Taromon's Dream Journal (WARNING: May contain long, boring descriptions of dreams)

[Taromon777]

I first considered trying to have lucid dreams last Friday. Haven't had any for the last three nights (but then I wasn't exactly expecting one that early). In one particular noteworthy dream, which I had on Saturday night, I was being chased by a Stegosaurus on my Granny's housing estate. I found myself questioning why it was chasing me. I was thinking, "Hang on a minute, Stegosaurus are herbivores, so why is this one chasing me?" If I'd stopped to think about this for longer (I wasn't exactly taking my time getting away), I could well have also realised that dinosaurs are extinct and that the situation was impossible, and become lucid. Unfortunately I got kind of sidetracked by this creepy woman and a cat-shaped cusion. But that's the closest I've got so far...

[Taromon777]

Whoah. I was so close last night! I didn't actually have an LD, but for the first time I dreamt about LDing. I was at my film-making class (dreaming about upcoming events is a common dream sign for me; in real life I'm going to the class this evening), and the teacher showed us this video, about a Dalek of all things! He told us that the video was supposed to be helpful in inducing lucid dreaming. I watched the video in great detail and found it hypnotic, but not once did I ask myself, "Is this a dream?" It's extremely tantalising; I was so close, yet so far! Still, not bad for my fourth night! Not much else worth mentioning; later on in the dream I was sitting in the front of the car with my Mum, reading magazines. I also compiled a list of my dream signs yesterday. However, they are all ones I already knew about, I haven't discovered any more since I started dream journaling.

[ReachingForTheDream]

Damn, you must have a very logical mind to catch that in your stegosaurus dream. I never notice anything unusual in my dreams xD

[Taromon777]

I find I become more logical if I wake up in the night and go back to sleep. I went to sleep at around 1am last night, counting backwards from 1,000. I never realised it would be so effective! I only remember getting to about 920. I woke at 7:30am, but I couldn't go back to sleep. I find if I wake after sunrise, and the birds are cheeping outside, it just feels too much like morning and I can't sleep. I tried counting back from 1,000 again but it didn't work this time. I got down to about 500 and then gave up. I think I just wasn't tired enough. Not much chance of lucidity, but I managed to remember a couple of dreams. As long as I can remember at least one dream a night, then I'm happy! I don't know if this is just coincidence, but since I've started looking for clues that I am dreaming, my brain seems to be trying to trick me by making my dreams more logical. I don't recall seeing any aliens or dinosaurs at all last night. The dreams I did have were also very vivid, some of the most realistic ones I've ever had. The highlight was when I was on the shore of a misty lake; there were loads of reeds in the water and the sky was glowing orange. It was beautiful!

[Taromon777]

I've been really ill for the last couple of days, so I'm getting a bit slack with dream recall.

[Taromon777]

Looks like I spoke too soon, I had dream recall overload this morning!! It was an amazing dream too, constantly jumping between different locations and scenarios. One minute I was riding a horse through a meadow, then I was on a boat docked up in a harbour, walking on the seabed, shopping at Tesco, and so on. It was kind of like nine or more "mini dreams", all combined into one.

[Darkmatters]

Keep it up Taromon!! Your dreams sound a lot like the ones I was having for the first month I tried, and I was getting frustrated thinking my subconscious was just going to keep teasing me and never give me a lucid. I even gave up for a day, then got back to it, and suddenly I had a lucid. So it'll take you by surprise... it'll play games with you and make you dream about lucidity etc, and then suddenly wham!! Are you actually writing your dreams down though? I notice in here you mostly just write about them or jot a few quick notes... pretty disappointing to us voyeuristic readers who want to live vicariously through other peoples' dreams!! Part of the power of a dream journal is recording all the details you can remember, thus focusing more attention on dreams and bringing them more into conscious awareness. Of course you don't have to write them up in detail here, you can do that in a notebook if you want. I just wanted to ask if you're doing it?

[Taromon777]

Thanks Darkmatters, the "Wham" happened last night! Among other things, I dreamt I was trying to run through my housing estate, but found that I couldn't. My legs went in slowmotion and it felt like I was trying to run through tar or cement. Then I was thinking, this is just like dream running! Then I realised it was a dream and instantly woke up. I didn't have a chance to try dream spinning or anything like that, it was all over too quick! Hopefully the next LD I have will last a little longer... As for your question, yes I do keep a detailed dream journal, I just don't bother typing it all out on the site.

[Taromon777]

Grr... I had another dream about lucid dreaming last night! I was helping someone I know to have a lucid dream, but it went a bit wrong and he started sleepwalking and talking in his sleep. Then this girl who was with me (don't know who she was, must be a fictional dream character), asked me what was going on and I went into detail explaining to her all about lucid dreaming. The subject of lucid dreaming was the main focus of the dream and yet I still didn't realise I was dreaming... I'm so annoyed with myself! Still, it's a good sign I suppose; this is the closest I've got since my very brief lucid experience. It can't be long before it happens again, and hopefully it will last a bit longer this time!

[Taromon777]

Just had a rather weird night; again I won't go into all the boring details. Early this morning, I woke up (at least I thought I did) and wrote down some keywords, so I could remember the dream I'd had and write it down later in more detail. Except when I woke up again later, I opened my notebook to find I hadn't written the keywords down! So it must have been a false awakening (and a very realistic one at that), which is odd as I can't recall having one before, at least not recently. I also vaguely remember questioning an unusual occurence in a dream, and I did a reality check (pinching my nose and trying to breathe) and it failed! I couldn't breathe, so then I came to the conclusion that it wasn't a dream and just went along with it. Looking through my dream journal, I seem to have discovered a new dream sign: showers. I've had a shower, or thought about having one, in most of my recent dreams. Perhaps I'm subconciously worried about having to have one in real life; the thermostat in my shower is broken and the water in FREEZING!

[Taromon777]

Last night I had an unusual dream which I thought would be worth mentioning. Note that although it was about lucid dreaming, I was not lucid myself. A man was lying in bed with his wife/girlfriend. I was standing at the bottom of the bed watching them, but I don't think they knew I was there. They were both in their twenties/thirties. The man lay completely still, attempting a WILD. After a little while, the woman leant over him, and whispered something to him; "You will now enter a dream," or something like that. The man heard her, but he did not respond because he was experienceing sleep paralysis. Then he fell asleep, presumably entering a lucid dream. The woman said (not sure whom to, she still didn't seem to notice me) that this is the best gift anyone can have, to have a lucid dream. Shortly after, I woke up. I've decided to call her the Lucid Lady, hopefully she'll pop up again at some point and help me on my own quest to lucidity!

[Taromon777]

Yay! At last! This morning I dreamt that I travelled back in time, and saw my hometown how it used to look. I walked over a bridge and down a street, and while I was walking it occured to me that time travel was impossible. I did some reality checks, all of which failed, but I remembered a dream I'd had before where a reality check failed, and concluded that I was dreaming because of the time travel. The realisation that such a realistic environment was in fact just a dream was pretty weird! As soon as I became lucid, however, the dream began to fade. Everything became hazy and sort of "milky", like someone had thrown a bucket of water over a painting that hadn't finished drying properly. I touched a nearby wall and felt the rough texture of the brick, but it didn't help much, so I decided to try dream spinning. It's a bit hard to explain, but by this time I was also aware of my real body, lying in bed. When I began to spin I had to be careful not to move my real body, only my dream body. I found myself in a swirling vortex of bright grey and white static, a bit like a TV screen with no signal. I tried to visualise a new dream scene, but woke up. It's difficult to say exactly how long I was lucid, but I think it was about 15-20 seconds. It took me three weeks to get this far, since I first started researching lucid dreaming. Any beginners who are reading this, and were thinking of giving up on LDing, don't! Persevere, you will have one eventually!

[Taromon777]

Last night I dreamt I was playing a Pokemon game, sometimes I was looking at the screen and others I was actually inside the game (which was rather fun actually!). Anyway, at one point in the dream I checked my watch; it looked normal and the time made perfect sense. A little later on in the dream, I checked it again, and it still made sense; in fact the time was now ten minutes or so after the time I'd checked it before! It worked perfectly, just like in real life. Reality checks never seem to work for me, my mind is just too logical... However, I wasn't doing it as a reality check, I was just checking my watch. If I'd been expecting it to go wrong, maybe it would have done...

[Taromon777]

I had a really amazing dream last night; I was in this building with some friends (not unlike a lodge I stayed in on holiday), but the amazing thing was that everything was so realistic! I could see every detail, right down to reflections in the window, and weirder still, the computer was fully functional! I logged on to Facebook and everything! To be honest I'm not surprised I didn't realise I was dreaming; everything seemed so real there really was nothing "dream-like" to question.

[Taromon777]

I dreamt that I was on the Moon with my parents last night; we parked there in our van and had a picnic! There were also some other people there, it seemed to have become a popular holiday destination. The atmosphere was perfectly breatheable, although it made my lungs hurt after a while so I couldn't stay out of the van for too long. But at one point I actually sat down on the Moon's surface and ate a sandwich! I woke up shortly after, and thought about the dream as I fell back to sleep. Then I dreamt I was back on Earth, looking up at the Moon, and told my parents about the Moon dream! Funnily enough, a few weeks ago a compiled a list entitled, "Things I would like to do in a lucid dream", and one of the ideas was to have a picnic on the Moon. Then I really did that in a non-lucid dream! It must have gone in to my subconcious...

[Taromon777]

Second LD!! Again, it wasn't mega-spectacular, but anyway... It was very similar to my first one, except this time me and my Dad were in Tesco car park, about to leave. Then something fell out the car door (a carrier bag probably) and started blowing across the car park; my Dad chased after it. But as soon as he caught up with it, time skipped forward; he was suddenly back in the car and we had already left the car park and were half way down the road. I questioned this, became lucid, and then - here we go again - everything went white. It had been a very vivid dream before but now it was all hazy, and I could only just make out the basic framework of the car. I thought quickly; decided to try looking at the ground. I did so, but there wasn't any. I once again found myself amidst what I call "static wind". I tried to relax and stay in the dream, but then I became aware of my real body in bed. Now - this is the weirdest part - I felt like I was being sucked out of the bed by a giant hoover! I'm assuming this was an effect of sleep paralysis? Then an invisible dream character / voice in my head told me that during SP it will try to slowly turn your body over onto the other side (I know that's nonsense, but my dreams are like that...). I felt like I was turning slowly, but then I opened my eyes, and well... that was the end of that! I would have tried to re-enter the dream, but I had to get up to go to the toilet...

[Taromon777]

Third LD! Last night I had a beautiful dream where I was lying on the back lawn gazing up at the constellation Orion. All the stars were vividly clear and in exactly the right places, I named them one by one; Betelguese, Bellatrix, Rigel... then some other nearby stars; Sirius, Procyon, Caster, Pollux... planet Mars... Then an ice storm started, like giant hail, and I had to rush indoors. I woke up around this point, got up to go to the loo, went back to bed, and fell asleep agaian thinking about the dream. Then, a bit later on, I had a similar dream where I was looking up at the stars, and also the Moon this time, from the living room window. My Mum was there, and I was telling her how clear the Moon and stars looked: "As realistic as real life." Then it occured to me what I'd just said. As realistic as real life. So this wasn't real life - I was dreaming! This time, the dream didn't fade straight away; I managed to explore the living room for a second or too. Then everything went hazy white again and I woke up. I kept completely still and tried to DEILD back into the dream, but it didn't work. I had to move in the end, I was lying in a rather awkward position...

[Taromon777]

I've discovered my ideal lucid dreaming technique: WBTB! Trying it this morning, I got really close to having a WILD, and later realised I was dreaming when I was running like somebody would in low gravity. Perhaps I'll try it again tomorrow...

[Taromon777]

Last night I had the best lucid dream EVER! It was completely spontaneous, I was in the middle of a housing estate and just suddenly realised I was dreaming. Then I though, "Hang on, if this is a dream, then that means I can fly!" I jumped as high as I could - and kept going! It was a bit hard to move through the air at times, but very exhilerating. I flipped over and saw all the houses upside-down, then started spinning around like a mad thing! Needless to say this made me wake up...