false awakening

Sep 29 2018

Background - i didn't get nearly enough sleep during the week (b/t 5 and 6.5 hours a night) so i haven't had lucids since last sunday and have only been remembering 1-2 dreams a night on avg. so maybe this was sort of an extended REM rebound effect? i didn't sit down to meditate (although at many points i made myself hyper-aware) or visit the bathhouse, but anyway i remembered to do math in most of my lucids, got to talk to my dream guide (or it felt like it), and got my subconscious to play music. p. cool night!

3 NLs - before waking at 5:30 (went to sleep 11:45) (fortunately i wrote all of these down)
* in 9, my parents are talking to "Mr Jeff" in the front porch, talking about walking sticks as "staves", they examine one i found in the forest when we went to the cabin at the beginning of august
* in 8, seeing an older woman out of the apartment who had just helped F and I with something or was maybe just visiting. she has the body of a younger person but has surface-level wrinkles, almost like they're a painted-on texture with no depth (they're white) and I think she even had black hair. but her skin also looks quite dry. she reminded me of one of my neighbors who walks two dogs
* in 512 (grandpa's house) with F and my dad. F and I are sitting at the dining table across from each other, dad is to the right. i have tea and she has water, my dad asks for some of my soft drink because there's some rule that anytime i have soft drinks he gets a portion (he used to do this IRL too ;_ but i tell him i'm drinking tea and that i don't (or barely) drink soft drinks anymore, he points out a detailed list of times i've had soft drinks over the last year. i'm eating a wrap and unexpectedly i see a splotch of guacamole getting pushed out of the top like a tube of toothpaste, i lick it so it doesn't fall and i can vividly remember the taste - it was spot-on. really good guac!

LD 1 - WILD after WBTB - after lots of HI coming close to successful WILD, finally it's sort of like an FA, in bed, can see light coming through curtain, sit up and move curtain (feel body shift into dream body). It's light out, I look around, look at body and try to transform, wake up. go back to sleep pretty quickly after that

LD chain 2 - WILD, DEILDs, and DILDs - too many so I'll only write summaries - didn't write all of these down because after finally waking from the chain I just dove right in to the second chain
* walking outside in area between 9 and neighbor's house, asked subconscious for music to play, got some symphonic. it came and went, but as it faded I would conduct it with my hands and it would get louder. after a bit the music changed to a medium tempo pop instrumental and I conducted it as well. I was focusing on the sight/sound/touch sensations involving the wood fence, white lattice, the foliage, grass, swingset, etc. very vivid
* converted FA in 8 bedroom, summoning big cuddly dogs (F's grandma has a big dog so whenever we go over there like we did yesterday, I cuddle with it); in the dream they're very warm, i'm starting to feel temperature more in dreams whereas before with touch i would only feel pressure; one of my goals is to actually feel the bones inside my hands and the muscle contractions
* something with F in 9, can't remember details now...
* morning daylight scene, approach white service van and enter, there's a moldy (not really decomposed but with a green patina almost?) girl in the back sort of under the carpet (skin sort of the texture of the under-carpet material in floor boards) I try to move her head and her fully black eyes open, I kiss her (or do CPR?) and every time I do she blows air at me, weird weird weird wtf
* there were a lot more (i'm getting vague impressions of more FAs and maybe one more outdoor one), they're just lost on me -- i'm giving it time and hopefully i'll catch a few more during the day

LD chain 3 - WILD, DEILDs, and DILDs - too many so I'll only write summaries - had these after a brief wakeup and pee
* met dream guide as pudgy girl (reminds me of an outgoing version of F's little cousin), talked to her about my thoughts and whether she was real. I didn't ask my subconscious for the dream guide, I just saw her and knew -- i asked "are you my DG?" and she said yes, we held hands and walked through a crowded mall and talked for a bit.
* fight/murder in crack, blame - there are two men and a woman, the man and woman are fighting (they're married?) on a second-story floor with long cracks perpindicular to the hallway, so that you can see through to the first story (long fall); the second man walks up and says something to the first man that makes him jump through the crack. the woman is distraught but turns to the second man (her lover?) for comfort. at first i'm a semi-lucid observer but after this i summon my dream guide and he shows up in a doorway behind me as a tall built older man, feel his sides (like obliques) through shirt and they're warm. he says it's the only way he could get to me (like KPAX sort of - why is a soap bubble round) (when I first see him I saw other girls who looked similar but definitely different to the girl DG from before, their eyes were different)
* red curtain in parent's bedroom and transition scene - cool technique where I was looking in a mirror and I summoned a huge red curtain and threw it sort of over and around me and wrapped myself in its suspended self to transition to the next dream, however the next dream was somehow "too small" and so it faded quickly as I couldn't get a grasp on it
* lost a lot of these too... will keep trying to recall

as i lay in bed trying to recall and recount these dreams, i'm perfectly still, when i finally do try to move there's heavy resistence and then a snap! and i awaken, it turns out i had been in a detailed FA the whole time, as a result I lost some of the lucids. before waking I could recall 13 lucids total. not too bummed though as I'm sure I'll have a lot tomorrow night too!

Sep 23 2018

Four nights lucid in a row! PB!

[D] FA where I'm in bed, feeling my breath intensely. I can see two spheres of breath rotating and flowing throughout themselves, as if each of them is tearing itself inside out. The spheres are located a few inches in front of my face and are about 5 inches in diameter each. They're arranged one atop the other forming a sort of figure 8. I shift to seeing this in third person from the left side. Maybe they're feeding into each other? But I see and feel their movement aligned with my even, deep breaths.

[?] Wrote something in my DJ but can only vaguely make out the words "tonight", "Jesus", and "fool". Awoke 5:30am.

[L] In 9. The dream starts in my bedroom. My bunk is high, almost shoulder level (like one of my old dorm rooms). There are some assorted items laid out on the bed. It's dark outside. I'm trying to find something. The dream shifts to the front yard briefly, then to the kitchen. I need to make F a BLT without lettuce or tomato, on a long sourdough slice. For some reason I'm trying to find a saucepan (maybe to cook the bacon?) but the only one I can find is submerged in water in a white bowl next to the sink. The pan has a thin coating of spaghetti sauce on it. Around this point I become lucid, or rather reach the threshold of awareness, but decide not to do anything about it and to observe instead. I don't consciously control anything, from dream body to dream logic. I put down the slices of toast in the toaster, and they seem too long but somehow change dimensions to fit. At first the slices are vertical as expected, but after looking away and back, they are arranged horizontally at the bottom of the toaster. I'm talking to F this whole time. Finally I tell her "I'm lucid". She doesn't really react. I decide to do something improvised, a coordinated reality check. I hold out my palm and either through speech/nonverbal command or through expectation, I have her stick her finger through my palm. It worked! However now I couldn't really see her, and could see through her. She was transparent and I could clearly read some text behind her that took the form of her body. The dream shifted quickly and I was outside the kitchen looking in, and the lights were off. I said aloud "lights on!" and some dim lights came on but not all. The dream started to fade. I remembered to do math but lost the dream before I could. When I awoke I tried to DEILD, however I could only see the emerging scene if I strained my eyes to the bottom-right corner; there were maybe 5 or 6 scenes that emerged. When I opened my eyes it was around 6:40.

[F] I find myself outside a sliding glass door with a family inside. They let me in, they're part of a resistance and they're hiding me from someone; before this I was in a ditch. This was in-depth but unfortunately my pen ran out of ink.

[D] I was in a church library. There were bookcases that slid apart, and I was shoved inside. Inside it was dark and there were others. We could see through the cracks of light left by the books. After several implied weeks of pleading my case that we weren't able to read the books in the dark, those imprisoning us finally gave us some better quarters. It was some sort of speakeasy establishment, and our quality of life went up (we had alcohol and other entertainment) but now some of the black prisoners were slaves/barmaids.

Sep 24 2018

I had at least four dreams but can only remember two. I'm trying to utilize a memory palace for dream recall when I don't have a physical DJ next to my bed, but it's not always working (although it does help a bit).

[D] I'm in the backyard of 9, in full knight's armor. I'm carrying a metal jug of gasoline or urine. It's daytime outside and I'm splashing this mystery liquid all over the lawn; I get some on my neighbor's fence.

[D] After a longish dream, I find myself sleeping 9's garage. There are several pillows, and one of them is fancy but makes no sense (day residue from a stupid sweater one of the Property Brothers was wearing). It's made by George (the Walmart brand). It was very visually vivid (and mentally/perceptually clear) at this point, and I think if I didn't get involved with the dream drama I could've easily become lucid. I was in a sling chair but now I'm in some sort of giant furniture bucket looking at a late 90's desktop and monitor. My dad comes in and talks to me for a bit. I decide to go inside and sleep on the couch (worried about bugs). When I go to shut down my computer though, my C drive disappears! I think my hard drive somehow unmounted itself (in the dream I thought somehow it got disconnected/shaken loose). It's a weird mix of XP and Vista and 7 and when I open the start menu I can't search for anything in the search bar. I start freaking out about my computer, eventually I wake up.

Sep 20 2018
(from phone again)
awoke 330, no dreams (not a trace)

[D]nl in hallway then classroom, trying to be sneaky w F, middle school, they have a sub or "numbers lady" helping them, I'm in a desk (shame - naked?), F finds the biology or nursing book, but it's hardbound landscape like a steno book and the papers are warped and barely readable, I'm upset as I need the book, try to show F but now all pages are fine, can't find a warped one (vivid)

[SL]felt like a visualization/hh at first, but was a dream. in a larger classroom (feels like biology, maybe + lab), clear sight of 2 doors, see dcs walking by doorway and some entering, some of them have ? for faces, become semi-lucid (aware that i can control my surroundings, but not the idea of "dream")? start copying one dc using doorway expectation, a blond plain-faced girl with a loose pony tail. i copy her several times passing through the doorway, some going in some walking on, i look at the other students and try to decide how to control them when one of my copies sits next to me, i get kind of nervous and after a second i wake up

[L]I'm in bed and I feel like my dog is going to walk on my face (i feel a presence approaching) but i hear the door swinging on the hinges like it's already open and i realize its F. she says "it's me, june" and is being silly. i realize I'm dreaming but i can't open my dream eyes, so i start separating my dream body from what i can now feel is my real sleeping body (or my dreaming physical body, not sure if it was a copy because they were in same position), i separate mostly and tell her to come with me (still can't see except checkerboard hh, but can hear and feel surroundings as i move) i phase thru the wall next to the bed and fall back, flying to catch my fall, hh gets lighter, i float back up and ask "june" to join me again and i wake up. try to hold on to hh but dog wakes me up. whole thing was nonvisual (not counting the hh-like imagery)

Sep 17 2018

I color-coded again, but somehow still went out of order. Why is the order of ROY G BIV so hard for my just-awoken mind to remember?

[F1] Red - I was in an open wooded area with about 6 others (family/friends), and we were being threatened. Possibly at gunpoint? The dream was long, vivid, and dramatic, but I don't remember much now.
[D1] Yellow - I had a new boss, who looked like a soccer mom/high-powered woman from an episode of Undercover Boss I recently saw. She had serious botox face and bad red lipstick. We became close and trusted each other with secrets. In the office (dark interior, fading afternoon sun coming through huge windows, on a stairwell near a door to an auditorium) I see she's looking at her phone with a night-vision video playing, I understand it to be about my current manager (Y). Y is in the wrong. I ask for details but new boss can't share them. Next we're in a minivan riding down my old street. It's dark, and we drive up to my childhood home, but my dad has left a ~10x5 foot flatscreen TV on a box in the middle of the driveway.
[D2] Orange - I'm in my childhood home with my new boss and family/friends for a barbeque/get-together. It's morning or overcast afternoon, and it has just rained/is about to rain again. I talk with my boss & family for a while and then I understand that my grandpa is coming in (he was dropped off in the backyard?). I go to help him in. I pass a bouncy castle in the back-left corner of the yard where a tree is with kids inside. It's raining and I'm wondering if they'll be okay in there. I hop around, dodging deep muddy ruts and footprints in the yard. Finally I get to my grandpa and help him inside, and I notice he didn't bring any drinks (he always brings soft drinks to social gatherings). When we get to the patio, I look in an oversized ice chest and there aren't any drinks there either. Suddenly the rain intensifies and I warn my dad because the grill is flaming and isn't under the patio.
[F2] Green - This is a strange sequence of events and I'm not sure which came first. In Scene A, I'm downstairs in my WL living room which is brightly lit for a while with others, then the scene transitions and I'm in bed with the side-table lamp on, and there are three servants in the bed next to me. I clap our WL copper cooking tongs together and the servants take a strange formation. In Scene B, I'm in bed in the dark, and I have a close memory of being downstairs, so I focus on the difference between the location of my body in bed (which I can barely feel) and the location of my body downstairs in memory. I try to WILD and almost succeed, unsure if I did. There are three possibilities and I can't remember which is the actual case.
Scenario 1: Scene A came before Scene B, and I was trying to DEILD and failed.
Scenario 2: Scene B came before Scene A, and I successfully WILDed.
Scenario 3: Scene B was an FA, because its memory has a dream-like quality.

In any case these were pretty vivid. I just wish I got more sleep

Sep 16 2018

Pre-WBTB:
[D1] I'm in a blue version of my childhood living room with F. She brings me a plastic rectangular package of writing utensils, and I tear it open and start looking at the different items (big fat sharpie, pencils, pens, an eyebrow brush). She looks mad at me for some reason. While I try to figure it out I fold a piece of paper in half along the middle. It's regular printer paper with one side watercolored blue, but not warped or anything. I keep prodding her as to why she's mad at me and she gives me the silent treatment, so I try to put back together the plastic box, but I can't fit all of the writing utensils back in. She's drawing a diagram of an isometric house, and I find out that she has a laminated piece of paper with different house diagrams on it that she wanted me to draw with her. It's blue and I think it might be the same one I folded, just machine-printed and laminated now. She angrily marks into the laminated paper with a pencil, but it barely shows up. I look at some of the different patterns, and while they look like they should be evenly isometric or orthographic, they're significantly skewed in multiple places. This makes me more aware of the dream state.
[L1] The scene shifts and I'm on the other side of the room, which is now incandescent. F and I are now in chairs by the fireplace, and the room is decorated for Christmas. I ask her "Are you still mad at me from the last dream?" Asking this question either triggers or strengthens my lucidity. She replies no but is still a little standoffish. I start literally pulling her leg, lengthening and transforming it willfully to about six or seven feet long, and bendy. Suddenly she switches places with me, and I'm now on the floor near the piano. I nonverbally command "Show me a clear view of F's face" and the control of my vision is taken over. It zooms and pans mechanically over to her. My vision is clearer now, but I can sort of see black bars at the top and bottom of my vision. She looks stoic or angry, but is facing directly towards me (her face is a little different than IWL). I'm pretty impressed by the effectiveness of the "show me" command, so I try again: "Show me the most beautiful thing I can imagine". The camera pans over to the picture frames against the piano wall and I think "Oh no, not this Freudian shit". Then the cameras react to me and point towards the ceiling, at a mobile that's very Christmasy, with a twisted wreath and a stuffed simplistic angel in the middle.
[D2] I'm in bed with F in an unfamiliar, dark blue place. She's trying to paste some text (a pop-up overlaid my vision). So I edit out the "http:/" and some other stuff and put into google (again via overlay) and I realize that it's the name of a reddit user? I say "oh I recognize this" but then I think maybe she'll be mad if she knows I know(?). After this she looks at me with a serious face and tells me that she's going to donate blood to A.L. (can't remember full name). When she says this, in the dream I remember an earlier NL (pre-pre-WBTB) but I don't write it down upon awakening. (4:50am)
[WBTB]
[L2.1] I'm NL in an open field, the sky is a faded blue and the earth all around me is dead and cracking. I think there's a treeline a couple of miles off in front of me and farther off to my far right. I see a huge explosion in the sky in front of me, it's bright blue in tint but not too intense to look at. I look off to the far right and see more of these, which are already shaping into crosses. The crosses are of varying sizes. I look back in front of me and the explosion has formed into a single, giant cross, with a couple of circles behind it. I realize I'm dreaming and immediately I think "I need to teleport to the bathhouse!". Because of this, my mind is preoccupied while I'm looking at my hands trying to stabilize the dream. The ground looks very clear, the detail is amazing on the cracks. But the dream feels paper-thin, and I start spinning prematurely thinking "bathhouse", and I wake up.
[L2.2] I'm in bed with F and almost immediately become lucid. Details ommitted but I tried to exert nonverbal dream control over her, and it almost worked, but the idea/expectation of her in my mind is too strong-willed and resisted me.
[L2.3] I'm a woman in a combination campsite/hotel, and again I'm almost immediately lucid. I'm situated all the way at the end of the row of rooms, and I see an older foreign-looking man with a crumpled brown leaf on his nose. He sort of reminds me of Eggman in retrospect, but friendlier in a way. I approach him because I either need something or was just looking for a DC. He's sort of ignoring me and my passage to him is blocked by a wall, so I look away and imagine a small gate. It appears and I go through. Scene shift and we're in his kitchen, he's reaching for the honey or sugar for some tea and I reach for it too. For some reason this is a grave offense, and I feel I should leave, but he forgives me. Scene shift and I'm in a gift shop, and there is a tribal african woman with body paint. Scene shift and I'm outside with the old man, and I pass by a tree with small blue scorpion creatures on its leaves. I then see down the road, a huge version of the scorpion creatures coming towards us and the cabins! I start running, but can't find my room (the layout is different now, with individual cabins). There's a man behind me so I let him pass and follow him to a small bunker. We drop in, and I feel unwelcome. One of the men has a strange-looking gun, and I make some military comment which he doesn't take kindly to. I'm still lucid so I actually offer to become another DC lol. The whole scene reminded me of FMJ for some reason. There's a fridge in the back of the bunker behind a sort of divide/cage. I'm handed some things to put in the fridge; one of them looks like ice cubes, and one of them looks like cheese or butter. I keep putting them in the wrong one, and the guys will just tell me "Fridge. Fridge. Freezer. Freezer". I keep insisting that the ice cubes need to go in the freezer but finally I look back down and they're diced carrots.
[L2.n] Within this dream chain I had another one in my apartment, and then an uncaught FA where I was DJing in bed.
[WBTB2]I woke again and had another lucid chain of (I believe) 3 different ones, but I couldn't find a pen so I didn't write them down, and got comfortable and forgot all about them!
[F1] Extremely long NL. It was cinematic, and was a sort of mix between Wreck it Ralph and a royal wedding, plus maybe Treasure Planet? It was a dark city adventure where we had to save the city from an evil corporation, some sort of power plant that you can see from anywhere which has a huge orange skullface on its building. I vividly remember the end, but the beginning and middle are fuzzy with a few distinct impressions. I think it's possible that the WiR dream and the RW dream were separate at first, but merged towards the end. Towards the end, we (the posse) are turning the corner on a cyberpunky road where all of the lights have gone out (we've shut down a few power plants already). But now as we round the corner we can see the big orange skull and we're ready for business. We drive up on the dark interstate hi-rise-ish road and approach a crowd of shadow people with yellow eyes. I throw a "shovel knight" at them, which is a rolling ball that slashes the people and turns the shadow people into normal people. The street/city setup reminds me a bit of early Duke Nukem. We round the corner and see a ship, which we untie and board. We end up walking into a sidedoor to the wedding.

Spoiler for unexpected romance:

I've been competing with this guy who looks like John from Sherlock, who is imposing, in the RW dream the whole time. We are relatively young, and there are some young girls that we are supposed to walk down the aisle during the wedding. However I (the persona I'm assuming in the dream) has feelings that have been developing for the whole dream, for the one that Sherlock John is supposed to walk down the aisle. Someone appears at the white door, and I open it, and there she is, in a beautiful white and gold dress; she looks surprised that I opened the door, I'm also in a white tux/commander's outfit with gold trim. She has black hair and pale skin, and a very straight face, which looks sheepish, somewhat sickly, but truly beautiful in a way I can't describe. I kiss her gently with closed lips. She's shocked but when I offer my hand she takes it. She's holding a paper and I'm holding a sketchbook (maybe I'm the wedding sketch artist? Who knows) and I take her paper and put it with mine. We hold hands and walk, having our pictures taken (turns weirdly digital for a second). Then I'm dancing with her and she's embarassed, like a deer in headlights, so I hold her.

Totally unexpected but interesting and enjoyable dream; can't figure out what kind of day-residue or thoughts led to this.



*Note: Counting L2.* as one dream together as they were a mostly uninterrupted chain.
**Note: I think I WILDed (or at least DEILDed) for some of the entries in L2; I distinctly remember that feeling of "crossing over" and how it sort of rushes through you and throws you off-balance. Very cool.

Sep 15 2018

First a summary of the pre-WBTB NLs:
It's morning on a sunny hilltop, just outside the twon, blue skies. (fragment)
I'm in a version of my childhood home which is an apartment or hotel, 4ish stories up. I'm with my fiancee.

Spoiler for lewdness:

Across the open space in another room I see three girls in lingerie getting down and dirty. I have an understanding that the intimacy is not genuine and is for show. I point them out to my fiancee and we watch.

The lighting/mood was incandescent (I seem to have incandescent dreams and fluorescent ones, and there's a clear distinction of feeling between the two). There was another longer segment before this. (dream)
I'm talking to Adam and Tom (two random DCs). It's a public place, maybe a grocery store in a small town or a town hall (this is a reach) and they're arguing about the fidelity of Adam's wife, who used to be Tom's wife. (fragment)
I'm watching Jack Nicholson, Pheobe from Friends, and some other celebrities corroborate their story in a fluorescent courtroom. (fragment)
FA where I'm writing detailed notes in my DJ, even drawing pictures (I'm an amazing artist in dreams). Very convincing and thorough. (dream)
Pen went out and I didn't write hard enough to leave marks, so I lost some. But one mentions noises, my fiancee, and my dog. It makes me think it was another intruder FA or variation of it (my dog barked a lot last night so I was afraid of having one), but I always remember those, so it wasn't that.

Wake 5am. Fiancee (I'll call her F from now on) has work at 5:30 so I don't try to fall back asleep and just half-meditate while reflecting on dreams. Get up with her and walk my dog (calling him D from now on) and look at the stars, getting a strong feeling that I'll become lucid. I end up going back to bed at 6:30 or 6:40, I wear a sleep mask because there's some light entering into the room now. D's being loud and shaking the bed with his scratching so I threaten to kick him out. I end up trying something strange, I put two of the pillows over the sides of my face and my ears to block out noise, and I sort of side-hug them like the ten commandments.

As I'm falling asleep, I have the tranpsarent eyelids effect a couple of times. The first time, I can see D, and I try to latch on to the visuals as a dream, but they pop out of existance. I have this with a few other visuals: a long stalk of grass or leaves, and a pillow or blanket with a tag and words I could clearly read ("english", "c.o.t.r."). A couple of times I feel like I'm going to WILD. I fall asleep and fully wake at 7:24am.

This time I turn on my side but still use the pillow similar to how I did before. I go back to sleep. I wake up around 8:30, although I'm barely awake; I use this time to try and WILD as my body's still in REM atonia. I finally can fully focus on an image/scene, and at some point everything blacks out and I "pop" into the scene! It full materializes around me! I have awareness of my waking body and the fact that I was awake less than a second ago. I was surprised at the blackout before it happened though, I always assumed (and when I've had DEILDs I've experienced) that you go directly from waking to the dream with no visual discontinuity. Anyway, I'm in a tan carpeted room with white walls and a staircase. The stairs are the same as in my WL apartment, tannish carpet and white rails; however the room they open up into is bigger. I'm at the bottom of the staircase sitting on one of the stairs, looking through the rails. I am sort of a point of perception rather than a body; I try to spin but can't use my body to do it, so I think "bathhouse" and will myself to spin. It works! My perception point starts spinning, but I don't go anywhere or transition to another scene, the visuals just intensify. I look closely at the stairs and the room around me, the light coming in from the kitchen window, the layout of furniture in the living room. Suddenly I wake up. (Lucid)

After this, I decided to keep trying to WILD. I kept on the edge of sleep and let myself fall into visuals another time! This time, I went directly into the dream scene with no blackout (it felt more like a DEILD). I find myself in a living room type area, near a sliding glass door. I put my finger through my thumb to stabilize it works with a little resistance. I pick up a small box or something similar and throw it through the glass, which doesn't loudly shatter but sort of just breaks and disappears. I go through the opening and it's a tight fit because the balcony railing is right against where the sliding glass door was, and it's high. I climb up and get my torso over it, then I jump from the balcony to a tree (the trunk looks like a palm but it's twisted). As I jump down onto it, I experience some sort of anti-gravity or limited gravity, which is cool. I land on the tree and grasp the trunk. At first it had branches, but when I look around and notice they're in my way, they disappear and it's all trunk. The trunk is kind of twisted. I decide to thoroughly experience the texture of the tree, so I rub my hands over it, bite it, lick it (it tasted sort of sweet with a bitter aftertaste and rough texture). Some seriously weird stuff omitted.

This dream starts a chain of DEILDs and DILDs that last a while*. In the first, I'm in bed with F. I look at my hands and become lucid. After a bit I get up and ask her to come with me but she's gone. I go to the dark hallway and turn into a bathroom with the light on (sort of reminded me of my best friend from childhood's bathroom). I feel around in the cabinet expecting a few things and although I hit a wall, I say "Oh right, wasn't there a secret compartment there?" and that part of the cabinet pivots away and I find the object I was looking for! Was pretty cool, I did this with some drawers too. I read some vivid words that I don't remember (some tags on towels, labels on some circular plastic packaging). I believe I walked down the hallway too but then it ended.

Again I found myself in a dark room, fingerpalmed, walked over to a table and grabbed a box, then threw it through a sliding glass door. The glass didn't break, so I walked up to it and punched it. I walk outside and it's night in a cyberpunkish or maybe Coruscant-like city. As I walk out onto a large circular balcony, I see that to my right there are three guys leaving theirs as well. I think to myself "I should lock up because they'll break into my apartment", but then I remember that a) it's a dream, and b) I punched through the sliding glass door. I realize that one of the guys is B, a coworker. The two guys with B are wearing old-time diving masks and carrying spears. He's wearing some sort of Rita Repulsa outfit with the big shoulders, but mostly black. I end up with a large stick (a branch from the tree before?) with a thin metal spearhead sticking out the top of it. Then another DILD which again I'll omit.

Woke again, didn't record time but I think around 9:30 or 9:45. Went back to bed and had an FA where my grandpa came up the stairs into my room and handed me something he said was a CD (I was sleeping naked so he didn't want to intrude). The package wasn't a CD though, it was a tight grouping of multicolored beads with a small gamecube-sized disk deep inside of it that I couldn't get to. (fragment) Had a lot of other NLs and I think a few more LDs during the dream chain, but it's really hard to read my writing...I'll edit my post sometime when I have time to decipher them.



*For the September Competition (and my LD Count) I'll count this dream chain as one lucid since they were all basically back-to-back, and then count the first one as its own (since there was a period of longer wake in between them), so two total.

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 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 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 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 26 2018

I went to bed at 1:15am and woke at 5:45am. The first dream I remember was an NL. I was in a store at their early morning closing time, and there were only 3 workers present. I was on the frozen aisle. One of them said they would help me once they're done buffing the floors. I waited outside with an umbrella near the open back door of a van (I think they were going to help me load something). After this, I wrote something else in my DJ about a WW bus where I was dying and had to plan my escape. Not sure whether WW stood for WWII or Weight Watchers, both seem equally appropriate.

Before sleeping again I got up and went to bathroom (I find it's easier to return to sleep when I walk around first). Tried to focus on HI and WILD, but no success yet. Ended up MILDing with mantra "I will be lucid in my next dream".

Next time I woke was 7:35am. I had just had a long NL with a huge cast of DCs (was a family reuinion/party). I was hanging out with one of the non-family guests who I didn't know. For some reason it seemed like my family would or should have been angry at me for doing this, but they weren't. The dream transformed slightly and instead of being in my childhood home, I was in someone else's large house (I think I remember this house from a work party my Mom brought me to as a kid). I was now in a hallway that seemed like a bathroom but was filled with people. The doorway connected to the living room. I was speaking to Uncle B, who greeted me but was unusually curt (he's my godfather and is always very warm and talkative IWL). Somehow this triggered me to become lucid.

I looked at my hands and said aloud "I'm dreaming!". I looked at my uncle who had become sort of an expressionless robot (not literally but he looked confused, blank stare, furrowed brows). For some reason I poked him in the chest jokingly. His body turned towards me and he started approaching me menacingly. I felt fear at first, but then a surge of confidence. I put my hand out in front of me and said "You can't hurt me, this is my dream!". His face instantly turned friendly and he leaned back and laughed. He smiled and said "That's right ZAD! Excellent!" and he reached out and hi-fived/shook my hand. I walked around the party for a bit looking at the other DCs. They were all ignoring us and carrying on their own conversations. I don't remember if I lost lucidity or the dream faded, but I awoke after. I had a huge grin on my face when I woke up, it was awesome to have such control of the situation! I've had hostile DCs before and usually they kick me out of my dream, so this was a win for me.

I went to sleep with the same method again, trying WILD then resorting to MILD. The next time I awoke was 8:59am. I remember being in my childhood home on the couch, trying to fall asleep next to my fiance. Earlier my dad had come in and thrown at me making a joke about a roach crawling on it. Within the dream, I was actually trying to WILD! I felt my dream body fall asleep just as my waking body does, and was moving my dream-dream arm (i.e. visualizing the sensation of moving my dream arm without actually moving my dream arm). I kept waking back up and couldn't fall asleep in the dream. I remember being afraid of roaches crawling across my face.

At some point I was able to WILD in my dream -- I latched on to some HI that placed me in the same exact room but without the couch or my fiance. I looked at my hands and became lucid! The room was dark and I felt like I was losing visibility in the dream, so I walked to the light switch unconsciously expecting it not to work. Sure enough, it didn't. I was losing lucidity so I dropped to floor and felt the coolness of the wood with my hands. I also tried to use mirrors to stabilize, but I don't remember even seeing my reflection. I should have transitioned to another dream, but I didn't. I "woke up" in the previous dream and lost lucidity. From this dream I tried to DEILD in the dream, and the HI was really close to completing each time, but never materialized. It would be black and white outlines, with the camera moving in a similar fashion to the opening scene of Ocarnia of Time where the camera follows Navi through the village.

I believe the other dream (me on the couch with fiance trying to fall asleep) continued for a while. At some point the lights turned on and we were watching TV. A tall man in a white shirt and red shorts walked in front of the TV and my fiance asked me for some type of food from the kitchen. I yelled out at him, calling him Rob and asking for the food, but he didn't respond. So again I got up from the couch and walked towards the kitchen. At this point I became aware, looked at my hands to confirm, and became lucid. I don't think I said "I'm dreaming" like I usually do, but it was incredibly vivid. I walked towards Rob who was in the kitchen. He had that same furrowed brow and broken robot look about his face (his eyes and mouth looked like they were scribbled in). I approached him since he was standing in the way of the fridge, and he started walking menacingly towards me. I felt confident from my previous encounter, so I simply said "Rob, you were going to get me some "X food", right?" He instantly turned friendly and apologetically let me know that there wasn't any of that here. That was fine since my fiance and the couch had disappeared. I felt his shirt to stabilize -- it was now one of mine, a casual tan button-down. Feeling the texture stabilized the dream. I walked away towards the living room and the layout had changed. The hallway was gone and the curtains took up the entire back wall now. There were also more windows now. I looked out them and when I looked once, they would show night, when I looked again, they would show morning or daylight.

I started losing lucidity, so I turned around and faced the kitchen and curtains (there was no furniture in the living room now). I focused on my breathing. The visuals improved a hundredfold. All of the colors enhanced and felt like I was looking out of a kaleidoscope or a stained glass window -- especially with the curtains, which IWL are very bland. Although the visuals improved, there was a white bar blocking the bottom quarter of my field of vision. I tried to imagine that it was like eye black so I could peel it off, but I couldn't. So instead, I tried to take it out like contact lenses, and my eyes naturally rolled up. This almost caused me to lose lucidity, so I just accepted the white bars for now.

I approached the back-left window and opened it. I imagined that it was light and would slide right up. It did! But it was so light that it easily slid back down. I crawled up (and felt my legs here, something that rarely happens in LDs for me) and put my body through the window, continuously sliding the window up as I went through. I could see that there was an awning coming down from this window, and instead of being ground level, I was four or five stories up. It was a hotel, it reminded me of the Arlington in Hot Springs for some reason. The awning was more like a giant blue tarp, and one corner was tied to my window, the other corner being tied to the ground. I decided I would fly down. Unfortunately I unconsciously doubted myself and as I fell I started losing vision. I tried flapping and that helped a bit, but I ended up landing on my back. The dream almost completely faded, but I sort of DEILD'd (still within the outermost dream) myself back into it.

Now I was on a suburban street where I had landed. There were biggish houses lining the street, and a few houses in front on the right, I saw a man and a wife in a truck, possibly about to back out of the driveway or just arriving back. I manifested Animal Mother's gun from Full Metal Jacket (I think an M60) and started shooting at them. I could see the bullet holes in the cars and buildings, but I didn't hit them. Then I walked over to a group of teenagers on their phones outside a nice house. I pointed the gun at them and told them to get inside. I wanted to kidnap them and see if the police or someone would come to fight me. They sarcastically said "Oh no" and started walking into the house. From here the dream faded pretty quickly. I wrote all this down immediately with a huge grin on my face. I think this last lucid must have lasted at least 1 to 1.5 minutes, which is the longest I've had yet. Overall, awesome night!



*Note: The visuals overall in these lucids were the best I've had yet, but I forgot to enhance my sense of touch! I need to work this into my mantra or my memorized list of steps of things to do once I become lucid. So when I was holding the M60, I was really just positioning my hands as if I was. I actually couldn't feel or see it either, I just believed it was there. I don't think I actually pulled a trigger, I just made sounds with my mouth

**Other note: I think the dreams where I was on my couch was a type of false awakening, just not where I actually was IWL.

***Edit: Forgot to mention that in my last lucid, when I was walking through the living room the second time, I asked aloud "Subconscious, how do I make my dreams longer?", but got no response.

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

Aug 21 2018

I went to sleep around 11:45 or 12. As I was falling asleep, I performed the Progressive Relaxation technique mentioned in LaBerge's ETWOLD. During the relaxation, I continuously repeated to myself that whenever I saw either of my parents or my fiance, I would do an RC and question whether I was dreaming or not (one of them almost always show up at some point).* I enforced this by looking over at my fiance and doing reality checks. (I've always been aware that they are dream signs but this is the first time I've tried to use them to trigger RCs).

I eventually dozed off and had a few NLs that I can't remember now. I should have written them down when I woke up at 4:15 as I could still remember fragments then, but I was in shock when I awoke. My entire body was numb! I've never actually experienced waking up into SP and/or REM Atonia, only trying to induce it on myself, which never really worked.

It was amazing! I was completely calm and relaxed. Even as my dog was rearranging himself next to me and putting his paws in my side, it didn't phase me or make me any more awake. It was a state of disconnection with my body, all except gentle, almost imperceptible vibrations.

I've been reading up about visualization and imagining all 5 senses after reading arby's VILD and visualization posts. During the day yesterday, I was practicing moving my "dream arm" while my real arm remained still, and also noting how my entire body felt while walking, standing, leaning on something, sitting, etc. So naturally when I found myself in this state I did the same. The sensations were remarkably accurate! I could visualize myself standing in another room and feel all the sensations of my body being there. This alone was amazing.

I also tried to use this state and convert it into a WILD** or SSILD-then-fall-asleep, but oddly I couldn't get "relaxed enough" to fall back asleep -- my breathing was very shallow and I had to strain to take deep breaths, which pulled me out of the state momentarily (although I returned quickly each time). So I sat in this state for probably an hour or two and just enjoyed it. Eventually I fell asleep into an FA that I couldn't catch and convert (those pesky buggers!) and another NL that I do remember.

The strange thing about my NL was that it was as if my brain was actively fighting me -- now that I had identified my parents and fiance as dream signs and was using them for MILD and RCs, it removed them from all my dreams and placed in people from work that never pop up in my dreams! Strange.

Overall a weird but positive experience!

*Does this count as MILD? I'm trying to figure out how exactly to differentiate MILD from other similar techniques and it seems kind of vague. Is it just setting your intentions and/or having a mantra as you go to sleep?

**edit: Looking back in my DJ, I actually did almost WILD two or three times but got pulled back each time, back into the state. I think it helped me to identify what the feeling is like though, as it was closer than I've ever been before!