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Pre WBTB - Winter Neighborhood

There is some muggy jungle scene but I can't recall much else.

I'm at a neighborhood street in the winter time. It reminds me of one I used to run as part of a route in college. Unlike how I remember, there are homeless people struggling to stay warm all across the street. The group I'm with don't have anything to give them so we feel bad.

Post WBTB - Zoomin' Through Space and Fun at the Sand Shrine

I take the Yuschak primary trigger supplement combo and get back to bed within about 10 minutes after reviewing WILD entry techniques. I lay down for sometime and wait for the vibrations. They eventually come and are fairly intense. I feel two waves of them, but no images ever form. I eventually slip off into normal sleep.

I'm back at the same neighborhood but this time it is a warm summer scene with a thriving community. I'm living with some friends of S and I. Three couples. SP is sort of the mom of the group and we're following her. We are coming home from driving somewhere and get into the house. The inside reminds me of my Grandma M's house. Specifically the bar we sit down at is reminiscent. We start unloading bags and everybody gets something. I get a giant jelly candy brick. I get up to look around the house and use the bathroom. SP or one of the other girls nearly walks in on me while I'm using the toilet, but luckily I'm standing and facing away from the door. When I go back into the hallway, I do a nose reality check out of habit. I'm lucid now.

Since a house isn't the most exciting place in the world, I decide to go outside. I leave the front door and the green grass is super vivid. I decide I should stabilize, so I rub my barefeet on the grass and the dirt. I lick the dirt for good measure and rub my hands. I do a few more nose RCs just in case. Well, if that check failed I would have looked really stupid. Oh well. Good thing I can breathe through my nose. I decided I want to fly, so I took off superman style. I hit a set of tree branches above me like a total chump immediately but it didn't hurt too bad.


Flyin' high. Made with a combination of Bing and Nightcafe image generator AIs.

I rose up into the sky and enjoyed the view of the neighborhood. I wanted to go explore more, but the world started to zoom out. Oh shit. It feels like I'm moving super fast. The world zooms out so far that I'm now in space looking at Earth. I think about the Outer Wilds Travelers' Theme song and laugh while saying the first few notes of acoustic guitar out loud. Naturally, the song starts to play. Zooming through space with music.

Outer Wilds Travelers' Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR_wIb_n4ZU


The vacuum of space. Made with Nightcafe AI.

Into the universe I say "So, where are we goin'?" like Pippen at the council of Elrond from Lord of the Rings.

As if in answer, a pale blue cloudy planet comes into view on the space horizon. I remark that this definitely isn't earth. It doesn't have any green on it. At this point I'm just super happy I have been lucid this long. As I'm sent closer to the planet I confirm it isn't Earth. This is a desert planet.

My feet lithely (not a hint of my waking knee pain) land at the top of a shrine in a desert. There is a book with golden pages atop a pedestal. I see an attractive purple haired woman across the way near the top of the stairs leading down to the sand. She's wearing skimpy clothes, black leather with her chest showing. Her legwear isn't covering much either. No complaints. I get the sense that she is an experienced traveler, or she can guide me in some way.

"Woah! This place is so vivid!" I say.

"Yeah, it's pretty much always like that," she replies over the desert wind.

I start to follow her down the stairs and then try to pull her closer to me. She doesn't seem into it so I back off. We continue walking down the shrine area. I look at her clothes again.

Spoiler for Spicy Content:

"Soooo are you into bondage or something?" I ask.

"Well...yeah" she replies while turning a bit red.

I pin her to one of the nearby walls and start to make out with her. I slowly slip my finger behind her and down her lower back...and further.

"FUCK! I forgot how amazing this feels!" she says.


The purple-haired guide. Made with Nightcafe AI.

The dream gets unstable after that and I go into a false awakening. My body feels heavy. I try to rollover but still feel something like sleep paralysis. I have a few more false awakenings, but I eventually decide I really want to write down dreams, so I wiggle my toes and rollover. I wake up for real this time.

Supplements: Yuschak Primary Trigger Combination (3rd Attempt)
Galantamine: 8mg
Choline Bitartrate: 250mg

Default = Commentary
Blue = Dream
Dark Orange = Lucid

2022 June 20th

Some in-line notes too.

Dream:

I'm walking through a small town that could be somewhere in my native country. Small houses, ground floor only. Trims and so on as expected. I'm with dad and cousin T. It's daytime, probably morning. Dad is taking photos and as we get to the top of a hill in the town, I see a somewhat breathtaking view of distant rolling hills much like this one, with pink cherry tree plantations here and there, interspersed with some vivid green leafed trees of similar size.

I tell dad he should hurry up to get to where I am, so he can take a photo. As time passes, the landscape or the point of view seem to change (I might be walking down the other side now) and I fear he won't be able to get a clear and unobstructed shot anymore. I lose track of my cousin. At some point she was telling dad about these aliens that live here with the villagers, whom she calls "Aarkvaads", but dad misunderstands that those would be the villagers rather than the aliens.

(recall gap)

Me and dad arrive at some rustic old restaurant. We climb up some stairs and take a seat at a table by the stairs and by a window. Daytime seems consistent with before but it's relatively dark in here due to the windows being a bit short in height. A guy that reminds me of G from school but who is a unique character, comes up to the table; he's our server. (Can't recall the dialogue)

I need the bathroom now and make my way down two flights of the wooden stairs. At the bottom, I'm not sure if I'm getting into the kitchen area by accident, but I go a bit further and find it is indeed the bathroom area. There's no outside light here, it's dark apart from some poorly placed and dim fluorescent tubes that are clearly too old. I think dad comes down too also looking for the bathroom. I go into this somewhat overly large and polygonal shaped room past a glass door that is barely frosted for privacy. The toilet is adjoining the doors' wall and the area feels dilapidated and unclean. I get ready to have a wee. I'm wearing my normal grey work trousers and it feels cumbersome to deal with everything.

Then I somehow start worrying about the fact that dad can probably see through that pointless frosting. I think I have a short wee and then give up, then leaving the room with dad going past me to use the room himself. Something happens and he slips I think? (Mostly comical in nature if anything)

Then, I'm at the mid level of the building, where the entrance is. I think I want to go outside? It's bright and different from before outside.

(recall gap)

I am outside and the restaurant is located at a sort of edge of a sedimentary cliff. Yellow-ish sandstone. It's sandy out here and there's no vegetation to speak of. It's an immense valley with sharp sand-dusted peaks. The server from before is out here, having a break or a cigarette. He's some kind of furry "bat boy" now, slightly taller than me. At some point earlier, I think there was something about a UI thing about choosing how he looked. Red is heavy to his colour theme and his fur almost looks soaked in dark blood, but not wet.

We talk, or I overhear something. Something about a rebellion? Other locals that are with him have assault rifles, Kalashnikovs probably.

Before this I think I actually had a bit of a walk around. There's this large plaza and some kind of Christian procession ritual is taking place. The entrance to the temple is where they want to go, and that's also (an?) the entrance back into the restaurant? They are standing still enough and I make my way through the very dispersed but neatly laid out small crowd, though as I get closer to the large doors the main ritual seems to be moving forward too. Not wishing to interrupt anything, I stop myself next to a tall older woman. It's daytime, about noon. The plaza reminds me of that in front of church of L. The walls to the side of the entrance are smooth eroded sandstone which bulge out every so often. (In retrospect, some of this sandy/rocky scenery reminds me of James' realm in Sacrifice, and as a God, James is perhaps more Christian in a sense than the other four)

Now, when the rebellion thing is starting, the sky goes dark and there's a heavy blue tinted atmosphere, and for lack of better description, the stench of magic is in the air. I'm in a party with sibling T and notice he's at a location called "Crystallarium Caverns", not at all the valley location I'm in. He doesn't realise that we're in different locations when we talk via chat. Fighting happens around me and I look up over the temple/restaurant and see there's a female spellcaster. She seems to be wearing something slightly harlequin-like. She has an enormous book that in width would be the height of four people, and I see her enounce some kind of runes which make a visible effect coming out of the book as she speaks each one. She throws down fire magic at the rebels and around me.

I start to get sick of her spellcasting and somehow reach my way up to her book (distortion of scale/point of view?) and then I hurl it down toward a much lower tier of the valley, intent on making it land in some water. But she uses some kind of TK to slow the books fall and it doesn't reach or touch the water. I think to myself that I should have jumped with the book. But as it rises back up, I can read its runes on a page now. Each page is organised as a kind of mandala with a number of circumscriptions for each rune. I try to read them aloud myself but I'm not sure about the pronunciation.

I think eventually we beat the spellcaster woman, but the rest of the dream recall is lost after this point.



Notes:

- This dream was particularly vivid and part of that may have been due to the fact that I barely managed to sleep the two preceding nights, on one of which I felt to have had a brief dreamless sleep, which always makes me feel odd for the rare times it happens.
-- Not sleeping was mostly on account of being ill.

- The runes in the book remind me a bit of the node tree in FFX, which I've seen recently after this dream, but given that they appeared more like mandalas it may have been an intrusion either from a discussion I had with my mom or from something relating to Jung. Whatever the source, I have thought about trying to replicate the layouts I saw in the dream.

- G and his bat form reminded me of Troy from BL3 for some reason. I think something about the posture and a drawing I did of Troy some time back. It's odd that it's the second time in not too long that I've dreamt about a bat character. Part of it may be an intrusion from the fact that someone's character I'm drawing lately is a bat, but it didn't feel especially related to that. (Different gender, different morphology/species)

- In the second half of the dream, there was something about the Aarkvaad aliens that was relevant to the context, but through my recall of the dream, I couldn't really pick it back up and so I'm not sure how they actually related. Searching for Aarkvaad online didn't really yield anything interesting and past the dream's context is probably a mish-mash word that sounded alien enough.

- The temple plaza felt very much like being in front of the actual church that it likely had inspiration from, which is interesting for the fact that I had that dream not too long ago where I was at a much more accurate version of said plaza/church. There was something more ancient and mythological about this dream's temple and the procession ritual that was taking place seemed to relate to that. In the dream part of my modern waking behaviour took hold where I was able to just go through the group without caring too much about the effect I might have on it, but as the ritual seemed to begin, my behaviour reverted to something more alike what I always learned to do, which in a sense is to give them space and not get in the way. I think as I walked there I thought about people who are careless and those who care too much, perhaps partly reflected in my responding behaviours.
-- Also curious to the ritual aspect was the fact that I was an outsider to it, even though to me it felt very familiar and normal. I just had no place in it myself; perhaps a symbolic expression or metaphor in itself.

Morning of July 18, 2020. Saturday.

Dream #: 19,570-02. Reading time (optimized): 2 min.



My waking-life identity is absent throughout this dreaming experience. My dream’s backstory emerges as an atypical narrative where I am pretending to be a high-ranking military officer. I have an unfamiliar younger male partner who is working with me. Even so, the outcome is to result in delivering something to a genuine naval ship or a high-ranking officer.

The narrative otherwise firstly links as a precursory factor to the usual instinctual summoning of imaginary kinaesthesia to vivify the dream state. In this case, the vehicle resembles a WWI US Standard B Liberty Army Truck, though with the driver’s side on the right. My partner and I are trying to convince an unknown civilian male to give us items from a research laboratory that relate to recent discoveries in molecular biology. He is uncertain if we are legitimate but decides to cooperate with us. He wants to ride with us as well, reflecting that he hoped he had put his trust in the right people.

My partner drives the truck as my dream vivifies, and night becomes day. The streets and high embankments are all white sand as we travel. At one point, the vehicle goes onto a small wooden raft, and it simultaneously takes us across a river as if the momentum of the truck put it in motion. We travel around for a few minutes on a battleship that has areas that make it appear more like a cargo ship.

The three of us stand outside a military base. A general walks out to greet us, and I salute him. He seems to recognize my partner and me but greets me as a “French pig.” I do not take it as an insult, but I am puzzled because I am supposed to be an American officer. The man we brought here does not seem to notice this contradiction. A private appears and will lead us to where we are to give what the other man took from the small town laboratory to the general.

My dream vivifies as imaginary kinaesthesia and physicality exponentially increase when I focus on my walking I try to maintain as a formal swagger.

We sit on what seems to be part of a dock. The general sits down farthest from the water’s edge. An unknown woman is nearby, and I consider I should show my identification. I intend to hold up my badge, but instead, hold my left hand up in a C shape as if holding an invisible one, as my summoning did not work. She does not say anything but appears slightly puzzled.

We give the general the item. It is a resealable sandwich bag containing chocolate chip cookies. After he eats one, he takes notice of one that is bigger and of a lighter color than the others. Baked within it is microfilm. He holds it up to the light and studies one section of exposed microfilm in a thinner area of the cookie. “This is what I expected,” he says, and thanks us.

---

Some dream fragments. There was a third one but I have such a faint and vague memory of it, not even sure where I'd start. I practically lost the other ones while getting up but made sure to keep my eyes closed as much as possible until I could write here, which helped.

---

Dream Fragment:

I remember being at some sort of concrete structure. I'm not sure if I was "me" but a couple of other people were here too, I think one of them was that Torres guy from NCIS. This place was dark and there was a massive abyss right in front of us. Across this abyss was another flat area made of concrete and there were some soldiers there. They were holding us here or something and they shouted that we should stay put.

The soldiers got on a platform and it started moving down very fast. They disappeared from sight. Somewhere down there was some light, but it must have been a literal mile or more away. Then some more soldiers appeared but this time they didn't wait for the platform and just jumped down where the platform shaft area was. I was intrigued but at some point in the dream I simply "knew" that at the bottom was a special fluid that would break any fall, no matter from how high.

Torres like the idea of just jumping across and into that specific area. I felt it was too risky. It was a long way down and there was no way to aim ourselves properly and the gap between the two concrete areas was quite wide. But he got on some sort of pole hanging from our side and got closer to the other side, hanging just over the middle. Then some soldiers came back up on the platform and noticed. They started shouting at him and warning him to stop. He ignored them and now he grabbed onto some rope that was hanging from the ceiling. That's as much as I remember clearly for this fragment.

I do remember there were no light sources. We were very deep underground most certainly, but somehow we had a light radius of our own, like in RPGs where the characters just give off light...

Dream Fragment:

I don't remember how I got there but I arrived at a small lab/office place. This dream was somewhat vivid, more than the other one. There were two researchers, wearing labcoats, and one of them greeted me. He seemed a bit uninterested at first but then he saw my boots. They were covered in some sort of pale golden sand. I realised I hadn't noticed this myself until that moment and he became very interested. He went over to a counter and showed me some tins with rounded caps.

The caps were all a shade of gold or tan. He asked me to see which one I thought was closest. I selected four of the tins first just as a guess. Then I held them and made their coloured cap be over my right boot in my vision. The first wasn't it, too orange. The second and third one seemed similar, the fourth one was too dark but the right hue. I compared between the second and third against the sand and decided the third one was the closest. He seemed happy with this and I felt somewhat happy to help. I made a comment saying "well at least I can definitely tell that my skill at recognising shades correctly has improved". I genuinely felt this was true in that moment and realise now that it was indeed a very accurate test of my skill in this.

The other researcher was just doing something on his own over on another counter but I don't remember what. Oddly enough, despite looking at my feet, can't be certain what the floor was like. Some sort of plastic tiles? Maybe wood. But square shapes. The counters were an off white on the top and a light stained wood on the cabinets. There were a couple of windows to the outside and I made note of the fact that it was daytime outside, but the room was quite brightly lit anyway with some fluorescent lamps that actually gave off a warm colour for once.

This whole dream bit felt like it was in sequence of the previous one or another one between them.

---

Side notes:

- It could possibly be the first time while dreaming where I had to use a skill that I'd use for painting in waking life. For me this is a particularly good sign because for a long time I've wanted that context to come over into dreams in some form.
- The researchers wearing labcoats were clearly dreamsigns that I missed. The labcoat is a dreamsign I successfully managed to insert into my dreams as a dreamsign a while back, I think last year or the year before.
- The dust on my boots reminded me very much of gold powder in the dream. In the dream I had a much clearer notion of where I had been previously, which was relevant for that context.
- Despite looking at my boots and remembering them very clearly as the black leather army-type boots I have in waking life, I only vaguely remember my trousers and can't really say which ones they were. It seems odd that my boots are the only detail I remember clearly from looking down, despite the fact that in the dream everything was the same level of vividness.
- I do remember I was wearing some sort of dark hoodie in that dream. I remember it because I remember the sensation of having the sleeves pulled up, something I often do if I'm indoors.
- Don't have much at all to make note of from the first dream since many details are vague now, but the fall-breaking fluid definitely made me think of stuff from Portal and from Satisfactory.

Had a few dreams but only remembering a couple of fragments.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was playing Dune 2000, doing some sort of special single-player mission. I was struggling a bit with the micromanagement because in this scenario the game started me out with three separate bases each on their own rock islands fairly far from each other, on the south-east side of the map. The map had very large expanses of sand (I could remember seeing a preview in a menu) but also had a lot of cliffs and ruins and old walls.

I remember some of the game's music playing a bit, but even though I remember the interface looking like Harkonnen, my units didn't all seem to match my faction. The enemy was managing to send some engineer units to capture some of my buildings and this was annoying me and something else had also gone wrong so I think I restarted the level. I went back to a menu where I could tweak something and I was tweaking some starting radar thing that allowed me to see further into the fog of war initially.

This second time became weirder, kind of fast too. My vision was more inside the actual game now and despite this being a top-down view game, I was able to somehow control the view and see everything in 3D. I was telling some units to patrol so engineers would stop taking my buildings but this was being wonky. I don't think the game even has a patrol function. Again I was struggling with the three separate bases issue. There were many units on the map and I could see stuff going on in the minimap this time. The game was spawning waves of Zerglings and other stuff from Starcraft I and they were ambushing some unit groups I'd sent out to try and make small attacks on the enemy.

Then some of my spice deposits were running out and more wasn't appearing fast enough. I was afraid the harvesters would be getting destroyed by the worms soon. Then all of a sudden, a bit north-northeast from my middle base some giant walker thing with fleshy tendrils and orange sort of growths on it was approaching and I think I let out a swear. I sent units to attack it because it looked like it had loads of health, and eventually they were managing to take it down. But now the game was spawning so many enemies at the same time, I couldn't keep up at all and was going to be defeated soon.

Dream Fragment:

Was in a parliament. It was dark and a bit desaturated. But the house was full. I was right in front of some middle bit where some person speaks. And this man was there in a suit with no tie or bow, he was speaking about Europe and the future, but I can't remember what he was saying exactly. He seemed happy about not so good circumstances that he would mention. This made me feel uncomfortable somehow, on a less conscious level. It also somehow made me realise a bit where I was standing in the room, but I don't think anyone cared.

I think there was some daylight coming in from the other end of the room, probably why everything looked so grey and dim.

---

No notes for now.

Two nights ago, I had a dream about a creepy monster. It started out as an orange snake, female. Then it turned into an evil monster. Apparently, it was called a "ground Shrek", and despite the reference to a kid's movie, it was actually quite terrifying.

It had glowing yellow eyes, and a mouth that was filled with sand. It sang a song as it began eating/killing everyone, and it went like this:

"...And we shall be appointed view
Of earth's eternal sleep."

There were a few lines before it but I couldn't make them out. It kept singing this creepy ditty over and over again as it killed people, and its voice was now deep, masculine, and hollow. The song had a tune similar to a church hymn that I know, "Go Forth With Faith", which for some reason makes it even creepier.

It raced towards me, and I couldn't get away in time. The last thing I heard inside of its mouth was this song, and I fell into the sand that fell even further into a black void. At that moment, I believed that I was facing death, and I would finally see what the afterlife was like, if it existed. Then I woke up. Terrifying, but cool.

D1 - Im in a land where people go on adventures and quests for things. I return with some others and find at the border a trading post which is a rectangular hut staffed with some peculiar characters. Me and my buddies decide we could set up our own trading house with are own characters (one had a strange bird I remember and a large grey wizard style hat, but she had glasses and a wide smile).

D2 - At the end of a holiday I am returning and am lumbered with the task of taking some bizarre photos of a cliff side residence. I decline as it would mean hanging out of a helicopter on a wire. Due to social etiquette
we cannot completely escape and are dragged into a social gathering on a hillside mansion, looking out over the sea. It is a blindingly sunny day and all the guests (spanish?) are dressed in their finest. I and my daughter have to prepare a giant cake. The icing itself is exquisite, old fashioned cars and buildings being made out of the white icing.

WBTB
D3 - I am across the road from a doctors office and want to get in without being seen. I become invisible and slip into the waiting room. I am trying to get something and crawl across the floor but have to play dead as they are so close to me they could hear me breathing.

2nd WBTB I am trying to get lucid again
D4 - All I can manage to get is a little lucidity as I try and manifest someone in my dream. Only her foot appears Oo poking out. As I lay on some sand.

D5 - Trying again, the woman I am trying to make appear. Appears but is in cartoon form. I am a lumbering ape or monster next to her graceful form.

I was in a house or an apartment. It might have belonged to my Dad. The floor was sand like at a beach. There were holes in the sand which seemed to be nests for snakes or insects or something. I was filling some of them up by moving sand around with my foot. My Dad asked if I could have it done by the time of some party he was planning. I said that I would try but that I wasn’t sure because it takes time.

Then things changed so that I was no longer working on a sandy floor, but instead working on a bed or mattress, filling in dips and holes in the mattress. At one point our late dog Elvis was in one of the holes as I was moving pillows around and he came out.

Then I was in Alaska on the road and I was running into travelers. Somebody was traveling with a bunch of young women who may have been prostitutes. I met a couple travelers who were headed to Oklahoma. They said they had begun their journey in Pennsylvania. I replied that they were really taking the long way. They said that they really wanted to visit Alaska.

The scene changed. I might have still been in Alaska but I was at music club and I had been given an upright bass. I was just starting to fool around with it. There were two guys, one of whom had a beginner’s music book. They kept telling me to play different simple 3 note songs. At first I went along with it. But then I moved the upright bass over a divider into a corner of the room. As I moved the bass I made a joke to a man that was sitting close by that I hope I didn’t stick him in the privates with the stick-like stand that protrudes from the bottom of the bass.

I began to play a David Lynch-type jazz scale. I was kind of managing to play that. Then Peg said that when I hit certain notes it hurt her feet or her knee. She was sitting close to the bass and it may have been bumping into her. But I said that I needed to hit those notes and asked her to be patient with me.

So, I was playing that Lynchian piece and I had my hand high up on the neck of the bass and there were snakes up in the corner of the room and they began biting both of my arms repeatedly. I was okay, though. I posed for a photo for Peg, showing off the bites, because we thought it would look cool. Then she moved out of the way so a man from the press could take a photo.

The dream scene was this giant beach with different rock cliffs on the outside. The left side was mostly rolling fields and the right was a big cliff. There are rock cliffs in the water and on the sand as well. I believe that I'm in some sort of summer camp like Rockbridge that I've been to in the past. There are cabins in the fields and kids are in there for free time. Kolby is there hanging out with some other people walking around. I remember thinking I didn't fit in with them. At some point, a younger girl and guy come up to me and say my name to me which startled me but we sort of laugh. Then they're on the beach with me doing whatever. Someone tells me that the boy is cute looking but a douche. There's this rope that I'm holding onto which is attached to the middle of the sky and swinging me around the entire map. I'm swinging and spinning around the beach and around the cliffs.
On the right is the cliffs made up of separate rocks. It must be 100 yards or more high. I'm climbing up with some friends and people are falling off. There's a group of older moms there for some competition at the top and they are telling me to leave but I'm trying to hold on. I'm afraid I'm going to fall off.
At some point I'm in a gas station that I think is a McDonald's. Two of my fraternity brothers are there and I ask them to make me a frappe but then I feel bad making them do that so I just say I'll get coffee somewhere else.
Another dream I'm in these hallways with a group of guys. The point is that there are girls trying to freak us out, like a haunted house. At the end of the dream there's a girl from my high school named Bridgette tickling me.
False awakening, my friend Mason is in my college bedroom. He asks me if I've told my dad about his recent grandfather's passing and I tell him that I don't talk to my dad much, to which he replies with something about being born by him which confuses me. I get into the shower and he's trying to mess with me.

I went to the beach with two women who were my friends. We found a spot where there weren't any people and decided to put our beach towels up on a sand dune where the water wouldn't get to them. The dune was a place we had been to before. We called it cricket hill because on top of it there was some grass where some crickets lived. They would always be chirping. There was an abandoned wooden skimboard lying near the water. I started skimming parallel to the shore until I got near some people then I ran back the other way. The other two women were just sitting on their beach towels on the sand dune.

#483 - DILD - 8:43AM

I had an idea during a jog yesterday to play with psychedelic sand in my next LD so that's what I aimed for. I was having a hard time getting lucid even with a dose of galantamine (too tired) so I feel lucky to have pulled this off so late this morning. I dreamed tons. Most of them were pretty boring, but I enjoyed a strong feeling of bliss that carried through each one.

[QUOTE = "summary"]I noticed I was living in a strange town and became lucid. I started jumping really high until the dream destabilized then I remembered my goal. I found some sand and played with it with expectations of something trippy to happen. I saw patterns and colors and deep space while my hands morphed. I woke up shortly after.[/QUOTE]

I am standing on the back steps of a house that I think of as my home. Something feels off, but familiar at the same time. It's lightly raining and my see Alysha and Riley playing in water puddles. Suddenly, Riley does a belly slide through a deep puddle. I smile and glance at my wife who is intent on watching him. Riley then takes a deep gulp of water and spits it out my direction. I move over to him, "Eww! No, don't do that. It's dirty."
In response, he starts to cough and spit like he has dirt in his mouth. My wife moves in to help, but he recovers quickly and goes on playing.

I become introspective again while worrying about the rain. I remember that I had decided to go for another run today, but this rain is making me renege on that idea. I look around an wonder what town this is. I recall going for a jog in town yesterday, but I can't make it fit in this setting. I ask Alysha, "Hey, where did I run yesterday? I don't know this town anymore."
My wife ignores me and watches an older girl wonder up and play with my son in the rain. I think I should be feeling wet by now but my body feels nothing. I wonder who this girl is, then notice we are basically in a church parking lot. I see other people come wondering out of the building. Then it hits me. I remember that I was trying to DEILD just a moment ago and almost succeeded. I do a nose plug and blow through. I become excited and start jumping up and down. My jump turns into giant leaps and gliding downward. I try to look down and see if anyone is noticing me but the dream is breaking up now. I recall my sand goal and stop jumping to stabilize.

I crawl around until my vision clears and notice that I am face to face with asphalt. It's a parking lot and there is a blue pickup truck nearby. I stand up and search out a sand pit. I worry about the rain making the sand wet, but quickly dismiss that idea. I see an grassy area next to the church. I rush over and next to an AC unit I see patch of deep sand just big enough to play in. I lay on my stomach and pick up handfuls, letting the sand pour out. It all looks normal except the color of the sand looks more like sponge cake being darker on top like its been baked. I then remember that I need to have more expectation of something psychedelic. I do so as I take a finger and swirl the sand round, stirring it up. I quickly see geometric circle patterns flow out with traces of red. I shout out in delight, "Whoa cool!" I pick up more sand. My hands look cartooned and as the sand flows, it looks like multicolored, jagged lines of ink. I shout, "Whoa, man! Psychedelic sand! Yes!" The dream goes dark now and I feel that I am waking up. I test it by shouting "Hey" a few times, risking my wife coming in the room. However, it sounds really dreamy still so I roll over to my back. I look up and say, "Let me see outer space." A star field forms then quickly zooms into deep space. It's so beautiful that I reach out for it. I am surprised when my hands and arms look distorted and flowing like tentacles. There must be five or six appendages rapidly flowing up and waving like they are caught in a strong current of cosmic energy. I smile, "Whoa cool. Outer space, man." I then spread all of my tentacle apart and the view of deep space splits and moves out of view, putting me back in darkness. I feel satisfied enough with this dream to go ahead and wake up. For some reason, I keep repeating, "Outer space, man." Over and over. I know I sound like a stoner hippy, but I don't care at the moment. There's a brief flash of a false awakening, then I wake for real.

#469 - DEILD - 4:56AM

I slightly wake up from some dream involving an intelligent humanoid-hippopotamus creature resembling something Patricia Piccinini would have created. I didn't even find it all that odd. It was like a pet.

I lucidly relax back into a dream where I am in some mixture of my job and a gym. I look around and marvel how vivid the dream is. There is no one around so I call out. My voice is loud and echoes a bit. No one comes and I decide to just explore. Unfortunately, I wake up.

I decide it's not time to wake up and visualize walking. In a few seconds I see that I am walking on sand. I reach down and grab a handful. I squeeze feeling the soft crunch and then relax letting it trickle away. This new dream happens so fast that I find myself not thinking I am really in a dream. I feel it's just heavy HI. I'm wrong, of course, but I just tell myself it will all come together as I go along and let the thought go.

Perhaps I relax my concentration a bit too much because now I have the idea stuck that I was trying to capture Sasquatch by stacking large logs across a wooded path. I suppose I was standing on a sandy beach because now I see the sand ending at a wooded hiking trail. I see I have already cut a log so I heft it on my shoulder and march ahead. I am looking for the spot that I want to stack logs but the trail has opened up too much and it's all sandy again. I feel myself struggle as I move uphill. I decide I am working too hard. Since this is a dream I can always take shortcuts. Suddenly I am at the top of the hill and see a good spot to stack the log. I decided my work is already done and now I see a wall of logs across the trail. The idea is to get Sasquatch to chase me and somehow crash into the logs, knocking it out. Whatever.

I look to my right and see a log cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney. I turn to go check it out, but some strange creature comes out of the doorway. It looks animal-like, but also resembles a garlic cluster with legs. I have a mix of first and third person view as the garlic thing runs at me and bowls me over. I get up and run but a second garlic thing comes out and cuts me off. Suddenly, two new creatures resembling a mix of Groot and an ostrich comes out to battle the garlic things. I decide this is just the distraction I need to get away. I turn to run, suddenly wake up.

I recall another super long non-lucid dream where I go have my wife's wedding ring cleaned. I talk to the jeweler a long time as he polishes a huge golden trophy. I don't understand his words and he calls me out on it. When I leave I have a white pickup that runs slow. A lot of pedestrians block my way out and I get lost in some impossible labyrinth of a parking garage. Then I am under a house spending a huge amount of time looking for a lost ring with confusing structures. When I find it I am at my ex wife's parents house. The ring glows when I put my finger in it. I decide its some sort of toy so I go find my girls to give it to them. I look into the bright purple light that consumes me in a white light. I wake up.

Morning of July 27, 2015. Monday.



After spending intimate time with Zsuzsanna in reality, I then enter the usual “portal” of apex lucidity with the lighter form of sleep paralysis (this being always effortless and automatic but different than the other type, which has sound and augmented touch but no imagery at all and a completely different awareness than the other form), the thin white lines (always starting with a “spark” that seems to “fall”, creating a door or impression of a door) quickly forming a fairly bright and highly detailed outdoor setting, rapidly changing several times (mostly in the background) but then stabilizing. My setting comes as an alternate version and fictional perspective of where the alley behind our house is implied to be (and looking due north). Even though I am blissfully looking into our backyard (and clearly recognize it as such), everything is different. For example, the tall dark wooden fence is a much shorter picket fence and our shed is not here at all. Additionally, the fence squares off and seems to divide the area of where the central line (longways) of the shed would be in reality. This is somewhat amusing (though perhaps I am somehow “seeing” another time period; would not be the first time - for example, after our shed is finished being eaten by termites and new shorter fences are added one day, perhaps). I know exactly what I am looking at…except that it is not really how it looks. I find this familiarity yet typical “wrongness” of rendering quite enjoyable, particularly as it was created so quickly. I have no idea how that is possible, or how it can seem so realistic, but I go with it.

I notice that there is a round wooden card table near the west side of the backyard, a bit closer to the house, as well as at least three bentwood chairs (though I only focus on one of them). I “explode” the chair and table into splinters after playing around with them for awhile, spinning them in the air and such with in-dream telekinesis. Then I reintegrate them back to normal. Breathe in, reintegrate, breath out, explode, and so on. It vaguely reminds me of the motions of bits of straw moving on the surface of a pond. The chair noiselessly (well perhaps with a soft subtle “puff”) explodes into splinters, the splinters spin around…breath in…the chair is perfect again. I decide to let it hover in the air about seven feet above the ground at a tipped forward angle of about thirty degrees while the table continues to float about a foot from the ground.

The environment shifts slightly as I enter a more dynamic state (this is a specific type of dream state that seems to be “between worlds”). Everything is sand falling and holes opening up. I watch the incredible beauty of the transitions. At one point, it looks like concrete blocks have been placed sideways (longways north and south) all across where the parking lot across the street is in reality, each recess originally meant to be a place for an exotic plant, but sand is falling continuously; beautifully. This seems to shift into a new dynamic. Breathe in…miniature waterfalls everywhere; breath out, “sandfalls”. I reach my hand down to check the texture. It shifts between water molecules and grains of sand continuously and evenly with my breathing. I see very clear imagery of small white stones in potted plants. Miniature cycad palms emerge and sink back in at times.

After awhile, in this blissful appreciation of sand falling everywhere and moving and sliding downward (in different colors and textures) over various implied forms and with a slight granular “rustling sound” everywhere in the world, my dream shifts to another type of state and goes “Fantasia” on me. I am aware that instead of the parking lot, it is a very large mandrake garden. The mandrakes (all about four inches high) are ready to crawl up out of the ground and dance, a composite of the brooms moving about from “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and the guards marching about outside the witch’s castle in “The Wizard of Oz”, though it becomes more like ballet after a time, all uniform, all smooth, all in harmony…except…

One mandrake seems to be struggling with his presumed partner (in trying to pull “her” from the ground). I go over and look and see him in a shallow hole pulling on something, which turns out to be a limp, lifeless carrot, only partially anthropomorphic. He looks up at me curiously. He has a face about the size of my thumb that looks much like a miniature old chimpanzee.

“That’s a carrot!” I shout gleefully.

He blinks and looks worried. “Oh?” he squeaks, with a raspy puzzled voice. He turns and walks away dejectedly as the hundreds of other paired mandrakes dance “perfectly”.

From here, I am in a fairly dark and seemingly undefined “void”. Some sort of “creatures” which are like giant luminous dandelion seeds (about five of them, about a foot and a half tall) lightly brush over the backs of my hands. There is an implied communication. At times, their luminosity changes slightly, becoming dimmer or brighter, mostly at the central area of the span of “tendrils”.

Ritual: Last night I experimented for the first time with kava kava root (Piper methysticum). I had read many anecdotal reports that it instigated vivid dreams and perhaps even lucidity, so I thought it was worth trying out. I ordered some dried powdered root from an online herb and spice supplier that I trust. I don't have any doubts about the freshness and quality, as the package confirms that it was packed earlier this month and sourced from Vanuatu. I had read many reports of people complaining about the taste, describing it as "muddy," so I was surprised when I opened the package and encountered the most extraordinary and delightful fragrance. The plant is related to pepper, so it made sense that the scent would be peppery, but there was also something delicately floral about it and even a hint of wintergreen.

I had abstained from alcohol all day, since the two should not be consumed together, and my plan was to drink the kava before bed. I had a late dinner, ending at 11pm, so my plan was to give myself two hours to digest, then start drinking the kava at 1am and go to bed a few hours afterward (unless it made me too sleepy before that, which seemed like a distinct possibility). I don't like cold drinks late at night, but I read that you could warm kava gently without destroying its properties, so I adapted a recipe for "Mexican Hot Cocokavachocolate," blending two tablespoons of powdered kava kava (half what the recipe calls for, as I didn't want to overdo it my first time), two tablespoons of cocoa powder, agave syrup, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a generous pinch of cayenne with about two cups of almond milk (I skipped the vanilla extract suggested by the recipe because I didn't want to use even a tiny amount of alcohol). I blended this until it was frothy and then separated it into two mugs, putting one in the fridge—I planned to start with a minimal dose, and work up from there if it felt warranted. The other mug I heated briefly in the microwave, just enough to warm it, and then topped it with a dusting of grated Himalayan salt and freshly made whipped cream.

Okay, I'll admit I have a slightly weird palate (for instance, I *love* the taste of wormwood), but this was one of the most delicious dessert drinks I have ever tried in my life! It was so much better than regular hot chocolate; the spices and kava gave it exceptional depth of flavor and an unusual aftertaste. I didn't even need to strain it: I don't know if my powder was ground unusually finely or if the almond milk held it in suspension better than plain water, but it only added body, not grit, to the concoction.

I'm glad that I had done enough research to anticipate the curiously numbing, analgesic sensation that spread from my mouth all the down my esophagus, because that's the kind of thing that would really worry you if you didn't know it was supposed to happen! I sipped the kava very slowly over the next hour or so, to make sure my stomach didn't have any problems with this new experience. Everything was fine, and the onset of bodily relaxation came quickly, though my mind remained clear. After the first mug I felt like it would be fine to drink the second one I had reserved, so I slowly consumed that too. Despite the heavy feeling in my body, it never did make me drowsy, so I played SWTOR until 3:30am and then read DV and some LD books to prep for bed, retiring at 4:30am. I should note that I never felt any trace of euphoria, either, an effect that some had noted. That didn't bother me, though: my only interest was in enhancing my dreams.

Unfortunately, in that respect, the kava kava was a total bust. It was no different from any ordinary night of crappy dreaming: I was vaguely aware of dreaming most of the night, but my recall was terrible and what details I could specify were mostly mundane day residue. There was no sense of complex overarching plots, just lots of little random scenarios. Lots of people have written that kava helped them sleep more deeply and wake refreshed, but I didn't experience that either: I woke three times in the first several hours of sleep, which is typical, except that I felt much groggier than usual during those brief wakeful periods. At 9:00am I woke up and felt so unpleasantly lethargic, mentally as well as phsyically, and the dreaming had been so disappointing, that I decided to try to clear my head with an ample dose of piracetam. That stuff is amazing: to preserve its efficacy I save it for special occasions, but it always works really well to clear up any "brain fog."

Within fifteen minutes I was feeling complete mental clarity, so I decided to turn it into a proper WBTB. I added some L-theanine, alpha-GPC and bacopa and returned to bed using WILD technique. My focus was still subpar and I couldn't count effectively, so I initially fell into non-lucid sleep, but gradually became more aware of the dream as it progressed. There was no "aha" moment of lucidity, but I was definitely lucid by the end.

In conclusion, the kava kava didn't seem to improve my dreaming in the slightest, but at least it didn't suppress it either. If anything helped me get lucid, I believe it was the piracetam and other supplements I took at WBTB, because those I've had success with many times before. My recall was poor for most of the night, and even after waking up from the LD only the last scene was initially clear; recollection of the earlier incidents revived only after I started tracing back the course of events.

DILD, "Creating a Cat": I was hanging out with a friend, JM, and her young son. [DR: yesterday I had seen a picture of this kid that she had posted on Facebook.] The little boy was telling us a story about a butterfly who took care of him in the place he used to be. It sounded like he was talking about before he was born, and this reminded me of a book I had learned about last night, about a project to compile and investigate accounts of young children who claim to have memories of past lives. [DR: Jim B. Tucker, Return to Life, 2015.] After I mentioned the book to my friend, she told me about the time she took her son to an island off the coast of Wales (the named started with a 'T', something like "Tirnagal" or "Tiriagal") and he had started talking about how he used to live there. As she describes this, suddenly we both turn and stare as we hear the boy start speaking another language with the somber intonations of an adult. I have no idea what Welsh sounds like, but what the boy is saying definitely has the structures of a formal language—it is not just childish babble. The experience is so uncanny that I feel the hairs on my arms rise. Before I leave, I say to my friend, "The only thing I regret about not having a kid is the way it can sometimes provide unexpected insights into the human experience." [DR: This comment might also have been inspired by something I was reading last night, on p.163 of The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger (2009), where he describes a toddler who falls and looks to his mother for social cues about how to emotionally react.]

I leave my friend's apartment and go outside. Now I'm on a beach. This is one of my most distinctive and common dream signs, despite the fact that I have little interest in beaches in WL and rarely visit them. I think it is related to the tide, a phenomenon that has always unsettled me. Despite the frequency and distinctiveness of this dream sign, for some reason it is one that I always have trouble recognizing as such. On this occasion I already have some degree of dream-awareness, but I lack awareness of that awareness, the metacognition that is characteristic of true lucidity.

As I'm walking along the beach, the sand looks soft and warm and comfortable, and I can't resist the temptation to lie down in it. Initially I am lying on my stomach, but then I roll onto my back, and feel as cozy as a kid making snow angels. I pause to reflect, why do you never hear of kids making sand angels? My comfort is soon disturbed by rippling in the sand... I notice that the whole beach is now billowing and subsiding, the dunes rolling like great waves. "Is it supposed to do that?" I vaguely wonder, and then a particularly large dune threatens to bury me, forcing me back on my feet to keep my balance. Though not quite lucid at this point, I have instinctive awareness of my mastery and control in this environment: I find it easy to "surf" these sand waves as they roll by underfoot. But they are getting even bigger, and I have the impression that the water is now rising rapidly as well, so I decide to find higher ground.

At the edge of the beach I find a stairwell leading up into a building. Getting into it takes some creative climbing, as there are various panels of transparent plexiglass serving as barriers, but I manage to circumvent them and get inside. The stairs emerge into the center of a dim, semi-industrial space, with narrow walkways on all four sides surrounding the wide pit formed by the stairwell in the middle of the room. No sooner have I gotten my bearings than a round hatch covering the end of a large pipe poking through the wall opens, and a humanoid creature crawls out. It is gollum-like, with huge bulging eyes. I don't want to be spotted, so I hold still and focus on being invisible. I feel a moment of relief as the creature initially descends the stairs, but it comes back promptly joined by a second person, a male human. As they approach the spot where I'm standing, I retreat into a corner to avoid them: even if they can't see me, they might blunder into me by accident if I'm not careful. On the bright side, having to strategize in this tense situation is improving my lucid awareness.

I reflect that my "invisibility" is just a mind trick: I am willing the DCs not to see me, and from their lack of reaction I assume it is working, but I can still see my own body plainly. This bothers me—at this point I'm a fairly experienced dreamer, so shouldn't I be able to dispense with a body? I've had no dearth of NLDs where I'm just a disembodied perspective, so surely I should be able to accomplish the same thing in my LDs. I decide to try to eliminate my dream body.

My body does obediently disappear from my field of vision, but the trouble is I still *feel* like I'm in a human body, with two legs, two arms, and two eyes located frontally in my head. If I have really transcended the body, I should no longer feel like I am mapped onto a human being. I conclude that I should begin subverting the pattern, and my first attempt is to try to shift my visual apparatus to floor level. This seems like it should be a fairly easy, basic task, but I find that I have trouble with it, maybe because I get caught up in questions like, well, if I'm not seeing out of physical eyes, then shouldn't my vision be even more radically different—unconstrained by frontality, for instance?

Meanwhile the man and gollum-like creature disappear into a side door, still apparently oblivious to my presence. I retrace my steps to the top of the stairs and examine the hatch that the latter had crawled out of. I consider going in there to explore, but decide that from the look of the creature and the size of the hatch, it will probably just be a cramped and uncomfortable network of tunnels. Instead I decide to follow the two through the side door.

I find myself in a large, open exhibition space with various vendors and booths. I pause for a moment to wonder why spaces like this are so common in my dreams. I don't know if this was a product of false memory or else better access to dream memory than I have in waking life, because at the time I was under the impression that I encountered such rooms on a regular basis; now that I'm awake I don't feel like they're especially common. At first I was just wandering around with no specific purpose, when it occurred to me that I shouldn't waste this opportunity to work on some tasks. There are a ton of things on my docket, but nothing especially pressing, so I thought over a few possibilities and decided to work on my Ars Magica forms and techniques—the other day I printed out the whole list of combinations and decided I should make it a long-term goal to try out all of them eventually.

I recalled that "creo animál" was the first one on my list that I had not tried, so I started intoning, "Creo animál!" I lengthened the syllables in a resonant voice, putting emphasis on the first syllable of "creo" and the last syllable of "animál." I repeated the invocation a few times in this manner, staring at an empty patch of floor. I didn't have a clear idea in mind of what kind of animal I wanted to create, but I thought I could leave that open for the dream to surprise me. However, nothing was happening. I thought perhaps I needed some raw materials, so I telekinetically lifted a nearby booth (hoping this wouldn't be too much inconvenience to the vendor) and pulled it into the space where I was working, then focused on compacting its form and shape into something suitable to my purpose. It folded itself up obediently until it was much smaller. However, I felt like I needed to impose a pattern on it since the dream wasn't responding with anything, so I arbitrarily chose the form of a cat. People started gathering around to watch the show as the booth finished its transformation, and now there was a short-haired black and white cat sitting stiffly on the floor. [In retrospect, the technique was closer to "muto" than "creo," since I adapted existing material rather than conjuring it from thin air.]

The newly-created cat was not moving, and did not seem capable of movement; it was like an empty shell of a cat, a living doll. This made sense, since I had created the body but not endowed it with sentience: I concluded that this would require a separate effect. Luckily this concurred with another task I needed to work on. "Creo mentem," I said, directing my words at the cat, and this time the effect resolved quickly: now the cat seemed to be capable of moving and perceiving its environment.

I wondered if "mentem" alone was sufficient: wouldn't that create something with the bland mental workings of a robot? Wouldn't I need to add "imáginem" to endow it with emotions and imagination, the "spark of life"? I wasn't sure, but I thought I'd better throw that in for good measure, so I intoned "Creo imáginem," focusing on giving the creature the capacity for emotions and inner life. Immediately I had doubts about whether this was wise. I don't know if my doubts were caused by the cat's behavior or if the cat's behavior was conditioned by my doubts, but whichever it was, the creature did not look pleased. It was lashing its tail in the way cats do when they're annoyed, and its face was contorted into a savage snarl. I wondered if throwing in "imáginem" had been overkill—emotions are not always pleasant, after all, and a creature so unexpectedly brought into existence might well be feeling upset and disoriented. Plus, I didn't even know if "imáginem," was necessary for a complete being; perhaps sentience was sufficiently specified by "mentem." [Consulting the Ars Magica rulebook now, I see that I misremembered the scope of of the Form: "imáginem" deals with sensations and illusions, not emotions and imagination. Though actually that makes the whole Form seem superfluous to the dreamstate, where there is no obvious difference between creating a thing and creating an illusion of that thing.]

I knelt down to have a closer look at my creation, and felt even more disturbed. There was something awful and abject about its face, a wound or rot-like distortion of its jaw that left the teeth clearly visible through its cheek. [DR: I realize this might also be day residue, because recently I was reading articles about the so-called "zombie cat" which came with graphic pictures of a similarly disfigured animal.] I decided that I should try to understand what this cat was experiencing, so I said, "Intéllego animál." I felt impressions of fear and rage coming from the poor creature, and guiltily realized that I must have screwed up somehow. It made it even worse that it was a cat, a kind of animal for which I feel a great love and sympathy.



With a sweeping gesture I willed all the effects I had invoked to disperse, effectively uncreating the cat. I didn't have a clear visual sense of the result (did the body simply disappear or did the vendor's booth revert to its former shape? I'm not sure), but at least I felt that the spell had ended. I looked up at the spectators who had been watching the whole event and sheepishly apologized: "It didn't want to be a cat. I'm sorry. It just didn't work out."

One woman spoke up in reply. Her words were uttered very calmly and slowly, emphasizing each of the adjectives, and I felt like she was subtly criticizing my actions: "People want to be fair, and dominating, and controlling, and diverting."

We were riding robots. There were missiles. I or someone else (a female) controlling a robot was fighting three enemy robots. She had to escape but was surrounded. Then she shot a missile. The enemies thought it will explode for damage but turned out it's a shroud (of sand?). She hid and escaped while they're blinded, but one of them is capable of outrunning her.

I was in a factory with slanted glass windows so that whoever is on the upper floors can look down the ground level.

---

- Listened to some OBE audio with no words.