Calmseas' Dream Journal

Thursday Night, May 19

Vivid Village -

Ok, I had my first lucid dream since joining this site--though I have had them in measured number for a lot of years.

The dream began non-lucid. I dreamed I was traveling around my local town by bike or car; I'm not sure which at the beginning. I think there were other people in the car with me, but I don’t know who they were. However, I was the driver. Sometimes I was on the sidewalk, sometimes in the road. There seemed to be some construction going on that I had to avoid. I came upon an electrical device of some sort on the sidewalk. It was a small box, just a few inches square, and had two wires coming out of each side and extending at a 45-degree angle to the edges of the sidewalk. All of a sudden a bike or another car approached me, and when they got close to the electrical device, their warning lights started to flash. I thought, "Hmmm . . . that must be the reason for the device--to trigger flashers from oncoming vehicles."

I kept driving, but now definitely on the road, and definitely in a car. I was having a hard time seeing--I thought maybe because of the sun. But I also had what I might call a "mental fog" that made it tough for me to see things. I would pull through intersections not really able to see if someone was coming at me from the side. All of a sudden, a guy--probably in his early 30's--was right in front of me on one of those 1890's high wheeler-type bikes. He looked really annoyed. He moved from in front of the car to along my side of the car, and when he got past me, he started yelling at me. I was now really perturbed because I thought I had been very courteous to him, slowing down to nothing and waiting for him. So I flipped him the bird in the rearview mirror and continued on.

Then I came into this little village of perfect serenity. I wasn't in my hometown anymore. At that point, I started to think about how much trouble I've had driving, and all of the things that had gone wrong for me, and the metal haze and all of that. I thought that this is not at all like me, and it occurred to me that I might be dreaming. I became lucid at that point, and did my reality check--pinching myself (hey, it works for me). Suddenly, everything became so very vivid with rich, deep colors everywhere. It doesn't get more bold and real than this even in true reality. I especially remember one large, old-style house with a high-pitched roof. The house was painted in the deepest, boldest red that I have ever seen. The rest of the village was such a beautiful scene. There were houses on low hills all around me, but the main road that I was on didn't seem to have anything really on it. This was a village, but I didn't feel like I was in any kind of a built-up or "downtown" area. Aside from the red house, the thing that stood out the most was a railroad track running through the middle of everything, built up a few feet on an embankment, but running roughly parallel to the road that I was on.

All of this was happening quickly, and I started to get a little excited. I remembered the dream-spinning technique that I read about here. The dream seemed to want to start to fade, so I thought that I would try spinning. I span only 1/4 turn, and fell awake on my right side in bed--or so I thought. I figured "OK, spinning doesn’t work for me; I try to start it and I wake up." So I got out of bed (though I don't remember actually getting out of bed) and started to tell my family about this neat dream. Only then did I wake up for real--I realized then that I had earlier experienced a false awakening. When I woke up for real, I got up and quickly started to jot down notes.

It's now about an hour later and I am typing this. I look forward to many more of these experiences, and hope that I can really learn to stay in these dreams and control them. I have never been more than about eight feet off the ground flying in a dream, and I'd love to figure out how to head out into space and visit other planets.

Saturday Night, May 21

To Catch A Rabbit -

About 2:45 am, I awoke and then had a difficult time getting back to sleep. When I finally got back to sleep, maybe an hour later, I began having a long series of short lucid dreams and false awakenings. I know that I had a number of dreams, but only remember a few snippets from a few dreams. The really neat thing to me is that I began to use some of the techniques that I’ve learned from this site.

In one of the dreams, I remember becoming lucid in a big room—I think the living room of my old house. There were many colorful packages (they seemed to be presents of some sort) around the room. These presents and everything about the dream became much more vivid as I attained lucidity. In this dream, I kept telling myself to “remember this dream, remember this dream.” I think that was why I was able to recall this dream even though there were several others that followed before I woke up.

It was in a later dream, I think, that I did my first “finger-through-the-hand” reality check that I learned from this site. I felt the resistance of my hand when my finger hit it, but then it pushed right on through like pushing through putty. Either later in this dream or in another dream I decided to try to walk through a wall. As I approached the wall, it was as if I could see through the wall, and I saw a rabbit outside. Again I met resistance as I came in contact with the wall, but then I just kind of dissolved through the wall. As I exited the other side of the wall, I quickly tried to grab the rabbit. I think he got away.

Another dream I have a vague recollection about: It involved my family members and maybe some friends in an indoor hot tube or pool. When I entered they were all already there, maybe like they were waiting for me. I can’t say much more about this dream.

It is truly amazing all of these techniques that you remember to use just by reading about them during waking hours and trying, even modestly trying, to remember to put them into use during a lucid dream. The mind is a marvelous thing.

I had several false awakenings. Each time I thought I was awake and lying in bed, I pinched myself and felt no twinge of pain. So I knew that I was still sleeping. One time I did feel the pain, so I believe that I actually work up. However, for me it seems that the new gold standard for a reality check is the “finger-through-the hand” technique.

In one of the other lucid dreams this night, I tried to fly myself to outer space but it didn’t work. I think I just stayed with my feet firming planted on the ground as I gazed at the stars. I think I will truly know that I have arrived when I am able to leave the earth and head off into space. That is my goal for lucid dreaming, since I don’t think I have ever been able to fly more than just a few feet off the ground in a dream.

Friday night, May 27

http://webpages.charter.net/mhkeur/L

I saw this image of two backward L's in the middle of the night after I had awakened and was in a transitiion from being awake to going completely back to sleep. It has no significance to me that I can think of. In the same transition time, I had vague imagery of a row of aluminum buckets tilting forward together and emptying. I can't relate that to anything either.

Toward morning I did some dreaming, but I only remember just a couple of fleeting and very vague images. They both involved motels.

In the first image, a car pulled into the space directly in front of my door, so I pulled next to him into an area that wasn't a marked space. The spot where I parked had a yellow "X" through it, and it was behind a column--needless to say, it was hard to get into this spot.

The second image may have been the same motel, but it was around the other side. All that I remember was being near the outdoor stairway and looking up to the 2nd floor.

The motel in both images was an older style 2-floor motel with all rooms having outside exits. A walkway and parking spaces ringed the lower floor, and a balcony/walkway went all around the 2nd floor--like some of the older Day's Inn's and other older motels in use today . This was a popular way to build a motel in the 1960's. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve traveling and staying in these kinds of motels. I loved the swimming pools (yes, with diving boards--remember those?), and I really liked going out and walking all around these motels at night, including walking all of the balconies/walkways, and getting ice or going to the vending machines. Maybe I dream these images because they are serene for me and are positive relections from a childhood that has long since vanished in the world of reality.

June 9, 2005

The last dream in which I became lucid occurred about a week ago. It started as a fun free-for-all gathering with a lot of people. I became lucid but soon felt like I was starting to lose the dream. So I thought I'd try spinning again. (The last time I did the spinning thing, it resulted in a quarter turn to the right and then a false awakening.)

I spun myself into the mezzanine of a gym. I remember lots of vivid blues. Blue must be the school color. I tried to fly in the gym and I was able to float a little bit; it seems like I floated right over the edge of the mezzanine. I thought that this would be a boring dream so I decided to spin again. I spun myself into a church social hall (and I thought the gym was boring). I decided to try my luck and spun again (like Wheel Of Fortune). When the spinning stopped, I was still in the church, but now the building was on fire. This is where I got into a real spinning rut. I tried to spin out of the fiery church, but just kept spinning back into it. Each time it seemed to get a little worse. Fire trucks arrived—the whole nine yards.

Finally, I started spinning again and for some reason a funeral entered my mind as I spun and, you guessed it, I ended up still in the church but now with a casket in front of me. At this point, at least the fire was out. Then for some strange reason I thought I'd see myself in the casket if I looked, so I decided I was out of here. It took a few seconds but I managed to wake myself up. I never did know who was in the casket. From fun-loving free-for-all to fire and caskets: Would that be considered a disintegrating dream, or what?

Wednesday night, June 15

I had a series of both lucid and non-lucid dreams tonight. I awoke about 4:00 am, and had trouble getting back to sleep. I must have gotten myself into a light sleep and began dreaming all sort of things. It felt like I was in a transition from waking to sleeping for the rest of the night.

In one non-lucid dream, I remember the old Pope with a pair of "Mark Feldt" (Deepthroat) glasses. It seems like I saw him at different stages in his aging process with different types of glasses, but I might just be making this up. This was weird, and I don't know where it came from. I only remembered this later after thinking about the other dreams. Out of nowhere this Pope image dream came back to me.

In another dream, I was in a school corridor with some old friends. I remember that the tiles on the wall were green. It was either this dream or the later flying dream where I became lucid after thinking about how I got here. The last thing I remembered was that I was in bed, and I didn't remember waking up and getting ready for the day, and I didn't remember the process of actually traveling to the school. I was actually engaging the analytical part of my mind. At that point, I said to myself that I must be dreaming. I've discovered that whenever the thought enters my head that I might be dreaming, and I don't immediately know that I'm not dreaming, it means that I am, in fact, dreaming--and I don't use or need any kind of reality check to confirm that I'm dreaming.

In another non-lucid dream, I was in a car in a parking lot eating my lunch or just killing time, and my sister showed up. I remember thinking that I can't get any peace even in a car in a parking lot!

The other lucid dream I had, and the best dream of the night, I remember being in a field and becoming lucid. I tried to fly to a tree and I was able to get off the ground and fly, though not far and not very high (as is typical with me). I also remember snowflakes coming down, and it seems that I could actually feel these flakes as I caught them in my mouth. In another part of this same dream, I stopped a couple of cars each with a few people in them. I picked up the back car and threw it through the air over the first car. It landed in front of the first car. I don't know what this was all about.

I remember at one point during this series of dreams that I held my nose and closed my mouth and continued to breathe normally. I tried to hold my breath to see if I even needed to breathe at all. I did have the sensation that I needed to breathe, so I may have been actually holding my breathe will I was sleeping. Anyway, I know that I can breathe with my nose and mouth closed, but I also know that I do need to breathe in my dreams.

I had a false awaking at some point. (As I said, there was a lot of transitioning going on for a couple of hours.) I remember kneeling at the edge of the bed with my head down under the blankets and breathing. I was in a position that would be very difficult to do in reality, and one that I would not normally attempt to take, so I know that I must have been dreaming this.

Well, that's about it. It was certainly an active night.

Sunday night, June 21

I became lucid and mantained the dreaming for what seemed like a very long time. I think I was more passive-lucid much of the time. I was aware that I was dreaming, and did a lot of active dream-type things, but was in a "whatever" kind of mode most of the time.

I don't remember probably 90% or more of the dreaming. While I know that the dreaming went on a long time, I only remember bits and pieces of the dreams. I do recall flying, high and long--which is an accomplishment for me. I flew high along a river for quite a while, then I did an semi-circular descent to a pinpoint landing on a beach where friends and family were waiting for me. It seems that I was there before and left everyone behind for some reason, and then returned in spectacular flying form--I always was something of a showboat.

In another scene, I was driving a flying car. The take-offs were tricky because bridges and power lines had to be avoided on the ascent. At one point, I was in a line of flying traffic--all kinds cars and trucks flying just above the powerlines and moving as a propagating wave (up and down). I remember thinking how silly this all was, and it could only happen in a dream--I definintely knew that I was dreaming, but I didn't seem to be directing the dreams for the most part.

At another point I was in a house. I remember pretty bold yellows, but I'm not sure it was this house or another dream. For some reason, I wanted to leave my hosts (there were a few other people there, though I'm not sure who they were) to go take care of something, so I went into the kitchen and walked slowly through the wall to the outside. I knew I could do this because I knew I was dreaming, and I had walked through walls before in my dreams.

I also remember putting my finger through my hand (and the corresponding "putty-like" sensation). And I remember experimenting with changing the dream many times--maybe eight or ten times. Everytime, I would close my eyes and think about where I wanted to be; and when I opened my eyes, I was in the new location without fail. Closing my eyes seems to work better than spinning for me. I can't remember any of the other locations I visited, or other details at all. I think I need to work more on dream recall now. It seems that lucidity is not really a problem for me.

All in all, it was a very good night of lucid dreams. And I woke up rested to boot!

Tuesday Night, July 13

Just one snippet of a dream came back to me as I approached a stop light in town this morning. Funny how I didn't think at all about this dream until the sight of the stop light jarred my memory.

I dreamed that I was able to change stop lights from red to green by hitting the escape key as I approached the light. The escape key was either a keyboard I had in the car, or an actual escape key on the steering column or something--I don't know, but it was definitely a key marked "esc."

I remember thinking about whether this action on my part was morally wrong, and also whether or not I could get into some legal trouble by doing this. That is all I remember about this dream, though I am sure there was more.