Because the Dark Matters

[Darkmatters]

Dream Lucid The Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration I wanted to test to see if the Lucid Dreamer might be what caused my recent bout of insomnia, plus I wanted to try using just one 4mg capsule (apparently taking too much is what causes lucids where you can't move or can't see or get weird real-body signals that screw up the dream). Had no problem getting to sleep before taking it if course (no insomnia anymore), took an hour to get back to sleep after taking it. I think I'll get some L-Theanine (relaxation/sleep aid) before trying it again. I also think I'll experiment with taking one and a half capsules (6mg). No lucidity, but a very cool dream! A matched pair of them actually, the second commenting and expanding on the first in very interesting ways. My memory of the 1st dream is very hazy. I didn't write it down because I wanted to fall back asleep as fast as possible with nothing to wake me up. However, after taking the Lucid Dreamer and B-5, I did review the dream in my head to try to lock it into my memory. I was Ashton Kutcher. Or at least my personality was just like his... not sure if I looked like him or nor, and the theme of the dream was comedy improv - there was the definite sense that I was acting a role (a theme from last night's dream) - so I could have just been playing him. The whole dream was an improvised comedy jam between me and my subconscious. I wasn't lucid, but I was aware that there was another mind, far more powerful than mine, that was creating the situation and the other characters and maintaining them moment to moment and responding to what I said and did, and I was responding to its choices as well. It was a really cool feeling! The setup for the session - I had a hot girlfriend and it was time to meet her family for the 1st time. A perfect Romantic Comedy setup, right? It must have been a family reunion or something, because it was a LOT of people!! It took place in a large house. I was walking from room to room looking for the girl (who I never found by the way... wondering if she even really existed or was just a convention cooked up for the purpose of the improv?). In each room are a number of her family members, all of whom are very weird and crazy. They all look funny... tall and skinny or short and fat, every description (except for normal) - and their personalities were strange and outlandish. How to explain it? They all seemed very excited to meet me, and each of them wanted to monopolize my time - wanted all my attention for themselves. Not in a bad way... they're just the kind of people who are very opinionated and strong-willed and who have ideas that they want to share with you. Like the weird crazy person who sits next to you on the bus and keeps telling you about Venusians who are controlling our minds. That kind of weird. I wish I could remember more of the specifics - really sad to say I can only recall one character - Aunt Mini. Maybe it was spelled Minnie, but I think of it as Mini because that's part of the joke. See, she's really short and fat - like 3 feet tall, but has these HUUUGE boobies, and she's a close-talker. She wants to get face-to-face, and in so doing, the boobies get pressed up against you a lot. Mini is a joke referring to her size and the size of her boobs. When I figured out this joke that my mind had set up for me I started to laugh. Aunt Mini... ok, it's funny!! Good one, sub-c! I don't remember if I came up with any good lines myself, but I definitely spent a lot of the dream laughing in amazement at the cleverness of my subconscious in devising these characters and coming up with fantastic names for them. But at the same time they were all great people.. there was a warmth and humanity to it all that made my laughter sweet rather than mocking or insulting. I felt that I was being shown the truly human side of weird crazy people, people we usually turn away from or laugh at in an insulting way. Ok, there were more characters, but I can't remember them. I woke, took the LD and eventually drifted back to sleep. In the next dream I found myself trying to remember the last one and reciting it to myself so I wouldn't forget it. It still felt like a creative and interactive comedy jam-session with the sub-c, and as we went I was getting its story on the creation of those characters and what they meant. As if the dream was revealing its inner workings to me. It's almost as if I was hearing a voice in my head explaining things. Again I was laughing almost the entire time with a warm expansive laughter that embraced all of humanity. But again I don't remember much! And it seems like the explanations in some ways were different from what I had dreamed the first time... and for that reason I think the second dream actually made me forget a lot of the first one and vice verse. It's like in re-enacting the improv we did it differently the second time. But what stuck with me the most from it is this... The sub-c explained to me that the entire first dream had been a lesson in The Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration. Every one of those characters, in demanding all of my attention to themselves, was acting out on their unsatisfied sexual impulses, which usually go unfulfilled for most people. Even those who have what's considered a satisfying sexual/romantic life are actually sexually frustrated because, according to the way humans are wired, whatever you're getting sexually/romantically you always want something else (grass is always greener). And most importantly... this is the very REASON that human existence is so interesting! It's what drives us in all things... what essentially makes us human. Or it's a very large part of it, and we're not aware of the huge part it plays. We think of sexual frustration as a negative thing... when in reality it's the very driving force that led us forth from darkness to become human in the first place! (note... I'm not saying this is true.. it's just what the dream told me). The idea being basically that everybody in the house - in the dream (representing everybody in the world) was horny, and they were subverting that energy into their actions. Rather than acting directly on it, they would talk loudly and impassionedly about some theory they had concocted, or whatever. Hobbies people have.. interests they take, scientific discoveries and artistic masterpieces - all of it is subverted sexual energy, and if not for the way humans are wired to be subject to constant sexual frustration, we wouldn't have those interests. But this revelation wasn't just psychological or sexual - it was somehow spiritual. The dream was saying it isn't BAD that our energy all comes from subverted sexual frustration, but that it's a common link that we all share deep inside, so it draws us all together. And understanding it brings us closer to enlightenment. I remember trying to improve on the 1st dream by saying "Maybe Aunt Mini could be Aunt Minitonka? Tonka - as in Built Like a Truck? Get it?" - Which seemed pretty funny, but I immediately decided it put a weird twist on the character... makes her sound like an indian and brings in unwanted associations, so it's back to the original Aunt Mini. Cool... editing my own dreams as I dream them! I came away from the dream with warm laughter in my heart - ready to look beyond people's weird self-serving behaviors and to understand the driving forces that cause them to act the way they do. Oh, and in case I didn't get this across - the endless comedy of sexual frustration is nothing less than life itself.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I have heard that the only reason men get out of bed in the morning is because of the possibility of sex! It is true that you can reduce any motivation down to fulfillment of life energy. And it is the life force that has fueled all things in this universe. Even the Universe is the fruit of cosmic sexual energy. Gives a whole new meaning to the Big Bang! All life is the unfolding in time of the power of the timeless orgasm. In every peak experience you touch the timeless void. This timeless void is what we all hanker for, the source of all energy. Energy to create life, the Universe and everything. It is celebration. It is this that makes a peak experience. That is the appeal of sex, to unite the opposites and to touch this timeless void for a few moments. Life energy is a river. Life energy is kundalini. Sex is one expression of kundalini. there are other expressions of kundalini also, like love, compassion, spiritual bliss. But it is all basically the same energy and ecstasy and passion are its nature! But if it is frustrated you might want to talk Ashton Kutcher's ear off! And beware of Aunt Mini! She sounds like a wild one!

[Darkmatters]

Wow, that's a really deep insight!! So glad I met you man, this is the stuff I need to hear!!

[Darkmatters]

Dream Lucid Ok, catching up real quick... 2 nights ago - All I remember is the tail end of the last dream. I'm riding my bike in some kind of maze where the walls are only 2 inches high, like curbs. There are cardboard boxes sitting here and there, and I don't want to have to stop my bike to move them, so I go real slow and try to wedge my front wheel in between each box and the curb beside it and sort of flip it away with a quick jerk of the handlebars. It worked every time. Last night - Decided to try opening a Lucid Dreamer capsule and one of the B-5 capsules and intersperse half of each into each capsule.. make sense? So each capsule now has 250mg B-5, 100mg choline and... waitaminnit!! Here's where I ran into a problem -- the 4mg galantamine is nestled randomly in with 200mg choline! If I divide the finely milled white powder into two equal piles, how do I know where the galantamine actually is? It could all be in one pile! Sort of defeats the purpose. I had to facepalm and laugh at myself for that one. The don Juan in me was laughing at the Castaneda in me. Anyway, since I had already done the deed, I went ahead and took one regular LD capsule and one of the modified capsules ( I made 2). Never got back to sleep after I took it though... I shouldn't even mess with it on work days. Semi-related note... I love that galantamine is extracted from lotus flowers! The Chakra flowers. I dreamed me and John Candy were security guards in a department store and had a huge food fight. All the food was made of shit.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

What is this lucid dreamer capsules you speak of? What supplements do you do to help your dreams? Sometimes I just take amino acid blend and 5-htp. I would like to learn more about these type of things, however I do not want to mess with my brain chemistry too much. What is in it? How does it work?

[Darkmatters]

Here's what I'm talking about. I learned about it on this thread. I feel the same way you do, I wouldn't care to try anything that could be dangerous, but after reading through that rather long thread I'm convinced it's completely safe and quite effective. After buying the Lucid Dreamer product, which contains only galantamine (4mg) plus choline (200mg), I found out about a similar product called Galantamind (heh... get it? cute huh?) that also has 100mg vitamin B-5, which is recommended with the combo. I ended up buying B-5 separately. If anyone reading this chooses to try it, definitely read that thread I linked to. And don't get the 8mg glantamine... that's too much for some people and can cause weird messed up lucids... better to get the 4mg - sold as a "starter" kit. That way you can take two pills if one isn't doing the trick. Essentially this stuff strengthens neuron activity in the brain, helping with cognition and memory, and as it so happens, if you take it during a WBTB, it also sparks lucidity. I don't care to mess with any other supplements or drugs for lucidity though.

[juroara]

Semi-related note... I love that galantamine is extracted from lotus flowers! The Chakra flowers. That's pretty awesome! I couldn't take this galantamine stuff even if wanted . I can't swallow pills, does it only come in pills? I know shameful. Some people think it's an irrational fear of choking. But the one time I did swallow a pill I gagged it back up. It's like my body thinks I'm swallowing poison. (actually I know I'm telling my body it's poison, lol, I really hate modern medicine) But..if it's from a flower, maybe there is a tea I can drink that has natural galantamine in it?

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I just read about galantamine. I never really thought to much about taking supplements, funny, though that I don't think twice about drinking herbal tea. I read that there is a possible side-effect with galantamine involving too slow of a heartbeat. I don't know if this stuff is for me. A few years back I was having problems with anxiety attacks or panic attacks where I thought I was dying. My anxiety would make my heart go crazy and I would think that I was having a heart attack so I would try to calm down and then I would feel like my heart would stop or skip a beat so I would have to tense up again. I fainted once and went to the hospital (I still have an unpaid hospital bill). It got so bad that I could only lie in bed all day trying not to panic and keep my breathing calm. But I healed myself. I haven't had a panic attack in years. But things that mess with my heartbeat make me nervous, which doesn't help my anxiety. I like the 5htp though because it actually mellows me out and improves my mood also, and it is very natural. Anyway, I find brain chemistry very interesting.

[Darkmatters]

Juroara - some people like to open the capsules and dissolve the powder in orange juice or something similar. Not sure how it tastes though. Dannon... really? Slow heart beat... well that's not good. I don't remember seeing anything about that. It hasn't done that to me, and I don't plan to take it too much. If it does anything funky to my heartbeat I'll toss it.

[Darkmatters]

No recall AT ALL from last night!! I did remember 2 dreams and parts of a 3rd when I woke up, but I lay in bed for a while thinking I'd get up and write it down in a bit, and when I tried it had all disappeared! I *THINK* I remember one image, of a few people in a volkswagen... but I'm not even sure about that.

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I don't mean to spread fear about it, I am just saying for me it would make me nervous because I am too sensitive to things sometimes.

[Darkmatters]

This is the remains of my bottle of Lucid Dreamer. I took a couple days to think about what Dannon had said. I did a websearch. Essentially in the words of don Juan, I took all the time I needed to make the decision - chose the path with a heart, and once I made the decision I acted on it - immediately and irrevocably. Actually I did take it one more time after Dannon's last post. I must admit, I had really come to rely on the pills to get lucid. And even though the dreams were of low quality overall - unable to move in one, unable to see in another, always dreaming of trying to get to sleep or get lucid etc - the lucidity itself was powerful! It was thanks to the Lucid Dreamer that I was finally able to do reality checks in a dream, to feel my finger go through my palm, breathe through my pinched-shut nose, go right through a window. But it was a crutch. It was training wheels. They can help you reach places you aren't (currently) able to reach without them, but you come to rely on them too much and then they become a hindrance. Oh, and I forgot to mention... about an hour after taking it my heart rate got kind of funky... slow and irregular. That was too much, and thats really what decided me. So, after taking that last capsule (and not being able to get to sleep at all afterwards! ) - I took the water I had left in the cup beside my bed (which was intended for taking the Piracetam after waking up) and poured it into the bottle. H2O - essential for life; THE most abundant material on earth; and one of the most destructive known to man. Water erodes mountains - destroys houses - drowns people. And it's capable of rapidly and utterly destroying a bottle of capsules. I knew if I didn't destroy them I could always change my mind later... it's not hard to dig a sealed bottle out of the trash! And I was like a junkie or an alcoholic! So I dissolved them into a sloppy green mass. Humorous note... you can see the paper envelope containing silica - supposed to safeguard the capsules against the destructive ravages of moisture. I've been feeling like absolute crap for a couple days now. Symptoms - pain in the abdomen, headache, and a general overall achiness. It COULD have been from the galantamine... or it could be from overdoing the Rapid Breath of Fire. I actually think it was the latter... because the abdominal pain felt more like a muscle strain than anything internal, but hard to be sure. Heh... I was really dreading shipment tonight at work! It's usually me and one other person putting up load after load of heavy stuff... but tonight little did I realize it would end up being me alone! Strangely though, after about 5 minutes of labor, I actually felt better! Weird. But not a bad thing! And now the achy headachy pain thing seems to have passed. *SIGH* - ok, so now I've thrown away my crutches, and I find I've lost the edge I used to have. I need to get back in practice at being aware constantly of the dreamlike nature of reality, and the real nature of dreams. Reality checks, setting intent, mantras... all of it. Maybe I'll read ETWOLD again too... that always seems to help. Time to start taking my first shaky steps without the crutches... Thank you to my friends... Dannon for pointing out the danger of Galantamine, and Juroara for jump-starting my dream journal recently and for all her support throughout!

[Darkmatters]

Dream Lucid CARS CARS CARS No recall AT ALL from the night before last... last night I can only remember the last dream. I really need to get back to where I was recalling dreams from every REM period! I'm in a weird car... it seems like a large toy car, with a couple of people (don't know who they are). I think the car was big for a toy car and we were small enough to fit in it. The car was really quick and had a lot of power! We went zipping around through gravel and dirt doing donuts and figure 8s and having a blast! This was in the field at the end of my street at night. I remember another car being there... maybe we almost ran into it, or at least we were surprised to see it there for some reason. We talked briefly to the people in the other car, and I don't remember what was said, but it seems like we were making up a story about why we were there. It felt like lying to the police when you get caught drinking or something - a situation I haven't been in for many years! I'm in a weird house with my mom and she asks me to go to the store and get some candy bars. I have to go up a really long flight of stairs to get to the front door, and when I step outside I notice I don't have any shoes on. I almost went like that, but it was cold so I went back in to get my shoes. Heh... I like the way I got down all those stairs... I put a foot up on each side against the baseboard and was able to just sliiiiiide down! I love strange methods of transportation in dreams! Now I'm driving another toy car... this one is faster and makes a wicked sound like a chainsaw. I'm controlling it with a remote. I seem to be in some kind of desert race with many other vehicles, all raising long clouds of dust as we progress across the rugged terrain. The coolest thing... there are rocks falling in slow motion all around us... like asteroids and boulders and showers of gravel all coming down in extreme slow motion. It was awesome... we had to take the falling rocks into consideration so while passing other drivers we don't get hit by any rocks. This was a fantastic dream image!! Then I'm driving a regular car on a highway near my house. In front of me is a pink Trans Am driving very erratically and very fast. I seem to know the person driving it. This seems to be a continuation of the desert race segment, and the strip malls just ahead are the first signs of civilization we've seen for days. The Trans Am suddenly swerves on screeching tires and crashes, but it seems like the driver did it on purpose just to spin the car around and park it in the left turn lane (!!) As it's crashing/parking, a girl in an all pink outfit pops through the side of it (similar to the lady who popped out the side of a crashing car that sparked my 2nd lucid dream since joining DV...). She slides along the road for a second in a crouching position, looking at me like this is what she was trying to do. It looked really cool... like some kind of female superhero move from a movie! I park right behind her to protect her from oncoming traffic. It seems like we did this crazy move for a reason... we were going to film a scene for a movie right here or something, but I woke up before I found out what it was.

[Darkmatters]

Last night I ordered these books from Amazon: The Mind At Night: The New Science Of How And Why We Dream The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don Juan The Art of Dreaming How to Practice : The Way to a Meaningful Life The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching This completes my Castaneda collection (I had already read Active Side of Infinity... heh, it's the last in the series and the first one I read!) and begins my reading in Buddhism. I'm so glad I destroyed the Lucid Dreamer pills!! I had actually been considering it already. I got exactly what I wanted out of them... just a little experimenting and some lucid experiences to show me what I'm shooting for that I can now work toward without the pills. I never intended to take them every time I had a day off (which is what ended up happening - and I even took them a couple of times on work days! ). So it needed to be done. They had served their purpose and had become a habit I needed to break. No regrets, no looking back. It was an act of impeccability. Today I realized that, although I haven't made much progress yet in lucid dreaming, I've gotten a great deal of excellent information just from keeping my DJ and from participating on the forum and thinking so much about dreams. My main reason for being interested in lucidity is to try to get n closer contact with my subconscious in order to spark greater creativity. Specifically I want my films to become like little dreams. So often you see movies with a "dream sequence" that's nothing like a real dream, just dumb little conventions that have become accepted to mean "dream"... you know, the edges of the frame ripple, there's slow dreamy music, etc. I want mine to have a more authentic dreamlike feel to them. Some filmmakers and authors obviously have a great feel for dreams... like David Lynch and Lewis Carrol to name just two. These guys must have really delved deeply into their own dreams... I'll bet they both kept a DJ! I didn't realize how important just keeping track of the non-lucids can be. Today after waking up I for some reason thought about a couple of dreams I've recorded recently and had a bit of a revelation. I was thinking in particular about the dream I called a wish-fulfillment dream, which only takes on meaning when taken in context with the dream just before it because it commented ON that dream. This is also the structure for my Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration dream, followed by another dream that elaborated on it and expanded on it. It made me think about this... I could make a series of very brief films, some of which comment on other ones, and taken in context they take on more meaning than taken individually. I had never considered making a series of short films that need to be taken in context like this before. I love this... actually getting ideas for the structuring of short animated films from the structures of dreams!

[juroara]

Wow! That's a lot of books! And I'm glad your off the pills too . I don't think we should be dependent on any supplement. We gotta learn the old fashioned way!

[Darkmatters]

Yeah, I'm a pretty voracious reader... I'll probably finish them all in a month or so! Glad to be clean and sober too!

[Darkmatters]

Dream Lucid EXCUSE ME I hate when this happens... I woke remembering an awesome dream that made me feel great... but I had about a half hour till my alarm went off and wouldn't you know... I fell back asleep and had a crappy dream that completely wiped the good one from my memory banks!!! I wake up to find my house has been converted into a gallery or museum during the night... all the doors removed and there are clusters of people standing here and there looking at pictures on the walls. There's one woman standing right in my bedroom - she's heavyset and wearing a brown fur coat with an elaborate piled-up hairdo. I can't believe she has the nerve to stand right there when she sees she's in my bedroom and I'm sleeping. I'm putting on a long-sleeved shirt but I can't open the cuff buttons and I have a really hard time squeezing my hands through the cuffs. I have to struggle with it for a long time but finally I get it on, then I see it's really dirty and I have to struggle again to get it off. The whole time the lady just keeps standing there silently looking at the picture on my wall. From time to time she turns her head to look at me, and when she does it's like her head is divided on a line right through the eyes... the top half of her head moves a split second later than the bottom half. It's really weird looking... like her head is made of rubber or jello or something... very unnerving! I finally get a different shirt on and get out of bed (not sure if I'm wearing any pants or not). She again turns and looks at me, so I say "Excuse me"... politely the first time. She doesn't respond at all, just keeps turning her head every few seconds to look from me to the picture back to me. I say it again, louder and less polite. Still no response. So I step right up and shout it into her ear: "EXCUSE ME!!!"

[Dannon Oneironaut]

Alright DM! Happy for you. Good decision. Impeccable! I like your cars dream, it reminds me of a video game. I make myself stay away from Amazon because I will end up going on a shopping spree. Never go to ebay or amazon if you are drunk! I learned the hard way. But I should start using amazon because I just end up at the bookstore paying full price for a book. I buy lots of books. It seems that since you pored the water in that bottle you have claimed your own power.

[Darkmatters]

Ha ha!! Yeah, I police myself pretty well on Amazon. I only allow myself to make one big purchase a month there (this was it!). I'll take the entire month choosing what it's gonna be, and usually after a few days I'll pull a few items out of the cart and pop em into the Save for Later cart - and I usually end up never buying them. It's the only way I can beat the impulse buying bug.

[Darkmatters]

Dream Lucid In the Palace of the Persian Prince I'm sitting on the roof of a bus (!!?) on a vast network of spiraling overpasses. An unidentified friend is sitting next to me. The bus is stopped in gridlocked traffic for the moment. Across a huge empty field we see somebody running toward us, miles away. The name Jesus of Suburbia pops into my mind, and for some reason I think it's him, trying to reach us. He disappears for a moment behind an overpass, and when he emerges into sight again he's much much closer... like almost on the edge of the highway, within about 60 feet of the bus... but now traffic starts moving and the bus takes off, leaving him behind. The bus takes me (now alone?) to a huge dark ruin of an old mansion out in the boondocks. I go inside to find the house empty and somewhat falling apart, but not moldering or anything... still pretty clean on the inside. I decide to stay here for a while... it's like I need a place to hide or something. I remember scenes of chasing someone... a girl who lives in the dark house. It's like we're playing hide and seek. She seems to be afraid to come out and talk to anyone, like she's been hiding in the darkness all her life. I don't mean her any harm, just want to talk to her about this house... it seems like I was drawn here for some reason and she's part of it. But she always eludes me. It was fun though... I remember lots of long sailing leaps up to balconies and crawling through ornate carved wooden ventilation shafts and into secret chambers that were designed into the house by its original inhabitant (who I somehow know was a prince. I now think of the house as a palace). Someone came in through the front door at some point, I think it was a doctor? Or someone with medicine I needed. But I was injured or hurt in some way I don't recall or didn't understand... I was huddled on a landing overlooking the huge entry foyer where he was and I was too weak or sick to even speak. After a while he seemed to be gone and I was crawling through the corridors looking for a room where I could curl up and heal. I thought there was one certain room - maybe it was the prince's room - that had the healing energy I needed, but I needed to find it in all the vast maziness of the huge sprawling palace. There was no electricity in the house, but I noticed a room with light in it. I went there... someone had laid out some fresh bedding and food... apparently for me. I vaguely remember seeing a very pale girl with long black hair that I somehow knew was Persian - it must have been the girl who stayed on in the house after the Prince's family left it vacant. She seemed too timid or frightened to be in the room while I was there but kept bringing me food. She seemed to be helping me to heal. I woke up and was remembering this dream, but I was really sleepy and at some point I was half asleep and still reciting the events of the dream, but now I was making parts up... embellishing on it and changing it. This is like the Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration dream where I fell asleep and was 'remembering' it but at the same time changing it and it made me forget most of the original. Very annoying!! Fortunately in this case it only happened for a second or two and I snapped out of it and realized what was happening, so I wrote this one down before I could lose any more of it. The Scene of the Crime It's night and I'm walking around on alleys, come to some kind of convenient store or mini-mart. I walk in but there's nobody there, and there's a long box laying in the middle of the store... the proportions of it are coffin-like. I touch the box, but get a flash image of a screaming face and I decide not to open it, step back instead. Now EMTs rush in and a couple of them kneel next to the box and open it. Inside is a guy on a stretcher... it seems to be some new kind of protective measures they're taking when people are really injured and need to be protected. The victim is wearing a neck brace and his face is the one I saw in my flash vision... he looks like he's screaming but there's no sound. Now in walks the detective. It's Louis Gossett Jr. He has a look of intense concentration on his face and he's holding a pocket knife (weapon used in the robbery attempt?) against his forehead. The way he's holding it it looks like sunglasses that he's holding over his 3rd eye. His regular eyes are tightly closed and he's muttering to himself... something about "I'm going to find you wherever you are..." Music I'm playing a guitar. Only 1 chord... I think it's a G (if I remember right... been a long time and I was never very good). I"m holding the chord and sliding it up and down the neck of the guitar. At first I'm only strumming rather clumsily, but once I find the right frets to stop on and get somewhat of a plodding melody going then I switch to finger picking. I did used to play like this, but never got very good at it... in fact I used to play a song exactly like this that I invented... a single chord slid up and down the neck while finger picking. But suddenly a powerful inspiration overtakes me and my playing gets incredible!

[Dannon Oneironaut]

Don't you wish you could record the music in your dreams? I wish I could hear your song. I LOVE to make music in dreams. Did you know that Paul McCartney heard "Yesterday" in a dream and to this day he isn't sure if he really wrote it or not? The aborigines of Australia believe that when you dream of a song or make a piece of artwork from a dream that you are actually channeling the ancestors' dreams. These songs become sacred creation songs that they believe created the world. I WISH I could've heard it! I usually remember how to play the songs I make in my dreams, my problem is that they don't sound all that spectacular or special in waking life. "Excuse Me!" makes me laugh. It is a funny mental image. You might like to send that dream to this artist who makes comic strips of other people's dreams: http://www.slowwave.com/

[Darkmatters]

Dannon... to be honest, I woke from that dream thinking the inspiration had come, not from the ancients, but from YOU!! I immediately thought of your dream of making music recently, and I thought I was channelling your talent. Yeah, I had heard that about Sir Paul dreaming up Yesterday. Awesome!! Oh, another reason I might have dreamed of sudden inspiration making me into a better artist... over the last few days I've been getting ideas and inspiration for the film I'm working on (which has sat untouched pretty much since the beginning of the year when I turned my attention to lucid dreaming and this site). Last night it all came together and I suddenly understood exactly how I need to make this film!! Part of the inspiration comes from my dreams. IN fact that's the main reason I wanted to learn to lucid dream... get in closer contact with the subconscious and get inspiration from it. But the inspiration has come... not from lucidity, but from just closely studying my dreams themselves - the regular ones mostly. Anyway, it looks like I"ll finally get back to work on this beast that has almost killed my creativity and become a tremendous albatross around my neck - and hopefully I'll be able to make it into a decent film after all!

[Dannon Oneironaut]

That reminds me to check out your youtube channel. I went to check it out the other day but I have wireless and something was wrong with my connection and youtube. Someday you should tell me more about these films.

[Darkmatters]

LOL well so far basically everything I've done is just practice - hard to call any of them films... except maybe Terror in the Pumpkin Patch. Man, I need to get a bigger version of that uploaded to YouTube or something... it's so small! The only other one that's somewhat of a story would be One Good Yank - which is really just me trying to learn about mime principles... telling a story through nothing but body movement. I call that one a microfilm. A stop motion animator is essentially an entire film production crew and cast... you have to be the writer, director, producer, the whole carpentry crew, set decorator, you do costumes hair and makeup (well... in fact you have to make all your actors!) - you have to BE all the actors... and do your own sound, effects, and editing. Just learning to be a good animator takes years... and so does learning to write a decent story and how to move the camera effectively etc. I've been putting in the effort in all that. So everything I've done so far has been preparatory. This will be my first "real" film, and it's going to be real short and sweet. Well short definitely, I HOPE it ends up sweet! So everything you see on those links is practice at making puppets and moving them. Here are the links for anyone else who wants to see them... I just realized I had only posted them on your DJ: My Darkmatters blog My YouTube channel My website Darkstrider.net That link goes to the page with some of my older animation on it... I also have pages with lots of great work by European stopmo animators plus a Gallery with puppets I've made and drawings/paintings I've done.

[sleepyzac]

Blind! Dream Lucid Took Lucid Dreamer supplement last night along with a full 500mg capsule of B-5. This is the 3rd time I've taken the supplements, but my other 2 tries were unsuccessful, I believe because I was also taking megadoses of Piracetam to begin the daily regimen of it for cognitive/memory development. Yesterday I didn't take any Piracetam, just to see if it would change my chances of getting lucid. I took the supplements after 4.5 hrs sleep during about a 20 minute WBTB, then I counted myself back to sleep. Got to a hundred and stopped counting because I seemed quite relaxed and close to sleep. Occasionally during the count I'd stop and repeat "I AM dreaming!" - feeling the excitement of being lucid and imagining myself dong RCs. I was afraid I'd have a hard time falling asleep, but very soon I found myself in a public restroom washing my hands & noticing how luxurious the decor was. I thought "I need to remember this, because it's probably the nicest accommodations I'll find myself in all day." Then I was in bed wearing socks and a sweater (!?) and there was music playing quietly that I wanted to shut off so I could get to sleep and have the lucid dreams I was waiting for. I shut off the clock radio, but then noticed even quieter music playing that had been hidden under the other music. It was the Rush song Cinderella Man (which includes the line "Try as they might they cannot steal your dreams"). I fiddled with the big stereo for a while and finally got it shut off. I woke up singing Cinderella Man, and it's been in my head ever since. Incidentally though, there was no actual music playing IRL... guess I just dreamed it. I decided to take another Lucid Dreamer capsule, for a total of 8 mgs of Galantamine, just to really push it, because I wasn't getting lucid yet. That did the trick! Counted myself to sleep again. After a while I found myself in the room next to mine, typing or something, and wearing a robe, socks and mittens (!!). My theory is that I was getting signals from my sleeping body and this was my dream's way of interpreting the feeling of covers over my entire body. I heard someone call my name from downstairs and went to see who it was. As I pass my bedroom there's some kind of curtain hanging over the door as if to stop me from going in there. Downstairs I find my mom and ask her if she called me. Nope. So I go into the living room where my sister lauren is sitting with a friend. They didn't call me either. I go back upstairs. There's a bit missing here, seems to be a dream edit rather than a forgotten part... I find myself in bed wearing the crazy getup and fumbling around trying to make it more comfortable. I'm also having trouble seeing. Suddenly I realize I:m dreaming and get all happy & excited. And for the first time I remember to do RCs. I don't really need to - I KNOW I:m dreaming, but I want to see what it's like. So I try to push my finger through my palm. It feels like it goes through in a bit, but I can't really tell because now I can't see AT ALL!! So I do a nose pinch and can breathe perfectly! That makes me laugh. So cool... it's like being in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are different or something. Because it really feels just like you're awake, but you can do these crazy magical things. I walk to my window and decide to see what it feels like to go through glass. Never done that before either. I press both hands against the windowpane and in a few seconds it begins to stretch slowly outward under the pressure, feeling like tightly stretched plastic wrap rather than glass. This is so freakin' COOL!!! Suddenly my whole upper body pops through and I can now hear wind and birds that I wasn't hearing inside. Still can't see a damn thing though!? I have an awkward moment wondering what to do with my legs.. the main problem being only that I seem to be blind so I don't want to go flying around. I start to climb outside anyway and my legs come through like there's no glass at all, but I decide against flying while blind and pull myself back in. I begin to believe the reason I can't see is because I have my eyes closed, so I try to open them (takes some effort), but as they open I suddenly become afraid I'll open them IRL and wake up. I wake up. It's pitch black in my room, and I'm standing halfway out in the hall (wait... I woke up standing in my doorway?). I start to get back in bed but I see a wasp coming down the hall toward me. I don't want it in my room, so I run down the hall to the bathroom & it follows me, then I run back to my room & shut the door before it can get there. But wait... if it's so dark, how the hell can I see this tiny little wasp? I realize it was an FA and that I'm still dreaming. Do another nosepinch... yep. Im dreaming. I'm getting pretty pissed about it being pitch black in my dream though so I open my eyes, and this time I do wake up for reals. Frustrating. Ah, to be fully lucid but struck blind!! It's like a punishment from the gods of antiquity. Next time if this happens I need to think of it differently... it wasn't that my eyes were closed after all... I could see the wasp, right? So I need to think of it as if there are no lights on and either switch one on (I was standing right next to the light switch in my room when I saw the freakin' wasp!) - or just ask the dream for some light. Another thing I thought of... if I find myself in a dark lucid again and don't want to risk destabilizing it I could do something that doesn't require light... like summon some hot girl. Though... that might also destabilize the dream. Ah... At least I know the Lucid Dreamer supplement works now. Next time I'll go ahed and take the Piracetam in the morning even on the day I want to try Galantamine again, just to see if it works as long as I don't take a megadose of the Piracetam. It might not, but at least I'll know. Im counting this as 2 lucids because of the FA. And if that's not allowable according to the Rules of Lucidity (whatever that means), then because I believe I was partially lucid in the first dream, when I was dressed in socks and a sweater. Either way, I'm counting it as two dammit!! nice! i love the winter wear, hilarious! and the darkness thing is odd, tough though because what you think is what you get so if you think it's dark and get stuck thinking like that it's hard to change. i've had similar issues before with problems that one should be able to change in a dream but never this particular one. although when i took that stuff i was in dark tunnels so maybe it's got something to do with it? no now that i think about it there were definitely plenty of parts in well lit areas... who knows, maybe you have a point about your brain linking with the outside world and since it was dark when you went to sleep...