Pyramis Lucid Dream Journal
Today is my birthday. I've been having lucid dreams since I was very young, at least since I was 4. Like others in this forum, I developed the skill as sort of a defense mechanism against nightmares. After that, the monsters became my friends.
I have this sense that the dreamworld actually *taught* me how to LD, how to fly, how to manifest objects, etc. For instance, I had this recurring nightmare where this group of angry bandits would capture me, take me up on top of this mountain cliff and throw me over the edge. I'd get that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach and wake up terrified. I had this dream over and over and over. Until one day, instead of falling to my death, I learned to swoop up and glide down to safety. The dream kept recurring and each time I got better at swooping and flying, as well as being lucid. The bandits were transformed into my friends and teachers. They were no longer evil. It became one of my favorite dreams and I discovered that if I flew off the cliff and over the forest, at the far end of the valley was a wondrous amusement park where I'd spend the rest of the night exploring and playing.
I began to have these regular "training dreams" that would teach me some aspect about lucid dreaming. They were abstract, without a "story" to go along with it. Like, just a platform floating out in space where I'd train to levitate, call objects into being. Sometimes there would be a voice, instructing me in technique.
Lessons like: the dream is a direct manifestation of your thought. If you decide that you will see an object appear in your hand, you will see it, without exception. The tricky part is this: the dream will just as easily manifest your doubt. So if in the same moment you think 'I want to see an apple in my hand' you also think 'what if this doesn't work?' -- it won't work. You must arrest all doubt. Only then will you experience the total emancipation of your will.
Even today, "teachers" will appear in my lucid dreams, transmitting some esoteric lesson on the nature of thought, waking life, existence itself. I get the feeling that they are all the same teacher, in different guises. Some are more sinister. Some, benevolent. He likes to scare me so that I'll really pay attention and take him seriously. The only nightmares I ever have anymore are LDs where I can't wake up because he is preventing me. He does this to prove he has more power in the dreamworld than even I do. That is scary.
I started this thread on a whim. I think I'll post here from time to time, some of the more important or crucial LDs that have shaped my life.
I know I'm not alone here in saying that lucid dreams have fundamentally altered my understanding of the world, both asleep and awake. They unlock a new chapter in the human story, one that has only begun to be read, let alone understood.
The last great frontier is the inside of our heads. We are the explorers.
It's our job to bring back to the peasants some of the treasures that are out there. Not simply to prove that there is a there there. But to demonstrate that what we bring back from that place can have tangible, positive effects on the "real world" that monopolizes peoples' attention. That dreams can teach. That lucid dreams open up direct dialogue with the subconscious/collective unconscious/who knows what it is. That brilliant ideas, creative insights, great music, great art can be downloaded on demand from that land inside our heads – by anybody who bothers to learn how. ;)
Hundred Faces, Hundred Bodies
March 20, 2000
This is, by far, the most lucid dream I have had so far [as of 3/20/2000]. The reality control was unprecedented.
After school, instead of going home to my mom or visiting my girlfriend, Genery, I decide on a whim to go to the movies. The fictional theatre is located on the west side of my hometown, Santa Rosa, California but the neighborhood looks like something out of Small Town, America –– quaint and old-fashioned. The movie theatre is classic art deco, ablaze in flowing marquee lightbulbs. Across the street is narrow city park that runs several blocks, dark now after sundown, lit here and there by isolated streetlamps that cast little amber pools.
Burning in black and white capital letters above the theatre entrance is the name of a new movie that I really want to see, starring Nicholas Cage. I step up to the window to purchase my ticket and ask for one adult admission. As I pull out my money I see that there's already a twenty dollar bill lying in the transfer basin. I give the ticket-girl my own money and pocket the twenty, along with my change and ticket. I walk through the door into the lobby.
Just then it occurs to me that I should let someone know where I am. They might be worried. There are two payphones in the lobby; one is out of order and one is in use with another person waiting. There are only a couple of minutes until the movie starts. I go outside and across the street to a payphone in the park. Dropping a quarter and a dime in the slot, the line to my house starts to ring. Jerry, my mom's boyfriend, answers the phone and I tell him where I am and what I'm doing. He asks me for a lot of details like the theatre's location and what the plan is after I get home. I'm getting frustrated because I know the movie is starting by now. He delays me so long after the movie's start time that I decide to get a refund on my ticket and just go home. I tell him this and hang-up.
At that moment I shift into lucid dream-awareness. I make a conscious choice to become as lucid as I can. The dream solidifies around me into a reality equal to, in all physical aspects, the waking reality within which I type this out to you now. I realize that I now have greater mental control over the dream than I have ever had before.
My WILL becomes physically manifested continuously before my eyes. I walk back across the street and being to stroll along the empty sidewalk towards the theatre. I have a spontaneous whim and am suddenly surrounded by a boisterous crowd of people; every one of their faces are known to me: friends, lovers, family members, teachers.
Following another playful whim, I elect to manifest my good friend, David, and then multiply him so that every face in the crowd is his face, every body his body.
Now I multiply my own body a hundredfold. Indescribably, I have simultaneous awareness of every separate independent body. And now every one of my selves takes a step forward with hand outstretched to greet and shake the hand of a corresponding David. We all being a cacophonous, deliberately silly conversation.
The composite vision from my one hundred pairs of eyes feels like 360 degree panoramic omniscience. I choose to have the movement of all those bodies leave colored tracers behind in my vision. I choose to slow time down to a crawl in order to admire and contemplate this most extraordinary vision.
In my reverie, my tight control slips a little. I walk back into the movie theatre and over to the ticket counter to ask for my refund. The young black man tells me I can't have one since the movie already started. I'm about to explain that that is the very reason why I want a refund, when I realize I have power over this situation. I simply exert a little Will and he quickly returns my money with a smile. I walk back out the door and am suddenly elsewhere.
In a small apartment. I'm with my good friends Adam, Erik and Dave. They are talking about a jazz concert that we all apparently just returned from, though I have no memory of it. Apparently I missed an opportunity to play with Wayne Shorter, the star, myself. I have the peculiar feeling that I just smoked DMT and am now coming out of the trance. I'm still lucid though and sort of ignore the reality around me. I get up and walk out of the living room, down the hallway and into a room with a piano. My intention is to try to play some music but there's equipment piled on top. I move it and have just sit down to play when the other guys come in. My lucid control is slipping away as I lose my concentration. I hit a couple of notes on the piano. Dream ends.
successful CANWILD, maybe dream sharing too?
I programmed a custom alarm clock on my Mac for doing the CANWILD technique and set it to start going off every ten minutes from 8:30am to 10am this morning. (Basically, it's an alarm that rings once, loudly, so it wakes you up but you don't have to move to turn it off.) Success! It's a great technique cause you get several well-timed shots at WILDing.
I started off the night with a VILD technique I read about on here to consciously slip into sleep paralysis. I think that technique has a lot of potential.
The alarm went off a total of 12 times this morning, but I only consciously heard it about 3 or 4. I realize now that it worked a bunch of times. What I thought was me turning over around in bed, or opening the window, or drinking some water -- were all false awakenings where I was actually dreaming. If I'd bothered to reality check, it would have been lucid. Nevertheless, it did work once exceedingly well:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2617/...45a1d3dedd.jpg
It's night-time on a farm in beautiful rolling hill country. There's an old barn and old shed, farm equipment. Some drama is going down among the farmer's family and I might be implicated.
At this point the CANWILD alarm chimes once, loud enough to wake me and remind me to keep still and try to go back into the dream. I don't think I used any technique in particular to maintain consciousness except perhaps visualizing myself back on the farm. Next thing I know I'm in my bedroom with a couple of friends, Dr. Z and someone who I've since forgotten. They know I'm trying to LD this morning and it seems like I failed.
But I know to Reality Check -- no matter how convincing the failure story is in the moment. I tell my friends to do it too: hold your nose and breath. It kinda sorta doesn't work; and I wonder if I just have a stuffy nose. So I walk over to the light switch and flick it up and down a few times. It works a couple times but definitely not well enough to be reality. I tell my friends: we did it!
[Side note: always RC! Simply 'examining the feeling of reality' or 'inspecting the logic of the situation' just doesn't cut it. I had to RC to realize I was dreaming, despite the fact that I'd just fallen asleep in Washington state and was dreaming I was in California with friends in my bedroom. That seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Only the RC was authoritative.]
My two friends and I walk outside. We're back on the farm, in the night-time. It's exciting. We levitate off the ground to play with our dream skills. Night turns to day and I shout to my friends, pointing out this development. Lots of people show up on the farm, some of them trying to get us interested in dramas of various kinds. I tell my friends, "Don't get interested!" And we fly around the hillside making trouble for dream characters for the fun of it; focusing on our lucidity instead of getting caught up in a drama.
It's interesting, and not uncommon, for me to have lucid dreaming companions. I don't really think I was dream sharing -- I think it was a hold-over from the first dream scene where I brought them along into the LD experience with me. However it sure helped to reinforce my focus on the LD to not be alone. LDs can be utterly lonely and alienating at times as you come to see yourself as God, alone in your own universe. It's nice to have friends who will encourage you to stay lucid and who will talk to you about it.
We landed together next to the farm shed and talked about the dream. Of course, everyone claimed to be a real person and that we were dream sharing. I proposed that we come up with a common image to communicate with each other after waking to test if we were actually dream sharing; not a word, phrase or concept -- because the dreamworld is primarily emotional-visual, not conceptual-linguistic. Someone proposed 'rolling around in the grass' and I added emotional color-depth to make it 'the feeling of rolling around in the grass when you were a kid'.
I'm going to email the image to Dr. Z now.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3178/...0b66c015af.jpg
