The Oneironomicon: Dreaming with the Nova Dreamer.

[Ikelos]

The Oneironomicon Lucidity by LED Utilizing the Nova Dreamer Introduction DreamLucidNonDream I am at the building where my mother works. There are three desks in the front office area and a door to a gift shop to the right. In real life there is another office here instead of a gift shop. I go into the gift shop to look around. I notice another man there. He is a priest and is wearing the typical clerical clothing except that he has an Ozzy Osborn shirt on with it. I think that is strange. Should a priest be wearing an Ozzy shirt in public? The priest begins to fly around the gift shop like he is possessed. I decide to leave. I go back to the front office area and now my mother and a secretary are at the desks. The secretary asks me if I would like to buy some candy for a fundraiser for her kid's school. I say sure. When I buy the candy, I get some change back. $.50. I look carefully at the change. Something is not right. The coins just don't look like real quarters. ??? This must be a dream! I realize that I am dreaming and I go outside to look around. In front of the building there is a car without tires. It is jacked up on blocks and has its hazard lights on. I decide to get into the car to go somewhere. I am not worried about the cars lack of tires, because its a dream. I don't really have any goal in mind of where to go. I pull out onto a highway. The highway runs through a dense pine forest. I am amazed at how green and lush everything is in the dream. I notice some small white flowers dotting the forest floor. I lose lucidity. I find a pond in the forest. There are some other people swimming there. I want to swim, but I don't want to get my clothes wet. I wake up. That is a spontaneous DILD I had many years ago. It was dreams like this one that first sparked my interest in lucid dreaming. I wanted to have them more often so I read books and tried various techniques to induce lucid dreaming. I eventually bought a NovaDreamer. It worked well, but lucid dreaming on demand isn't nearly as easy as the spontaneous LDs lead me to believe. Now after a long hiatus from lucid dreaming, I want to get back into it. I dug out my old NovaDreamer and I have worn it to bed for the last three nights. The results so far have been underwhelming. The First Three Nights: Messing with the Settings To learn more about the Nova Dreamer read the manual here. Night one: (3-22-10) I couldn't remember how the settings worked on the NovaDreamer. I set it to 7 and went to bed. It turns out that 7 isn't a preset sleeping mode like I thought it was. It is actually used to set the Rate in adjustable mode. Since it wasn't set right, the device didn't cue me and I didn't have any lucid dreams. Night two: (3-23-10) I looked up the correct settings and used #3, for medium sleep, and went to bed. At some point in the night I removed the device. I remember thinking that it started to come apart, so I took it off and went back to sleep. I thought that was a dream since it is common to dream of the device malfunctioning when using it, but it actually did kinda come apart. Part of the material on the face pad was coming loose, but not nearly to degree that I thought it had. When I removed the device I accidentally dropped it on the floor and one of the batteries came out, so I don't how many cues it gave me during the night. I didn't have any lucid dreams. Night three: (3-24-10): I once again used the preset #3 for medium sleep. This time I managed to keep the device on all night. I remember seeing the cue from the device three times. Each time, my entire field of vision was flooded with red light and I thought " There's the signal from the NovaDreamer." Each of the three times I pushed the test button since I was wearing the mask, and each time it worked perfectly. I was awake. In the morning I checked the device to see how many cues it had delivered through the night. It was... Fifty-two! Holy smokes, 52 cues and I only remembered three of them. I think the settings are ok. At first I thought that I might need to reduce the intensity of the cues, because I thought I was waking up every time. But, three of 52? If I had woke up all 52 times I wouldn't have gotten any REM at all. So #3 seems to work fine. I didn't have any lucid dreams, in fact, since I started wearing the Nova again, I don't recall any dreams. This is strange because I can usually remember at least part of a dream every night. But for the last three nights, nothing. Well nothing except the three RCs when I thought I might be dreaming but was actually awake. Correction: I was reading the NovaDreamer wrong. I actually received 25 cues. That seems like a reasonable number. Dreams: Two Broken Something Michelle Kissing M (Lucid) Fencing the Homestead Fixing a Computer I have been to the Future The Dragon Eye My Brother's Restaurant Beef The Old Neighborhood Soviet Detroit Heart The Formation Unrecognized dream cues from the Nova Dreamer: It is a bright day. Really bright, like Las Vegas bright. - Two Broken Something 3-25-10 I think that I need to push the test button. I push it and nothing happens. - Kissing M 3-26-10 I see a pomegranate. It is cut in half and where the seeds should be there a bunch of red LEDs instead. The LEDs light up weakly. - Kissing M 3-26-10 I notice outside the window there is a bright red convertible sports car. - Fencing the Homestead 3-27-10 I see a reddish glass sphere surrounded by red metallic scales. - The Dragon Eye 3-28-10 I am at the restaurant. It is well lit - My Brother's Restaurant 3-29-10 I see a bloody side of beef hanging in a clear plastic bag. - Beef 3-29-10 I look ahead and see that the skyline of Detroit is dominated by the Kremlin. - Soviet Detroit 3-30-10 I see a red bag shaped like a heart. - Heart 3-30-10 Recognized dream cues from the Nova Dreamer: I see a cartoonish splash of red in the middle of my field of vision.- Kissing M 3-26-10 suddenly the entire room is washed in bright light. - Kissing M 3-26-10

[Ikelos]

Reality Check Where am I? How did I get here? I won't document every reality check but I will put a few here. Here is one from today. I am driving on a highway. I notice on the other side of the highway there is truck with orange lights flashing. Is that the signal from the NovaDreamer? Since I am working with a ND, flashing lights are an obvious dreamsign. I ask myself where I am. I am on a highway, an interstate in fact in my hometown. I then ask, how I got there. I am on my way to meet some clients at a building in the next county. I was just at my office which I drove to from home this morning. Everything checks out. I can easily remember how I came to be in this place. Am I dreaming? Not this time. Just to be sure, I try to press my finger through the palm of my other hand. Nope, it won't pass through. I am confident that this is reality.

[Ikelos]

03-25-10 nondreamdreamlucid Two Broken Something It is a bright day. Really bright, like Las Vegas bright. I am standing next to a swimming pool at my house that also is a dealership of some sort. At the end of the pool there is a show room and the house is built around it. I walk along the edge of the pool and I see two workers on the other side of the pool. I can hear them talking about "two broken something." They are using a word other than "something" but I can't understand it. It is gibberish to me. I continue to walk along the pool, then I see these two pots or planters. They are large and seem to be made of clay or concrete. They have plants in them and the sides of them are broken out. The workers were talking about these. I get a little irritated about the situation. Why do they always break things? EOD Michelle I am at work in a small room with a lot of computers. The computers are just packed in on small desks so the room is really crowded. I am thinking about how the employees do not realize that me and a couple other employees are actually the owners of the business. They don't understand just what we do. For example, I set up the network for this room. A woman comes into the room. She looks Hispanic with black hair and kinda dark brown skin. She is very attractive. She is also a cop and wants to ask me some questions. "Do you know Michelle Castanedez"? She ask. "No. I don't know her". She obviously does not believe me. "Are you sure"? "Yeah, I'm sure, I don't know any Michelle Castanedez". She shows me a picture. The picture is not a photograph but a type of hologram projected by what appears to be a smart phone of some kind. That doesn't seem strange to me. I look at the picture and I do know the woman. (She is just a DC though, I don't actually know her) I say: "Oh her? Yeah I know her". The police officer is looking at me like I need to explain this further. So I explain myself. "When you asked about her, I didn't know who you were talking about. But when you showed me the picture I did recognize her. I am not lying to protect her or anything". That answer is apparently good enough for the cop. She tells me that the Michelle Castanedez case is the one custody case that they refuse to settle. I figure that Michelle must have left her boyfriend or husband and taken a child a with her. For some reason the police think that I am involved with Michelle. Hell, I don't even know how I know her. Once the interrogation is done, I realize that I am no longer in the computer room. I am now sitting in the back of a car. A couple of my co-workers come get into the car. It is Friday and everyone is anxious to leave. I tell them to have a good weekend and I get out of the car. It is windy and raining out. Good thing I am wearing a trench coat. I walk along the sidewalk and I notice that there is fresh dog shit on the sidewalk. I step around to avoid stepping in it. It is a green color and really gross looking. EOD Well, looks like my recall is back. I slept with the NovaDreamer on the same settings as last night. I remember being awakened by it a couple of times (maybe more). I am worried that I may have the intensity set too high. One time in particular the light seemed to be intense bright white light instead of the usual red. I also recall counting the number the of flashes during the cue. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, NINE! Since I thought the light was white at first, that makes me think I was dreaming, but when I pushed the test button it worked, so I know I was awake. I may eventually turn the intensity down, but for now I'll continue to use these settings. I want to make sure that I see the signal in the dream, even if that means a few wake ups. I didn't have any lucids, but I am optimistic. In my dream Two Broken Something, the first thing that I noticed was how bright the day was. That is clearly the signal from the NovaDreamer. Too bad I didn't think to do a RC, I could have spent part of my night lounging by the pool in Las Vegas baby! Of course, I could do that in any lucid dream. Anyway, I need to make bright sunlight a dreamsign. In the dream Michelle, there is no obvious signal from the ND. But that makes sense. I had that dream in my last hour of sleep after I had removed the ND. I had a good reason to remove it, not like some times before when I would mindlessly remove it in my sleep. I forgot to add it this morning but the NovaDreamer indicates that I got 32 cues last night. Correction: As stated above, I was reading the device wrong. I received 23 cues last night. That is about the same as the night before when I received 25.

[Kamilii]

You have great dream recall.

[Ikelos]

You have great dream recall. Yeah, it is pretty good, but I have had lots of practice. Years ago when I started my first dream journal my recall was terrible. I would have to keep a notebook beside my bed and write down dreams as soon as I awoke or I would forget them. And even then I had a lot of one sentence dream fragments. With time tho, I have conditioned my myself to be able to remember them better. Now I usually don't write my dreams down until after I have been up for a few hours. I will still forget sometimes. A few months ago I had a really good dream. In the morning I was going to tell my wife about it when I realized that I couldn't remember it anymore. I was like: "Hey hon, I had a great dream last night". "What was it about"? "Well I was uh, well, um, wow, I don't know anymore, I can't remember. But I know it was good". I do sometimes worry that by waiting so long to record the dreams that I may be losing some details or even corrupting the memory. But it is just not feasible for me to get up in the middle of the night to write down a dream any more.

[Ikelos]

3-26-10 Kissing M dreamlucidnondream I am in a petrochemical plant. There are a couple of guys working nearby wearing FRCs (flame retardant coveralls) and hardhats. I think that I need to push the test button. I push it and nothing happens. Just to clear this up some, there was no test button in the dream. I was not lucid at this point, but I was thinking about the Nova Dreamer and the test button. Something must be wrong. I push the test button a few more times but still nothing happens at all. I see a pomegranate. It is cut in half and where the seeds should be there a bunch of red LEDs instead. The LEDs light up weakly. Man! How could I not be lucid at this point? I am thinking about the Nova Dreamer, I "pushed" the test button several times and it failed exactly the way it should in a dream, and I see a pomegranate with red flashing LEDs. That is the Nova Dreamer just screaming at me " You're DREAMING idiot"! Now I am in an empty field next to the chemical plant. I see a cartoonish splash of red in the middle of my field of vision. Its the signal from the Nova Dreamer! I am dreaming. Awesome, I haven't had a lucid dream in a while. I decide to fly. I simply lift up into the air and I am flying. No problem. I fly along a major road towards the city. I notice that the city is all industrial. There are refineries and chemical plants as far as I can see connected with freeways but there are no commercial or residential buildings. I go down to fly lower. I amuse myself by hitting things on the sides of the buildings with my fist as I fly by. I am in a bathroom in the chemical plant. I am living there and I don't want any of my co-workers to find out. D comes in. I pretend to be washing my hands and combing my hair while I wait for him to leave. As D is leaving, M comes in. I say to her: "Hey M, do think you can just walk into the men's restroom and no one will notice"? She goes into the last stall then says something about how she has to use the men's restroom because the women's restroom is closed. I am now in the first stall and suddenly the entire room is washed in bright light. Its the Nova Dreamer! Wow instant lucidity! I know that I am dreaming but that's not all. I also know that this dream is set in a chemical plant where I used to work years ago. D is an engineer and M is a chemist. They are both people I used to work with but the plant has been closed now for a couple of years and D has moved to another state. There is no doubt about it, this is a dream. I decide to do a reality check even tho there is really no need to. I used to have a crush on M so I decide that a good reality check would be to kiss her, that is certainly something that I would not ever do in real life. M is now standing right in front of the stall that I am in, so I just walk right and grab her and plant a lip lock on her. It is wonderful! What a great feeling! I want more! I want to have sex with her! So with no foreplay or taking off our clothes or anything, we are both naked and having sex right there in a bathroom stall. I see all her naughty bits, or at least my dream version of her naughty bits that look suspiciously pornoriffic. My view changes from 1st person to 3rd person. I am now a disembodied agency watching a DC of me having sex with M. The DC-me looks like me, except that he has a huge bald spot on the back of his head. What the hell? I don't have bald spot, why does he? I am starting to feel a little bored. You would think that lucid dream sex would be pretty interesting, but in this case, not so much. The kiss however, was glorious. I am back in the 1st person view. I am ready to end the sex. A DC walks in on M and I. She is just some DC, not anyone that used to work with. M is embarrassed and gets off of me and at that moment I orgasm and ejaculate on the DC. This orgasm was a real let down. There was no physical or emotional feeling involved. I would describe it as grammatical. You know how you end a sentence with a period to show that is done. This orgasm was just punctuation there to show that the sex scene was done. I am now in an open area to side the of the bathroom stalls. M is still with me and now another friend of mine MD is there. I try to impress them by walking on my hands. So I jump hands first towards the floor and fall flat on my back. I just lie there for a second pretending to be knocked out. When I open my eyes I am awake. Man, I needed to take a leak when I woke up. I wonder if that is why I was dreaming of a bathroom? I checked the Nova Dreamer and I got 37 cues last night. Since I am having lucids again I think I will attempt some of the tasks. Basic Task - Taste a rainbow, tell us what it tastes like. Advanced Task - Fly through a forest of Truffula Trees