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Sunday, 9-13-20, Core 2

After a couple of long, regular dream fragments I found myself in the upstairs bathroom, sitting on the toilet. It was night and I was spacing out a bit, staring at the fan grate in the wall (which was on the wrong wall though I didn't notice at the time.) For a few brief moments, the grate I was looking at blurred and faded, and in fact everything in my visual field seemed to "glitch" and become less solid. I stared hard at the grate to try and unblur my vision, and it seemingly popped back into existence, becoming even more sharply defined than before. This whole experience was very similar to common waking life experiences where one might defocus one's vision when tired or consciously refocus on an object in order to sharpen one's vision on it. However, I found the extreme degree to which this happened here unnerving as it seemed as though the reality around me was liable to disappear altogether without constant attention to it. This is very likely a dream. I thought. My mind threw up the requisite resistance in the background due to the realistic, mundane nature of my experience up to this point. No, this could be a dream. I insisted mentally. I thought backwards, remembering the previous two dream fragments as if they were part of my day, then thought back further to remember myself getting into bed for core 2. There had been something a little strange about everything after that point, when I thought about it. I haven't woken up since then, I realized, I am dreaming!

I decided to test gravity by seeing if I could think myself into floating, as I habitually do upon first becoming lucid. However, this time I felt heavily weighted down, as if my body were made of lead. Everything was vague and I knew I needed to stabilize the dream. I went to raise my hand in front of my face so I could stare at it to bring more clarity, but I couldn't raise it a single inch. I was genuinely surprised. Why do I feel so heavy? I asked myself, If it's just my expectation I should be able to change it with a thought... I tried this and failed. I then noticed that I could seemingly sense my waking life body where it lay. I could even feel where one of my feet was hanging off the end of the bed. The sensations mapped to the position I remembered falling asleep in. REM atonia? I wondered. Am I closer to a waking state than in previous lucids, but still deeply enough asleep for the atonia to be present? Is my brain translating my bodily sensations into this dream experience of extreme heaviness?

I looked around again and realized the dream had faded more. Brute forcing things wasn't working. While I didn't feel close to waking up in terms of sensation (the level to which I could sense my body wasn't changing), I was reluctant to sit in a blurry dream scene for an extended period of time. If this is due to atonia, maybe I can work with that. I'll let images come and go they might in a WILD, observe them and wait for them to stabilize to a more solid dream. After a few moments, the fully blurred out scene randomly gave way to a vision of water, waves, the surface of an ocean. Before the scene could fully form, however, my consciousness lapsed. I know I dreamt some more before waking, though I don't remember the content.

Spoiler for Additional Notes:

Although this lucid was brief in terms of dream time and actual action, I'm very happy with the ease of logical thought in this dream, whether or not that reasoning process was completely accurate. There was definitely a greater awareness of myself in relation to waking life and a higher degree of observation within that context than is usual for me. I've certainly had other lucids where I recalled what I wanted to do with the dream from waking life, but I don't remember ever tracing back through my dream memories all the way to a waking memory of going to sleep before! The recall process isn't usually that effortless, either. It's just too bad my dream control wasn't equally effortless this time.

Aug 21 2018

I went to sleep around 11:45 or 12. As I was falling asleep, I performed the Progressive Relaxation technique mentioned in LaBerge's ETWOLD. During the relaxation, I continuously repeated to myself that whenever I saw either of my parents or my fiance, I would do an RC and question whether I was dreaming or not (one of them almost always show up at some point).* I enforced this by looking over at my fiance and doing reality checks. (I've always been aware that they are dream signs but this is the first time I've tried to use them to trigger RCs).

I eventually dozed off and had a few NLs that I can't remember now. I should have written them down when I woke up at 4:15 as I could still remember fragments then, but I was in shock when I awoke. My entire body was numb! I've never actually experienced waking up into SP and/or REM Atonia, only trying to induce it on myself, which never really worked.

It was amazing! I was completely calm and relaxed. Even as my dog was rearranging himself next to me and putting his paws in my side, it didn't phase me or make me any more awake. It was a state of disconnection with my body, all except gentle, almost imperceptible vibrations.

I've been reading up about visualization and imagining all 5 senses after reading arby's VILD and visualization posts. During the day yesterday, I was practicing moving my "dream arm" while my real arm remained still, and also noting how my entire body felt while walking, standing, leaning on something, sitting, etc. So naturally when I found myself in this state I did the same. The sensations were remarkably accurate! I could visualize myself standing in another room and feel all the sensations of my body being there. This alone was amazing.

I also tried to use this state and convert it into a WILD** or SSILD-then-fall-asleep, but oddly I couldn't get "relaxed enough" to fall back asleep -- my breathing was very shallow and I had to strain to take deep breaths, which pulled me out of the state momentarily (although I returned quickly each time). So I sat in this state for probably an hour or two and just enjoyed it. Eventually I fell asleep into an FA that I couldn't catch and convert (those pesky buggers!) and another NL that I do remember.

The strange thing about my NL was that it was as if my brain was actively fighting me -- now that I had identified my parents and fiance as dream signs and was using them for MILD and RCs, it removed them from all my dreams and placed in people from work that never pop up in my dreams! Strange.

Overall a weird but positive experience!

*Does this count as MILD? I'm trying to figure out how exactly to differentiate MILD from other similar techniques and it seems kind of vague. Is it just setting your intentions and/or having a mantra as you go to sleep?

**edit: Looking back in my DJ, I actually did almost WILD two or three times but got pulled back each time, back into the state. I think it helped me to identify what the feeling is like though, as it was closer than I've ever been before!

I almost had a successfull LD but I forgot to do a RC after getting in
So I was falling asleep , becoming more and more comfortable, my consciousness started to diminish slowly, and so I thought why not try rope technique while I was watching the tirades of my mind in the hypnagogic stage. And with this thought, I imagined a rope to the side of the bed , horizontally floating , and started to pull myself out of myself. I felt intense energy going through me and then I found myself in a full blown rem atonia or whatever you may call it. I was completely paralysed and had auditory hallucinations of weird ambient noises and such. Then I imagined and thought to myself "it would be pretty scary if I were to hear someone screaming in my ears". And thats what exactly happened after . After that I entered a dream I think, someone was glitching in my window and wall , thought it's a burglar, I DID NOT realize that I am in a dream now. And then I woke up.

So I was sitting on white bed in a room with red walls (i think) so then all of a sudden this bird flies from out of under the bed so I jumped onto the bed trying to get away but then the bird bit my neck. I didn't feel it so it was OK.

I'm recovering from an illness so it was a coughing, uncomfortable, rough night. I finally had to take 1.5 mg of melatonin to tip myself into sleep at around 4 am to get this LD (which explains the melatonin reference in the dream.) Given all that, I'm really pleased to have gotten lucid. I just wish I'd gotten more than 4 hours of sleep!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #75: Floodlights

Wife and I are staying in a hotel room and having some disagreement about the use of melatonin in cooking and laundry. She tells me that she will never bake melatonin into bread or use it to wash our towels. Peeved, I hide around the corner out of sight, and sulk about how unreasonable this ban on melatonin baking is.

Then we're in bed trying to fall asleep. I roll over to my right side and find that there's a hammer in bed with us! I think about how horrible it would be if REM atonia malfunctioned and one of us had some kind of combat dream. (I've had a vague but long-standing fear of REM behavior disorder since I was pretty young.) I'm pissed that the hotel staff has left this in our bed and I get up, deciding that I have to get rid of this hammer.

I slide the hammer flat along the floor and throw it into the hallway through the gap under the door. It spins round and round then clonks into the wall on the opposite end of the hall. It suddenly seems ludicrous to me that the hammer would fit under the door like that and I become lucid.

Vividness looks good, so I'm excited. I head for the window of the hotel room, passing two more double beds on the way out. (It occurs to me that the bed I was just in was crammed into the kitchen nook.) As I approach the window, I notice that a four-foot metallic cube is shoved against the wall. It's vibrating ever-so-slightly and there's a strange voice coming out of it saying something about "Orcs Must Die!" (I played this game before going to bed.) I think that the voice is telling me to "insert a coin". I'm really interested in this but I start feeling confused. Worried for my stability, I turn away from the cube and turn my attention back to the window and my goals.

I want to make my way to Angel Falls for Task of the Year, so I plan to phase through the glass. I halfheartedly try to push through it, but I know that I'm doing it wrong and my hand is stopped at the window. I struggle to remember what I'm supposed to do. Oh right -- the glass isn't even there. Just do what you want. I simply walk outside into the night, paying no attention to the glass, and find myself standing on a ledge looking out over a nighttime city scene, many stories off of the ground.

I don't feel like I can Hulk-jump from this tiny ledge, so I allow myself to rise up to get a better look at the city. I'm high up now, and I see a distant tower topped by a turning searchlight, clearly visible in the night sky. It intrigues me, but I decide to stick with Task of the Year. After floating upward for a while, I land on the hotel roof. I look to the sky above me and see a strange array of floodlights shining down on me like I'm in the middle of a sports arena. The lights are blindingly bright and my vision first goes completely white, then fades to black.

For some reason, I don't think of readying myself for DEILD but instead become fixated on asking the dream scene a question. While I'm fiddling around, everything collapses around me.