The Cusp

Another night, another battle of wills with what I thought to be another dreamer (at least I did within the dream). Maybe it's because I'm always inviting people to come find me in every dream related forum, or it could even be a regular dream. My recall is too poor still to tell.

I remember that back and forth pattern, the pushing of wills. At one point they began to attack me physically, leaving me covered in these huge bloody welts almost 2 feet long. I almost made the mistake of trying to heal myself and focus on closing up those wounds, but thought better of it at the last moment and just ignored the wounds instead.


Fragments:
-Playing Linkrealms and I find a silver fur cape. *I was confused and disappointed to find I didn't actually have that cape when I booted up my game in RL.
-Walking in the woods with someone, the snow is almost all melted, and I notice tons of big fat Wintergreen berries. They seem to have gotten twice as big over the winter.

Lost all the detail of this dream, I just remember a pattern of pushing back and forth with something, not physically, but with our attention. I suspect it was a shared dream and I was fighting someone. I say that because of the back and forth pattern. For some reason dream fights against other dreamers seem to develop the pace of a tennis match, with the ball going from one side of the court to the other until someone scores.

When you attack in a shared dream, you are trying to hook your opponent's attention. What happens is you send something at your opponent, and they either ignore it, deal with it, or succumb to it. If they don't succumb, then they send something at you. It goes back and forth until something until someone finally believes of the the incoming "gambits" is real and it overwhelms them. There's a chance that may be a pattern that just happens with me, but I'm fairly sure it's a strange attractor that will hold true for any two people fighting in a dream. (and by fighting, I don't necessarily mean physical fighing).

That's the second or third dream like that I've had this week. Not sure who it could have been. I've always had an open invitation for anyone to come find my in my dreams. Plus I've also been having what I think might be shared dreams with one of my prodigal dream control students. We both only half remember these dreams, but the pattern of me demonstrating something, then making him do it, then me, then him, over and over, drilling him with repetition, that's an easy one to spot.

It's weird, I haven't had any shared dreams in years, and then I run into Waking Nomad online last week, and now I'm having them almost every night.

Really need to work on improving my recall. Had an awesome sword fighting dream during a nap yesterday, and I forgot all the detail.

Art Obsession

Spent most of the day yesterday doing digital art, and spent most of the night dreaming about doing the same. Been having lots of dreams like this over the past couple of months, and I think it's really helped improve my art. I don't wake up with any "Ah-ha!" moments, but I must be gaining experience, because my work has improved dramatically.

Time to start keeping my dream journal again. Other dreamers are starting to show up, and it would be nice to be able to remember them. Have a vague recollection of seeing one of my prodigal students in my dreams the past two nights, but can't recall anything about it. What a waste!

I consider this one semi lucid, since it involved obvious dream related themes. I just accepted it as being a little to real to be fully lucid.

Keeping Secrets
Sleep: OK
Sleep position: Unknown

I have power which manifests it's self visually in my dream as a sword. Other people, other dreamers, think they can take my power by stealing my sword, which is ridiculous. The sword is a phantom projection of a part of myself, which would be impossible to take from me, but that's not stopping these guys from trying. They are constantly coming after me, and I fight them off. On occasion they surprise me and actually do get my sword, but it's still me and I can still control it. I make it disappear, and they just come back to try again.

Starting to get annoyed, I decide to put an end to this once and for all, but how? It's not like I can destroy the sword to stop them from coming for it, it was never real in the first place. I turn to the first rule of dream control for the answer: Every thing requires your attention to exist. If I can't destroy the sword, I can destroy everyone who knows of it's existence. If nobody knows about it, then for all intents and purposes it doesn't exist for anyone other than me.

I was quite proud of how neat and tidy that solution was.

While there is nothing in there directly relating to the 12 Monkeys, I can still see that show's influence on this dream.