Tiktaalik

The Pregnant man
11/06/20
-vivid - semi lucid

I’m sat on a sofa in a living room among a few other people. Just then the door opens and in walks one of my old friends who is male. I’m shocked to see him (I haven’t seen him in years) and notice he is holding his belly and has a round bump sticking out? He’s pregnant! I can’t believe it and now wonder if he has always been a woman and I never knew? “Your pregnant, how!?” I say in disbelief. “Hips syndrome” I think he says and I see he has child baring hips as well. “Don’t ask!” he chuckled. It’s all really really weird and I suddenly doubt everything. I chuckle to myself in shock. “This is a dream right?” I say. “This has to be a dream?!” He just looks at me and doesn’t answer. “It has to be!” I look around and at the sofa I’m on, it’s my parents sofa with all their big cushions and looks so real. I then look at him and ask “seriously tell me honestly, am I dreaming?” He doesn’t answer and just looks at me with a pleasant smile. I then look at my hand and see how real it looks. There’s my wedding ring. I close my hand and try to make my ring disappear, which is my chosen reality check. As I open my hand though the ring remains. I do another quick one and the ring doesn’t budge. I conclude this is real. After I put my hands on his bump and it feels really warm and I can feel a sort of hot stomach ache in my own belly as if the baby is inside me. “Whoa I can feel it, like really feel it!” I say with amazement.

Analysis:
So close to lucidity here. I heard a story about a pregnant man who was formally a woman on the radio yesterday so that came from that and I guess my old friend was just a character inserted to play the part. I can’t believe that moment I almost became lucid though! It happened! I questioned my reality and it was triggered by the weirdness of the situation but the reality check failed! I had heard this could happen so time to mix it up and get some new checks going. I haven’t been doing them frequently so was this was a good wake up call that I need to practice more otherwise they won’t work. So annoying, I was semi lucid and remember how real it all felt at the time and how vivid that moment was.

First Contact with Unconscious
02/06/20
-Lucid #2 - WILD

My 6am alarm wakes me up and I cant recall any dreams. I feel Frustrated by this and worry as well that I wont be able to fall back asleep.

Suddenly I awake in my bed as if from a dream but my eyes remain closed and I can’t recall a dream? I must have fallen asleep I assume and now my consciousness has switched back on though I don’t feel fully awake. I notice everything feels hazy and dark behind my eyes, almost unstable. Instantly I know I am on that brink between awake and sleep and it feels almost hallucinatory. I then begin to focus behind my closed eyes just experimenting to see if I can do a WILD. Within a few seconds the darkness starts to feel like it’s vibrating! I can still feel my body and want to know if I am in sleep paralysis so I think about moving my finger to find out but I stop, not wanting to wake myself up. The vibrating feeling intensifies and I start to hear crackling in my ears as if a loud radio is being tuned up and down next to my head. It’s really surreal and I feel a little scared and I worry I’m going to experience something frightening. I decide I want to stop and wake up but suddenly I hear a braver version of myself tell me to “relax, don’t panic and just look ahead and think about where you want to go in your lucid dream”. It comforts me and gives me the courage I need to continue. I look ahead and can now make out a very vague grey circle in the distance. I imagine it’s the moon and I wonder if I can go into space and experience one of my dream goals. I instantly re-consider thinking that would be way too extreme for my first WILD experience. The feeling escalates and now I feel as if I’m been sucked through a dark portal and a moment later I find myself in a dark street rushing at speed down a narrow path. It takes me a moment to understand whats going on but then it clicks, I have just entered a dream! The transition was so seamless I didn’t even notice it. I am now fully awake and lucid and appear to be riding a bike at speed down a narrow path. I look around and I’m in a quiet, English village at night, lit only by street lights. It looks like my old neighbourhood from my childhood and the street is somewhat familiar but looks a little different. It’s completely deserted and I’m the only one there. I get really excited and laugh to myself in triumph and disbelief at what’s just happened. I did my first WILD and awoken lucid in a a hyper realistic world! I remind myself not to get over excited otherwise I may wake up and begin rubbing my hands together to stabilise the dream as I had learnt. I then remember what I came here to do. I wanted to have a conversation with my unconscious mind. To do this I remember other dreamers said you shout questions at the sky. But the street I’m on is too narrow and the sky obscured by houses. I know I need to go somewhere more open and so I say to myself “when I go around this next corner there will be an open space”. I carry on down the deserted road and as I turn the corner on my bike I see a wider path and beyond a large round culdesac waiting for me with a direct view to the sky. It’s perfect. I rub my hands together again to stabilise and notice I can ride the bike with no hands? I look down and I’m surprised to see I’m not riding a bike at all, I’m just sat in mid air floating down the street as if sat on an invisible bike! As I reach the culdesac I come to a stop. I pretend I’m still riding a bike and hold the handles and pull the breaks to stop. It works and I dismount. I now make my way to the round open space in front of me and clap my hands and yell “Stabilise!” I had heard that can help too as I really don’t want to lose lucidity here. I then decide to increase my awareness and begin touching things which Im also told should help. I make my way over to a house to my left and I feel the conifer bush that’s there. It feels completely real and my mind is blown by this. I then touch the bricks and feel their rough texture. Finally I run my hand along a cube shaped letter box which is wet and I can feel the cold water. I scoop some up and let it trickle across my hand and spill through my fingers. “This is real!” I say to myself in wonder. Once more I have to tell myself to relax and not get too excited. I then stand in awe for a moment and look around and can’t believe that this is all going on in my head right now. I picture myself sleeping in my bed whilst all this is vividly happening in front of my eyes. It’s completely surreal and I hope thinking about it doesn’t wake me up. I keep walking and reach the culdesac and step out onto the open road as if it is a large stage just for me. “Unconsciousness!” I yell to the dark sky hoping it is listening. “It’s me!” I yell as loud as I can and my voice seems to project louder as if on a microphone. There is a calm and eerie silence and no response. I look to the sky and see dark blue clouds above and behind what appears to be faint glowing blue grid lines as if it’s all some kind of computer simulation. Little trickles of electricity shoot across each grid line and hiss, crackle and buzz like electrical circuits. It feels like I am within a powerful and magical place, my own brain perhaps and though my unconsciousness hasn’t responded I can feel it’s there hiding and watching me. “I’ve come to speak with you!” I yell out again. “Will you speak to me!?” There is another pause and It appears I may be wrong and nothing is there. Suddenly a deep sounding and wise voice speaks back from the sky and sounds a little like Leonard Nimoy. “Yes. Atlas” it says as a flash of blue light appears behind a cloud showing me where he is hiding. “Atlas?!” I shout back and wonder maybe if that’s his name? I am then distracted by some people stood behind a house window, they aren’t looking at me but I worry maybe I’m making an idiot out of myself standing in the middle of the neighbourhood yelling. It’s then I remember this is a dream and I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. “We’re all under Atlas” the voice says. I am confused and don’t understand his odd words. “Ok...”? Is all I can think to respond and during my confusion the dream fades. I wake up...

Analysis: There’s lots to analyse here but I’ll try be brief. The WILD really did come out of nowhere, I must have half woke up from a dream. It was really weird, it was almost like my dream woke me up and said here you go here’s the door now just figure out how to get in. I was fully conscious with full waking memory during it and remembered all the steps perfectly and they worked perfectly. It was unbelievable. There was a moment when I felt too scared to continue. The experience felt so bizarre and I worried it was only going to get weirder but it didn’t it became somehow peaceful and exciting. I willed myself to continue and I succeeded. The dream setting was familiar and looked like an alternate version of my hometown and was maybe a nice comfortable and calm place to have my first WILD experience since I chickened out of floating through space. I was oddly riding a bike? Or not a bike! I don’t ride bikes in waking life so I think It could have been my minds way of interpreting the fast flowing movement that came with entering the dream. It’s definitely the most vivid experience I’ve had. Everything was so stable and felt so real! My memory was working excellently as well and I remembered to stabilise and go after my dream goal to speak to my unconsciousness. It was an amazing scene when I tried to speak to him. So eerie and silent and I could feel something powerful was lurking behind those clouds. The electricity flowing through the sky felt like a representation of my brain neurones and made it feel like I was in some amazing space within my own head. Then there was him. That voice, so powerful and wise yet somewhat nervous to speak with me. I really felt it was just me and him, a one on one first meeting. I really didn’t understand what he was telling me but the words were intriguing. If it hadn’t have perplexed me so much I may have been able to stay lucid longer. Now I’m an atheist and not a big believer in spiritual signs nor the idea that there is some unconscious mind that’s communicating with me in my dreams but it is fun to imagine that it could be something more.
I spoke to myself in the mirror before bed and made my intent to speak with my unconsciousness as if he was a person in my head. It appeared he heard my call and awoke me from my sleep and provided the gateway to meet him in the form of a WILD. I then spoke to him as I had intended and it was almost like I was in a darkened area of my brain, which he had allowed me to enter. He then spoke to me hidden and powerful like a God. I even think I’ve met him before in another dream years ago when I was a child. He spoke in cryptic wording and spoke of Atlas who in Greek mythology was the Titan who held up the celestial heavens. “We are all under Atlas” he said. Did he mean we are all under the heavens? Was it his way of describing something beyond this real world? You could interpret our meeting as something really profound until you start looking at the experience with a more critical eye. Let’s be honest. I went there with the intention of speaking to him so my mind was most likely making it all up as I went along as it’s what I expected. It’s probably why he made no sense and took so long to respond. He was also exactly how I imagined a powerful subconscious God would appear and seemed a little too perfect along with the setting. Then there was the Atlas comments. Did I just miss hear him say something else and then the dream just went along with the whole Atlas thing? I may not believe that there is some sentient being visiting me in my dreams but it is still a vivid conversation with my own mind and that in itself is incredible!

Waking Notes:

Stability: High
Control: High
Clarity: High
Awareness: High
Length: Medium

Trigger: Awoke from a dream
RC: NA
Length: 4 mins approx.
Goals: To speak with my unconscious mind
Techniques: DEILD/ WILD
Time: 6 - 6:30am
Lucid count: 2

- Heavy emphasis on ADA & RCs in the evening
-Slep through the night with Low recall
-Woke from a 6am alarm