carry over into your dreams. If you just wake up but can't remember any dreams at all even after a few minutes of trying, think back to what your last thoughts were before falling asleep. Keep walking yourself backwards until you remember something, anything at all.

Note: For convenience, you can combine this with daytime lucid dreaming awareness practice by asking yourself “Am I awake or in a dream currently?” whenever you do this. This is not required, but can cause lucid dreams if you decide to add it.

WBTB + Recall
WBTB stands for Wake Back to Bed and is another way to enhance your recall because it gives you more opportunities to remember dreams upon waking. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night (whether naturally or with alarms), you can practice thinking about your dreams as described above. This provides more chances to remember dreams, and can be done to capture early night dreams.

Normally the later night dreams are easier to remember simply because they are more recent from the moment you woke up, but by using WBTB, you can more easily recall early night dreams. This can also be combined with MILD or WILD lucid dreaming techniques.

In-dream Recall
Last but not least, recall can be done while still inside of your dreams. I recommend in-dream recall for people who already have good recall, or more frequent lucid dreamers. Although it's a misconception that lucidity will automatically be remembered, you can train yourself to make "notes" in your dreams (even dream journaling in your dreams) that can help cause meaningful activities to trigger the 'oh, I want to remember this later' intention. I've found that this works for both lucid and nonlucid dreams.

Here's some things you can do:
- Develop the habit of noting "I want to remember this when I wake up." any time something meaningful happens.
- Make a habit to journal (or think about) dreams at the end of each dream while you're still inside of it. Doing this consistently can be very powerful.
- Get into the habit of asking yourself what you were doing a few hours ago, to aid in retaining memories of previous dreams.
- Before you wake up, take a few minutes to think about the dream while still asleep even if the dream has ended (when and if you experience limbo states).


Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Should I write down nightmares?
A: That's up to you. If you don't want to, you don't need to. I personally (usually) skip writing down nightmares. Another way to handle this is to rewrite nightmares in a way you would prefer them to happen, which can cause positive changes to your future dreams.

Q: Can I rewrite my dreams?
A: Yes! This is handy if you had a dream you didn't like. You can rewrite it to incubate different results for next time.

Q: Can drugs or medications prevent dreaming?
A: Alcohol and THC are known to cause recall issues. There may be other medications that can also affect dreams and recall.

Q: If lucid dreams can be forgotten, how do I know whether I've had lucid dreams before?
A: You could already have had lucid dreams before without knowing it. There is no way to know, but you can start improving your recall to remember future lucid dreams so this will no longer happen.

Q: But how do you know that you forgot your lucid dreams?
A: Personally I notice it when recall chaining between dreams. For example:
Dream #1 is a lucid dream at the beginning of the night.
In Dream #2, I remember Dream #1.
In Dream #3, I no longer remember Dream #1, but can remember remembering it in Dream #2.
Thus a lucid dream is remembered indirectly as a memory of a memory, but otherwise forgotten.
I've also done a lot of other experiments to test out how dream recall works in different scenarios.

4th September 2021

Fragment:

I'm with my family and my god mother's family. We're in some kind of hall, but it looks like a bigger version of my childhood bedroom, at least in layout. It also feels partly church-like. There's an on-going conversation about money, savings and debts. It's established that our family has less savings but also potentially much fewer debts to pay.

Then some discussion just between me and my siblings. We head outside and it's sunny, low angle, maybe misty.

(maybe earlier in the dream, disjointed) Some bit about needing the deuterium power cell to be replaced for the auxiliary power system of a flats building, maybe where aunt B lives. The deuterium radioisotope generators is in a small outbuilding that's fallen into disrepair, in the shadow of the apartment building. There's a presumably lead-lined window that gives a peek inside. There's a cyan-blue glow inside. I worry on some level about being exposed to radiation.

(disjointed, part of a living dream memory of sorts) I'm at a place like a mall or the cinema in a mall, reminds me of the one near home. Black or very dark walls? Dark flooring. There's something about WoW. (the false memory feels like it's part of my teen years but being relived)

Some other bit later on. A church place again? There's a coffin I think. Something about a corpse is important. I fight with someone, a frail-looking but kind of mad (insane) person?

---

Notes:

- Even almost twenty days after having first written this dream, my visual recall was notably better than I was expecting.

- In the dream and on initial recall I didn't think of it, but the cyan-blue glow chamber with the radioisotope cell somehow now reminds me of that dream I had with the lizard and the blue energy core. Very similar glow. Additionally, this small chamber was notably much darker than it should have been.

- Most of the dream involved warm colours apart from that glow.

comment non-lucid (shortened) lucid

I was sitting at a table with a guy I liked and I asked him something (in Czech). I realized that I was in an international group and that he wouldn't understand me, but that if it was a dream he would understand me. He asks me some follow-up question, which makes it unclear if he didn't understand or misheard. I answer it in English. He answers in Slovak, which satisfies me - it makes sense that he understood my Czech. I continue talking to him in a mix of Czech and English.

I used to have some language-induced LDs. These days, similar situations usually end as only semi-lucid (I know that people in my dreams understand everything). This was almost there…

In another dream, I'm running errands in Prague, walking down a street in the centre, I want to catch a tram. I think about the previous dream - I set an intention for the next night so I don't make the same mistake again. Anyway, it's a pity that I haven't managed to fall asleep again after that dream, otherwise, I would have had a good chance...
...How do I know this isn't a dream? It doesn't seem likely to me that it is. But thinking about it, I don't really have any reason to be here... RC confirms. Nice.

I'm in the mood for a different experience today than yesterday. I recall Sageous's thread and the memory exercise. I know I'm not in Prague, and I know I'm sleeping. I recall my birth year. Then the exact date of birth. Easy. Highly lucid, I think, ready for anything (not as much as I thought at the time, but it wasn't bad).
Goals? TotY, TotM, and teleportation training. I tell myself that TotM - asking a DC which part of my subconscious they represent - is easy and a good place to start.

I turn the corner and approach a woman. I excuse myself and ask her, "Which part of my subconscious do you represent?"
She looks confused and scared and doesn't know what to answer. She tries to talk her way out of it, so I let her go.

The city around here isn't much like Prague anymore. It has a vibe somewhere between the multicultural neighborhoods of Western European cities and third-world countries. There are more women around with headscarves. I don't want to ask them in case I scare them. I also notice there are a lot fewer people around than there were at the beginning. I want to go back to the center.

I tell myself that an experienced LDer would fly, but I still can't fly. Just taking off probably won't work, it's never worked for me. I decide to try high jumping.
1st jump - I jump higher than I would in reality and the man who passes me looks at me in surprise.
I bounce again, and I'm even higher, about 2-3m, which still isn't enough, but gravity already has a weird feel.
I bounce once more, this time bending my legs a lot to bounce, and gravity is already completely broken, like it was in the Defying Gravity dream. I do a half backflip and float in the middle of nothingness, seeing only solid grey above me. As I realize there's no reason for me to land backwards on my hands, I flip forward again and the street reappears in my field of vision. I use swimming motions to orient myself and dive into the air in front of me. I'm flying!
Occasionally, I'll add a swimming stroke, but my clothes restrict my full range of motion. I'm losing altitude a little, but very slowly. I started at roughly streetlamp level and flew about 200m before I landed on the ground again. Cool!

I want to give the TotM a second try. There's a small market in a side alley. I approach a group of people, same question as before. They look confused and I notice they're really young, young teenagers. So I explain it to them in more detail.
"There's a theory," I say, "that all the people in the dreamworld, except for me..." a girl interrupts me: "Why except you?", but someone shushes her.
"All the people in the dreamworld, except me," I repeat, and continue, "represent a tiny part of my subconscious. And I have an assignment that my mother gave me" (this seems like an ok lie) "to ask some people what part of my subconscious they represent. So what part do you represent?"
The children seem attentive and understanding. One boy starts to say something but stops after two words and it doesn't make sense. Someone says they don't know. Someone else says something evasive. So I thank them and say ok. It doesn't get any better than that. Done.

Teleportation. There are lots of doors and lots of walls around, lots of opportunities for different techniques. There's even a box that has doors on 4 sides! But I want to go somewhere farther.
My lucidity has gone downhill from here. I want to fly more, but I'm carrying strange silver plates. I want to tie them to my waist with a towel so I can fly, and a woman is helping me, but it's not really holding. Then I think about leaving them in this locked chest I have with me, but I find it's full of silver coins with wolf images on them.
A merchant shows up and offers to trade me silver for gold so I can have a smaller volume of stuff. He's got these dodgy coins, pale greenish-yellow, don't look like high purity. He wants to know if my Witcher coins are genuine, and he wants me to prove myself to him with a Witcher pen. I remember that I lost the pen in the previous dream. The deal is off.
I wake up.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid FA / AP


I am in a small dark room, white walls, old furniture. There is a table and two chairs and Riverstone is sitting behind the table, against the wall, with his head pending down and acting bizarre. I am lucid and try to figure if he is real or a shady DC. I say something but he is unresponsive. I tell him I know he is not real, so I am going to play with him a little bit. He then reacts, but I still can tell he is not really Riverstone and I actually feel he is becoming threatening to me. So I shrink him to the size of a bug and pick him from the floor. Now he is putting on a fight. I put him on the table and tell him it will be fine, I'll bring him back to normal size, but as I do it, he turns into a black snake and I stop resizing him, because I don't wanna face a giant black snake.
I turn away to the door and just leave. At the next room I see my dog Hachi, but also Bernardo and some other stranger dog. Hachi is happy to see me, but then the other two start fighting in the background and instead of him defending Bernardo, he joins in attacking him. I scream in horror, but then tell myself it is just a nightmare and turn away. I plunge into the wall, I wander through darkness for a while and then come out at another dark room, very much the style of the previous two. I hear noise outside the door and open it. Looks like a cprridor of some vintage looking hostel. Some kid from another room to my left is also peaking out, sleepy. Tells me something as if I am supposed to know what he is talking about. I go to the lobby and from there goes a stairway to a living room in the basement, which is full of youngsters having fun, just like som hostel I stayed in Japan once. I am not interested, so I choose to go out to the street. There is a street market, which reminds me somewhere I have been in Germany. I recognize the memory, love reliving the details. Then hear some guys talking about getting laid and whose lady from the hostel tourists they are going to bang. They spot me and start acting menacing, like they are considering to rape me, so I try to get away from them by climbing a rope that is hanging with clothes from the top of a passageway over the street, and I run up a hill. End up in another strange house, that looks abandoned, almost like a windmill, but it is inhabited by 3 girls. One looks like Natalie Portman. They are nice and invite me in. They are having like a slumber party, all lounging over a bed and sharing chocolates while talking about this and that. They offer me chocolate, I say no and they find strange. So then I go on and on explaining my aversion to choclate since I was little.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid FA / AP

Seeing aerial views along a road in the eastern part of Lisbon in the 90s. Seeing the start of the construction of the Expo'98 and other upgrading construction work in some the neighboring areas. I feel nostalgic and amazed and then realize I am not actually seeing this on tv but dreaming and recalling. I am amazed how my mind has stored in detail the images of the roads and landscape as they were before all the changes and modernization. I feel a wish to go back to that time when things were simpler and then tell myself "shut up, it wasn't that good and you'd miss lots of nowadays improvements", but the nostalgia was still strong.

Cauliflower Spaceship
I'm far away in space and in the far future. I'm on a massive spaceship that was damaged from the inside, by a battle I think, I can't recall. I'm explaining to the crew that a chemical reaction near the engines created oxygen that was leaking to the fuel line, making us go way faster than we should. We were way off course, doomed to be lost in space as our ship was damaged.

Suddenly our ship is destroyed. We have spacesuits on and float through space uncontrollably. I see an alien ship, it looks like a cauliflower. The front of it splits into 6 triangular pieces that open up to reveal a massive swirling portal inside the ship. We fall straight into the portal and find ourselves falling to an alien planet. Somehow we land safely. We are in an alien city that looks to be very advanced technologically. On the side of the road there's a booth that gives you a shower and new clothes instantly. I try it out and in a flash, my skin is dripping wet and I have a brand new suit on that's still warm like it was just ironed out. There's another smaller machine that creates coffee from some sort of recycling. It looks bad and smells like poop, which makes throw up before I even taste it. Dream ends.

Memory-erasing hostile aliens
I'm with army friends next to a big lake that is unfamiliar. This location doesn't look like Finland. There is a mountain range behind us that the other soldiers turned to sand with some bizarre weapon. Then the dream gets confusing, because we encounter aliens that eat memories. I can only recall quick moments of action. We were driving in jeeps, most likely leaving the lake. Another moment there is a towering alien with no facial features, like a silhouette, standing in front of us. We start firing at it, but my memory cuts there. I recall the alien firing a green plasma orb.

Suddenly I'm standing on the road leading to my childhood home. The gaps in my memory terrify me. The aliens are using my worst fear against me. The streets are empty. I run to the house and turn on the TV. The news make no mention of the aliens. No one else can remember them, even though they could be everywhere. My brother is in the house and sees my worried look, asking what's going on. The fear wakes me up and persists even while awake. Takes a moment for me to realize that it's safe now.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening


Somewhere with family members and a few acquaintances. My uncle Zé is there, still living. Zilla is also present. I am trying on a dress she absolutely loves. It's a tight, red polka dots, no shoulders dress. People gasp seeing me in it. She asks where I bought it. I think C&A but we check the label with and it says some other brand. Anyway, she is sad she missed the chance to have one just like it.
We walk to some shops with dresses on their windows. She points to a few dresses, asks my opinion, I dislike all. She gives up, we part ways and she heads to her car.
Meanwhile, I spot Matos, who just saw me and heads towards me. He looks super thrilled for seeing me, tells me so and invites me for a coffee. I hesitate. He asks if I'm married. I say no, but that I have a commitment. He argues we left something in mid-air in our past, recalls our deep connection and asks if we could restart from where it was left as he never stopped thinking of me. I recall our teenage love with sweetness. But I am through with it.
I telĺ him my car is in the opposite direction he is heading. Suggest him we should treasure the memories we have but move on with our lives. He insists it was unfair, that we shouldn't have lost touch, that our connection is one in a lifetime. I tell him he was special alright, but that at best he is maybe the 3rd option on my backup list. Not even true, he is no longer on the list. He is heartbroken. I feel sorry but just wanna go away and say goodbye to him.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

Going through an office, like a school or library administration, until someone detects I am not a worker there. But I am trying to go across and find the exit or a passage or access to some place and I say I am just leaving. (This is a recurrent dream).

Then with mom at what seems like a museum and we are caught in the middle of people marching or parading. I see a giant snake gliding on the floor between them. For some reason we start following them while singing along Bohemian Rhapsody. Then we continue our path on the street. It's already dark and we need to be careful as by the side of the road, there are lots of potholes with lava. I see someone falling into one but doesn't die. Instead, he gets his legs covered in lava as if it is jam or something sticky.

Surprised to find that my house has a basement and lots of storage space and my dad saying "I told you, you would forget about all the rooms you have in such a big house". Except that no, it is not my house but a house I visited when looking for a place to buy. We had loved this house but the price was so high we didn't even argue with the salesperson, we just left. Also, the house is in the city, why did we even check it out? As we leave, I notice my mom looks much younger and thinner, must be about my current age.

Then I visit my uncles in Amadora, at their first house that I can only remember in dreams, but it looks different. The streets are modernized. They used to be just empty land and now there is a brick pavement all around with nice parking lots. It's like I am accessing memories and rearranging and changing them.

Not dream: I woke up earlier than usual, woken up by our friend staying over and remember dreaming something, but in no detail, and soon fell asleep again. Woke up at the normal time and stayed in bed for 45 minutes, seeing whether I'd sleep more and dream again or not. I didn't but remembered some dream fragments and got up. I knotted two of my fingers as I've seen a friend do, to remember the fragments and my intention as I go through doorways in the house, as I first go downstairs to make tea and then come back up to write my fragments as follow:

---

Fragment 1 (non-lucid):
I was playing a special player vs player mode in a game I'd been playing recently in waking life, where I'd throw bombs at other players and vice versa, with the objective of making each other fall off the platforms until only one of us was left. What was different from the real game was that I was able to use my character's swords as well in this game mode.

Fragment 2 (non-lucid):
I remember talking to old friends and they were inviting me over to their estate across the river; in the dream I had a memory of what the estate was like, but I felt like something was off, as I also didn't remember this estate actually being so big. How could I remember and not remember at the same time? The "memory" was vivid, so I think that in the dream it's more like I was actually at the estate and that's what made me question it a bit.

---

Notes:

• In waking life, there is a phenomenon that when you go through a doorway, your mind forgets current thoughts and changes how it thinks. I think I remember reading that it is believed this had to do with contextual adaptation, before humans made so many artificial thresholds themselves, such as going from the tundra to the plains and to the desert and so on. Interestingly in dreams, doorways and thresholds in general can have very literal scene changes beyond them. For me, anyway, they do.
• Keeping fingers knotted like this causes a good deal of pain, especially since my joints are hypermobile, but focusing on this lets me focus on the intention I set when I started doing it, even when I go through thresholds, as I've observed my friend do. I don't know the mechanic behind this, but it just seems to work.
• The friends from my second fragment are like extended family, but I rarely see them anymore, and in fact, in waking life it is impossible for me to casually see or hear about them, because I no longer live in the same country, so in my dream I was back in my native country, and should have realised this to be unusual.

I find myself in a room full of DCs and suddenly awareness increases to lucidity. I recall my thoughts from the previous night to try to score more points from the competition. There's a particularly distracting DC in front of me and I weight in the options of going for dream control vs kissing. I decide to go for the latter, explaining to myself I can do dream control a bit later. There are around 8 DCs surrounding us and I begin to feel uncomfortable.

Not sure what happens, whether a dream end or possibly loss of lucidity. It seems like a little black out but I return to pretty much the same scene, aware again. End of memory. Awake. Back to sleep.

Another dream episode where I become lucid again, different indoors place, I don't look around too much. Once again a lone DC catches my attention, though this time not as distracting. I have the feeling my memory of the previous dreams is becoming blurred as I didn't write anything down.

I take time to focus on the DC and save the memory of the previous and current dreams to this moment. I raise my fingers to count three lucid moments for the night.The dream ends sometime soon and I do a brief mental review prior to going back to sleep.

I am traveling in a foreign country, driving a car down a dirt road—although there’s a bit of a traffic jam at the moment, and nobody is actually moving except the pedestrians, who walk between the cars and on the side of the road. Two women wearing some kind of sari-like traditional dress walk past. I think about giving them a lift—something I wouldn’t ordinarily consider doing, but they seem particularly trustworthy somehow.

At some point, I suddenly find that the car is full of people, and I’m in the backseat. The two people in the front seats are wearing police uniforms, and two or three other people are standing between the rows of seats. I ask a man in a white business-type shirt standing to my left if this is a police chase, and he confirms that it is. I have heard about this—of officers requisitioning vehicles so they can go after somebody who would otherwise escape them. I suppose that’s OK—not that I get any choice in the matter.

The next thing I remember is walking through a public building, talking with the same man. He’s asking me questions. One is, essentially, whether I can take any time off work. I reply that I can’t. I’m working remotely even now, on this trip. He is concerned that I’m not recovering from something, which he seems to feel is my fault, and wants me to undergo a scan of some kind—he’s holding the equipment now, beside a machine there. This is a little exasperating, as I’m already pretty sure this has to do with some kind of control issue, which isn't exactly news. But what’s more troubling is the fact that he’s mentioning things that happened since the car chase, and I don’t remember anything between now and then. I try to determine how big of a memory gap I’m dealing with. Very shortly afterwards, I conclude that this is not something it’s possible to do without knowing what happened during that time. And at that point, I wake up.

It’s an hour or so after that—after recording the dream and after listening to people being typically noisy atypically early downstairs—that my cell phone rings. Or vibrates, rather, since that’s the setting I keep it on. I’m annoyed since I was almost asleep, and this is such a good opportunity for having a lucid dream. If I ignore it and don’t move, it’ll stop soon enough. But it doesn’t stop after the normal number of rings, and so I finally give up on the dream and get up to shut it off. And that’s when I realize—this is a dream.

This is the part where I figure out what to do, now that I have this opportunity. And right now, what I want to do is go back to the setting of the last dream and figure out what was going on there. I head over to the window and step onto the windowsill, disregarding the glass pane, which obligingly acts as though it didn’t exist.

It is dark out, but the setting I see before me has nothing else in common with what I’d ordinarily see out my window. For one thing, it’s a long way down—the ledge where I’m perched isn’t as high as an airplane would fly, perhaps, but it can’t be that much closer to the earth. The landscape spread out before me is also unfamiliar, and remarkably strange. The ground is uniformly flat, with nothing but houses and trees as far as the eye can see. But every so often, there are tall, thin spires, each set of them closely grouped, apparently made of rock— like giant needles stuck into the earth. Their tips are about level with where I am—in other words, incredibly high—and they’re so disproportionate to the rest of the landscape that they look unnatural.

Looks like I’ll be flying, then. But first—I will it to become daytime and wait for a little while. Nothing happens. Well, that was probably a little unrealistic, but it was worth a try. Anyway, I can see just fine, even with no discernible source of light: everything below me and in the distance is clear and crisply outlined. But seen with night-vision, it’s all dark blue, which will make it less interesting to fly over. (Later on, after waking up, I’ll recall that I intentionally enabled myself to see in the dark in a lucid dream a couple months ago—could it be that it was a lasting modification? That would be interesting.)

I ready myself and launch outwards, extending a set of muscles I only have in dreams, when I choose to: wings. It’s a smooth glide for the most part. There isn’t much in the way of wind up here—as empty and still and silent as it is on the ground far below. Trees, houses, more trees, more houses, and the nearest set of spires, coming ever closer. It’s an odd feeling, being up here in this lonely place, poised and sharply aware and secure somehow.

The next part is difficult to remember—I’m not exactly sure how I managed to find my way back to the building from the first dream, but it seemed to involve flying in a pattern around the spires—a little like dialing the combination of a lock, a little like grabbing the fabric of dream-space and twisting it in exactly the right way. But one way or another, I'm there. The building was full of people before, but now it is dark and empty. And a woman with brown skin and dark hair is standing beside me there—she will take me to the man I want to speak to.

And that’s the point where it would be best to end this account, I think….

(29.1.18)

Last night
bed 10:15 pm
GPC 3 am
WBTB 4am - 4:55 am
GM - 4:55 am
Estimated length 40 min

I decided not to do any TOTMs this time. But I had the phone and glasses TOTM as a backup plan.

1. Ophelia
I think I answered my mobil, and picture of young ophelia, sleeping and smiling showed up. And one more image of her. We spoke a bit, but both of us hard time coming up with the right words. (ok yeah, I was thinking about this when falling asleep for a WILD)

2. Jump-floating
I was jumping up fast and just as I was about to start falling down, I continued up, hovering. Was pretty cool.

3. Waking life memory
I wanted to see if I can recall my full name, where my sleeping body is, and which city I live in. And I was able to do that easily. I recited it a couple of times, which helped me keep my awareness longer. Made me feel good that I can do it.

Next time, I want to recall more.
Where I grew up
School
Work
Friends names
DV!

4. Transitions
I started to try and feel a side by side rocking motion, and also from feet to head, as soon as I started to WILD. I knew when that happens, I will know I'm dreaming. It happened exactly like that, and then at least once more during a transition in the middle of the event.

I didn't have very good vision. At one point, I only saw from my right eye. As if there was a door closed over my left one. I briefly wondered how I can fix it, but wasn't bothered enough to dwell on it.

I was also disappointed at some point, that nothing cool happened, like the smoke monsters in my last one. But I was happy about the WL memory thing.

I don't recall any sex this time 0_0

Ritual: WTB around 2am. Drank a lot of wine last night, so woke up many times to rehydrate. Just before dawn I felt the slightly anxious insomnia that often helps me get lucid, so I decided to confirm my intention with a little piracetam. For years I've been trying to come up with a good dream mantra/affirmation but never found one that stuck. Since I got lucid in a recent dream from seing the word "awaken" I decided to start with that. I wanted it to be longer and have good rhythm, so I tried "Awaken into (seeing) dream," where the word in parenthesis could be varied with any other two-syllable verb with the emphasis on the first syllable: seeing, hearing, feeling, being, dreaming, etc. I liked the versatility and hoped the variations would help keep my mind active. It seems this mantra was actually successful because it was still going through my mind well after the dream had started, although, curiously, the words had changed (see below).

WILD, "No Snow for Sledding": The transition was very smooth, and I think the mantra actually served as a good anchor this time. At one point I was inspired to see if I could move my dream limbs, and felt that familiar ambiguity about whether it was dream movement or real movement. I was 65% sure it was dream, so I kept at it until I gently 'flumpfed' in a loose heap right off the bottom of the bed, and then I knew for certain. This dream version of my bedroom was remarkably accurate to WL.

I was crawling at first, and from that low perspective had a good view of my two cats. They looked a little different—shorter hair I think—but I could still tell them apart. Dream logic made me wonder if I could somehow better communicate with my anxious cat in a dream. I crawled over to her and put my hands on her head, reaching toward her with gentle thoughts and telling her that she didn't need to be so anxious. It didn't work: she bit my hand! After that she went into the hallway where I was surprised to see our older cat chase her, an inversion of their usual relationship. I moved toward them and noticed a third animal, a remarkably lifelike grey squirrel—even more vividly rendered than the two cats. [Source: I had recently remarked to my husband how odd it was that I had never seen any squirrels near our house here, but he said that he had. Then just two days ago I glimpsed a grey squirrel outside.]

I thought I had better remove the squirrel from the house, so I picked it up by the scruff of the neck—it was so realistic I thought I had better handle it carefully lest I get bitten again. I peered down to it, wondering if it might have anything to say (this being a dream and all), but no, it just twitched its nose like a regular squirrel. So I opened the window on my side of the bed, the place where in WL I toss out the miscellaneous bugs that stray into the house, and tossed it out.

Around this point I noticed that my mantra was still going through my head, though slightly changed from what it had been as I fell asleep. It had taken the form: "Awaken, dreamer, I am dream." It occurred to me that once I was already lucid, the word "awaken" was no longer useful, and in fact might be detrimental. I thought about how the meaning of the word depended on its context: from non-lucid sleep one can "awaken" into lucidity, but from a state of lucidity, to "awaken" is to wake up. With the precarious thought of waking I felt the dream begin to destabilized, and hastily altered the mantra to: "Dream on, dreamer, I am dream." I managed to restabilize, and with the natural musicality of dream found myself adding a bit of melody to the words.

After this my thoughts turned to more practical ends. Wasn't there a task I wanted to do? Right, the sled ride. I thought over the details. I would need to sled down from the top of a snowy mountain and then through a crack in the earth into... who knows? Finding out would be the fun part. It was snowy outside, like it is in WL, so I thought that would make a good start. I just needed to go outside and find a sled and a mountain.

I opened the window again to fly out, but now there was a pane of what felt like transparent plastic covering the opening. I was annoyed because even in WL this is one of the few windows in the house that has no screen, so there should not be anything barring my passing. I decided to shatter the barrier with my mind, concentrated, and... nothing happened. Disappointed that I could not resolve this more stylishly, I manually peeled aside the flexible plastic panel and slipped out onto the lower roof. (This part was not quite accurate to WL: although there is a sloping side of another roof to the left, there is no level area just below the window where one could stand.)

I willed myself to fly, but nothing happened initially. I kept focusing until I began to float up and across the yard. There were a lot of random pavilions scattered below, and I reminded myself to be observant so I would remember the details later. I flew over to the roof of a small outbuilding—the environment no longer bore any resemblance to WL—where I found two sleds. One was child-sized, the other larger, and I noticed approvingly that they were the old fashioned kind on runners, much easier to control than round saucer sleds.

I picked up the larger sled and looked it over. The details were wonderfully vivid: it had a painted metal superstructure consisting of thin round bars painted white, and flat wide bars painted green. These encircled a small rectangular seat of heavily aged and distressed wood. I noticed an odd detail in the very center of the sled, a transparent glass sphere about four inches in diameter, half full of water. I peered closer, wondering if it was some sort of gyroscope, and saw words printed on the sphere: "FAST WATER." I decided that this was a device for boosting speed, and that I would name my new sled "Fastwater." I felt very pleased with it.

Sled in hand, next I needed a mountain. I resumed floating through the air and scanning for suitable topography. I soon found myself approaching a steep hillock, but since it was at most a couple dozen feet high, I didn't think it qualified as a "mountain." After that was a second, taller hillock, but I rejected that one too on the same grounds. Then in the distance I saw a much taller hill with a massive castle on top of it. I had the impression that it was a German castle called "Schwanzstein," though even in the dream I recalled the meaning of schwanz (which, in common with many Americans, I learned long ago from the Mel Brooks film Space Balls). That seemed like a peculiar yet somehow familiar name for a castle, and I wondered why it came to mind. [Source: German castles have come up in conversation twice in the last few days, both the one at Wernigerode and another whose name I couldn't remember. I just asked my husband and he reminded me it was "Neuschwanstein." So there you have it. Sorry Freudians, you can go back home now.]

I figured that the type of hill on which one was likely to find a German castle could qualify as a small mountain, and decided that this would be a good spot to sled down from. I floated closer, noting a number of stiff and oddly sepia-hued guards standing around the courtyards, as though peopling an old postcard. I noticed a perfect straight chute for sledding that ran down from the top of the mountain, so that's where I landed. Everything was in place... except... there was no snow anymore. Could I just sled down anyway, I wondered? No, I distinctly recalled that the task specified a snowy mountain. I peered around, hoping I could at least spot a few patches of snow and call it even. But the grass was as brown as the guards—there was a hint of sepia about the whole place, like a movie scene shot through a filter—and no snow was visible anywhere.

I sat down with my sled, willing it to snow. I concentrated my expectations, imagining how the first tiny flakes would move erratically through the air. Once again the distinction between imagination and experience—which seems so improbable in the dream state—was reconfirmed, because even though I could clearly see the type of snow I envisioned in my mind's eye, the dream air remained stubbornly free of flakes. This TOTM has a lot of moving parts, I thought. It's as hard as a TOTY! A moment later I woke up and was amused to recognize my error; in waking life I would not have misremembered the category of the task, since the TOTYs are linked by a common theme.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 8:30am after spontaneous DILD.

In the course of an NLD, I was changing clothes in my bedroom when I spontaneously realized I was dreaming. I decided I shouldn't waste any more time fussing with clothes and instead get to work on the next task I had prioritized: the Fairy Circle TOTY. Glancing at myself in the mirror, still partially undressed, I headed outside.

I wondered if the dream would let me pass through the sliding door to the patio without obstruction, but instead I found myself exerting what almost felt like a realistic level of force to open it. Once outside, I didn't want to get bogged down looking for a fairy circle, so I primed my expectations. The fairy circle, it was right over here... I've seen it before. I headed right and found a nice patch of soil like a garden plot. Just as I had "expected," I saw tiny plants like seedlings growing in a distinct circular ring about five feet in diameter. At first I didn't see any mushrooms, so I reminded myself: And there were mushrooms. Looking closer, I now observed a few small mushrooms interspersed among the plants. I also saw a few smooth, bulbous growths that reminded me of the "stone plants" that had fascinated me when I was a kid. I had forgotten those even existed!

Now that the circle was adequately established, I needed to summon fairies. I knelt down and focused on the center of the ring, where the soil was bare. I noticed faint movement in a spot slightly off-center, and then the loose earth began to fall inward, as though a hole were forming beneath it. I continued to concentrate on the summoning, and then an odd formation slowly rose out of the earth until it stood about two feet high. It resembled a candelabra with at least two tiers of arms in all four directions, except instead of candles, it held small figures that I presumed were the fairies. I reached out and grabbed the one from the very top of the arrangement. It was about eight inches tall and stiff like a statuette.

I looked closely at the small figure in my hand. She was dark-skinned with shoulder-length black hair, wearing a crimson dress with a dark green cape on her back. Her hat was the same crimson as her dress, but in form it resembled a Santa hat, with a white fuzzy brim and a white pompom at the end of the conical tip that draped behind her. Attached to the toes of her green shoes were round bells, both silver and green. I thought the overall impression was really cheesy, not at all how I would have preferred to imagine a fairy! There was one more incongruous detail: her face was contorted with an expression of unmistakable anger.

I was tempted to ask her name, but remembered how pointless and distracting this line of questioning can become, so I should get straight to my real question: "What is your secret?"

Her response was both unexpected and chilling: "It is evil." She sounded as furious as she looked.

"What is?" I asked, utterly perplexed.

I can't recall her initial response, but it did not resolve my confusion. I decided to be more specific: "When you said, 'It is evil,' what did you mean by 'it'?"

She said a few more things that I don't recall, and then a line that struck me clearly: "The evil of a controlled substance is the substance."

This was even more confusing. I hardly ever use controlled substances, at least not illegal ones, so I didn't understand how this could be relevant. Moreover, I disagreed with her stated position: in my view, the main evil of a controlled substance is the social strictures that punish people for possessing or using it.

"Why did you bury amphetamines?" the fairy pressed.

What happened next was the clearest case of false memory that I've experienced to date. With what felt like a flash of insight, I suddenly realized the probable reason she was so angry. I "remembered" something about my fairy circle—something that I'm pretty sure had not come up in the dream until the point at which I now "remembered" it, but now seemed to explain everything. I recalled that at one point I had buried a bunch of drugs inside the fairy circle, mostly amphetamines, as part of my preparations for the ritual to lure or summon the fairies. It now occurred to me that this might have caused problems within fairy society, and I felt a twinge of guilt.

I didn't think I would get any more useful information from this fairy, so I put her aside and grabbed another, this time from the side of the candelabra-like arrangement.

This fairy didn't look human at all. It looked like... a turnip? Was that the right vegetable? The white round bulb with a blush of purplish-red at the top? Yes, a turnip. I was reminded of a photograph of a white radish by Edward Weston (1886–1958) that I had seen the day before in WL. This was clearly a turnip, not a radish, but it gave me a similarly vulgar impression. If this was a fairy, it was clearly not from the upper echelon of fairy society. Or could its abject appearance be the result of too many amphetamines?

Well, here goes.

"I have a question." I said, wondering if the turnip-fairy could understand me. "The question I've come to ask is: What is your secret?"

I was still rotating the turnip in my hands as I spoke to it, uncertain which side was the appropriate one to address. How do you talk to something with no face?

I heard a male voice, faint, with the accents of a yokel, like Cletus on The Simpsons. It responded to the question in my mind, not the one I had voiced: "There is a side that says: 'Look at me'."

I realized the turnip must be trying to help me orient it properly, so I turned it until I found a round black label with white block lettering that, sure enough, said "LOOK AT ME." It was hard to make out—I missed it at first—because the label was embedded in a scene featuring the stylized profile of a man in a black cloak.

"It would be a lot easier to see if there was some white space around it," I commented about the label.

The turnip-fairy took my suggestion and the surrounding scene promptly faded, leaving the round black label with its white letters clearly discernible. I reminded the turnip that I had come to ask its secret.

I don't recall its initial answer, but I do remember my skepticism. Whatever he had said had sounded as unconvincing as the response I had gotten from the first fairy, and I assumed that he, too, might be pursuring an agenda that involved concealing the truth.

"I don't think that's your secret." I said doubtfully. "Tell me your real secret."

The tone of his response implied that I was wilfully ignoring the obvious: "Oh come on, we can't tell you that."

Even before his sentence had concluded, I was ejected from the scene and found myself standing in my bathroom. I felt like I had woken up, but wasn't sure. I briefly considered going back outside and attempting to continue the scenario, but realized I should promptly write down what had already happened. I grabbed my notepad from the bedside table, and after a bit of trouble with the pen—which I recognized as another dream sign—I started writing down what had happened. Although I realized I was probably not yet awake, I figured that even while still dreaming it could be useful to write down some initial recollections while they were fresh, and it might help me remember them better when I did wake up.

However, I hadn't gotten more than a few sentences into it when dream-writing began to feel tedious, and I was afraid I would get distracted, fall into an NLD, and lose the memories entirely, so I forced myself awake. But as soon as I grabbed my actual notepad to begin writing in WL, I realized my mistake: merely transitioning to wakefulness had dulled the memories of the dream that had been so crystal clear just before I had woken up. I wrote down everything I could still recall, but unfortunately some details of the conversations were lost.