Tiktaalik

The stop watch experiment
29/06/20
Lucid# 7 - DILD

I’m in a strange bed in a room full of other sleeping people. I get up and exit into what appears to be a hotel corridor. I then turn around and I’m surprised to find my old best friend and his wife standing behind me. I follow them into their hotel room and when I look back at my friend I see he’s shrunk to the size of a child and this startles me. “Wait am I dreaming!” I think with disbelief.

I put my hand up in a halt gesture as if telling everyone to stop talking and don’t come near me. I then lift a finger and try to push it through my palm. My finger hits my palm and doesn’t go through but it does seem sort of spongy. I do it again and get the same result. I don’t give up though as I’m convinced this is a dream. On my 3rd attempt my finger indents my skin a little and feels sticky like I’ve just stuck it in chewing gum. I pull it out and a string of my sticky Palm comes stretching out stuck to my finger. “It’s a dream!” I conclude.

I waste no time and know I have to quickly stabilise the dream. I rub my hands together and yell “stabilise!” Then I remember my stabilisation experiment I was thinking about before bed. The idea was to find a way of tricking my mind into keeping me in the dream longer. So I came up with the idea of wearing a stop watch and setting the time. “I’m wearing a watch” I say and look at my wrist but there is no watch. I feel a little silly thinking this will work but I try again. I look away and say it again and this time a watch has appeared on my wrist! It’s quite a big bulky, grey watch made of rubber with a digital face. I then grab the spinning wheel around the edge and turn it with a ‘click, click, click’ and as I do the numbers on the screen change. I’m trying to find the time I want to stay in the dream but the numbers come up in a random, incoherent order which makes it difficult. “These numbers are all over the place” I say. Finally I find 10:00 minutes and begin the timer now telling the dream I want to be here for at least 10 minutes.

I then walk around the room as if I own the place. I ask my friends wife if me and my friend can talk alone. She complies and leaves the room. I stand in front of my friend now, who has returned to normal size and jump at him and shove him playfully. “Hello!” I yell in excitement and he smiles and appears a bit startled. “It’s great to see you!” I’ve been waiting for a while to have a lucid dream with my old friend (he moved away many years ago). I remind myself I shouldn’t get too excited though and try to calm down.

I can’t actually recall what happens next but I think I’m exploring the room and feeling the furniture as I come across a grey sofa and suddenly remember I wanted to try flying. I can’t really fly properly indoors so I decide I should start simple and try hover. I feel like I need something to jump off so I aim to stand on the sofa and jump off. I’m not sure what happens then but my friend grabs me or I bump into him and it knocks my vision and my eyes fog up and go dark. I panic knowing the dream is going to crumble so I try justify the darkness to my brain and say “Oh no I have mud in my eyes!” I start pretending and wiping my eyes hoping the dark patches will disappear like I’m rubbing the mud away. It doesn’t work as I’d hoped and only gets worse.

In a last desperate attempt to stay in the dream I spin in circles hoping I can spin into a new dream. My vision has become completely black though and for a moment I feel like I’m spinning in a dark void but then my body is gone as well and I think I’ve woken up. I realise my eyes are still closed and I should attempt a DEILD but my mind begins to wander and I worry it will take too long and I have to get up soon. So with regret I give up and wake up and recall my dream.

Analysis:
It was one of my dream goals to hang out with my old best friend again and he appeared all on his own so it was probably on my mind. Then he turned really small and my lucid brain spotted the oddity straight away. It was good to see my memory was working at full capacity as well and I was able to carry out a planned experiment which was to manifest the watch that was meant to tell my brain that I couldn’t wake up until the timer was up. I definitely wasn’t in the dream for 10 minutes so it didn’t work. I suppose I should have known. details like numbers and text are known to change all the time in dreams and the watch was nonsensical as I should have expected. It was interesting to try though. Then there was the rubbing the mud from my eyes. That too didn’t work as I’d hoped and it seems you can’t always trick the dream in this way. I’ve learnt a lot and was a good experience all round.

Waking Notes:

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

Trigger: Dream oddity
Reality check: Finger palm
Length: 3 minutes (approx.)
Goals: Meet up with my friend & try watch experiment
Techniques: WBTB, MILD
Time: 6:30am
Lucid count: 7