Flavour's Journal

[Flavour of Night]

Begin Dream Journal; Flavour of Night I guess I'll begin this with no clear notion of how I intend to proceed. I guess I'll color my lucid dreams blue, and my non-lucid dreams green. It seems a good way to set them apart, and it seems like a lot of other folks like to do it that way. So here I am, a natural lucid dreamer. I've had a very changable relationship with my lucid dreaming which began in early childhood. Lucid dreaming was an occasional diversion through my mid-20's, mostly good for the lulz, but I'd never considered putting any effort into it, or even that there might be a point to doing so. It was during this time, around 1990 that I found myself working in a job that was putting great daily stress upon me. I started frequently waking up with wind howling in my ears, unable to see, unable to move; it was terrifying. I called this simply, "waking up in my sleep", because I had no better way to describe it. I decided that these episodes must be something being "visited upon me", so I made the conscious declaration that they were no longer welcomed. This must have worked, because they stopped. It might or might not have been coincidental that I began a new, much more satisfying, job at this time. Lucid dreams were very infrequent over the next couple years, then I awoke with a shock one night in 1994. My eyes were open, I was in bed, the room was much better lit than it should have been, and something evil was there with me. I couldn't see it, I couldn't hear it, but black malevalence was being rained upon me. Whatever dark-being was responsible for this had also re-arranged my furniture. Who puts their bed underneath the window, after all? Then it struck me, I couldn't see 'her'.. but I knew the presence was female.. and quite old and ugly. I couldn't see or hear her, but I knew she was there and I had a pretty good idea what she looked like. This revelation didn't do much to placate my panic. After considerable calling on God and Jesus to give me a hand (I probably would have also called on Odin, Vishnu, Ron Jeremy, and the Michelin Man if I thought it might help), I snapped to wakefulness. Shortly after these disturbing experiences, I moved to East Tennessee from Ohio and started what has become my lifelong passion: Hiking. Lucid dreams were becoming more common and the Internet along with the Web had become established and I had been online since 1990 anyway, so I figured on doing some research online. "Ah... Lucid Dreaming, that's what it's called." And as for the unpleasant experiences, "That's Sleep Paralysis gone bad, sure is some scary shit!" So lucid dreaming and it's associated experiences were welcomed again. Sleep paralysis had lost it's bite. The hag never bothered me again, though she tried a few times. It's much easier not to be frightened when you understand it's your own mind playing silly buggers with you. Sleep paralysis had become something to "ride out", like being stuck in a tent during a violent thunderstorm. Soon enough, the winds, the rains, the thunder would pass, leave only a quiet dripping of water from the trees and distance rushing of swollen streams.. not at all unpleasant. Over the next several years, lucid dreaming and it's associated experiences were on and off. never unpleasant, sometimes fascinating, and always interesting. It occurred to me that I might start "trying new things" with my lucid dreams, trying to make them last longer, to observe them more closely, to learn to keep them crisp and clear. Ah.. this was starting to really get interesting! I found DV in early 2006, and read a lot, posted a bit, and generally lurked around for the next couple years while I got better at controlling and enjoying dream lucidity. I'm not sure why I just recently delurked and started posting and interacting here again, but it's been a rewarding experience.

[Flavour of Night]

Lucid dreaming has been a two-edged sword for me. My dreams are usually vivid and quite well developed. I sometimes awaken and marvel at the stories my mind can create. Lucidity can have an opposite effect; when I become lucid, the dream characters can become passive and somewhat disengaged. Instead of interacting lucidly with a dynamic story-line, I'm standing there saying, "OK, what now?". I think I get too involved with working on some skill or experience, and let the storyline fall away. Perhaps it's not the dream characters who are disengaging from me, but it's I who am disengaging from the dream characters? Still, I am taken by surprise at times. I'll try to do the lucid tasks for February. Levitate a groundhog? Easy enough. If I want small, furry critters, the place to go is the mountains. I give my head a shake, and I've got trees. I like the head-shake, I can get to a lot of places with it. It's not the best mountain scene I've done, but it's servicable. Now I need a groundhog. I'm not particularly good at zapping creatures into being, so I'll just look for one. I hadn't noticed that large rock before.. come out ya little bugger.. and there he is. I don't want to try to lift him, just put him up there where I want him.. He's up on the rock. That's not too bad, but that's not levitation. Make the rock go away and leave him hanging in air? Not working. Getting some tunnel vision, the rock and groundhog are plain, but there surrounding scene isn't being maintained well. I do that sometimes, concentrating on one aspect of a dream can make the surroundings fade. Screw it, I'm going for it. I'll do the finger pointing thing, that'll get him airborn. I point at him and use my will to try to move him. He's going up! How about that ya little fur-bag? While lucidity sometimes messes with the sponteneity of my dreams, my subconscious can surprise me. The critter speaks.. he doesn't really speak, his mouth doesn't move, he's just sort of there, but a voice speaks all the same, "I'm a hedgehog, dumb-ass." I guess I can work on that task later.

[Flavour of Night]

I can get caught up in a notion that such and such is always like so and so in my lucid dreams. I'd recently posted some advice to a member who had trouble opening his eyes during a dream. I suggested not getting caught up in the notion of having to open the eyes, but rather to just simply see eyelids or not. I thought about this advice and realized that I don't blink in lucid dreams unless I make a point of doing it, and even then, while I register blinking, I still see as though I'd not blinked at all. I wanted to do some work with this. There is a wall in front of me, I want to try to walk through it, but walking through things can really mess with my clarity. Ah.. the blinking thing! I close my eyes.. blackness!! I open them, the wall! I blink several times, blackness! wall! blackness! wall! blackness! wall! Sweet! Now for the wall, I press up against it with my shoulder, and sure enough it resists. Just turn into it face-on, the wall gives, and I am inside. Being inside of solid things feels odd to me. it doesn't make any sense. I suppose I could expect it to be like moving through air, but that's never the case. There's always some sensation of resistance even if no more than jello. It's dark in here, and I press on and out the other side. Aw crap! fade to grey! I'm losing it. I put out my hand in front of me. Focus.. focus.. I see a foggy outline of my hand in lighter grey than the grey around me. SNAP! The scene is back, clear, and focused. Sweet!

[Flavour of Night]

Clarity and recall go hand in hand. I like to think that. Last night, I was having a somewhat strange, richly detailed dream. I missed the one really glaring inconsistency that my subconscious threw at me to clue me in on the dream. My subconscious does that, "Let's see if he figures out you can't climb three fiights of stairs from the ground, and end up eight floors up...". All the other details, down to the last, "Well done, subconscious, well done!". For such a clear and richly detailed dream, I swear I wouldn't have remembered a thing about it had not my girlfriend made a semi-conscious power-play on the blanket just as the action was starting to wind down. As I stood there, I felt something dragged over my body, as I went cold from my right to my left. I woke, suddenly and fully, "Share, dammit!". Clarity is one thing, but sometimes recall can benefit from a little outside help.

[Flavour of Night]

Last Friday evening: I was very tired, and I kept falling asleep and jerking awake on the couch. The program (it was the History Channel) would be audible whether I was asleep or awake. Eventually, I found myself waking and falling back asleep directly into a dream over and over. After a few cycles, my consciousness was unchanged whether I was awake or asleep. It was a repeating cycle of groggy waking and lucid dreaming, narrated by the TV. I finally woke more or less completely to a commercial with a NASCAR driver recommending some product, ostensibly "because it works", but more likely because they gave him a pile of cash to say it.

[Flavour of Night]

It occurred to me tonight while I was in chat with AspiR.. I don't want to journal every dream and lucid experience I have. It sounds too much like work. If I feel like writing something down, hooray for me. Otherwise, fuggit. Sure, I'll probably miss out on something or not discover something else, but c'mon, I'm too damned old for homework!

[Flavour of Night]

I don't really mind missing some dream-sign that I should have caught, but sometimes enough is enough. Last night, for instance. I'm looking for dream-signs... anything to tip me off that I'm dreaming. There's a sign... naw, that's a stop sign. How man sides does a dream-sign have anyway, and what color is it? Brilliant, Dan, brilliant. Next time you'll tell yourself, (made-up fictional dream to follow, mostly for the lulz) "If you're looking for dream-signs, that's probably a dream-sign in itself!" Hey man, this text is still green.. That means I'm still not lucid.. Maybe If I concentrate real hard.. GRRRRRR.. There!"

[Flavour of Night]

I was at work today and I didn't have any dreams the whole time. Dreaming at work, it turns out, is frowned upon.

[Flavour of Night]

I don't recall anything, not last night and not this evening either. File under "Nothing to worry about". I've occasionally commented here that forum content seems to find it's way into my dreams. Folks get to talking about something that I've never had happen in a dream, and sure enough, it happens in a dream of mine. I also note that I've never had my teeth fall out in a dream. So I guess my point is this, thanks a lot you freaks! Next time you're lucid, conjure up a toothbrush! What do I have so far in my Dream Journal?.. Not too much about my dreams, and a good bit of self-indulgent BS. Yea, that sounds like me. Top ten things that are true about my dreams: 10. Being naked is cool. 9. But not in public. 8. I've never seen my own ass. 7. I've never looked for it. 6. Cats are cool, but are not to be trusted. 5. This goes for real-life too. 4. Dream characters never call me "Sir" 3. Unless they're trying to sell me something. 2. Finding a large sack of hundred dollar bills makes me wake up grumpy. 1. Especially on a work-day.

[Flavour of Night]

My hpynagogic voices say cool things, but they don't like saying things that can't be said in about 5 words or less. I can't imagine why this would be since I personally tend toward wordiness. At such times, I'm clearly conscious, but my mind is blank and I'm very relaxed... I know I'm not too far from sleep. If I even become more interested in WILD'ing, nights like this are probably the ones to try it.

[Flavour of Night]

I'm just back awake, and still no recall. I've got a lifetime of evidence to tell me this isn't anything to worry about, unless you're looking for material for a Dream Journal (in which case it sucks). So it's time to make up a dream for the lulz, here goes: I'm eating a huge, fluffy marshmellow. It's a bit dry but not too bad. I awake, "What the hell happened to my pillow?"

[Flavour of Night]

I have my recall back. I'm driving down the highway, and I know I've got almost zero gas. Just another few hundred yards to the exit. My gas gauge jumps up and down wildly and my car starts to sputter. I make it to the pump, but for reasons unknown, I have to go inside the store to get gas. As I enter, I see kitchen workers preparing chicken, and I'm dragging a pig carcass to put the gas into. While this doesn't seem too convenient, it doesn't seem too outrageous either. There's more, but considering the pig, it hardly matters. I wish my recall could have stayed missing one more night...

[Flavour of Night]

This dream happened a few nights ago, and at first I didn't feel like recording it, but it's stayed with me. I'm in the backyard of the house where I spent my teen years. My mother is there. She's been deceased 16 years now, and though her presence is often a dream sign that triggers lucidity, it does not seem odd to me. We're being sprayed with water from above, and I note two obnoxious kids on a third floor balcony aiming a hose at us. This house didn't have a third floor, and no balcony, but again ,nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Their behavior annoys me, and I'm going up there to have a talk with their parents. The interior takes on the look of an apartment building and I climb a flight of stairs. I'm quite suddenly about 8 floors up and I spot the kids in the hallway. They run from me through a door at the end of the hallway and I follow. I find myself in a long open room with a rows of identical green glowing lamps down the left side of the room. I note exquisite detail in the lamps and continue my pursuit. I see the kids up ahead past the lamps and they stop briefly at a grocery store style open cooler to the right. The cooler is stocked with sandwiches. They grab sandwiches and continue on. I see a sign that this entire area past the lamps is reserved for graduate students, and I see several of the students in a lounge area to the left. The kids continue through a door marked "No admittance". I come to the open door and see the kids starting to explode bit by bit as they run further on. I want them to stop and save themselves, but they don't and they are pretty much killed by their insistence to run. I turn back in disgust, and I'm confronted by the graduate students who lead me to the lounge and interrogate me with a gun to my head. I cooly ignore the gun and look down, but my attention is caught by the feeling of a gun barrel pressing into my left nostril. I'm not fearful, but I am annoyed. I'm trying to convince these fools that I'm not up to anything and shouldn't they too be bothered that these kids got themselves blown up? They continue to play "We've got the gun, you need to more impressed", and I tire of this and grab the gun. They are startled, and are moreso startled when I simply hand the gun back to one of them and tell them, "Next time it's going up someone's ass." This seems to impress them that I'm not there to create any trouble and they stand down from the posturing. It turns out they've got exams upcoming and haven't had much sleep and are just a bit jumpy about the whole ordeal. I ask if I can help, and they say they're working on economics. "Sorry, can't help.. now if it were chemistry or physics, I might have something for you". They thank me and assure me that I shouldn't worry about the kids as, "those kids do that all the time".

[Flavour of Night]

I have those dreams where I'm trying to accomplish some goal. It doesn't matter what it is, I'm trying to get something done, but the dream isn't cooperating and it's throwing distractions up at me like whack-a-mole. No sooner than I get past one side-track, here comes another. It's enough to, as my old friend Eve used to say, make we want to lie down and take a sh*t. The lady had a way with words.

[Flavour of Night]

I was watching my grandson last night and part of today. As expected, he was awake at the crack of dawn and he saw no reason why I shouldn't be as well. I can often get an extra hour of sleep if I tell him I need 5 minutes to stretch and hopefully he'll wander off,forget about me for a bit, and content himself with trashing my living room with his toys. Around noon, he asked me if I would take him hiking tomorrow, and I saw my opportunity to do some negotiating with a 5 year old., "Well, if you'll let me nap on the couch for an hour or two, I'll take you". He agrees, but in his typical precocious manner, he says, "I reserve the right to wake you up." Fair enough. Never argue with a 5 year old: The kid enjoys the challenge, and you just end up aggravated. I'm hiking up a trail on the Tennessee side of the mountains toward the crest, and someone has installed mileposts like on the interstate. I find this silly and annoying as it messes with the natural character of what I'm doing. besides, I know I can estimate my mileage with close precision from years of doing this and the fact that I've been over these trails countless times. I come to one such post, and it advises me that Fremont Peak is 2 miles ahead. SNAP! Fremont peak is in Wyoming and this is Tennessee, I'm dreaming. I don't want to do anything in particular, just run uphill effortlessly. I'm aware at the same time that I'm asleep on the couch, and my dream is at the mercy of a boy who reserves the right to wake me up at any moment. I'd best enjoy this while I can. I see wild grass start to appear as the trail widens and the slope moderates, and I see open sky through the trees ahead. All these things tell me I'm coming to the ridgetop. I know it is the first of March, and here at 4,600 ft it should be in the 30's, but the temperature is comfortable and I'm not sweating. I don't sweat in my hiking dreams and I also don't usually have to deal with damned insects. I don't know how many bugs I've swallowed on the trail in my life, and I don't want to know either, the number probably lies somewhere between, "A lot", and "All of them". These thought passed quickly through my mind as I arrived at the gap. I don't mess with lucid hiking dreams, I enjoy them too much, so I concentrated on what was presented to me, and made no effort to manipulate or otherwise control the situation. It occurred to me that I might strip and butt-slide my way down the mountain-side. This thought didn't occur to me out of some perverse desire to be caught out naked, but more that I was simply in my element and happy to be there. Off went my clothes, and I leaped up into the air and down the side of the mountain. I was skating feet-first down the mountain-side in a blur of green and brown. I wasn't touching anything on the ground, being suspended slightly above. It occurred to me that this was a good thing because all in all I'd rather not use my ass as a plow. Then the phone rang... it was my son telling me he'd be around to pick the little guy up in 20 minutes. I wasn't disappointed that the dream was interrupted, it had been fun and I was pleased to have been lucid for the first time in the better part of a week.

[Flavour of Night]

This is the single fragment that's stuck with me from last night: I was pursued down a tunnel and across a football field by a gang of midgets. It seemed that if I could cross the goal-line, I would be out of their reach. They caught me around the 25 yard line and piled-on. It didn't hurt, my sensation of pain was pretty dull, but damn! Yes, that's right. I couldn't out-run midgets. It wasn't one of those, "OoooHhh! My feet are like two lead blocks, the ground is like quicksand, and I can hardly move!" dreams. I was hauling ass. Pretty embarassing, no? I can only conclude that these midgets were a breed of super-enhanced ninja-midgets. Yea, that's what I'll keep telling myself.

[Flavour of Night]

Yes, that's right. I couldn't out-run midgets. I should add one thing: Subconscious, you suck!

[Flavour of Night]

I woke in a hurry this morning, with a couple dreams fresh in my mind. "No time", I told myself, "I'll run 'em down on my way to work." So I'm behind some guy in a pickup with a bundle of rebar sticking way too far out the back, nearly dragging the ground, and if he's going somewhere with it, it's obvious he's in no particular hurry. Instead of working on recall, I was working on getting good and pissed-off. So now, I've got nothing... I can't remember a thing.

[Flavour of Night]

I was in chat a couple nights ago, and someone was asking about WILD'ing. Learning how to WILD seems to be cause for considerable frustration for a lot of folks. I mentioned that I've done it occasionally, but as a natural LD'er, I'm not really a big fan of induction, it doesn't bother me that sometimes it doesn't work. I went on to mention that I occasionally WILD accidentally, and when asked what I meant by that, the only explanation I could think of was, "Well, sometimes I go to sleep, and I forget to lose consciousness." This might sound, on the surface, like a bit of a snarky answer, but I'm willing to bet that folks who are good at WILD'ing might see a certain simple truth to the statement.

[Flavour of Night]

Some dreams are just weird, and when I recall these beauties, I wonder if I might have eaten a bad bag of chips before I went to bed. From this morning: I'm staying at a cabin with a guy I worked with 20 years ago and some of his friends. This guy has been in my dreams lately because recently our companies merged and now we're working for the same people. I didn't particularly like or dislike the guy, and haven't seen him in many years, but he's been showing up in my dreams. One of the women is thirsty and doesn't want to drink water, but also doesn't want anything artificial. I tell her I have a 2 Qt. can of orange juice and she's welcome to some. She's worried that it might have preservatives and I get the can to show her that it doesn't. I look at the ingredient list, "Water". That's it, just "Water". This strikes me as silly, and I show the can around, everyone else thinks it's a bit on the silly side too. The scene shifts, and I'm carrying a gym bag in one hand and the can of orange juice in the other. I'm walking toward my old middle-school and hearing a radio interview (though there is no radio), with a guy who tried to spend two years living under a homemade bio-dome but decided he couldn't handle it and stopped after a year. My mind does some unseen gymnastics and suddenly I've become that guy. I'm supposed to be picked up in front of my old school, and I decide I should put the juice can (yea, I still have the can) in the gym-bag to free up a hand. Once I do this, the bag becomes very heavy and difficult to carry. I put it down a couple times and pick it back up, and as I approach the school, I decide to just grunt it out since I'm almost there. My ride shows up but he's driving a flying car with room for only one person. I don't recognize the guy, but in my dream I know him all the same. He tells me he'll be back around in a bit with the bus. I go inside and I see a mostly eaten sheet-cake on a table and I start to pick icing off of the edges. Two middle-schoolers join in and pretty soon we're racing to scrape as much icing of the sheet as we can. I go back outside and in the distance I see the bus coming to pick me up. The bus is large, inflatable, and flying slowly in a great slow circle toward me. I find this unusual and so does everyone else. I woke up at this point, and really didn't have anything but the flying bus. I sat right down at the keyboard and started recalling, and I've put together this dream. It's interesting but pretty silly. Do I think I should have become lucid? Uh, yea.. about the time the flying bus floated onto the scene! Ya think?!

[Flavour of Night]

Dream control isn't just something that we exercise in our lucid dreams. It turns out that we can exercise a good bit of control over our regular dreams too, we just don't realize we're doing it. Last night was one of those nights for me, my dreams were fairly fragmentary but surprisingly vivid (my more fragmentary dreams tend to be less vivid). I was jumping though scenes at a fair, and everything I did seemed to turn to gold: I was standing over a golf ball with a putter. A cup was placed on the ground about 100 feet away. The object was simple; try to putt the ball into the cup. I aimed and swung. The ball shot away at surprising speed on a beeline straight into the cup. I buried the sucker! Later, I was playing a game where I started with four solid balls around an inch in diameter. The idea was to drop them one at a time into a tube, where they would curve around and pop out the other end of the tube, bounce around and fall into holes of various sizes, or maybe they would just end up on the ground. By hitting the holes, I won more balls to keep playing. The girl running the game seemed to expect me to do well, and I was doing quite well and soon had built up a considerable collection of balls. Eventually she told me that we were coming to the end of the day, and that nobody had won the fifty dollar prize yet for the day. She told me what I had to do to win the prize. I dropped the ball in the tube and watched it come out the other end. It bounced around a few bounces and landed right where it had to for me to win the prize. Need I even mention how I did at shooting free-throws? Sometimes we're in charge of our dreams, other times they're in charge of us. If I had been lucid, you can bet I would have been on a roll!

[Burned up]

Like the DJ Flavour, your reflective/commentary paragraphs are a nice touch. Can't help but notice you're speeling your name the Brit way

[Flavour of Night]

Like the DJ Flavour, your reflective/commentary paragraphs are a nice touch. Can't help but notice you're speeling your name the Brit way I took my name from a lyric written by a Brit, so I thought it proper to retain his spelling. And thanks!

[Flavour of Night]

My girlfriend's dog is half black lab and half rottweiler. She's about 110 pounds of muscle, kills possums at an alarming rate, is apparently racist against Hispanics but otherwise a sweetheart, and has the uncanny tendency to start barking whenI'm lucid. This morning I nailed a dream-sign: I pulled some change out of my pocket, and was a bit surprised to find that I had a handful of the old mercury dimes (kids, ask your grandparents if you don't know). This seemed odd, quite odd, too odd. Here it comes... wait for it... SNAP! In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, I like to indicate the moment of lucidity with, "SNAP!". I toss the dimes away and they turn to confetti, glitter, and dissipate like swirling fog. I hadn't had any particular intention of what the dimes should do when I tossed them, but one of the fun parts of being lucid is to do your thing and trust your unconscious mind to do its' thing. If you approach lucidity as "Me versus my unconscious", much more often than not, you're going to lose that battle. I inspected my surroundings, I don't like to try to fool too much with my surroundings if the scene is interesting. It's easier to work with what your mind is giving you than to try to force something. The scene wasn't all that interesting. I quickly close my eyes and give my head a shake. Crap, same thing. Maybe I'll try to summon someone even though I suck at summoning. I look out at the scene and simply expect someone to appear, I don't try to make someone appear, I just expect it to happen. Nobody appears but the scene changes. OK.. better late than never, I suppose. I'm in a wine-cellar. The floor is concrete and the ceiling is high.. a bit ridiculously high and the wooden wine rack stretches out of sight in both directions and to the ceiling above. The bottles are dusty and the air is cool and damp. I pull a bottle from the rack, and it's already opened. A neat trick because I don't have a corkscrew. I drink. The sensation is liquid, but not really wet. Sort of like my insides are flowing. There isn't really a taste, more of a floral aroma. I don't put the bottle down, but I stop thinking about it and it just goes away on it's own. It now appears that the floor of the cellar slants upward to my left until it meets the ceiling in a tight angle maybe 75 feet away. The base of the wine rack follows the slope of the floor. I walk slowly upward, noting now that the wall that had been behind me is covered in a long white curtain. I intend to reach the end of the slope where floor meets ceiling and just keep walking out the other side. BARK BARK BARK BARK!!! Crap.

[Flavour of Night]

I have no idea where this dream came from. My deceased mother was behaving in a most unlikely manner. While her presence is a strong dream-sign, it never even registered with me on this one. I was in the house where I spent my pre-teen years, but I understood myself to be maybe 16 or 17. I went into my room and I saw two things laying on my bed: Porn and a joint. I've never been a huge fan of the first and I quit the second years ago. Still, there they were: Porn and a joint. It was clear that they had been put there by my mother. For reasons unknown, she through it was a good idea, and had provided the same for my brothers as well. All she would have had to do was add a six-pack, and I'd have a trifecta. That's all I have on that one. My mom was cool, but she wasn't THAT cool. A classic "WTF?" dream.