Thread: Because the Dark Matters

Lucidity at last!!!!
Dream
Lucid (finally I get some use out of it!!)

1. Drug Raid at the Penthouse
   
   I was in a penthouse apartment apparently belonging to Tamara, a girl I used to work with long ago. It was an incredible apartment... there was a swimming pool inside! There were 2 drug dealers there with her, and I got the feeling that was where the money was coming from. Rob showed up and started flirting with Tamara, something I hadn't done because I assumed she was with one of the drug dealers and she flirted back with him, which kind of pissed me off. Then me and Rob were out on the rooftop/balcony talking and we saw a couple of SWAT vans pull up in the parking lot and police in riot gear piling out and running into the building. We knew they were coming up to the top floor to bust the drug dealers. Then suddenly we're in Rob's truck sitting on the parking lot and we can see the SWAT team up on the roof busting them. A couple of plainclothes cops come strolling over and talk to us briefly, say it's a good thing we weren't in there when they showed up. They say they know we weren't involved in any crimes, but because evidence was found linking us to being in the apartment recently we have to go to jail for two hours or so.
   
   
   
2. Sexy Spy Games
   
   I'm in Mark Brown's old house on 40th street and there's a huge christmas tree set up. I know I'm a spy (!!.. Dream sign I guess! ) and Lee Marvin is there with me. He's a helper, my link with the American Embassy or whatever (the feeling is that I'm deep in enemy territory in another country). Along comes a sexy Russian spy... sort of a cross between Nastassia Kinski from Cat People and Mila Jovovich, with a little Ivana Humpalot thrown in. She's even wearing a white fur coat and hat. I make drinks for us, but for hers I mixed up some urethane resin (which sets up solid in a matter of minutes! ). She doesn't drink it before it solidifies, so she knows I'm a spy when it goes solid. Now it's like I've violated the Geneva Convention or whatever Spy Rules we operate under so she now has the right to torture and interrogate me. Lee Marvin is now like a sort of referee, watching us both closely to make sure we don't violate the rules. So he watches as she straps me into this big chair. My legs are apart, and she has this big dog that walks up and sniffs at my crotch... scares the hell out of me because Im afraid it's going to do more than sniff. It does growl, but I dont end up losing anything that's important to me.
   
   But now the spy herself is kneeling where the dog just was.
   
   
   Spoiler for Ok, I better put the rest of this part in spoiler brackets, don't read if you're offended by pornographic dream imagery... (yeah right, is anybody NOT going to read it after that?!!):

   Somehow I've lost my clothes. She lubes up and gives me a handjob until Im rock hard and almost ready to blow. If she gets me over the brink I'll spill government secrets among other things. Then Lee Marvin says according to the rules she has to stop there. Damn those rules!!
   
   She stops, but she keeps her face real close.. I can feel her fur hat and her hair brush against me now and then as she talks in a sexy Russian accent and says really nasty things. I'm very aware of her thick lips and big eyes. Then she leans forward and starts kissing my belly, with a lot more fur and hair rubbing against bare skin. I'm just about to blow, but I wake up instead.
   
   
   
3. Driving me Lucid
   
   I'm walking along a highway watching cars go by and wishing I could be in one of them instead of walking. Suddenly one of them crashed into a ditch right next to a tree and the woman driving pops through the side of the car like a ghost. When she rolls on the ground she's hurt, and that makes me think "She must be real" (as if there are 'real' people and cars here as well as dream people and dream cars. See the logic... if she was a dreamer or a DC she wouldn't have gotten hurt.)
   
   I go lucid. God it feels so good to finally be able to write that!!!! Here it is again just for good measure. I go lucid. Hah!! Lucid lucid lucid! I suddenly realize that, since I'm dreaming, I could stop a car and just take it for myself. I step out in front of an oncoming car with my hand raised, it stops, and I walk up to the driver's door. There's a brief dream edit here... I don't see just how I got the driver out of the car or what happened to him, but next thing I know I'm driving it along the highway. It reminds me of the game Driver when you can switch cars. Unfortunately the car I got is an old road boat... a brown Delta 88 or something. When I floor the gas it makes a spluttering sound and almost dies, doesn't go any faster. But I remember things I've read on Dreamviews and in ETWOLD etc, and I decide to find a Turbo button hidden somewhere on the dash, disguised as a regular button. I try the wiper button - the wipers come on. Damn! I try the lighter - it's just a lighter. But lo and behold... there's ANOTHER lighter just above it!! That must be it! I pull it out - it's just another lighter.
   
   So I think for a bit. I realize I have to somehow make myself BELIEVE one of these buttons could actually be a turbo button, and I;m trying to come up with a way to do that, when I suddenly notice there are 4 red VW beetles around me. I laugh and think 'well, those have GOT to be dream cars!!!' I don't seem to be fully lucid, I still think most of the cars around me are "real". So I cut off one of the VWs and switch to driving it instead. It's a much faster car, and when I step on the gas it doesn't splutter and almost die. I'm humming along at about 70 or 80, weaving rapidly in and out of traffic. I'm having a blast, when it occurs to me I don't have a license and I'm driving illegally. Somehow I completely gloss over the fact that I also just stole 2 cars! But I remind myself that this is a dream so I can't get busted.
   
   And I run into the wall on my right. A moment ago it was a row of storefronts, now I'm driving inside a mall and I just ran into the doorway of a restaurant! Heh.. considering I was doing 80, it was just a tiny little bump though. The restaurant is at the end of a corridor, so I back up and whip the car around. A couple of teenage punks come out and look at me as I drive off over the tiles into the mall, laughing because this feels so cool.
   
   Now instead of driving I'm walking in one of the stores. Beside me is Ronnie Haas, who was in one of my recent dreams. I'm telling him that I have a cool dream car that will do all kinds of tricks and go real fast and we ought to go for a drive in it, but he seems annoyed and doesn't believe me. Until I tell him I'm dreaming... then he smiles with this wicked look that says Awwww hell yeeeah!! But a girl who's walking behind us overhears and suddenly leans up and starts hitting Ronny all over the shoulders and back, screaming something I can't understand. Her arms and head swell up alarmingly and she falls down and starts convulsing. Shit... now we have to make sure she's ok... And I wake up.

I obviously wasn't fully lucid... if I was I would have been flying around rather than driving an old clunker. I wish when I remembered ways to make things happen in dreams I also would have remembered to do an RC and stabilize the dream. Last night I was reading somebody's DJ and he had a dream where he was driving but he remembered he doesn't have a license. That must be where that idea came from.

Hi again I only had time to read a few of your dreams. It's interesting because I clicked through to your journal from the link in your sig in your thread about getting lucid for the first time and immediately saw how you'd read Demon Haunted World. Just last night a friend recommended that book to me telling me I'd love it. Was planning to buy it today - quite a coincidence.

Interesting how you had the dream of being in a stop motion film. You can definitely induce dream content if you want. Our dreams seems to reflect our deepest desires and our deepest fears. I find by spending time during waking life thinking about how much I want to do a reality test in a dream it becomes more likely to happen. I'm now at the point where I only have to think about it hard for a few minutes before I go off to sleep and I'll do one for sure in my dream. Even though WBTB and WILD are my main methods for lucidity it makes for some great bonus DILDs!

Keep up the good work and enjoy those lucids

Thanks DreamQueen, nice to hear from you here.

Yeah, Demon Haunted World was a great book, as well as the other Sagan ones I read. I'm on Castaneda now, working on A Separate Reality. Also great stuff. Having that lucid really boosted my confidence, and makes it seem like I'll be having more soon. Last night I watched HI turn into a dream... it was awesome!! Didn't go lucid though. I'll be posting that one in a bit.

Dream
Lucid

1. Hot for Teacher - and teacher is hot for herself
   
   1st part I remember I was getting dressed and had only one sock on. I was looking or the other one and couldn't find it anywhere, though I found all kinds of totally different socks that didn't match each other. Then I looked under the bed, and found dozens of old crusty socks there covered with cobwebs and dust. I pulled one out and it had been chewed by rats. Ugh.
   
   I walked into a classroom as class was just about to start. There were no desks or chairs and the floor was tilted pretty steeply down toward the teacher's desk. I sat down on the floor in a spot I knew was mine and a few other people were coming in now. At each place were a few papers... a test and some study materials for it. The guy next to me started filling out the test before the teacher arrived, and I asked if he was sure we were supposed to do that. He said he didn't care. I started filling mine out too, but thought it was probably wrong. Soon the class was just about filled with people and the teacher walked in. She was totally hot!! Sort of a milf type with long black hair, and it seemed like she was completely narcissistic.
   
   I covered my test with the study papers so she couldn't see I had already filled it out, but she didn't seem to care at all. She picked it up and gathered everybody else's tests, even if they weren't filled out. There was a sort of dream montage where I saw the room a few times, as if through the entire class period condensed into a few seconds. The teacher had changed clothes several times, always wearing something sexy but tasteful and standing as if she wanted to be the center of attention. She never sat at her desk. Now she showed a movie, and it was some kind of historical film showing a lot of different situations throughout history, She played all the female leads in it, affording her opportunities for lots more costume changes.
   
   
2. HI there
   
   (HI for Hypnagogic Imagery)
   After waking up from the last dream I wrote it down and lay back down. It took a long time, but I started to fall asleep, and inside my eyelids I noticed shifting color-blobs. I watched them and suddenly they turned into an image. At first it was very flat and colorless - it looked like a reflection on a piece of glass. It was a field... I could clearly see every blade of grass and in places I could see clods of dirt and little frogs and things like you'd see in a field that hadn't been mowed for a long time. Suddenly it became very clear and vivid, no longer like a reflection but like I was actually there in the field in bright daylight. I knew this was HI and I was excited. But I didn't go lucid.
   
   Now I was panning sideways slowly across the field, like in a movie. I noticed a few people standing around, and saw that the field was next to a small town. Now it seemed I was in a car slowly moving toward the town, and I was looking out the side window. I was not aware of the inside of the car or who was driving. We moved in slow drifting motion through this old town that looked like it had a lot of history behind it. The terrain was very hilly and a lot of the roads were just dirt trails or light gravel. I kept seeing these awesome old brick buildings (which are a staple from some of my childhood dreams). I started to notice we were seeing a lot of really small brick buildings that looked like they used to be ice cream stands or something... it was like we were on a tour looking at these in particular. I found the pic that I posted above for this.. even though it's not brick it has the right kind of look... all kinds of decorative stuff built on.
   
   Suddenly the car swerved onto this scary steep trail that wound down along the edge of a cliff with a sheer dropoff along the edge. I got scared because it looked too dangerous, the car wasn't going to make it without sliding off into the gorge. I heard my dad's voice from the driver's seat say "Im going to try it". I knew we wouldn't make it and I asked him not to. Woke up then, but with the feeling that because I had asked him not to, he decided not to try the trail.

...My dad died a few years ago. He was living in Colorado, high in the mountains and you have to drive on steep winding mountain roads to get to the house he was building and living in. A week after he died, his common-law wife died in an accident where she went over the edge of a mountainside.

Also, about the brick buildings -- when I was young I had a lot of dreams where everything was made of old crumbling brick. Complex buildings, sidewalks, streets... everything. My dad was always in these dreams.. it was shortly after he and my mom had separated and he left. So I associate these dreams with him and with that period in my youth. There are areas of the city I live in that really do have a lot of old brick buildings, and many years later I saw a documentary about the founding of my city... it grew up around a brickworks, and originally all the buildings were brick....

Getting caught up - last few nights
Dream
Lucid

02-05-2010

1. The Comic that Roared
   
   Standing in desolate spot out in the hills with no trees or shelter... it felt naked and cold. In front of me, nestled between a few hills in a cozy little spot there's an old rusty iron H beam standing up like a sign post and it has a rusty iron plate welded on to it at head level... like a sign. If it ever had anything written on it it's long since been worn away to pitted metal. The only residue left on the iron plate now is some old crusted paintball splatters in various colors, mostly worn away now. The whole scene is an icon of lonely desolation.
   
   Rob is standing next to me, and he has some comic books in plastic bags. I notice the covers seem puffy, like some gimmicky new trick the comic company is using to make them more "collectable". It's like each character on the cover is thick and puffy, while the background is flat. Yeah, great gimmick. Image, I'm lookin' at YOU!
   
   I press my finger against a monster on one of the covers, and when the puffy stuff sinks down, the monster roars. What's next, scratch~n~sniff?
2. Going to school dirty
   
   
   
   I'm on a yellow bus going down my street. Right in front of the bus a woman is driving with a kid in the car. She's not paying any attention, talking to the kid and occasionally she takes both hands off the wheel and puts them out the passenger's side window (!)
   
   There's another woman in a nice white convertible right in front of her who;s driving desperately backwards so the distracted woman doesn't hit her car. It's a crazy scene and everybody on the bus is watching. The woman driving backwards swerves off the road just in time so she doesn't get hit... the crazy distracted one just keeps right on going, never even saw her. Now we're passing my house and heading down the steep hill at the end of the road. I think Good... it'll take me right to the bus stop so I can go to school (DS alert!).
   
   I notice I'm wearing some weird clothes... not my school uniform (um... when I was in school we didn't wear uniforms... I think the dream is mixing school and work together). My pants are caked with dried-on dirt. Then I remember I don't wear a school uniform, so it's alright, and I'm picking chunks of dirt off my jeans. We get to the bottom of the hill, to where I used to catch the school bus with Ronnie so long ago. When the yellow bus stops I just get off & walk across the street to the school bus stop. A black dude is standing there already. A quarter falls out of my chest pocket and falls into the little pond behind the guard rail at the edge of the woods. I say screw it... that's 25 cents down the drain (right where I once lost a shoe!) but I try to fix the chest pocket... it's clear plastic & has a hole in the corner, and somehow It's turned inside-out so it's now on the outside of the vest. I can see a few more quarters and a huge survival knife in there (one of those really cheap ones with the hollow handle and a little ball compass in it). Im mostly embarrassed to be seen carrying this crappy stupid knife, so I'm trying to tuck the plastic pocket back into my plaid vest (). This seems to be mostly a fashion nightmare! Somehow I can't fix the pocket.
   
   There's a whistle from the woods and 2 more black dudes come strolling out. They look like gangsters, one with some kind of dyed red mohawk/ponytail thing (at last it's a fashion nightmare for my DCs too!). He looks at me and then at the other 2 black guys significantly, like "yeah, honkey's a racist" (I apologize for my dreams!).
   
   Now we're sitting at the covered bus stop a few blocks down the road, just me and the scary gangster dude with the red hair. We're sitting very awkwardly with our knees hanging over the railing and our backs jammed up against a wall.. but we seem to think this is normal. We're discussing christianity (waking life seeps into dream world ). I'm telling him I have no problem with it as long as it isn't fundamentalism. I start to explain why, but don't seem to remember clearly what it all means. Wake up.

Stupid clumsy Ninja
Dream
Lucid

02-06-2010

I'm creeping around in the basement trying to hide, carrying a huge machete like I'm some kind of ninja. Or rather pretending to be. Weird how sometimes in dreams you're like a kid. Kind of cool I guess... you get to live out parts of childhood again.

Im trying to tun off the lights by unscrewing the bulbs to be real sneaky, but the bulb wasn't where it was supposed to be. I kept creeping around feeling along the ceiling trying to find where the light bulb was - somehow I couldn't seem to see properly up above me. It's like I was all crouched down and maybe wearing a ski mask or something? Vision blocked pretty badly anyway. I Kept finding light bulbs screwed into extension cords, but every time I unscrewed one there was still light coming from somewhere else. So lots more creeping and feeling along, following extension cords etc.

Suddenly I came to the central hub of massed extension cords and electrical sockets... you know, those blocks you plug into an outlet that have 6 outlets on them? There were hundreds of them all plugged into each other. Near this I finally found the lit bulb. It was all covered with rust and dirt. I tried to unscrew it stealthily but it shattered. It seems like all this time somebody was coming down the stairs and the whole idea is I was trying to shut off the light and hide from them (and it took like ten minutes of clumsy creeping). Finally I jumped behind a sofa and covered up with a blanket, trying to become one with the pile of blankets back there. But a little girl I'd never seen before walked right up to me and stood there looking at me for a while, then grabbed the blanket and pulled it off me!

I'm definitely thinking creeping and sneaking are dream signs.

Dream
Lucid

1. Falling for Jennifer Aniston
   
   
   I'm standing in a skyscraper on one of the top floors looking across the street at another one that's split open down the front as if by an earthquake. Jennifer Aniston is standing on one of the top floors of that building, right in the center of the split where I can see her, talking on the phone. Suddenly the floor under her gives way and she falls through to the next one, but stayed upright and kept on talking on the phone. Now it seemed like I was watching the trailer for a new movie. I thought (Aw come on... that's STUPID! She'd fall FORWARD, not stay upright like that!"
   
   Then she fell through the next floor the same way, and the next, all the way down to the ground.
   
   
2. Driving her up the wall
   
   
   I'm in a house... I think it's the one Mimi lives in up on Sherwood Forest. Can only remember this one part -- there was a tiny girl.. not a child, a teenager, but really short. She asked me to spin her, and I grabbed her wrists and started spinning around. As I went faster she rose up and pretty soon she could 'run' with her feet on the walls up near the ceiling.
   
   
3. Riding on the Edge... of the wall
   
   
   I was riding my bike on top of a grassy hill near my house. I decide to go down onto the street, but it's a very steep hill, so I cut across it at an angle. As I"m descending fast (too late to stop now) I see another guy on a bike down there, and Im just about to crash into him, but I manage to swerve onto the top of a narrow concrete wall so I'm riding just over his head beside him. Pretty nifty work if I do say so myself! The wall goes down, the street comes up, and pretty soon they meet, so now Im riding on the street itself. The other guy is nowhere on sight. It now looks like Main Street, and it's dark. I'm going to a little store. I think I woke up then - anyway, its all I remember.
   
   
4. Fightin' Irish!
   
   
   I'm standing in a public square watching some Irish or Scottish guys putting up a decorative pillar with a sign on top with a slogan in their language and in english. Hmm... do they actually have their own language? They asked me to clean up a board they wanted to use for another sign (asked is a euphemism, they seemed to be terrorists) and the only tool they gave me to clean it with was a push-broom. It was totally ineffective.

I had just watched Rick Steves' Europe before going to bed, and he was traveling in Ireland, talking about the war between extremist groups there. Also I had grabbed a broom to try to sweep the fresh snow off the front steps, but it turned out to be really heavy wet snow, and the broom was laughably ineffective!

I'm very surprised to remember so many dreams from last night... I had to work today and so like usual I only got about 4 1/2 or 5 hours. At first I couldn't remember ANYTHING... but slowly it all came back to me. I usually only remember maybe one short dream on work nights. It's gettin gpretty late now, and I have to work again tomorrow, so

Drift Away
Dream
Lucid

1. Rubbing Cordy's crotch
   
   
   I was floating up near the ceiling in a school - or it actually seemed like I was drifting down THROUGH the ceiling, or there was no ceiling... anyway, I floated down into a section of corridor. I came in at a bit of an awkward angle and, though I was moving slow, it took some fancy maneuvering to keep my footing when I touched down on the squeaky floor. The corridor was very narrow to begin with, and there was a coat rack on the right along with a principal's desk and a few chairs (the principal's office was actually IN THE HALL) and walking on the left was Cordelia from Angel in a short plaid skirt and white blouse.
   
   Some guy I didn't know was floating just behind me - like I was teaching him how to do this floating thing. I said something like "This time we're gonna go left..." and twisted myself toward the left branch of the corridor.
   
   Suddenly we're back where we began and everything is just as it was when I first saw it... Cordy is still walking right where she was the first time. We drifted down and again did the awkward landing, but this time we took the right branch, right through the principal's office area.
   
   

   Spoiler for Adult content - over 18 only. No, seriously! Hey... I MEAN it:

   Then we dropped in the same way one more time. This time though it felt like I was teaching the guy what you can do in a dream. I grabbed Cordelia and bent her over, pulled her skirt up. She had no panties on - I started fondling her shaved crotch. Apparently it was just a demonstration of stuff you can do in a dream... I didn't follow up and just left her there as we passed through. Finger em and forget em I guess, huh?

   
   
   We progressed (walking now) through several corridors. After a while he was in front of me, and I noticed he was really super squat and wide, all red-skinned and red-headed like an Irishman, and his left hand and right leg were really swollen. He was only wearing a pair of shorts. When I noticed how swollen he was he said something about it, wondering if he had hit his hand on something and bruised it (!?). There was a beer keg sitting in the corridor and I suspected he had had some kind of tapper accident.
   
   
   
2. Skeleton Fence
   
   
   This might have been part of the same dream, Im not sure. I'm floating over the spiked iron fence of a golf course or maybe a graveyard at night. There are two old men walking on the other side. As I pass over the fence I notice my shadow on the ground - I'm a skeleton. One of the old guys says something nice either to me or about me.
   
   
   
3. Drive-Thru stalking
   
   
   I'm driving slowly on a road with many sharp curves in it at night. All this slow drifting in dark places makes these all feel like the same dream, or maybe related ones. In front of me is a house and my headlights point for a moment right into a window. It's a teenage girl's room and I can see her laying in her bed looking out at me.
   
   Now it seems like the road goes into and through the house, so I actually drive through her room and through part of the house before going out the front door. As I'm leaving she and her parents come into the last room to watch me go.. they seem angry and she's smiling.

I've worked for the last three nights. Normally when I work I don't get enough sleep and have poor dream recall, so I had gone to bed a few hours early (but spent an hour finishing Castaneda's A Separate Reality). I woke up from this/ these dreams (?) at 12:30 (afternoon... I'm a nocturnal). Decided to write them down, and that made me wake up too much... never got back to sleep! Pretty sleepy now... need to get to bed early again and this time if I wake up to hell with recording my dreams... it's DEILD time!!!

Dream
Lucid

To set the stage - I usually only have good dream recall on my days off when I sleep all day. On work days I tend to only get 4 or 5 hours' sleep, and usually can't remember anything. Well, I've worked for 4 days in a row (unusual), and the sleep deprivation was getting to me. Yesterday I woke up with a headache and this weird feeling like the front part of my brain was sluggish or still asleep. Rather unpleasant, and stayed with me all day.

Ok, so FINALLY I get to bed yesterday. It felt SO GOOD to lay down and shut my eyes! And I was hoping for some REM rebound from the sleep deprivation period. But it wasn't easy to get to sleep. I'd lay there for a while, start to drift off, and then wake up as if I'm stressed or something. I call this 'burning off the sleep fever' (it happens whenever I've been sleep deprived for a while). But one kinda cool thing I noticed... as I was laying there with my eyes closed I kept seeing images moving around, like pale colorless dreams trying to form. I guess this was HI?

Anyway, it's hard to say if I really had any REM rebound... I think it's quite likely, but my recall was pretty bad! Heh, just the fact that I was seeing HI a lot before I fell asleep makes it seem like I was already dreaming even before I was out. I remember the 1st time I woke up, I recalled a dream and reviewed it in my mind the way I do, as if I'm telling it to a friend, and even made up a title for it to help me remember it after several more wake-ups. Usually that works. But not this time... unfortunately when I finally did get up all I could remember was the 2nd dream and the little dream-flash I had just before waking up. Im sure I woke up and went back to sleep 4 or 5 times. Here's the one I remember and the little flash:

1. Wall of Comics
   
   I was walking with two people in a downtown city area. One of them was a really short girl wearing a short skirt who had fantastic legs.. the other one I didn't really notice. As we stepped from the sidewalk onto a series of parking lots we were crossing she was in front of me and I grabbed her wrists and picked her up and spun her around (just like in a recent dream). We were laughing and having a blast. Then we ran across the parking lots and into the entrance to a cave.
   
   As we went into the cave I saw a crack in the floor and underneath the chamber was a deep pit lit by lava or something. I thought "I've seen this movie... I remember how it ends!" I also remembered some of the actors who were in it, but the names are lost to me now.
   
   We jumped over the crack, and then over a series of cracks (each about 4 feet wide)... then as we progressed rather than jumping over cracks we were jumping from wall to wall across gaps between them. The walls were made of piled stones and were a few feet tall, but there were cracks in the floor between the walls, so to miss would be deadly.
   
   As I was jumping to one of the walls I saw a side view of it clearly, and it was a drawing of a wall done in a very stylized style. When I landed on it it had become a wall of stacked comic books... all from Warren publishing in the 70s and 80's (company that did big black-and-white horror comics featuring mostly european artists, and with covers by Frazetta and Richard Corben etc). I used to lOVE those comics when I was younger! I started looking at the ones on top of the wall, getting excited. I started to notice some of them were gigantic... like if you'd stand it up it would be as tall as me! One of the giant ones was an edition of Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, and I was thinking about getting it because I could tear out the illustrations and they'd be big enough to be posters.
   
   
   
2. Ebert and Siskel Roeper
   
   Like I said this one was just a quick flash. Roger Ebert was sitting in a chair and I was thinking about the other critics he used to work with, remembering their names, and I think the names of a few other movie critics. Meanwhile I noticed a rack behind him with something like bags of potato chips hanging on it.

Dream
Lucid

Last night I still had pretty poor recall, and the dreams I do remember were not good ones... very downbeat and depressing. It could be that it takes me a couple days to recover from sleep deprivation (see last post) -- I think there's some truth to that... but it's also probably due in large part to the freakin' HUGE-ASS BUCKET-O-NACHOS I shoveled into my face a couple hours before bed!!! I have a pretty sensitive digestive system, I really don't deal well with spicy food or cheese, and here I downed mass quantities of both! Geeze, it's like I was asking for crappy dreams!! Anyway... here's what I do remember (and wish I didn't):

1. Treebridge
   
   I was making a bridge by gluing popsicle sticks together. Not a complicated one, just a flat truss shape. Then I'm seeing it hoisted up into the trees, only it's full-sized now.
   
   Next I see it attached at one end to the top of a tall tree and tilted down at a steep angle (and it's a lot longer than when I made it... it reaches all the way to the ground). An old man with a cane is hobbling his way down the ramp/bridge thing.
   
   Next part, I'm sitting on the floor in my basement petting Dusty (my old sheepdog from many years ago - it actually could have been Star, a more recent and very similar sheepdog - but for the sake of simplicity I'll just call it Dusty). He's in pretty bad shape, his hair is all matted and discolored and I get the feeling it's because he's been dead so long. It's as if he's visiting me in this dream but because I feel like crap he can't manifest in full frisky form, & the corruption of death is making it through. No more Nachos before bed! Ever! This was just an awful feeling, I was sort of trying to ignore the signs of death and pretend like everything was ok, but I couldn't help but notice how bad he looked and that he wasn't moving right. So sad after my recent wonderful dream of reconciliation with him.
   
   Then I'm inserting a pair of small metal parts into two slots in the roof of the cab of a toy truck. Somehow the truck is Dusty, the cab is his head, and Im putting the parts into slots in the top of his head, just behind the eyes. I'm putting tape over the parts to hold them in place. I'm a bit horrified at the emptiness inside his head but try to ignore it.
   
   Then Im sitting on a big bus like a Greyhound at night looking out the window onto the parking lot. Next to the bus is a wide shallow puddle and right at the near edge of it Dusty is laying, still not looking good at all. I'm very sad. 2 guys I don't know are doing something to him and he can hardly lift his head. They assume he's dead and pick him up and toss him out into the puddle, which has become the ocean, where he sinks out of sight .
   
   There was more... I remember walking on the roof of the bus, but nothing else. I wish I didn't remember ANY of this one.
   
   
   
2. Breakfast with the Browns
   
   Staying at Mark Brown's house. Not a house I've ever seen though. I'm going to bed but he's staying up for a while. The bedroom is high on a 2nd or 3rd floor balcony (indoor balcony). There are 2 beds, each with a light switch (Missed RC!!! ). I sleep in one and when I wake up he's nowhere in sight. In fact I never saw him in the dream at all... I just knew it was his house. I'm getting ready to go to school (!!) and don't have a notebook, so I find a looseleaf binder and take some paper out that I put in a folder. Then I make some breakfast from his refrigerator.
   
   Dream cut - now I'm in a store. I stepped in looking for a comb or brush because my hair is trashed really bad and it was the only store in sight. It turns out to be a womens' boutique of some sort and there's a girl standing right in the middle of the floor with pantyhose half on and not wearing anything else. When she sees me she gets embarrassed and runs into a dressing room with a hanging curtain. I start looking around for a brush or comb, when I notice in the dressing room next to hers is a pair of feet in high heeled shoes. A girl steps out of this dressing room who seems to work here. I feel very out of place and I'm starting to get embarrassed by just being here. There doesn't seem to be anything to fix my hair with, until I see a shelf with a bunch of wig-heads on it and stacked next to them a bunch of things that MIGHT be combs of some weird kind, or at least I think I could comb my hair with one.
   
   They're clear plastic domes just about the size to fit on a head and on the inside they have teeth like a comb. Not very effective-looking, but it was worth a try, so I grab one and drag it through my hair. Heh... totally ineffective!!! Weak weak weak. My tangled hair (hmm... matted like Dusty's was?) is way too thick and strong, almost breaks the teeth out of whatever that thing was. So I put it back on the stack, feeling the countergirl's eyes burning into me and feeling like I was being a complete ass.

Heres proof that the nachos were at least partially to blame for the terrible dreams... after waking up I hit the bathroom and took a massive dump which looked really awful... in fact a bit like the nachos did!! (sorry... ). And literally as soon as that was out of my system I felt fantastic!!

Awesome Incredible Stupendous dream!!!
Dream
Lucid

1. Monkeys on the water -- and water in the sky
   
   I'm in a living room surrounded by my family... Grandpa (who's dead by the way), my aunt and uncle, and maybe my dad. I'm looking at this elaborately carved wooden fireplace screen that at first I thin is pretty tacky. It's a series of interlocking figures - I think they were little monkeys or something, with big repeating shapes cut out between them. I notice the cutout shapes are pretty complicated and have a sort of human shape to them... then I realize it's Popeye the Sailor, complete with his pipe!
   
   I'm astonished by the detail and the cleverness of the illusion, and I stop the conversation to point this out to everyone. Grandpa chuckles warmly and says yeah, he thought it would be a nice idea to carve this for my aunt and uncle for their fireplace. I'm absolutely blown away! I had no idea Grandpa had any artistic talent.
   
   Then I'm standing waist deep in a lagoon. It's raining, but there are these cool formations of coral or volcanic rock standing out of the water here and there that rise up over my head and then flare out, forming natural shelters I can stand under. There are big cardboard boxes standing in the water... really big ones like refrigerator boxes, and for some reason I don't want them to get wet in the rain (!?) so I go around and drag them all under one of the formations.
   
   The bottom of the lagoon is very jagged and treacherous & suddenly my foot breaks through whatever I'm standing on & I hear the sound of a glass jar breaking. I reach down into the water and pull out half of a broken jar, and I start to feel something stabbing into the bottom of my foot... I reach down again and work loose a long spar of broken glass from my foot that has blood on the tip.
   
   Before I notice any pain though I'm distracted by the faces of the cliffs around me... the coral or volcanic rock of the cliffs is completely covered with elaborate interlocking carvings of -- little monkeys! Done in a sort of squared-off style like ancient Aztec carvings. So detailed!! This dream was incredibly vivid -- I was acutely aware of the textures and colors of every surface. It was no longer raining.. the sun was shining brightly on the cliffs and warming the porous stone.
   
   Now a tribe of monkeys comes swarming across the cliff and wherever they pass the carvings are transformed instantly into far more complex shapes. From being essentially flat they're now very 3 dimensional and geometric. I'm utterly flabbergasted at this... I put out my hands in amazement to touch the phenomenal wall and it turns out to be soft and spongey - in fact I can cut through it with the edge of my hand! I cut out a really awesome looking piece of sculpture to take home - once I do it's hard porous stone again, and very lightweight.
   
   Now the monkeys (the live ones) are dogs - about the size of german shepherds but grey. They're very wolfish and wild, panting hard, but they're not menacing me at all, just swarming all over the cliff and the rocks under it. I pet a couple of them and notice some have big scars on their sides, apparently from the rough jagged stone (I assume it was jagged before they transformed it into carvings, and I guess every time they pass the sculptures are further refined).
   
   They sort of herd me around a rocky promontory and up onto a beach. There's a huge crowd of people all spread around in little clusters as if for some massive event. I see my mom and my sister & want to show them the sculpture I extracted from the wall. As I'm making my way toward them through the thronging masses a plane overhead bursts into flames and crashes in the woods nearby. There are reporters and camera crews here and there who point the cameras toward the crash site - not like its a tragedy, but just an interesting visual event.
   
   I get to the row of orange plastic chairs where my mom and sister are, and then I wake up.
   
   Was planning to do a bunch of DEILDs but when started to remember this dream I got excited and decided to write it down. So after that I went for a WBTB instead. Didn't lucid though.
   
   
   
2. Brother can you spare some bread?
   
   Hard to remember or even understand really, but I'll try to make sense of it. This one also seems to begin with me standing waist deep in water, but this time next to a grey stone castle with walkways built out through the water. It seemed like I was in a weird foreign country. I made my way up onto one of the walkways and saw lots of people standing and sitting or kneeling all over the place. They all seemed to be simple peasants, not very bright, and nobody was talking or anything. Each one had a loaf of bread laying on the stone walkway next to them.
   
   The water was rising and would soon come right over the walkway, destroying all the bread. I felt like it was my responsibility to organize them and save their bread (it didn't occur to anyone - including me - that they could just have picked up the bread... ). So I started giving orders which they mindlessly obeyed. But each one would only touch their own loaf, which made things difficult. PLus they had weird little organizations... political and religious etc, and certain groups refused to get near anyone from other groups. This made everything really difficult I remember passing the time by telling jokes that none of them understood.

Associations and interpretation...

In copying these dreams from my bedside notebook a few things jumped out at me. The second dream could be a continuation of the first... they seem linked by the fact that I'm standing waist deep in water next to a stone formation in each. So if that's the case, then maybe the stone castle represents the further refinement of the wall sculptures made by the monkeydogs? It had an Aztec (primitive) feel in the 1st dream, and in the second it was medieval (more advanced historically)...

The monkeys (that transformed into grey wild dogs) are transforming the environment in these dreams. I take it to mean they're transforming my mind. Refining it into a lucidity machine!

The dogs... they remind me of the german shepherd from an earlier dream that at one point had green moss growing on his side, and that also wore a harness making me think of him as a "guide dog". He was also linked to Nick Hilligoss, a mentor and teacher to me on another website, so these animals are like guides... dream guides maybe? The fact that they were grey links them with Dusty and Star, my sheepdogs who got pretty bad press in last night's dream. It seems like here I was seeing them as hardy, strong outdoor dogs in tune with nature in a way they never really were as soft floppy indoor dogs. So what it means... Dusty and Star, my dead canine companions, are my guide dogs and are helping me transform my mind so I can achieve lucidity at will.

OH, and this just struck me... I remember recently reading that Loaf has had a bunch of dreams with planes bursting into flames and crashing. That expains the plane crash in the first dream AND the LOAVES of bread in the second. Weird how the mind works, eh?

Writing my intentions in my DJ
Dream
Lucid

Before going to bed last night I decided to try something new - I wrote my intentions in my dream journal, using the LED lighted pen I write my dreams with. Here's what I wrote (from here on I'll just copy what I wrote in the journal):

• I will wake after each dream
• I will remember my dreams
• I will lie absolutely still, think about the dream I just had - imagine being in it and becoming lucid. I will then re-enter the dream -- and ----- become ---------- LUCID

I was successful at not moving the 1st time I woke. I lay perfectly still, didn't even open my eyes or twitch - never been able to do that before as many times as I've tried to DEILD. I guess writing my intentions in my DJ helped.

But I didn't fall back asleep. I think I was too excited because of my success at lying still. Several times I heaved a sudden deep sigh - completely involuntary, and a few times my heartbeat got real fast for a while. But I was getting HI and was able to visualize myself on my Dream Chopper - very vivid with full sound and wind lowing etc, plus I visualized myself some times rubbing my hands together or spinning - I know these are dream stabilization techniques for when you're lucid, but hey - I was grasping at straws here! I think it's a good idea to visualize things like this to get the images in your head so when you're dreaming you'll remember them.

So after maybe 15 minutes of lying there doing this and realizing I wasn't going to fall back to sleep, I decided to write down the dreams I had just woke from:

• 1 - Kicking Travolta's Ass
  
  I had a rivalry going with John Travolta. He was much taller than me, like I was a kid? Don't remember the beginning of the dream, but for some reason I was really pissed at him.
  
  Then I was walking around alone in a dark environment carrying one of my boxes full of drawings. I was carrying one drawing - the latest one I had done - separately on top. It was a cartoon character done in color. he had some kind of logo on his back but part of it was floating in the air over his head - this seemed really funny and clever to me in the dream. The drawing moved when you looked at it, and the logo bounced around comically.
  
  Some guy walked up to me and I showed him the drawing. He liked it. I then put the drawing n the box with the rest of them for easier carrying. Ran into Travolta again and somehow I tricked him and kicked his ass... wish I could remember how. It seemed like a really great plan perfectly executed, and I remember him laying face down on the floor at the end of it.
  
  
  
• 2 - The Lucidity Group
  
  I was a kid (again?!) sitting in a shabby apartment with a group of people... a couple were kids, most were older teenagers and young adults. They were a strangely mixed group, most of them people I would never choose to hang out with, but we shared an interest in lucid dreaming & visualization techniques. There was a super-hot girl there with an unbelievable body... huge boobs and booty and a tiny waist, long blonde hair, and a great smile. Actually now that I think about it, I believe it was Shyla Stylez. She was naked most of the time, almost naked the rest. Everybody was sitting or laying around in overstuffed chairs and sofas, some were asleep from time to time, everybody was being quiet or talking in hushed tones so as not to wake anybody.
  
  I was wearing some kind of huge floppy torn bell-bottoms, light blue, dirty with rips and patches here and there. Some guy walked over to my chair and handed me a binder full of photos that were either his visualizations or intended to help with mine. There were all kinds of awesome pics of different places and objects, including some great nude and semi-nude shots of the girl. I looked at the book for a while then went into the bathroom to change and head home. The sexy girl walked in and started talking to me in a friendly manner, and I wanted to hug her, so I just walked right up to her with my arms outspread (I was a kid remember, so my head was right at the level of her crotch... sorta awkward). She started to freak out a bit, but I wrapped my arms around her in a big hug rather than trying to cop a feel (even though my hands met right on her ass... hey, it wasn't my fault!) and then she was cool with it.
  
  She was holding her clothes in her hands... a couple scraps of cloth about the size of wristbands, and she was wearing some cool old beat up work boots. I joked about how tiny her clothes were, but when I looked at her again she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

Now it's back to bed... WBTB this time since I wrote the last dreams down. Gonna attempt a WILD (something I only tried once or twice before with no success). I know the pitfalls now - the biggest one being - as always - getting too excited and waking yourself up. So it's off to REM Atonia for me!!

<<< >>>

Tried for a solid hour to WILD - after doing the clench/relax method. Felt like I was getting close a couple times, but never got there. Finally rolled over and kept trying, but just fell asleep.

• 3 - The little girl and the Playboys
  
  I was sitting on a deck near my house just like the actual deck out back, but it was like a reflection of it.. the same design, but backwards. Next to it was the actual deck that belongs there, and the house beyond it. Weird.
  
  There was a little girl sitting there in the dark at the center of the deck, I was sitting on the railing or something talking to her. It seemed like I was telling her how to pretend to be asleep - its like she was in a bad situation and was getting either molested or beat up a lot at home, and I was trying to protect her. I was saying "Why would you even want to make any sound with those people around?"
  
  Then I was sitting in the dining room with a paper bag full of old playboy magazines. Rob and my sister were sitting there & Rob asked what I had. I showed him the Playboys (pretty weird with my sister sitting there!). He was looking at one and said "Oh yeah, this is a classic... it's got the pictorial with the girl in the clear plastic dress - but does it have the best picture?". I knew what he meant... there was some classic image that came form this issue, and apparently if you buy a copy chances are the pic has been torn out because everybody wanted to keep it or pin it on their wall or something.
  
  I started paging through and found the pictorial, but didn't see the picture itself. I thought I must have just missed it and that if I look more carefully it'll be there - then I woke up.
  
  
• 4 - Dried out Melba Toast
  
  Dreamed of a bunch of weird dudes like pro wrestlers - all big burly guys amped up on steroids and with an excess of personality - like cartoon characters. Then I was looking at a concrete porch stoop like you might see on a New York street - seeing it pretty close up. One of the wrestler dudes came falling form apparently really high (like 7 stories) overhead and landed on his side on the porch, right at the edge of the steps, and he slammed a hand down when he hit to absorb the impact. Then the camera pulled back to reveal that the porch itself was about 5 stories high over the ground. Somehow he managed to stay on it though it looked like he was going to fall off, and he jumped to his feet and did some silly dance, like a wrestler doing his routine. He now had 2 sets of legs and 2 sets of arms... and as I watched it became clear that he was actually 2 guys joined at th waist - I felt like I had solved his secret and now I understood why he was such a great wrestler... nobody else knew he was really 2 people.
  
  Pull back - this is a show on TV and I'm watching it in the living room. Lauren and my (deceased) dad are there, as are 2 other people... possibly the old next door neighbors? There's talk like it's getting late and we all need to get to bed soon, and the neighbors get up to leave The woman kisses Lauren (my sister) on top of her head and starts to kiss me the same way, but doesn't. Then she says something like "Don't eat too much chocolate cake just before bed guys!"
  
  That spurs my dad to get up and he says "Well damn... I'm up for a little...." "... Scrounging?" I finish for him, getting up and following him into the kitchen. On the way I see an old opened pack of Melba Toast on a shelf in the dining room (not even supposed to be food there... wtf?) gathering dust.

Final Thoughts:
This is what strikes me about the last few dreams. Especially taking into consideration the Lucidity Group and the dream with me talking to the little girl. About being a child in my dreams, and talking to the little girl... there's a feeling of vulnerability, and almost a sense of sexual violation. No, this isn't anything from my dark past - I suspect it's to be interpreted in a more Freudian way. Me as a child in a crummy room full of seedy people... what could it represent aside from of course the seedy people on DV?

Seriously though... I think my dreams are telling me that some inner part of me.. my inner child - the most vulnerable part of my deep mind - feels unsafe... and I think it's because I'm posting my dreams openly right here for all the world to read. I think that theme was begun in the Lucidity Group dream, and then continued even more explicitly in the followup. The little girl... that dream took place on a REFLECTION of the deck behind this house. She was a reflection of my inner mind. Little girl = vulnerability, and the situation she seemed to be in suggests an almost sexual violation. Knowing what I know about dreams (I've read Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams) I know that the most seemingly trivial symbols in a dream can reveal deep secrets clearly visible to anyone well versed in dream symbolism. It isnt the explicity sexual themes or any part of the Manifest content (the surface content) that reveals your inner world - and that's the part most people concentrate on... it's the hidden symbolism - revealed through analysis and interpretation. You probably won't understand those parts when you first dream it - you'll copy it all down and only later realize what it meant... and by then its too late! Everybody and their brother has read and probably understood it better than you!

It'
s not that I have any deep secrets to hide... it's just an insecure feeling, you know... exposing yourself to a bunch of strangers. But then if you're not going to reveal things exactly as they happened in your dreams... then what's the point? And I remind myself - everybody else is posting their dreams (though many of them are probably unaware of Manifest and Latent content and how to read them).

The alternatives are -

1. Stop posting my DJ here online
2. Edit it down till it becomes bland and uninteresting
3. Be brave - follow Castaneda's Way of the Warrior, and just post it all for the world to see -- but if I do that it means I have to get over the anxiety and doubt and just DO IT!!

I think these nagging doubts are what's stopping me from letting go and letting the dreams take over. More on this next entry in the Post Dream Wrapup.

Awesomest dream EVER... & almost DEILDed!!
Dream
Lucid

Funny note - a little before I went to bed I was in the kitchen getting an apple and a bagel to eat in bed. I had the light off - just the refrigerator light and the oven light to see by (I like to keep it dark before I go to bed). Suddenly I heard a door swinging open. It was clear as could be... no mistaking it. I know the sounds - it was one of the lightweight interior doors, not the heavy outside door. I thought somebody must have walked in and came up the stairs in complete silence and was now opening the door at the top of the steps. But I could see that door, and it wasn't moving!! I'm really hearing the Twilight Zone music now big time!!

The sound continues... seems to go on for a ridiculously long time... but I still don't see the door moving. Then suddenly the closet door across from it opens fast, and something comes out from inside!!! My heart leaped into my freaking throat!! So many crazy ideas are racing through my mind... including memories of the SP incident I had as a child when I saw a dwarf dressed in big floppy clothes walk out of my bedroom closet and tell me the secret to flying in dreams!!

Then I realized what it was - the vacuum cleaner leans against the inside of the closet door, and if the door isn't shut tight it pushes it open and the handle falls out. Whew! I guess when I had walked past I set it in motion somehow. The funniest part... I was standing there doing nose pinch RCs over and over!!!



Swingin' - The rope that reaches... EVERYWHERE!!!


Earliest part I can remember, I'm priming and loading a muzzle-loading rifle preparing to defend our village. There are only a few of us - it's a very small village and seems to be a tiny miniature built inside a vast empty house filled with dust and cobwebs. I mean... the houses of the village are so small... we were the size of toy soldiers!! And in comparison the house it was all built in was so VAST that I was only occasionally aware of it... wooden floor, a dimly visible ceiling far overhead, wooden beams like giant redwoods standing here and there. It was dark - there were only patches of light here and there revealing sections of the village.

Enemies start arriving. There seemed to be a lot more of them than us. I was afraid of fighting them face to face, so I jumped 10 feet straight up and grabbed the end of a rope that happened to be hanging right there. I got excited when I felt it and I knew it would make me like a superhero. I wrapped the end of the rope a few times around my hand to secure it, and discovered I could swing literally anywhere I wanted to!! I had basically total control over my direction and height, but I had to follow the logic of swinging - once I started moving in a certain direction I had to continue it or slowly modify it... no sudden direction changes.

At one point I looked up, curious to see where the rope was attached, and there was a little circle of dim light right where it emerged from the ceiling. Weird... it seemed any time I wanted to see something in the huge dark house an obliging disc of dim light sprang up there. Pretty cool.

Somehow my muzzle-loader had several shots in it and I didn't need to reload or anything (heh... just like in movies!), and I also found I could adjust my height just by thinking about it.. anywhere from almost dragging my feet on the floor to right up under the ceiling. It really felt too cool!! And when I was singing I got the tingling sense in my gut, just like when I was a kid and went real high on the swingset. It filled me with an overwhelming sense of joy and power!

From my high vantage point I got an overview of the battle, and I could see enemies sneaking up on my fellows and pick them off at my leisure. Somehow swinging by one arm did nothing to mess up my amazing aim! Soon we had killed all the enemies.

At this point I was way up at the highest point I could reach, a dozen feet or so under the dark rafters seeing everything laid out beneath me like - well - toy soldiers! And I saw what I knew nobody else could see as they were celebrating our victory... the dead enemies were beginning to transform! They grew and changed shape, became slinky dark forms with long sinuous tails... they were turning into giant cats!

They moved so fast and so gracefully and silently... I saw dozens of my fellows just get wiped out by them without ever seeing what was attacking them. I began a long downward swing that would take me past all the groups of my fellows, and as I rushed past them I shouted what was happening. I also shot as many cats as I could along the way, but it seemed like there were more cropping up all over the place. The cats scared me ore than the human warriors did because they were so fast and could leap so high, and I was like a big ball of yarn dangling at the end of my rope....

But I swung right in among them ready to battle to the finish.

One of our leaders was a red-headed girl just like Angie E. As I swung past to warn her about the cats she angrily told me to get down and stop clowning around... there was much work to be done. She stepped right n front of me and tried to physically stop me, but I maneuvered around her and shot a cat that was about to attack from behind her.

Now I was swinging along at a really fast clip just alongside (but slightly behind) a moving train. In the last car was a huge sumo wrestler kind of guy with red hair and red war paint and a red loin cloth. He was a warrior for the cats... it seemed like he WAS one of the cats, but in human form. And I knew he was one of their most dangerous fighters. I was planning how to attack him when he suddenly leaned out the open side of the car and cut my rope with a scimitar.

I held onto the rope with the hand it was wrapped around - now I had a length about 10 feet long and was still flying along parallel with the train by sheer momentum. In desperation I looked up and saw some power lines running parallel with the train tracks just overhead - so I whipped the piece of rope over the bottom wire and managed to grab the end with my other hand. Whew! And somehow the power lines didn't seem to have any kind of supports... which was a good thing, cause as soon as I ran into a telephone pole... hoo boy!! Don't want to think about that!

I woke up here... still elated with the sense of flying at great speed. My intention to not move upon awakening still held... I lay perfectly still and didn't open my eyes, tried to DEILD. But for one thing when I remembered the dream I got excited and started to wake up too much. I got that under control I think, but then I realized I probably only had a few minutes till my alarm went off, so little point in trying to go back to sleep now. This got to me and I had to look at the clock. I had a half hour till the alarm went off. I tried to go back to sleep... remembering the dream and still awash in the sense of flying... I visualized myself flying without the need to a rope to swing on, and holding a scimitar rather than the clumsy rifle (which was like twelve feet long, did I mention that fact?). But soon I heard my alarm start to go off.



Post Dream Wrapup:

Part of the problem that's keeping me from a successful DEILD is the fact that it was a work day and I couldn't sleep in. I felt constrained by time limits. I need to realize that there's absolutely NO REASON I cant fall right back asleep... my alarm will wake me up when I need to get up. I shouldn't even be remotely concerned with what time it is or how long I have left. These pesky doubts only hold me back.

The other problem is that when I remember a great dream like this one I want to record it in my DJ so there's no chance I'll forget it. Today I let that get to me and decided to get up and write it rather than commit to re-entering it. I have to get it straight in my head... the ONLY thing worth doing is to re-enter the dream and EXPERIENCE it... rather than record it. As Don Juan Matus would say to Carlos Castaneda... experiencing life is far more important than writing it down!!

Monkeys!!! - my 3rd lucid since joining DV!
Dream
Lucid



Resurrecting my DJ because I've finally had my 3rd lucid since joining!! I had decided to take a break... been trying for over a month and a half, and had 2 during that time, and I was getting frustrated because I wasn't having any more. Also I had heard sometimes it happens when you quit trying. Well, it didn't. I went for like a week and a half or so without so much as writing down my dreams or making even the slightest effort (well, not entirely true... more later).

But today I was off work and could sleep in all day, and after my 2nd awakening decided I'd try a WILD. Oh, actually almost forgot... I had re-entered a dream on the previous awakening. No lucidity in that one, but I guess the fact that I was able to re-enter made me want to try WILDing again.

So I basically just went into a mindful state... tried to keep my mind aware as I drifted off to sleep. I found it difficult... mostly I was either letting myself think about stuff or just going catatonic/ unconscious, so I started counting. Reached 58 and decided that was enough (I know I got messed up somewhere - like 46, 47, 48, 47, 48....

My mouth was getting super dried out (got a slight hint of a cold, couldn't breathe right through my nose) and I was getting really uncomfortable lying on my back, so I rolled onto my side and tried to stay aware. I don't think it was really a successful WILD, but Im not sure. It didn't seem like I went directly into a dream or went through anything like SP, but more like a DILD. But I did seem to be ALMOST aware I was dreaming from the beginning, if that makes sense. And one thing that makes me think there's a chance it might have actually been a WILD is the sound of rushing wind through the beginning of the dream. But I don't know. Anyway, here it is:



I was walking through a big house (seemed to go on forever inside, as if it was several square miles of interconnected rooms). Parts of it were like my house, but after a while it was my friend Rob's old childhood house. I wandered through it for a while without seeing anyone, but then pretty soon he was there and we walked together talking. Something seemed to be wrong with him... he was really quiet and sort of hang-dogish... not at all like Rob.

I was having trouble hearing him when he talked, and he seemed to be mumbling too. I got mad and started making fun of him to try to get him to speak up, and I remember part of the reason it was hard to hear him is due to the sound of strong wind, even inside the house. He never did really snap out of it though. After a while we were sitting in his car in some kind of big barn with straw on the floor and bales of it stacked here and there. We had our doors open, sitting with our feet on the floor of the barn and looking out at the straw.

I was getting a feeling similar to lucidity, like I kind-of-sort-of knew it was a dream, but didn't fully realize it yet. I reached into the straw under my feet and started pulling little packages out, large manilla envelopes like packages you might get books in through the mail. I had a playful sense as I did this, like I knew I could pull things mysteriously from nowhere and then see what they were. I tore one open to find a dirty, dried-out old sponge. The next one had grapes in it still on the vine, but looked dirty. I almost started eating them but stopped and said "These things all need to be washed".

So I didn't quite realize yet it was a dream. If I did I could have eaten them without worrying. Suddenly the car started to roll forward slowly, out the door of the barn. We both pulled our feet in and shut the doors, but he seemed to be having a hard time getting the car to stop. It rolled across the yard and toward a few big stacks of bricks in the neighbor's yard. I had just seen a teenager carrying a few bricks walk between the stacks and I shouted "Get away from the bricks! They're going to fall" We hit the corner of the front stack and they all went down like dominoes, and then I could see the kid standing there holding some bricks with a dumbfounded look on his face... I knew my shouting had saved him. And I went lucid. I started to laugh, experiencing the sheer joy of knowing Im in a dream and can do anything.

We drove on, Rob still apparently trying to get control of the car without success, and me telling him over and over that this is a dream and we can do anything. I was telling him to do some donuts or figure 8's, to burn rubber... stuff he used to do all the time when we were younger but now he drives like a grandpa (IRL). But he seemed to be just fumbling, trying to get control over steering and brakes etc. We were going haphazardly through a city area, winding between blocks, and suddenly up on a high balcony I saw a huge stuffed monkey that was alive! Actually when I first saw it it was a baboon, but quickly turned into something like a chimpanzee - only ten feet tall.

I shouted "Monkey on the balcony!" and pointed at it, not sure if he was seeing it. Then as we passed the apartment building it jumped off the balcony right toward us and I shouted "Monkey coming right at us!". Now I knew he could see it. But by the time it landed (sailing kind of slow) we had gone around a corner and it disappeared behind us. We turned another corner and then I saw a small fenced-in yard with a dozen or so giant stuffed monkeys all inside the fence. Now I got really excited and told him to get close to them and stop because I wanted to try some dream powers on them.

We stopped right next to the yard and opened the doors, and I saw a couple of gorilla generals (just like in the original Planet of the Apes ) - regular life sized, not giant like the stuffed ones - which seemed to be in control over the giant ones. I was trying to pinch their heads off with my fingers and blast them with energy from my hands and stuff, but it wasn't working. Then one of the generals saw us and started to open the gate, to let the giant monkeys out at us. I started to get scared then and didn't object when Rob took off again.

We went quickly into a country road nothing like the city area we were just in, and he was still struggling to control the car. But I realized that, even though I didn't have any powers, we were still safe because it's just a dream, so I told him to go back. There were steep embankments on both sides, making it hard to turn around, but I told him its a dream, just drive right up onto the embankments... hell, do a donut around that old well up there.

Then I woke up. So, if I remember right, that's 1 LD in Jan, and 2 in Feb. Getting better!

Oh, and when I said earlier that it wasn't entirely true I had totally given up trying... I did try a few other WILDs during my little vacation. One time I got really close, and suddenly got a feeling of pressure inside my head and a strong physical sensation of something pressing against my forehead, or what I've heard people describe as a third eye emerging from the center of the forehead. This was very powerful, and scared me a little so I quit trying after that.

Anyway, glad it's going well for me. Guess Ill go back to trying more often now, and hopefully I can have a few more in March. And start to get some control or dream powers or something!

The Monkey Connection -
I love the fact that my lucidity was because of monkeys!! A couple entries ago I posted a dream with monkeys swarming over a cliffside and sculpting ornate mayan type hieroglyphics into it, and I identified them as symbolic representations of my old sheepdogs Dusty and Star, helping me to attain lucidity... and now in my next lucid I see monkeys everywhere!!??! Too cool!! Also, how ironic... being as Im a stopmotion animator and was having dreams all about stopmotion for so long. Almost like a visitation from King Kong... or more likely Mighty Joe Young, as he's about the same size they are. Oh.. that's NOT me in the picture above, just so you know. I'm not that old! It's a trip though that an image search quickly turned that pic up, because it looks a lot like the monkeys in the dream, though they were twice as big.

Hold on Teddy... I'll save you.... OOPS!
Dream
Lucid

Last night's dream links up with a couple of previous ones, including my last lucid. Thought it was worth posting in here.

All I can remember is a fragment --

I'm on a balcony, 2nd or 3rd floor, and there's a teddy bear or some kind of stuffed animal on a lawn chair on the balcony - I think it was alive or moving, and it seemed like I had to get to it to help it or it was going to fall off the chair and through the slats of the balcony floor.

But before I could reach it this huge monster head comes up beside the balcony... some kind of ogre or troll dude, tall enough that his head is level with the balcony. All I have is a BB gun, and BBs are bouncing off his skin and even his eyeballs. But as he turns his head I see the gleam of metal deep inside his ear, and I know it's some kind of electronic control unit - if I hit that it will shut him down.

I take very careful aim and just wait until he turns his head. I fire at exactly the right moment and hit the metal ball in his ear, and that's the last I see of him... he just disappeared entirely from the dream.

So I look at the teddy bear, and it's just falling off the edge of the lawn chair, and goes down through the slats of the balcony floor. End of dream.

I didn't realize until toward the end of the day that it links up with previous dreams... and ones I consider important to my developing lucidity. A stuffed animal on a balcony... last time I saw one of those was in my last lucid (dream just above). Then it was a baboon for a second and turned into a chimp, but ten feet tall, and jumped down at me and my friend.

Difference... this time it was small and needed my help, and I was on the balcony with it, protecting it rather than fighting against it. And as I recall, I also linked those giant stuffed monkeys with the monkeydogs that I decided were helping me toward lucidity - AND that I linked with my two former dogs Dusty and Star.

Ok, I know... maybe I'm overanalyzing here, but really all this stuff occurred to me in a few seconds once I started to think about it. What it might mean -- maybe I shouldn't have automatically attacked the giant stuffed monkeys (I tried to pinch their heads off and fire energy bolts at them from my hands). Come to think of it, they didn't actually attack us, though they did seem pretty antagonistic and aggressive. I did get that sense of 'enemy' from them.

A little more thinking... and this I believe is more on the mark.

Rather than try to use dream powers to attack the monkeys, I wish I had leaped into the pen with them or something... anything rather than run away. Sitting in the car outside the penned-in yard was safe, and I tried various long-distance attacks (which didn't work). And as soon as there was a sign of danger we fled the vicinity. Well, Rob did, but he was driving the car, and I didn't stop him.

I should have dove right in among them fearlessly.... I knew it was a dream after all, what's to be scared of? And - here's the clincher - once I was among them, there would have been a NECESSITY for dream powers. I think that's key... when you really NEED them, I suspect they'll be there. Probably a good way to achieve dream powers for the first few times... by putting yourself in a position where you NEED to fly or have some kind of power. As Robert Waggoner says in Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, the way to approach LDs is FEARLESS AND PLAYFUL.

Also, I need to remember next time to stabilize the dream. I never remember to do ANYTHING... I just get all happy cause I'm lucid, and start running around trying for powers and control. Gotta remember... you must walk before you can run (or fly)!

Kornered by Kong
Dream
Lucid

To set up last night's dream, we got truck delivery at work yesterday and it was HUGE!!! Hundreds of pounds of foodstuffs to be loaded into freezers, coolers and cabinets. Really did a number on my back.

Ok, so I'm in this massive mega-mall that I tend to have in a lot of my dreams.... it stretches on forever in every direction... there is no outside world. I seem to be a cop or security guard, but a complete rookie, like first day. My partner is Ron S, a former friend from my wilder days, who was always a conniving backstabbing little #$^%head. He's teaching me the job, but he's doing it all wrong... we're not wearing any shoes and have our pants legs rolled up... it seems like he's deliberately making me do stupid stuff for some nefarious reason of his own.

Suddenly there's a giant gorilla chasing me all over the mall! And this time not a stuffed animal, a real, huge, hairy, smelly gorilla... it was basically King Kong. Now the dream is a nightmare, no matter where I go or what I do he's after me... ripping through walls and tearing out doorways so he can fit through. I'm terrified, I can't get away from him, and suddenly my back is spasming uncontrollably, making me weak and vulnerable. Im just leaning against a wall with my back muscles trembling, unable to move as King Kong is reaching for me...

I woke up then with my back spasming for real. And I instantly remembered a dream from my childhood, or more likely early teen years... I'll make a separate entry for it under this one.

::: DARKMATTERS DREAM CLASSICS :::

Battle of the Giant Gorillas
Dream
Lucid

This is one from the archives... I guess I was about 13 or so when it happened. Maybe younger... I don't really know.

I'm just chillin' in the house when all of a sudden this giant black gorilla rips the roof off and reaches in to try to grab me! I dive through doorways and down corridors trying to escape, but he keeps busting walls down so he can get in farther, and his hand is always just a few feet behind me.

He catches me and picks me up in a crushing grip... can hardly breathe and it feels like my ribcage is being crushed. He carries me out into the woods just behind the house, when another giant gorilla appears... this one brown rather than black. The new one starts fighting with the one that's holding me and rescues me from him. After he drops me I'm all injured, my back feels all screwed up and all I can do is lay there unable to move, watching these titanic beasts fight over me (literally).

I wish I could still remember the details... I know it was pretty long and detailed, with me getting captured several times by the black gorilla and rescued by the brown one, but alas, it's all forgotten to the abyss of time.

After waking up from that one, I was having back spasms (I've had problems with my back basically all my life). Now it seems when I have back spasms in my sleep I associate it with giant gorillas....

I managed to find this clip from the move War of the Gargantuas... this is the movie the dream was based on, though here one is green instead of black, and they're not really gorillas...



Ran across a rather interesting page about the movie: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/W...The_Gargantuas A lot more going on behind the story than I ever knew

Here's the trailer for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEhn0swpfQ (embedding disabled by request, so had to post a link). I had actually forgotten how cool of a movie it was until I stumbled across this trailer just now.

Main Street Money - and Wild Honey
Dream
Lucid

I'm walking down Main Street - there seem to be patches of snow here and there... weird cause IRL the snow melted a few weeks ago and yesterday for the 1st time it was a balmy 70 degrees!! I start finding money all over the street... badly crumpled bills just laying all over. I pick up a couple of 20s and some other bills and put them in my pocket, then suddenly I see this enormous wadded up roll of money laying in the ditch.

Just when I get there to pick it up a long expensive car pulls up with two guys inside who seem to be drug dealers, and they say it's their money and ask me to hand it to them. Damn!! I do it, but don't tell them about the bills already in my pocket.

They drive off and I proceed walking down Main Street till I reach my turnoff at 82nd and start heading home. There are tables set up along the sides of the road for some reason with little groups of people sitting at the tables talking, all wearing heavy winter coats and caps etc. I pass one table with three people at it - a woman and two men, and I hear Rob's voice, so I stop and sit down to talk. I don't recognize the other two people with him, but the woman is incredibly beautiful and sexy... a brunette with a wild gleam in her eyes and a great smile.

Immediately Rob says he can't stay, and he takes off. I don't know what happened to the other guy, but I'm left alone with the woman. IN fact she kind of reminds me of my French teacher from high school (who I was thinking about recently now that I recall). Complete MILF!

Now we're walking back out onto Main Street, and she's naked. She's totally uninhibited, and has a wild quality about her, as if she's actually some wild animal in human form. A cat it seems like. We're having a blast... running and laughing and joking, and there's a lot of touching and faces pressed very close together, staring into those sparkling wild eyes. She's the kind of woman who lights up a room the instant she walks in. I tell her about finding the money and what happened with the drug dealers, as if I'm asking her if what I did was alright (keeping part of the money)... she doesn't care one bit.

There's a lot of this stuff... basically a montage from an 80's sexy romantic comedy. At the end of it we somehow fall down a cliff and drift what seems like miles to the bottom, still laughing and talking. At the bottom I have to execute some complicated maneuver so I land safely, but she just lands on all 4s on top of a beach umbrella (it's a sunny warm beach scene). I say "Not fair!! I had to work hard to land!". She just laughs and the world is perfect.

I'm getting the feeling she's some wild uninhibited part of myself.

Now we're running (and laughing... always laughing) through the corridors of a school... right through classes in session (she's still naked and stunningly gorgeous).

Then I find myself walking through a forest of thick dangling vines on bare dirt. I'm still glowing from her presence, but she's not with me anymore. There's just a few seconds of this scene, then I:m laying on the roof of a bus as it moves down Main Street (I do dream about Main Street a lot). I'm now naked, and there's a warm purring cat curled up against me. It seems to be her in different form.

You dream a lot about monkeys! It's a shame you didn't have any dream powers in your last lucid, but that happens a lot actually. So when do you think you'll be lucid again? Tonight right?

Well I HOPE so!

Yeah, I do dream about monkeys a lot, don't I? I think it's still because I asked my sub-c to show me stopmotion-related stuff (King Kong is pretty much the center of the stopmotion universe, at least as far as I'm concerned).

Tomorrow I try my Lucid Dreamer supplement for the 3rd time... so it might happen then. I think it failed the 1st 2 times because I was taking a lot of Piracetam in the daytime, which counters the effects, but now I'm off the initial megadoses of it and I won't even take any tomorrow, just to maximize my chances. Keeping my fingers crossed...

And thanx for reviving my DJ!

Actually my dreams tend to go through these little phases. Once I start dreaming about something (like monkeys ferinstance) they tend to show up in a lot of dreams for a few weeks or even months. Is that normal?

*Sigh* and now that I just finished reading Robert Waggoner's Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self my subconscious seems to have developed a mind of its own and seems not to like me very much. I hope this little trend passes soon!

03-19-10

Paralyzed
Dream
Lucid


I've decided only to post my lucids and certain non-lucids here... just the ones I deem worthwhile. I don't like the idea of opening up my interior world for public inspection.

Note... I had my 1st lucid (since joining DV anyway) in january, and 2 in february. I was hoping for 3 in march, but didn't get ANY until the 19th (this one). I was quite disappointed not to be getting increasing numbers of lucids, but lo and behold.. suddenly on the last day of march I have 2 more!! Details in the next post on them. So Im right on track then... 3 lucids in march. Woo. Ok, on to the 4th lucid:

I believe this was the 1st day I discovered Binaural Beats and Theta-Wave music, and I listened to it for about 2 hours while meditating before going to bed. Had a couple normal dreams and as usual woke up after about 4.5 hours (I seem to do that every day). While briefly awake I asked my subconscious if I could have a lucid dream... I figured all the theta-wave activity had put me in close contact with the sub-c so it was worth a shot. And it worked, but apparently only partially, or something else was wrong.

1st thing I recall I was laying on some sort of couch in my room (there isn't one IRL) facing out the window. I couldn't move & was very aware of my position & my face being pressed against the clod glass. I suspect I was getting signals from my sleeping body and my dream body matched the position of my real body, and when I woke my face was about an inch from the wall... I could feel waves of cold coming off the wall. The way my bed is positioned, there's no way I could see out the window from bed, but the couch was right next to the window. In the yard next door I began to notice a lot of people... it looked like a party in fact, and there was a waterslide there (!). Apparently my old friend George and his mom lived there in the dream, and it seemed like she was throwing a big party for him. Among the crowd I suddenly noticed a guy named Mark that I used to know in high school and sometimes see at his job at Shop&Save. He was looking straight at me & it seemed like he could see me.

Then I began to notice there were people in my room. I couldn't see them because of the way I was frozen in place up against the window, but I could hear them walking around and talking, and my room seemed a lot bigger than it really is. 2 of the managers from work were there, arguing like they always do. Occasionally I'd see an arm or someone's shadow as they passed close by me, but I was beginning to feel really stupid just laying there unable to move with people all walking around behind me.

Now I"m looking across the street. It's dark, and there's a very old crumbling brick building there. It isn't there in real life. There's a lighted yellow sign over the door that I;m trying to read but can't make it out. I remember than in dreams they say it's hard to read anything, and also that if you stare at one thing for very long the dream will destabilize and what you're looking at will change. Well Im not real happy being paralyzed, so I stare at the building and try to read the sign.

Suddenly the whole building "shifted" subtlely.. nothing obvious, it was like the shape of it just altered slightly overall and the patterning of the brick changed a little. I still couldn't clearly read the sign, but it looked like it said Wal-Mart. Hah.. it didn't LOOK like a Wal-Mart, more like a creepy haunted house! I was like "Huh!... it's all true!" and I knew I was dreaming.


Now I'm standing in the middle of an alley uptown, and I seem to live in an apartment close by. It's dark and there's a group of teenagers sitting against a wall like they're getting high or something. I walk up and talk to them... don't remember what was said, but they pissed me off & I started punching them in the face. I didn't feel it though... just went through the motions. Weird. In this lucid I seem to be retarded or stupid.

Now I'm standing under a streetlight near the kids I just thrashed, they seem to have forgotten or don't care. I hear a radio being carried by someone walking up from behind me. I think it's somebody who's looking for me and I don't want to be found, so I walk fast away from the disc of light and then run, taking a couple of corners so as to throw off pursuit. I come up behind an old woman who's walking very slowly carrying an umbrella or a cane, and I don't want to scare her running up behind her in the dark, so I turn onto an alley. This brings me out onto Main Street (hah... my ultimate dream sign!) near where the entrance to my apt building is located.

Here it's pretty well lit and there are clusters of people standing around talking in the entranceways to buildings. It seems like a lot of businesses are open this late at night... maybe they're all night clubs or something, and they have patios with little tables and benches where people are sitting. I Have to duck down low to get under the low overhanging ceiling for my building's entrance, and once inside there are openings on both sides into a restaurant and a video game arcade.

Blind!
Dream
Lucid


Took Lucid Dreamer supplement last night along with a full 500mg capsule of B-5. This is the 3rd time I've taken the supplements, but my other 2 tries were unsuccessful, I believe because I was also taking megadoses of Piracetam to begin the daily regimen of it for cognitive/memory development. Yesterday I didn't take any Piracetam, just to see if it would change my chances of getting lucid.

I took the supplements after 4.5 hrs sleep during about a 20 minute WBTB, then I counted myself back to sleep. Got to a hundred and stopped counting because I seemed quite relaxed and close to sleep. Occasionally during the count I'd stop and repeat "I AM dreaming!" - feeling the excitement of being lucid and imagining myself dong RCs.

I was afraid I'd have a hard time falling asleep, but very soon I found myself in a public restroom washing my hands & noticing how luxurious the decor was. I thought "I need to remember this, because it's probably the nicest accommodations I'll find myself in all day."

Then I was in bed wearing socks and a sweater (!?) and there was music playing quietly that I wanted to shut off so I could get to sleep and have the lucid dreams I was waiting for. I shut off the clock radio, but then noticed even quieter music playing that had been hidden under the other music. It was the Rush song Cinderella Man (which includes the line "Try as they might they cannot steal your dreams"). I fiddled with the big stereo for a while and finally got it shut off.

I woke up singing Cinderella Man, and it's been in my head ever since. Incidentally though, there was no actual music playing IRL... guess I just dreamed it. I decided to take another Lucid Dreamer capsule, for a total of 8 mgs of Galantamine, just to really push it, because I wasn't getting lucid yet.

That did the trick! Counted myself to sleep again. After a while I found myself in the room next to mine, typing or something, and wearing a robe, socks and mittens (!!). My theory is that I was getting signals from my sleeping body and this was my dream's way of interpreting the feeling of covers over my entire body.

I heard someone call my name from downstairs and went to see who it was. As I pass my bedroom there's some kind of curtain hanging over the door as if to stop me from going in there. Downstairs I find my mom and ask her if she called me. Nope. So I go into the living room where my sister lauren is sitting with a friend. They didn't call me either. I go back upstairs. There's a bit missing here, seems to be a dream edit rather than a forgotten part... I find myself in bed wearing the crazy getup and fumbling around trying to make it more comfortable. I'm also having trouble seeing. Suddenly I realize I:m dreaming and get all happy & excited. And for the first time I remember to do RCs. I don't really need to - I KNOW I:m dreaming, but I want to see what it's like. So I try to push my finger through my palm. It feels like it goes through in a bit, but I can't really tell because now I can't see AT ALL!! So I do a nose pinch and can breathe perfectly! That makes me laugh. So cool... it's like being in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are different or something. Because it really feels just like you're awake, but you can do these crazy magical things.

I walk to my window and decide to see what it feels like to go through glass. Never done that before either. I press both hands against the windowpane and in a few seconds it begins to stretch slowly outward under the pressure, feeling like tightly stretched plastic wrap rather than glass. This is so freakin' COOL!!! Suddenly my whole upper body pops through and I can now hear wind and birds that I wasn't hearing inside. Still can't see a damn thing though!?

I have an awkward moment wondering what to do with my legs.. the main problem being only that I seem to be blind so I don't want to go flying around. I start to climb outside anyway and my legs come through like there's no glass at all, but I decide against flying while blind and pull myself back in. I begin to believe the reason I can't see is because I have my eyes closed, so I try to open them (takes some effort), but as they open I suddenly become afraid I'll open them IRL and wake up.

I wake up.

It's pitch black in my room, and I'm standing halfway out in the hall (wait... I woke up standing in my doorway?). I start to get back in bed but I see a wasp coming down the hall toward me. I don't want it in my room, so I run down the hall to the bathroom & it follows me, then I run back to my room & shut the door before it can get there.

But wait... if it's so dark, how the hell can I see this tiny little wasp? I realize it was an FA and that I'm still dreaming. Do another nosepinch... yep. Im dreaming. I'm getting pretty pissed about it being pitch black in my dream though so I open my eyes, and this time I do wake up for reals.

Frustrating. Ah, to be fully lucid but struck blind!! It's like a punishment from the gods of antiquity. Next time if this happens I need to think of it differently... it wasn't that my eyes were closed after all... I could see the wasp, right? So I need to think of it as if there are no lights on and either switch one on (I was standing right next to the light switch in my room when I saw the freakin' wasp!) - or just ask the dream for some light. Another thing I thought of... if I find myself in a dark lucid again and don't want to risk destabilizing it I could do something that doesn't require light... like summon some hot girl. Though... that might also destabilize the dream. Ah...

At least I know the Lucid Dreamer supplement works now. Next time I'll go ahed and take the Piracetam in the morning even on the day I want to try Galantamine again, just to see if it works as long as I don't take a megadose of the Piracetam. It might not, but at least I'll know.

Im counting this as 2 lucids because of the FA. And if that's not allowable according to the Rules of Lucidity (whatever that means), then because I believe I was partially lucid in the first dream, when I was dressed in socks and a sweater. Either way, I'm counting it as two dammit!!

The Gods of Antiquity are going to punish you for counting this as two lucids!

Walking through anything is fun! I've had the not being able to see problem before. If you're too afraid to open your eyes, you can also try the opposite - close your dream eyes instead! And then try falling into a new dream. You'll probably have a FA (so RC) or wake up in a new dream.

never had a false awakening...yet, but they sound funny and a bit of a nuisance.