dream fragment

Sep 8

Long NL. I'm in my apartment complex's front yard and office area. My manager from work is there, along with some coworkers and random DCs. We are in school sdesks arranged in the parking lot, doing work on laptops. I see an email in red letters that says "failed", although I know the test was successful. The email gets sent out again with SUCCESS, and mentions something like "good job everyone", but I notice that it's not just an email, it's a meeting invite. My boss comes around and pats people on the back, telling us to "enjoy the long weekend" and mentioning that we can work from our beds. My fiancee is there as well (either as a worker or just as my fiancee) and calls this out as bullshit as we were already working overtime. Before or during there is also the understanding that I have to assassinate someone.

Dream scene changes and I'm in a room walking towards a door. My dog is there and so is my fiancee. I am holding my dog as I pass through a door. I become lucid! I keep telling myself "I'm lucid" and "I'm dreaming" but don't do any RCs. I see a small door (like a dumbwaiter) and consider using it to teleport to my dream world I've been incubating, but for some reason I hesitate and don't (don't know if this was a conscious decision). Instead I go with the flow of the dream.

The scene shifts. I'm still holding my dog, and I think "he's the best". I'm in a somewhat cluttered room now, and I understand that I need to kill all of the DCs here. I do some jedi mind tricks to make sure they don't resist, and they work. I tell them I'm dreaming and they all react in a friendly way. Each time I go to kill one of them, it seems like they go through the 5 stages of grief for themselves in front of my eyes, always ending up at "acceptance" before dying. I kill 2 of them, and then decide to use ice powers*. At first I was intending for Skyrim ice shards, but it came out as more of a stream of icy powder/wind from my fingertips. My thumb and forefinger are pressed together and the way the stream of ice comes out is something like when you put your thumb over a garden hose to spray pressured water at someone. As I'm pondering this I go into intense visualizations of the streams, and there are 3D mesh outlines of the stream and its "weather patterns" overlain on my vision, like a series of oblong lines. The visualization shifts to a long sawblade with teeth marked with numbers. As I mentally change the number from 8 to 2 and adjust it by notches, I see the angle and strength of the stream change.

The scene shifts to a security cam view, and as I press my left thumb and forefinger together, I can send ice shards from the camera, although they're not reliable. The camera reminds me of the show Person of Interest. After this I'm transmitted into the room. There is a blue tint to the room, and I look around and see some DCs. I walk out of a door behind me and peer into the hallway (very bright incandescent light and white walls and floors), then I go back into the blue room. I tell the DCs "I'm dreaming" and again as I approach them they go through stages of grief. I do this to a couple of DCs then walk through a doorway/archway. Above the archway are two drill bits. I jump up and grab them. I test one on a wall and it drills right through, despite having barely any threads (it was basically an ice pick). I go up to an old lady DC and say "I'm dreaming". She looks at me with sadness and says "We'll take care of each other/ourselves", then I wake up.

The dream lasted around 2-3 minutes and was very vivid. I was lucid and aware the whole time, but it still felt like a guided/directed dream.

Longer NL -- I'm a young boy who is somehow a vertical venetian blind(???). I am on a quest with a young girl, we're descending into a deep level of some underground building, with a furnace and monsters. Her face doesn't seem real, more like a porcelain doll or something. We arrive and there's a giant hydra in a brightly lit room. It has a "cement burning rocket" that's burning me and melting my armor. The girl is wrapped up in one of the hydra's necks or tentacles. I back away and reach a closet with the venetian blinds. They tell me or some other voice tells me that I am one with the blinds.

I had a few other NLs and fragments. In one, I'm in my grandpa's house and there's a weird square baby with thin, posable arms. It reminds me of BMO from Adventure Time. It was a premature. The parents are proud. There's an old lady to my left who looks like my aunt, who's wearing a white shirt with gold lettering. I note it, it's in different languages (Chines, Latin, Greek) together. At some point I had my midget intruder FA again, but it was very hazy and I yelled "Fuck you!" or "I'll kill you!" loudly and it fades quickly. In another fragment, I'm Dexter and Rita is dropping in the pool next to me. I'm supposed to be enjoying it, but I'm Dexter so I hate it. I say something like "Rita, the water is going like 20 mph". Scene shift to Deb and Quin, Deb's in a room playing with a reclining bicycle for toddlers and Quin comes in and says something while smiling and laughing. Next scene, Deb is driving a bus, Rita and I and the kids are in there. She's taking a risky corner under an interstate high rise. I don't see the bus flip, but I understand it does. Rita scolds Deb in that annoying way she does. Finally, I have the transparent eyelids effect, I can see my room clearly and thought I heard my fiancee calling me, when I move my waking body my head is under the blanket and I go downstairs to find my fiancee watching TV, turns out she didn't call me.



*I don't know if this counts as the "Breathe an element" goal

Sep 7 2018

First dream of night: I'm at childhood home. I'm younger, I think. There is a party or gathering coming up, and we're discussing it in the backyard. My mom wants us (fiance and I) to wear a giant Barney suit. We tentatively agree. I try on the suit and can't fit the headpiece on. It's a rectangular oblong plasic open box (thinka tupperware container, but oblong. It was in no way the appropriate size for my head. On the two, I think there was a felt cap or something (driveR). I think the torso had a separate piece from the legs for the costume. After trying the headpiece on without the tupperware "structural mask", mI found that I could shift my focus and see myself in 3rd person (still non-lucid). I remember it looked nothing like a Barney head or any formed animal costume head for that matter; instead it was like a purple ghost outfit (i.e. loose draped rag with eye holes).

The dream shifts and we're all in a parking lot. My mom's request for us to work during the party has come up, but it turns out she wants us to work for 5 hours each. I say that's bullshit, she wsays "well you agreed, you just idn't specify timeframe or current ball timeframe". We were in some kind of parking lot, I was in a white van I believe. I was trying to pull out of the spot and around the corner. I fought with my momm about this and eventually resigned us completely from doing the ball.

Before getting in the van I believe, I was walking around a version of the parking a lot that was fused with my backyard. Off towards the far right/forward corner of the yard, there's a system of roots that went on for a few fet in either direction. I didn't realize, but some of them are completely rotten. I step over them and they collapse, while the healthy parts remain intact. The rotten roots fall away into a large grave-sized hole.

The dream shifts and I'm inside the house, in a false version of my room. My fiance is there with me, but is playing the role of a sister (posibly step sister or family friend, it was vague). The mood was fierce and rebellious. We are talking about how best to approach the Barney situation and my dad ends up walking around the corner. He has a few guys with him and he cracks some inappropriate jokes, and some of the guys with him say some stuff that's way out of line. My zipper is down. Before this my "sister" and I were watching TV or in the kitchen.

Dream fragment about "how to meet your heroes" or something similar.

Edit: In the main dream, I remember at multiple points having to swat away both lovebugs and wasps.



*Note: Seems like in my dreams, I usually get in huge fights with my mom (way more intense than anything ever IWL), and my dad is always laid back (innappropriately so).

Sep 5 2018

I'm in the front yard of my childhood home. It's dark out, a long while before dawn. My parents are there (we're all sitting on ice chests or plastic/yard chairs, I can't remember seeing them) and we're preparing for a party or get-together of some kind. The song "Sweet Child of Mine" is playing, and for some reason I have to learn the solo (I know it vaguely from playing it IWL in high school). This could be from the fact that my parents always wanted me to play guitar at family gatherings and I always hated it. I wrote down something like "just...play it" in my DJ but don't remember the significance. For some reason my high school girlfriend who I dated for like 3 weeks was going to be there, and I remember her name in loopy script. Can't remember if I wrote it or someone else did.

Very vague dream fragment in a restaurant. After that, a vivid dream where I'm on the patio/balcony of my current apartment. I had a "profound sense of acceptance" to quote my DJ.

I woke up around 5am into pretty good paralysis and decided to try a quick WILD attempt (my fiance gets up at 5:30am). Unfortunately my dog got up, flapped his ears loudly, and sat right on my arms/chest, which pulled me out if it. I lay awake for the remaining time and let my fiance sleep, but I heard some weird soft sighing. At first I thought it was her, but as she was leaving I brought it up and she said she heard it too. The only rational explanation is that it was our dog, but it sounded like a human female...

I walked the dog and looked at the stars, pushing my alarm back a little and resolving to get lucid.

In my next dream, I'm on a computer and for some reason I have to download a set of 128 bit pixel smileys. They're coming from a website called Jered/Jerek's World, or Site. The smileys are crude in an "early internet" kind of way. One of them was a picture of exaggerated red lips, another is more orange and is laughing, and my fiance laughs at them. I open up the windows search bar and paste what I had, into the search. It pastes the words "Jerek's World", and as I read the words in my head, the desktop background starts alternating between some tiled images, one tan one saying Jerek/Jered's Site and another grey one saying "Jerek's Billion Dollar Software Company". They transitioned in horizontal and vertical screen wipes.

Next, I'm in a long kitchen stretching out maybe 10 feet to the left and 20 to the right. I'm not aware of anything behind me, but I understand that in front of me past an archway is the living room. I'm standing at the sink, looking for something or someone. Possibly my fiance is there. I was just walking around with a Brita pitcher, and now I see that there's a second, rounder one on the counter. I try to find the lid for it and I see it's in the sink, but the inside of it is covered with a greasy layer of spaghetti sauce.

In my next dream, my boss's boss is giving advice on business lunches, i.e. where to take clients. She suggests some other restaurant, but her favorite is the hotel restaurant. She hands it over to a younger guy who looks annoyed and seems to be a drier, more monotone version of a WL coworker. The room is tinged with blue lighting. He hands out a textbook. We're going to go on a business lunch with him, which he's not pleased about. I pull my phone out and subtly try to voice-record him, but no such luck. I end up taking notes on paper and draw a vivid picture of lips (was one of the smileys). I think at this point I was trying to record my dreams in-dream! Should capitalize on this. I woke with slight headache.



*Note: Analyzing my dreamsigns from the entries I've posted on DV, I think I can safely say my strongest ones are a) childhood home b) fiance c) family members. Hopefully I can add trying to dream journal as a new one, we'll see if it keeps manifesting.

Sep 3 2018

Woke 3:35. In a fight with parents and grandpa about cooking or setting up something (possibly speed-reading). Daylight outside, long tables (possibly crawfish boil).

Woke 5:05. Long fragment in a stadium, receiving some sort of business presentation from coworker. After it's over, I'm picking up my laptop bag and I stand out of the way for a coworker and an unnamed DC, who say that they have a "merge request in the morning". The presenter (another coworker) is kicking us out.

Awoke directly from FA nightmare. My dog barked and I could tell instantly that it was serious, not just him barking at another dog. The door to the bedroom is thrown open and the midget from Twin Peaks season 3 entered with a small gun. He approached the bed, not looking directly at me or anyone, just at the wall behind us. He said something vague and I tried to lean up in bed asking something to the extent of "What do you want?". As I tried to move, and in some sense solve the problem, my vision blurred and the dream started to fade. He was wearing a blue shirt with the pattern of "I (heart) N Y" but the letters were "? (eye symbol) T Y" in white. The room's layout was completely realistic and accurate unlike other false awakenings. I woke up and said "holy shit" aloud. Very scary experience, but very vivid -- would have been invaluable if I could have gotten lucid and converted it.

Before that, I was in my childhood home, on the phone with my manager about something that needed to get done. The screen was black with red nubmbers and dial-screen graphics, and an orbiting globe outline. The call got dropped. I was worrying about this with my parents but they seemed to think it would all work out (it was nighttime). My sister was in my room on my computer, looking for the first book in a series my fiance is currently reading. I suggested that she can just read my fiance's copy rather than buy it herself. I end up also giving her a japanese manga volume and another poorly translated japanese book, I remember the engrish being hilarious in-dream. After this, I went to the kitchen (all of the lights were out). I was trying to write down my dreams in ink on the wood floors. In the back of my mind I knew this was a terrible idea and that my dad would be furious, but in the moment I wasn't worried about it. There were some drops of water on the floor and it was smearing the ink, so I started wiping it up, making the smearing even worse. I was also worried about cockroaches.

After the ink, I found myself in a distinct dream scene. I was on the ground looking up at the side of a cliff maybe 4 or 5 stories high. There was a good bit of dirt caked on and I thought to myself how nice it would look if I could get the dirt off. I grabbed a wedge-shaped piece of reddish slate and scraped as much dirt as I could off and stepped back, and noticed how nice the geometric patterns were. I remember the thought-phrase "cliff face". When I looked again, one of the rock formations sort of looked like a nose, and the one below looked like a mouth! When I started examining the rest of the cliff, the whole thing was taken up by face structures (abstract and Easter Islandish). The ground went from being solid dirt and rock, to having some cracks in which curved red boards were shoved and prying the cracks apart. In the cracks were green cylindrical vegetables (I thought of okra or fat asparagus stalks). As I moved forward towards the cliff, I noticed a mesh oyster bag of sea urchins, which were moving around each other in the bag, sort of like you expect spike balls to in a metroidvania or platformer. This was a really vivid and overall nice and creative dream that's simple but feels profoundly peaceful, the kind of nonlucid you generally want to have. So of course this scene transitioned directly to the nightmare FA.

I woke again at 8:59. My fiance was in trouble. We were in some sort of college sign-up, car buying, or other related scenario. There were DCs everywhere, and specifically several DCs with deep blue eyes and short hair meant her harm in an insidious way (they were outwardly friendly). I became more and more adversarial over the course of the dream, eventually hitting them and throwing things at them. We moved from the student union/indoor car lot into a side hallway which transitions to a long house with lots of corridors and small rooms arranged in pretty much a straight-shot, but almost labyrinthine at the same time. I was thinking somehow they were hypnotizing her, and she was getting more and more bruises on her arms and abdomen. Eventually I get in exaggerated physical fights with them and I somehow manage to get 2-4 of them to defect to my side as allies and stow her away under a sliding hole in the kitchen (sort of a drain hole in the floor, like you see in restaurant kitchens). She escaped succesfully.

I'm unknowingly in an FA but think I'm fully awake. I am having the "transparent eyelids" effect, and I'm looking around my bedroom at the closet door, but it's the wooden closet door from my childhood home. I'm etching a human face in it with my mind.

After this, I'm in my childhood home and members of my family as well as random DCs are dressed in "starship troopers armor" -- white and blue, and white and red. It was a long and in-depth dream, but I don't remember much of it. I finally escaped the fray and sat back on my bed, but then my father entered my room with his gun held high, and I remember thinking "oh good, you'll just be my bodyguard". When I thought this (non-lucidly), he changed his course of action from running forward to attack me to climbing in bed next to me with his rifle held out (think Fullmetal Jacket "This is my rifle"). I got up from bed* and started walking towards the hallway. Almost instantly I became lucid! I didn't say "I'm dreaming!" or do any RCs or stabilization unfortunately. I walked down the hallway towards the bathroom, and it was daylight outside, maybe early morning. I walked into the bathroom and looked at the mirror, seeing a girl in a dress instead of myself. In this moment, I started to think of the "bad guys" in the starship troopers armor and then banished the thought from my mind, knowing that if I thought of them I would encounter or summon them. So instead I took advantage of the situation -- although I was seeing the girl in the mirror, I felt my dream body as my own physical body. So I turned away from the mirror and decided that I would become the girl in the mirror. I turned back around and I was!

Spoiler for nudity:

My body had changed competely and I was naked. Naturally, I touched my arms and chest to test sensation (it was dull, sort of semi-numb as my dream body sensation usually is). I did a little twirl and

inspected my face further in the mirror -- my face was sort of ugly and homely**, and as mirrors in dreams usually do, my face shifted quite a bit. I leaned in further to inspect myself and kissed the mirror (it was cold). I then leaned back out and decided to try my "Clear sight. Clear sound. Clear touch. Grounded. Calm, confident. I can stay here as long as I want." stabilization phrase. However, as soon as touched my thumb and forefinger, I accidentally said "Clear mind" first! It rejected me from the dream instantly. As I began to feel my waking body, I realized my thumb and forefinger were touching here too; maybe this triggered the waking?

I laid awake for quite a while after that, as I had already slept more than usual for the night, and for the whole weekend basically. I was also still excited about the lucid and hoping to drop back into it. Eventually I went back to sleep and had some more non lucids. In the first, I was with my fiance in a rest area/cabin in the woods. In the next, I felt as though I dropped into the dream as a visualization from waking, but it's possible I was only visualizing from an FA. I was imagining tall waves, and how my body bobbed up and down in them. It felt incredibly nice and peaceful. I was at a beach, and my sister was standing on a board of some kind zipping up a life jacket. I think my fiance was bobbing up and down in the water too. When I looked at the shore, I couldn't quite see the sand but I could see tall buildings above the waves, which I identified to be my apartment buildings from WL. A distinct black shape was swimming towards me, and I thought it might be a shoe or a fish (I thought it could be a dangerous fish but dismissed the thought instantly). After another waking, I had a final dream of being in a wood panneled shop with an old woman who was offering the shop to me (inheritance?). Her wares were laid out on a long wooden table, which after looking away and looking back turned out to be a giant Knorr pasta packet. I believe this all happened in 3rd person.



*I think getting out of beds in nonlucids is a lucidity/awareness trigger -- will have to investigate how to encourage this).
**This is actually the second time I've transformed my body into a woman's in a mirror while lucid, but for some reason I always turn into butterfaces. Also not sure why I keep doing this. Why, lucid mind, why?

Sep 2 2018

I went to bed with strong intentions to become lucid, as well as a solid plan for what to do once I became lucid. I was trying the anchoring method I mentioned in another thread, anchoring positive and confident memories with the sensation of touching my thumb and forefinger together. I had a phrase burnt into memory to repeat nonverbally once I became lucid (to replace "Clarity now!"): "Clear sight, clear sound, clear touch. Grounded. Calm, confident. I can stay in this dream as long as I want" (in retrospect this is extremely long, but I think I'll try it out for a few new nights anyway). I also used my standard mantra "I will become lucid in my next dream"/"In every dream tonight" in combination with "In my next dream, I look at my hands and realize that I'm dreaming". In the future I will stick with only "IWBLIMND" since it's more succint and sets a clear intention for the immediate future, rather than a broad concept of "every dream".

I awoke at 1:18 am in a somewhat strong paralysis with extremely vivid imagery (not dreamlike, more like imagination). There was a man, possibly me, conjuring lightning circularly all around him. The lightning was blue, white, and green. I awoke again at 2:47 am. I remembered several dreams involving my fiance and my dog. In the first, I was at the elementary portion of my high school (it's K-12) and I swerved my car to narrowly miss my dog, who spontaneously started running out at me in the street. I got out of the car and was rubbing his front leg and paw. I noticed that his paw had too many joints and was curled in too much. Somehow this felt connected to a drive through.

In the next dream, I'm in a living room with a wrap-around bar counter. I think I've been here in a dream before. I'm watching Bob Ross on TV painting thick brushstrokes -- X's, C's, and U's -- over an already finished landscape. My dog jumps off the counter. I'm trying to remember what to do tomorrow, two important things in the morning and night.

My next set of dreams came after WBTB. In the first, one of my cousins was referred to as "3". There was an interesting story about diving, and D&D. I vividly remember descending in a well, looking up as the light was blocked out by the silhouette of a monster (Demogorgon?), although I didn't feel fear. Next, I was in an arcade or bowling alley, some sort of indoor entertainment place. I left my fiance to go to an adjoining room from the lobby and get ice cream. There was a girl there who was going in the same direction as me, and called me a "creeper" jokingly. She was trying to be funny or cute in the way she was getting her ice cream. I was friendly but not overly so. I got maybe 4 flavors of ice cream, in sort of a flight. In the next dream, I'm an intruder in a man's house. He has a lot of weapons strewn about, some intricate compound and traditional bows, swords, guns, blowdarts, etc. I go through room after room and find the man, he's in his mid 50s or 60s. He threatens me with a long, thin, metal pole, and I think he threatned to castrate me with it. He transports me back to some memory of 1950's New Orleans with a McDonalds, and a small building with an advertisement to "teleport you to the Science Museum". The visuals are faded, blackish, and all the buildings look like plywood.

In the next dream, I'm at Sonic at night/early morning with my fiance. She's handed me a cup, but I threw it away; there are two crumpled cups beside it. I understand it to be sonic, but it's more like someone's backyard, there aren't any lights or servers or menus, just the standard sonic table and trash can, as well as an overhead cover. A group of foreign men walk by, talking about wanting some cervezas. In the next dream, I'm going over some train tracks covered in water, in a swamp (I've been here before as well). The waves are rounded like tiled hills -- at certain points they are covered in grass, at other times they're just water/waves. I see the sasquatch.

My old boss is giving me cryptic hints about something, laughing about it. We're in the woods, sort of. Something about eating a spider/the dust that comes out when you crush the spider. Possibly my fiance was warning me not to eat it. I eat the dust, and then eat the crumpled spider husk too.

Next I had a dream about DreamViews! It was something about inline comments/spoilers; I remember red and purple text. There were other sites too -- DreamBattles and DreamWars (reenactments, maybe I read about this before).



*Slept for a really long time hoping to get lucid, and kept trying to go back to sleep. After this frustration, I decided to not get bummed out when I don't get lucid. It doesn't help. And there's always tomorrow night

Sep 1 2018

The night started with some visualization of a dream I'm trying to incubate, which lasted probably 30 minutes to an hour. After that, I set my intentions to become lucid and headed to sleep.

My first dream of the night involved some kind of network TV teenage vampire drama plot, which took place in a neighborhood similar to mine from childhood. In the next dream, I was in a trench coat placing high-stakes bets using a 90's era cell phone. At the end of this dream, all of my cronies were in a room, facing forward in rows, and I was facing backward. We were all peeing on the ground (I think it was a power play).

Next, I'm in a huge convention center. I had just seen the newest Avengers movie (I haven't seen it IWL). I was ranting to others about how Thanos had all of the Avengers on his side and wasn't even fighting, but was just using the Avengers to fight. The convention center was huge (should've caught that, since disproportionate structures is one of my dreamsigns). We (a couple of DCs and I) were walking through the ground floor when we ran into

Spoiler for nudity:

three girls in fishnet shirts, whose nipples were poking through the fishnet. I or one of my DC friends picked the middle girl's girls up and examined them like a fine connoisseur, asking "These are same-size, no?". I remember they had a lot of moles and sort of looked cancerous? The girl on the left had red fishnet, but the other two had dark grey or black, and all of the fishnet was thick, like yarn or wool rather than thin like you would typically think.

The dream shifts and I'm walking with some old high school friends and acquaintances. We come across M, who's sitting on the floor in front of some people trying to take a picture. We tell her to get up and stop blocking the picture, and she says "This is a picture?" in a way that for some reason made me give out this awful dolphin-like laugh. I remember thinking in my non-lucid state, "stop that, you'll wake yourself up!". Sure enough I did.

After this dream sequence, I got up as my fiance left for work. I walked my dog so he wouldn't bother me for the rest of the session and drank a little apple juice. I MILDed with "I will become lucid in my next dream" and "The next time I see a person, I will look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming". The first dream had very low lucidity. It was sort of a western setting in a two or three story house. Outside I could see a desert/grassland with tall grass growing and mountains in the background, and the sky was really beautiful (should have RC'd here also, abnormal sky is a dreamsign). I walked around the house and looked out of the windows.

From this dream, I awoke into a false awakening. In the FA, I was trying to get back to bed to LD (didn't catch this). At some point I opened my dream eyes and saw a shallow, long, white plastic sink on the wall. It occured to me that I was dreaming because that doesn't exist in my room, but it didn't "click" until I got up and reached for the knob. At this point there was a shift in my consciousness that almost threw me off balance, like flipping a switch. I walked to a nearby mirror on the wall and experienced what people say -- the properties of my face were changing and twitching, especially my nose, jaws, and lips. I didn't say "clarity now!" like I usually do, and I really need to stabilize. I had some feeling throughout my dream body, but felt numb, so I started slapping my face and pulling on my lips, tongue, cheeks. I was incredibly focused on engaging my tactile senses. I tried to summon my dream totem associated with stabilizaiton, but for some reason I didn't have pockets. I decided I would summon a DC to help, so strangely I called out the name of an acquaintance from high school (I haven't even consciously thought of this person in years). At first I called aloud, and I could only get out the first name since my voice was garbled as it always is. So I used non-verbal commands! I looked towards the doorway and she appeared! It was awesome to see this work, as it's only worked for me in the past in a semi-lucid. I think I told her to give me a massage so that I could feel my body better. She had a serious face on and nodded agreeably. I was wearing a red t-shirt and a thin, dark blue jacket like the band kids used to wear. I started to take this off, and sat back on the bed as she approached, at which point I woke up.

The first thing I did upon waking was an RC (I've been trying to train myself to do these at each waking), but it wasn't a dream. I was really pissed at myself for not thinking of the ways I've stabilized in the past ("clarity now!", breathe in and focus on senses, pry eyes open, etc.), but I was happy to have an LD after about a week-long dry spell. I reflected on what I could have done better and visualized it, then MILDed again and went to sleep.

I had a chain of FAs/DILDs at this point*. In the first, I was in a lit version of my bedroom. I got up, became lucid, and walked around briefly before losing lucidity. In the next, I'm in a grocery store on a higher staircase. I see a lot of DCs around the corner of the opening, and I look at a clock that says "08:00". I become lucid, feeling off-balance like before, and walk around the display, looking at some bread before losing lucidity. In the next dream, I'm on the street of my childhood home looking at a large white column in the middle of NOG's yard (one of our neighbors). There's moss or dirt up to about shoulder level on the column. My sister and mom are behind me and commenting on the small car parked in middle of the yard, trying to make out the license plate. I become lucid and start looking at some huge leaves on some plants that appeared spontaneously. We're looking through the leaves, arguing whether the license plate is UWP 117 or 116. The dream fades slowly out and back in, then fades completely.

From here I had a series of longish NLs:
I have a collection of wood carvings/sculptures. One in particular is of Spyro, the others are small people. The house I'm in reminds me of a previous vacation house.
There is a mouse running around the backyard at my childhood home. It runs up to the door and allows me to pick it up. My parents' dog and mine both just sniff at it when it approaches. It's almost cartoon-like, but is very real. We all fall in love with the mouse. At some point my sister finds a "water snake" which looks like it's breaded with panko bread crumbs until she places it in a bucket full of water and cleans it off (now it looks like bread dough). There is a 1ft dark green toady that walks through our back porch in the midst of all this, as well as some small slugs. My mom is sad/angry, lashing out passive agressively (this is practically a dream sign).
The next dream is in an urban fantasy setting (by this I mean full-out fantasy that just happens to pass through some urban sections, not vampires and werewolves in modern clothing). I am tasked with delivering something. I have to walk around these long, curving, somewhat cyberpunk blue corridors in the middle of the city. I'm wearing peasant's clothes and have a sword. Whatever it is I'm delivering is in a brown sack (possibly the remains of something or someone?). I have to double-back at some point (this could be a dream sign, going down the same path twice). Eventually I arrive at the base, which is a fraternity or sorority house. I meet with the buyer/receiving party, and they say that it's not what they expected. Don't remember much after this and my pen ran out of ink, so the world will never really know.



Overall, it was a pretty good night! Summoned a DC and learned to use non-verbal commands. Will need to practice and visualize how to stabilize VTA (visual, tactile, and auditory) senses more.

*Because of their short nature and the fact that they were pretty much chained together, I'm going to count all of these short lucids as 1 in total, for a grand total of 2 LDs tonight.

Aug 31 2018

I'm in a house that's based off of my current apartment. I'm running around the room, possibly with a baseball bat/umbrella/wooden sword, opening closets and doors trying to find an intruder. I'm yelling the whole time. I'm trying to protect my fiance. After some time I'm outside under the vine-covered wooden pavilion.

I'm walking with my fiance down some way in an old world city, vaguely European. There is tan, smooth brick all around, reaching up on the immediate rightin a wall maybe 4 or 5 stories high. There's a similar wall far off to the left, with a canal inbetween. I'm walking down the cobblestoned sloped path, and affixed to the wall to my right, and there are stepped/gradated rails along the wall, one high enough for my hands as well as one that's ledge-like for my feet. I climb up and remember the vivid feeling of the thin rails cutting into my hands as I maintained my grip while my fiance just strolled beside me.

Had some more nonlucids during this time but can't remember them/can't decipher my DJ (I write in the dark). I awoke at 5:30, went to the bathroom, walked downstairs and drank some apple juice. Went back to sleep around 6:15.

I'm talking to my boss and the receptionist at my desk. A coworker (D) says "Hey bro," and my boss tells him not to call me bro, but Tyrannosaur. Transition, and I'm reclining in a bed in a warm red room with incandescent light. Either the boss or the receptionist comes into the room (nothing weird). We talk.

Dreams are more vivid after this point.

I'm in the office and a mentally challenged classmate from college is telling the cleaning people not to spray cleaner in our four-way cubicle, because he has "smell sensitivity".

I'm sitting on the floor at the side of the bed from before, showing my sketchbook to D from earlier. He notes how finished everything looks (I internally note this too -- I never finish anything IRL). As I flip through the book, there is a series of 8-15 pages of detailed, beautiful (stylized) waves moving subtly with each picture. As I flip pages, eventually a woman appears amidst the waves. She changes poses once or twice, then becomes a younger (late teens or 20yo) girl. In the dream, I question whether I drew this. D comments "oh wow, lots of girlies in here". As I continue flipping the pages it switches from a paperback sketchbook to a bound hardback, and at the end there are ads (sort of like at the end of a manga volume).

I had a false awakening about writing down my dreams which was also vivid, although mostly I just rolled around in bed.

Awoke for real at 7:25 dreading work. Had some waking images/a daydream of a thin woman with small eyes and a stern look, wearing red and white leaf print dress. I think her name was Riah (short for Mariah?).

Aug 30 2018

Long NL, the first thing I remember is walking up a staircase or ladder and entering a dark basement. It is finished and in some memories it extends lengthwise to my left and right with no windows, but in others it's small and box-shaped, closing in all around with a window in front of me under an eave. In both memories, there are cardboard boxes all around, and right in front of me there is a broken light bulb. I'm yelling downstairs to someone that the bulb is broken (I remember there are two lit floors below me). It felt like several others were in the house with me.

Short NL when I fell back asleep after dismissing my alarm in the morning. I'm at a table in France. I'm a spectator, possibly without physical manifestation or presence. To the left is an american couple, to the right a french couple from another region of france. Both are travelling to this region and sampling some food. The backdrop is empty whiteness. The americans are making fools of themselves, and the french are snooty about it. I remember being both of them, and cutting open some toasted bread. There was also red sauce involved somehow (were these meatball subs?), and the dream ended with the frenchman laughing.

Aug 28 2018

I'm in my childhood church. On the altar there's some kind of human sacrifice of women going on. I remember also being around the sound booth (I was here a lot as a teenager). There are scenes in the youth room and parking lot as well, and they're all very dark, but I can't remember what was happening.

I'm in college again, but my curriculum is changing. I'll have to take a lot of advanced math classes I didn't have to take before. I'm really concerned but my fiance is trying to convince me it'll be easy, she starts drawing squiggles with her pencil on some paper in some sort of parallelogram (squiggles all going out from one point or line). I consider changing my major to Psychology, but I'll have to start with Psych 113 (whatever that is).

Aug 29 2018

As I was falling asleep, I did progressive relaxation, thought about a couple of new mantras* to see which felt right, and then started meditating on my breath, focusing on the tip of my nose. After a while I realized my body was mostly paralyzed. I decided to make the most of it and try to WILD. When I first thought of this, I got some pretty in-depth HI and imagined visuals, very vivid. But after that I spooked myself or something, and I couldn't get it to the same level of vividness for the next thirty or so minutes. So I MILDed on one of my new mantras and eventually moved and broke the paralysis.

In the first dream I remember, I was driving around my WL car. It was hard to handle (like trying to legally drive a car in video games) and I kept bobbing and weaving and turning around. My viewpoint was shifting between first and third person. I was driving around a warped version of the city I live in, and ended up running some stops signs or red lights. At some point some cops pulled out of a parking lot and started following me, but didn't turn their lights on. I lost them and went to an interstate ramp, but I didn't want to get on the interstate for some reason, so I was stuck between the ramp and the exit (it was on the left, whereas they're usually on the right). I had to wait for the lanes to clear out so I could back up and get off the ramp -- quite stressful. I think this happened twice.

In the next dream, it felt like an FA although I don't think it was. My dog was in it, which is odd because although I see him all day (probably more than my fiance) I've only ever seen him in my dreams once. We're in a darkened bedroom/living room combination. I walk downstairs and we're talking about somewhere we need to go. I'm possibly worried about an intruder? Slight shift and I'm going outside, I open the door and my dog almost makes it out but I grab his hind leg and put him back inside. Before or after that I caught him eating some crumbs off the ground.

Scene shift again and I'm sitting on something or laying on the grass on the side of the house, looking up at the sky. I notice some lights in the sky, like heat lightning. Then (separately) I notice I can see lights on the clouds, and realize they're coming from my phone! Even with dream logic I'm amazed that my light can travel so far to the clouds from my phone (I recall a similar experience from my childhood with a high-powered search flashlight). I try to shine the phone's light on a tree that's hangning overhead, and I see the patterns of the leaves on the clouds above! I also notice 2 moons, then 3, some redder or foggier than others, but mostly the same size. I wouldn't call it semi-lucid, but I was seriously questioning the world. I think I should try to add looking at the sky to my dream routine, since most of the time I'm looking at the ground or my immediate surroundings, and seeing these inconsistencies may help with getting lucid.

In the next dream I'm in a fitness center or some similar place. I'm sitting or laying down in these lanes, aiming my feet to sort of louge through the lanes. This is coupled with a video game-like view with arrows showing which direction I should go. At some point I turn around and lie prone, trying to go backwards, but my feet are dragging so I have to manually push myself. I'm sort of in a cobra pose with my back underneath this large pullup bar type thing (black metal wrapped in foam). Eventually I reach the end with a lobby or something similar (carpeted, reminds me of a Chuck E Cheese). I see someone I went to school with who I didn't really know, and I'm sort of embarassed. I say something stupid like "I'm having a Shiatsu massage**". She responds with something nice but is clearly weirded out.

The dream shifts again and I'm in some kind of locker room. Another less-than-acquaintance from HS is there and is trying to convince the coach that he should recognize/remember him. He kept saying "I'm Double-D! Don't you remember me?" and the coach humiliated him. I think my dog may have been eating crumbs off the floor here too.



*"I am a master/natural at lucid dreaming" - meh; "I look at my hands and realize I am dreaming" - solid; "I calmly take control of the world I've created" - good for focusing on stabilization, but it's a mouthful.

**Of course I pronounced "massage" the british way, probably because I just watched S1E3 of Black Books, "Grapes of Wrath", which is arguably the best episode of anything ever.

Aug 25 2018

Went to bed pretty late. Woke up at 5:30 or 6:30 and remembered that I had 3 long NLs, but couldn't remember them.
First dream I remember of the night was lucid. I don't know what I was doing and don't remember much about it. I was in a library, possibly on a college campus. I spontaneously became lucid and looked at my hands, and I remember saying "I'm dreaming!" excitedly. I then walked around and tried to push my fingers through my palm, but it didn't work. The dream started to fade and I remembered the advice to meditate in your dream. Instead of really meditating though, I sort of just focused on my senses for a moment (just vision and touch) and the clarity came back. I tried the finger through palm RC again and it worked! I remember walking around a little more but that's it. I think the dream continued but I lost lucidity. Vaguely remember bragging to DCs while not lucid that I could lucid dream (how did I not catch this ).

NLS:
Had another dream about two cacti in a pool house or greenhouse, and at some point they fused together into one (possibly connected with my lucid one).
Had another dream about college campus murders with some pretty gruesome mangled corpses. I think I was the murderer but was also investigating.
Had another dream in my childhood living room where my cousin dropped himself down through the beams (we didn't think he could).
Had another dream where I bought $50 dollar tickets for my fiance in some kind of stadium, but I couldn't find her and wanted to ask to use the loudspeaker.

Throughout the night, each time I woke up I tried to WILD using hypnagogic imagery. Didn't work but came close and had some cool HI. MILDed each time then using the mantra "I will be lucid in my next dream", and also tried to remind myself to RC each time I woke up, but I forgot to each time.

Aug 23 2018

Woke up at 3:30 am, remember bits of a long NL. I was a female (possibly jewish?) in some sort of relationship/society/sisterhood. My best friend or leader was dismissing me from the group sternly but also still loves me and was sad to see me go. I remember the words "Is it possible to always be a mama bear?" with no context (hey -- they made sense then). I also remember a DC from earlier in the dream that looked like an old (current) Seinfeld with white hair. I think I was returning to my family.

Was moderately relaxed but again had some trouble getting back to sleep*. Got up and went to the bathroom, then came back. Figured since I still couldn't get to sleep I would try to relax and WILD. No success after some time (although I had some pretty great hypnagogic imagery), so I SSILD'd and laid on my side**.

I eventually got to sleep about 45 minutes or an hour after waking. I didn't notice it, but my neck was strained because of the pillow's position. I then had a series of FA's where I would wake up in my bed and talk/move around, but my fiance would angrily tell me to go to sleep each time because she had work in the morning. Between the second and third FA, I woke up briefly and realized was happening. I resolved that if it happened again, I would take advantage of it.

Success! The next time I FA'd, I saw apple peelings on the bed, and went downstairs to get some apple juice from the fridge, and I thought about tryptophan and realized I was dreaming! I didn't immediately look at my hands and clarify the situation, but I was able to stumble through the dark dream living room (my movement felt somewhat staggering). There was a terrifying old (demon?) woman's face on the couch, so partly out of fear I decided to leave this dream. I pressed my dream head down into the "pillow" to change dream scenes and vaguely thought of a giant tree as a new destination.

I think that when I used this technique (pressing head back into pillow), I somehow became more conscious of my WL body and realized I was lying on my side with my neck strained and my left eye being pressed in by the pillow. As the new dream scene materialized, It came to me in portrait format instead of landscape, if you can imagine that -- and it was letterboxed (black bars on the left and right). This effect worked so well because I could only see out of my right "dream eye", so I didn't have the advantage of binocular vision to "3D it away". Because of my awareness of my neck strain, I also couldn't move my head at all, and the only thing I could control was zooming my vision in and out.

The dream scene wasn't a giant tree, but rather another, smaller version of the previous living room, only bright this time (with daylight coming in through the window and the indoor lights on). There was no one in the room. I understood that it went back some ways behind me and was dark that way. The couch was similar to my childhood couch (old and scratchy, had diagonal woven textiles, like thick yarn) but was grey instead of tan. There were some objects strewn about the couch. As I zoomed in closer, objects would "pop" out of existence, sort of the opposite effect of the Object Fade setting in video games; when I zoomed out, they would return. There was a largeish button, a cylindrical something, a box, and some other miscellaneous vague items.

I should have tried to change dream scenes again, but I think that would have been difficult considering I probably would have had to press left instead of back to fall into the pillow, and who knows if that would have worked. The dream faded very slowly and I probably could have held onto it longer.

Later I had another FA but failed to convert it. When I awoke I was feeling more relaxed and thought I'd casually try to WILD for a bit again. It was nice because I could feel the waves of vibration flow over me. I was doing LaBerge's "1. I'm dreaming. 2. I'm dreaming. 3. ..." method, trying to be a passive observer and let the dream take me in. Had some very vivid HI again and let it play out before me. I think I got partway there, because I remember my HI started integrating into moving imagery, then mini dream scenes, then almost a full dream scene. At the height of it, I was a point in space rotating around a stadium that looked like a giant thimble. I think I was fully aware, enough to at least call it a semi-lucid, but I don't think it was a dream as much as imagery; it didn't feel dreamlike, and I didn't feel as if I was really "in it" as much as I was just "seeing it".

Later in the night I had some more FAs and in some of them I was semi-lucid but not fully there. Once I was trying to WILD again, but got interrupted by a sudden and powerful fear of an intruder.

Overall, a pretty good night! I'm intereseted to know if anyone else has had this kind of "locked view" experience in their dreams, lucid or otherwise.



*I'm not sure why this is happening lately (waking up earlier and can't get back to sleep); I always considered myself a heavy sleeper and never have trouble getting to bed. Also, I haven't been setting alarms or autosuggestions to do WBTB, I think just possibly raised nighttime awareness after meditation is causing small disturbances to wake me. Any advice appreciated.

**I tend to lie on my back most of the time, which helps with vivid dreams and recall, but seems to be causing problems with getting to sleep and staying asleep if I'm not already tired from the day. It also makes me hyperaware of early morning hunger.

***Also just wanted to note that I've been abstaining from my nighttime tea (it makes me drowsy on weekday mornings) and any supplements (I sometimes use melatonin and/or valerian), but have been drinking half a glass of apple juice each night 30ish minutes before bed. Luckily I

This weekend I started using a more intense regimen for day work and night work to increase dream recall and lucidity. It worked (somewhat)!

Day work: relaxed ADA, i.e. every few hours I do ADA for an hour. During that hour, every 10 minutes I remember in detail what I was doing 10 minutes ago. Also, each time I take my dog for a walk, I do walking meditation and focus on all of my senses.

Night work: night meditation before bed and in bed, setting intentions for WBTB, and SSILD during WBTB. Started keeping a physical DJ instead of using my phone in the morning. As I'm falling asleep initially, I revisit past NLs and visualize that I do an RC and calmly go through my lucid checklist -- calmly state that I'm dreaming, get a good look of my surroundings, start moving through the dream, once I feel somewhat stable scream "clarity now!" (and expect it), keep setting goals for myself to move forward, and most of all, feel calm and confident with an expectation of success.

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Aug 17 2018 (morning of)

Begin day work, but no night work yet -- no LDs, but recorded several NLs.

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Aug 18 2018

Day work, begin new night work.
Two semi-lucids (SL) and one LD, as well as a greater number of NLs than normal.

SL: I'm in a bus. I can feel warm sunlight through the window on my left arm. I'm going down a street near my childhood home. At some point, I become semi-lucid and begin to drive instead of being a passenger. I shift to 3rd person view, and I'm able to zoom and rotate the viewpoint to behind and around the bus, lower to the ground, higher, etc. Eventually I arrive at the end of the street and turn down a shortened version of the waking life street--this place reminds me of the wooded area near where I send my dog for day care when we go out of town. There's an outdoor party under a pavillion that in waking life is used to shelter tractors. My fiance, mother, and sister are all there with other random DCs.

LD: I find myself in an opulent room with deep red walls. The beams and columns are wooden and gold, with gold trim on everything in the room. There is a wooden desk ten feet in front of me with scattered scrolls/books/papers and other golden/brass instruments sitting atop it. The room feels cluttered but I can't remember with what -- bookshelves, tapestries? All around me deep red, wood, and gold are prevalent. I look at my hands and each of my fingertips has a small twisted mouth on it, similar to the strange writhing creature on the tree in Twin Peaks Season 3. I instantly become lucid and say "I'm dreaming". I begin to walk forward towards the table and repeat again, louder: "I'm dreaming!" Then I scream at the top of my lungs "Clarity now!", however I may have doubted myself too much, and the words come out garbled. The visual intensity increases greatly and I physically rise up from the ground. I can see there is some sort of light source on the light beige/tan ceiling, and suddenly I'm dropped back to the ground, as if the dream is rejecting me and literally spitting me out of the dream. I don't pop out of the dream, but it fades extremely quickly. The total length was probably less than 10 seconds.

Other SL omitted for quadruple X rating and just plain bizarreness.

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Aug 19 2018

Day work and night work.
One LD, lots of NLs (more than normal).

LD: As soon as I enter the dream, before even examining my surroundings, I feel aware. I look at my hands and calmly say "I'm dreaming!" and feel pretty stable. The sky is reddish and very dark. I am standing on some igneous rock or basalt, with patches of dried yellow grass, some of which look as if they're illuminated by sunlight. There is also some gravel. I walk forward a few paces and set goals to walk to this patch of grass, then this one. I start to feel worried about the stability of the dream, so I drop to the ground and scream "Clarity now!" as I rub the palms of my hands and knees against the gravel and rock. As I was falling to my knees, the position of my legs and knees relative to my hands feels off--like they didn't exist before I dropped down. As I walk I realize that the rock that I'm on is sort of a cliff or hill, and that there's a dirt path on the ground level a few feet below the dropoff. I look up and see several houses ahead. The sky is darker near the houses. I'm level with the dirt path as the path rose up and the cliff dropped down to a point where they met. I stand up and pass the first, smaller one on my left. I believe the front door was open. The second house is larger and somewhat menacing. I feel some subconscious fear, and suddenly I dream bursts and I'm awake (or in an FA, which I really need to learn to convert). I think this one lasted somewhere around 30-45 seconds.

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Aug 20 2018

Return to daily regimen only -- no lucids, only about 3 NLs remembered.