wRembrandt

Had another lucid dream this morning. Was in this gas station searching for and eating pastries that I love so much. I was going to pay for them but decided since I was dreaming I was not going to do a damn thing but eat the pastries. After a while, I figured it was time to stop messing around and complete my goal: Find the dream character named, "Naomi"

I went outside the gas station to find a vehicle that was going to transport me as fast as possible to the park where I expected Naomi to be. All I found were cars that were missing a wheel. This is significant because here we see another obstacle keeping me from finding Naomi. I find a car that had all its wheels so I stole it of course. I heard sirens in the background meaning out of the blue(no pun intended) the police were on my tail. Fortunately, the park where Naomi should have been was only down the street from the gas station. I swerved into the park and ran into a tree. I rushed out of the car and ran towards the park bench where I knew Naomi should be. I was getting excited to finally complete this dream task I have been planning for weeks.

I finally arrived at the bench.

Instead of finding a black/asian woman with long, black braids, I found my dad sitting on the bench.

NO, DAMN IT.

Mind you I was lucid at this time, so I tried to use my dream powers of expectation to sort of summon "Naomi". I saw my father morph and distort a bit but no dice. The dream ends.



RANT TIME: The Naomi Obsession

Why the hell am I so passionately obsessed with finding a dream character from several dozen non-lucid dreams ago? Because the mere act of finding Naomi, at a certain place, at a certain time, in a specific form, to have a specific conversation, vindicates my ability to control the dream scene. That will officially mark the beginning of all the adventures I aspire to have; all the adventures that are the reasons why I have spent 7 years dabbling, researching, fantasizing, and failing at lucid dreaming. I can't have these adventures and memories if I spend most of the lucid dreams I ever have doing mundane things in places I already have familiarity with in waking life.

I am talking about achieving Inception levels of adventure; at least 4 nights a week. This, in my view, can not be done unless through sincere desire, planning, and expectation as in the case of finding Naomi.

Techniques:

So the "Ambience Induced Lucid Dream" technique I was fantasizing about several days ago is garbage. However, the root of it, SSILD, still holds water and has yielded positive results. This morning, I got an idea about the effectiveness of SSILD. Perhaps it was not in focusing on a sense for an extended length of time - as outlined in the original guide - that increases lucidity. Perhaps it was the act of switching focus from sight, sound, and touch that created the conditions favorable to induce a lucid dream. So I quickly switched focus from sight, sound and touch in a steady cadence. I guess spending 1 second per sense would be an accurate statement. Sometimes faster. Sometimes I would slow down and focus on a sense for a bit longer. But I was trying to get in as many cycles as possible because I have been having a problem where I would fall asleep without getting much done.

But of course, this wasn't the only thing I was doing to induce this lucid dream. I was also using prospective memory to visualize me becoming lucid in a later time. I wasn't repeating a mantra 10,000 times. I focused more on the visualization of me becoming lucid with the feeling that remembering to do this was very important. Mind you, I wasn't doing MILD and SSILD at the same time. I was bouncing between the SSILD-variant and the MILD-variant. WBTB was longer as well. I was awake for about 35-45 minutes. It wasn't intentional, it was just that I had a hard time falling asleep again.