lucid

Sep 9 2018

I was walking through a large paved road which felt like a walkway through a large park. It was a sunny morning or afternoon. The lawns on either side were lined with large oaks with twisting branches. There were passerby walking in either direction. Suddenly I became lucid and started running! I looked back and saw a DC. I turned around fully again, expecting to see a coworker from one of my college jobs*, and she was there! I was running backwards at this point to let her catch up, but for some reason couldn't stop or change directions, and instead had to run backwards, slower. When I reached her I made some conversation about the fact that I was dreaming, and she seemed thrilled. I took her hand and we started running together. We passed a few trucks (possibly ice cream trucks or food trucks) and signs, and I was able to read them clearly. I asked her whether she had ever flown before, and she responded that she hadn't, all she had ever done was float. I told her that that was a good start and we lifted off.

I can feel the wind on my face and body and we're still holding hands (platonically). We weren't doing superman poses or anything specifically to indicate that we were flying, just setting my intention on a direction and going there. It was a great sensation. The oaks stretched even farther up now, and I bobbed and weaved through the twisted outstretched branches. I had a few near misses but overall had pretty good control.

I decided to go higher than the trees and went skyward. At which point I could see in the top of my field of vision three or four wooden planks arranged like ceiling blade fans. I passed above the planks and at that point there were flat planes rushing past us. I looked down at my hands and while still holding my coworker's hands, I pushed my finger through my palm -- I felt some resistance at first but asserted "I'm dreaming" and was able to do it. Then I felt the dream stabilize a bit.

As I looked back up, I saw that it was approaching dusk with a sunset in front of us. Underneath was a large wooden building with multiple levels with wraparound balconies. It reminded me of the restaurant I worked at for a while. I approached it and landed on the roof (it may have just been me at this point). I saw a small shack/building on the roof. Upon further examination it looks similar to a dollhouse made of craft wood -- I can clearly see the seems and the semi-gloss finish on the wood. The dream fades quickly.

Note: I woke up from this dream at 6am on my left side.

Summary of other NLs:
I'm in a kitchen by a white door with glass panes near the head and the foot. The house reminds me of a classmate from my high school band's house. There were multiple locks that were complicated and kind of hard to turn. Once I turned them, my anonymous DC sidekick switched some small levers which had clear writing on them in a row. There is a silhouette outlined in the door and I think what lies behind it is a dark garage. I have a serious talk with my DC sidekick. We open the door and go through, and pass through the dark garage (felt ominous, there were other silent DCs there).

I'm in a garden/walkway with a girl. We look up and see bright flashing in the clouds above. It takes a triangluar shape and turns into a spaceship with clear writing on it (reminded me for some reason of the writing on a bus or van). We run over hill after hill and past trees to keep seeing it. Each time we get it back into our field of vision it's more detailed. Finally we see that there is a ledge on the back of it and there are giant women sitting there. They send down some smaller but still giant women who fire beams at us. We run in the opposite direction and become extremely cartoon-like in our actions. I fuse with her and our arms and chest start spinning; there are now two copies of me, one driving the process and one fused with her. We fire beams back at the giants chasing us as we run down a dirt path in the garden. This dream repeats twice or thrice featuring different versions (ages, genders, ethnicities, other factors changed) of both me and the girl. Very vivid and very surreal.

I'm at a store getting various items (I remember some onion bread buns in a bag that I got IWL from Walmart). I get some impulse items that I know my fiancee will be mad at me about. It's a pretty long dream as I go down the aisles. Finally I go down the clearance/general/jam aisle, where I find a stack of fresh papers. Underneath the papers I find some that I've drawn on (during my visit or my past several visits). I try to consolidate them as they're spaced out between blank pages. Someone passes me in the aisle and notices one full-color one I've done, I look up and say it's nothing, then look back down and it's even more polished and is the cover to a small booklet or magazine (maybe a doujin). I consolidate them all and tuck them into the bottom for safe keeping.

I'm in a large bathroom with long white counters and four or five sinks stretching out to the right and left, separated by double doors. I'm at the sink closest to the door on the right counter. The stalls are behind us. There are some middle-aged men holding bags and placing their miscellany on the counters, it looks like stuff you would get in those cap-balls from the 25 cent machines (where you turn the handle). Mixed in are brass gears and writing utensils.



*With my ability to summon DCs, it seems like I pretty much pick them at random; I haven't thought about these people in years but for some reason my lucid mind thinks "Gee, I would love to see X random acquanitance." I suspect that as I get better about remembering dream goals and incorporating my awareness of waking life, I'll be able to make more logical/planned decisions within my lucids.

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 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 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.