24.08.2009 Ever-Shifting Egypt (WILD)
NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID
3:35 - 4:30 a.m. (55 min)
I have little memory of how this all starts, but I know I was seeing hypnagogic imagery as I drifted to sleep and I was quite alert at the time, so I'm pretty sure it was a WILD. The first scene I remember takes place in a grassy field looking out onto a stunning horizon of jagged mountain peaks and an ancient, holy temple nestled between two of the peaks. At first my visuals are very weak, like the opacity setting in Photoshop is turned down below 50%. I'm just ripping up grass and smelling it to stabilize the dream and also to see how vivid my sense of smell is in dreams. After a while I succeed in stabilizing the dream (not sure how, but later I just jump up and down and it works instantly). I keep on pulling up grass and trying to smell it, but I just can't sense anything (insofar as grass has a smell, which I think it has quite a strong one). I wish I could remember more of this scene, but here starts a gap in recall over a fairly significant dream time span.
I think I somehow get back to my childhood home and my brother Sam is there, but it's very dark and my movement is restricted. Anyway, at some point I snap back into it and decide to try the DreamViews Task of the Year of visiting the Lighthouse of Alexandria. So I spin a new scene to ancient Egypt.
At first the world I enter seems very authentic - brick and clay buildings embellished with turquiose roofing, a populous city next to the Mediterannean, nothing modern in sight. The sights and sounds of the bustling city are exhilirating, and I take a moment to absorb the rich atmosphere. It is so detailed, a world unto itself with people going about their business with their own worries, that it's hard to believe that this is taking place all in my mind. I fly around the harbor for a while, seeing temples, statues, and monolithic structures but nothing so grand that it pops out to me as the Lighthouse itself. After searching for what seems like minutes, I fly across the harbor to a plaza on the other side. There I see a procession of elegantly dressed people walking. I descend down to ground level and start walking next to an impressive-looking man in ceremonial blue dress. I ask him how to get to the Lighthouse of Alexandria. He just points straight ahead and says to follow the plaza to the end and it's right there before the water. After thanking him, I resume flying in that direction.
As I fly, the scenery changes remarkably without my noticing it until I stop. Now, instead of an authentic ancient Egypt, I see around me a huge glass dome and bright lights. The bright lights are mainly coming from the lighthouse itself, which I find without difficulty. The building is situated inside the glass dome and the light is completely covering its exterior. It's advertising the lighthouse's sponsor, the Houstan Texans, in brilliant blues and reds. The team's logo is plastered all around the surface of the building and is moving in subtle animation. I'm greatly surprised by all of this, but it doesn't dampen my resolve to go inside and check out the lighthouse.
I enter at ground level and begin to ascend windy flights of stairs. Being in a close, confined space hampers my visuals a bit, so I hop up and down to restore them as I walk. Eventually the stairs terminate, but instead of being in a glassy room next to a ball of fire as I imagined, I'm in a circular room with many doors. Everything in the room, including the walls and doors, is made of wood. Not knowing where to go, I try opening a few doors at random. These happen to be bathrooms that are occupied, and they get slammed back in my face almost as soon as I open them. I go back to the center of the room, defeated, just about ready to give up, when a group walks in. I figure they know where they are going, so I follow them. They go through a door that leads to a giant swimming pool with a glass dome surrounding it. There must be hundreds of kids playing in the pool, causing a ton of commotion and ruckus. All part of the lighthouse, I guess. My lucidity isn't as great by this point, so when I walk along the edge of the pool and a kid taunts me while treading water, I am unable to resist the urge to get back at him by a little old-fashioned water wrestling and horseplay. I jump in and try to catch him. Unfortunately, he gets the better of me and pins me down underwater. The feeling of being underwater in a pool is extremely authentic and I don't for a moment worry about coming up for air, but nonetheless the kid's maneuver is enough to cause the scene to fade away.
Immediately I enter a false awakening in which I wake up in a room with Ben P., his brother Josh, and Charlie C. Ben and Josh are awake, and Ben's sitting on his bed while Jos is at his computer desk. I get up and start talking to them, possibly about my dream. But something isn't right. I can only hear out of one ear and there's there's this nagging noise of a radio ad being played somewhere in the background. Further, I have a vague perception of a bridge between my dreaming body and my real body, centered on the drool coming from my mouth. All of a sudden I tell Ben and Josh, "I think I'm still dreaming." Then I explain about the hearing problem and the ad playing as proof. They both laugh and say that they can hear the ad too, it's coming from Josh's computer, and of course I'm awake. They don't have me entirely convinced, though. I tell them that maybe I'm trapped in a state between waking and dreaming. They still think I'm nuts. Just as I'm about to give it up though, suddenly the thought strikes me that this isn't my bedroom; my real body is sleeping in a tent in the Idaho wilderness. I must be dreaming after all! Even though I tell this to Ben and Josh, they leave the room right then, evidently bored of trying to convince me otherwise.
My lucidity still isn't high, though. I notice Charlie trying to set up this computer game on multiplayer between my computer and his and I'm immediately distracted. I walk over just as he gets it set up. Looking at the menu screen, I figure it's a first person shooter based in Soviet Russia. But once we start playing, I realize that it's a role-playing game very similar to Pokemon, with creatures we collect as pets doing battle against each other. I make a remark about this to Charlie, but he doesn't pay attention.
Soon I get bored of the game and as I am pacing around the bedroom I suddenly remember the other DreamViews Task of the Year: exploring the Great Pyramids at Giza. Immediately I jump up and begin to spin in the air, intending to teleport there. I don't end up in the desert, however, but in an opulent hall with golden columns and dazzling bright light shining down from glass windows up above. The whole structure is a big, open, cylindrical tower adorned with statues, draperies, rich gold & gems. Soon I realize that it's a temple frequented by pilgrims from all over the world. I look up and see, at the apex of the temple, a giant statue of a godess. She must be the deity in whose honor this temple was built. Then I get this incredible feeling that she's beckoning me up to meet her face-to-face, that she has a message for me. It's irresistible. I fly up slowly, consciously trying to be very aware of my surroundings. As I do this I notice that the detail and opulence of the place are in direct proportion to my awareness. This is a valuable lesson in itself. As I approach the top and the goddess I get this exalted feeling, like I am in the midst of something divine and otherworldly, a religious transcendance. The richness and splendor or the temple only add to this feeling.
When I reach her statue face-to-face, though, I'm in for a bit of disappointment. For one, her face is quite ugly, with strange-looking eyes, a crooked nose, and distorted cheekbones. I thought she would be young and blonde, but she's old and has black hair. She doesn't speak to me in words, but there's a stone tablet with moving letters on which she conveys her message to me. The tablet is situated next to her right foot and displays it's text in orange type. The first message is about two sentences long. I try desperately to read it, but although all the words are in English, they make no sense next to each other. The phrase is meaningless jibberish. I tell her directly that I don't understand. Instantly the letters rearrange themselves into a new phrase. But this one is even worse than the first, as none of the words are in English. The goddess's expression shifts subtly into one of frustrated disappointment at my failure to understand the message. But at this point I have grown hopeless and apathetic.
I drift back down to ground level. As I make to leave, I see Russell Crowe, a pilgrim about to receive a blessing or message from the goddess. He asks me how great I feel after receiving her wisdom. I tell him not to bother, it's a waste of time...the messages she gives are just jibberish. Crowe grows instantly enraged and violent. He says we have to settle this right now, in the adjacent bar. Amused, I play along. In the bar, we hop up on top of the bar platform, ready to duke it out. A crowd of spectators has formed around us, eager for action. We both slam beer bottles against the side to make sharp weapons of broken glass. We then run at each other and start to exchange blows. But soon after this starts, the dream scene shifts.
Now I find myself in an airport terminal. I'm still lucid and remember my plan of getting to the pyramids, but for some reason I feel I have to go through the proper channels to do so: i.e., fly through designated flight zones, land at airports, etc. As I wander the airport trying to find the right terminal, I come across a jacuzzi peopled by about four women. The desire comes over me of wanting to prove my sense of touch is vivid and intact. I go up to one of the women, a young, pretty girl with black hair who looks foreign, and start kissing her passionately. She kisses me back and and we both enjoy it while it lasts - maybe half a minute, if that. Then I abruptly run away without looking back, preoccupied with flying to Giza and finding my terminal.
Some intervening scenes are skipped from the dream, and the next thing I know I'm coming in for a landing at an Egyptian airport (flying with my own body, of course). As ground control is waving my on, I overhear reports on the radio of strange extraterrestial spaceships rapidly approaching. The man on the radio is shouting desperately for gunners on the ground to shoot the ships down. Soon I can see them: giant, hulking masses of futuristic design coming in for a landing through our atmosphere. My own goal suddenly seems shrouded in insignificance as all attention is on the invading spacecraft.
On my periphery I see gunners firing lasers from turrets at the ship. Surprisingly, the combination of all this firepower blows huge holes in the ship and it starts exploding, crashing down in freefall. I decide to ignore all this and fly on into the desert, towards the pyramids, which I can now see with my naked eye.
Before I get there, though, I'm directed through an indoor room, like customs or something. They assign me an Egyptian guide, who I suspect asks mostly as a government agent spying on me to make sure I don't steal anything or whatever. He looks like a shady guy in any case. When we get back out, we're at the base of the pyramids and the scene has a very Indiana Jones-type feel, like everything's being explored for the first time.
At the base of the pyramid, the first stone slab serving as an entrance is barred shut, blocking the way. To the left of it, though, are three stone statues of dogs, all right on top of each other. For some reason the idea occurs to me of licking each dog statue on the nose to try to open the barrier. I do this, and the taste is very real, like hot stone with a layer of sand on top. And sure enough, this causes the slab to slide away and grant us entrance.
Unfortunately, we are unable to get very far one inside, as there is an impenetrable horizontal ceiling cutting off any further ascent. This ceiling covers the whole dream scene, both inside the pyramid and outside, and despite my efforts to fly through it, I just can't. My "partner" chuckles at my misfortune and I become helpless in my frustration.
The scene shifts again, this time for a brief false awakening in which I recount to whoever is with me the epic dream I just had. This doesn't last long, though, and soon after I awaken for real.
LOG: 08/23/09 - 08/24/09
Supplements (& dosage) taken before bed: 100mg 5-HTP, 2.5mg Melatonin
Supplements taken in morning: 8mg Galantamine, 400mg Choline (Dreamamins), 600mg alpha-GPC [NO MUCUNA PRURIENS]
WBTB session length (if applicable): 30 min
Exercises done after taking supplements: Repeating my intentions x2, 61 point relaxation
How long did it take to fall back asleep after taking supplements? ~30 min
Sleep position: on my left
DILD or WILD? WILD
Transition details (if WILD): can't remember
Dream quality: 9
Ability to recall dream: 9
Lucidity level: 8
Lessons or theories: This dream was an excellent example of how awareness level can affect the quality of the setting of a dream. It was also the most powerful for me thus far in a spiritual sense, even though no particular messages or revelations were given to me. The temple setting itself was glorious and evoked tremendous awe and wonder within me.
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