Thread: Camdave's Workbook

Well good news to report, and a wall of text to go with it! Again, my recall has been pretty good over the last couple of days and I've settled more into a rhythm of questioning reality and performing reality checks regularly during the day, and then at night time hoping for a M/DILD early on and then waking up about 5-6 hours into the night to attempt a WILD. For this I set an alarm, but I've not yet had to use it as either I or my wife wake up throughout the night anyway.

As per the comments above, I've found that for the WILD I relax and prepare myself for the onset of atonia and generally get to the stage where my body begins to feel heavy before getting lost in thoughts and falling asleep. Last night I tried to WILD on my back as I've never before fell asleep in that position - in the past I have tried but always end up rolling onto my side. (my usual position is on my side, either foetal / "yearner" position) I didn't WBTB last night as when I woke up I felt confident that I'd be able to lucid dream. I relaxed and started going into paralysis, but again fell asleep! I had an odd dream in which I was playing a Fallout-style game for someone who couldn't beat the boss of a certain level, which turned out to look like a large version of Homer Simpson. Unfortunately this didn't prompt me into a DILD (!), but the person who I beat the level for thanked me and said "as a reward, you will now wake up in a lucid dream - enjoy!".

I woke up in my bed and did a nose-pinch reality check, and I found that I could breathe through my nose! So somehow my brain has "granted" me permission to lucidly dream I got out of bed and tried to "open" the door (light was shining through the cracks even though it was about 4.30 am - should be totally dark) to my private beach/tropical island (I've been visualising this regularly) but found that it didn't work, and I entered the hallway. I sat down in the study instead and found that the table is pretty much replicated perfectly in my dream - nothing odd or strange about the objects, after having taken a mental photograph and comparing it to what I see now. I touched the objects and rubbed my hands to stabilise the dream and did another RC just to confirm, and then I managed to summon an object in my pocket by thinking about it. I then could start to feel my body in bed whilst sitting in the chair and began to wake up - about 30 seconds of lucidity but it felt great!

I tried to DEILD in order to get back into the LD, but I've not really read up too much about it. I woke up on my back so stayed still and tried to get back into the dream, but found consciousness coming back quickly so I turned over to my side to sleep. Again I fell asleep as I couldn't keep concentration on my previous brief dream, but when I fell back asleep I found that I was consciously aware that I was dreaming. I was in a different location, walking out of a house and I saw an African Grey parrot sitting on a perch in the garden. I told the parrot that I knew I was dreaming, and then summoned a peanut in my pocket to give him. So I suppose I chained together two lucid dreams inadvertently - in the second one I didn't perform any RCs as I had supreme confidence in the fact that I was dreaming. I suppose the peanut-summoning is an inadvertent RC.

One thing I have noticed is that my (lucid) dreams are actually pretty realistic. I've been doing a lot of observation and awareness during the waking day - I did it last night in my first dream and everything was pretty much spot-on. I was impressed by the subconscious memory, but I was expecting some crazy and out-of-place things! I did manage to change the colour of an object by focussing on it, though, so I guess that's one manipulable thing. I'm assuming this is something to do with awareness and your conscious mind starting to become active, so that would explain the lack of "irrationality" that is standard in the lucid dreamscape vs a regular dreamscape - that is, until you intentionally introduce the irrationality!

I also notice that I quite often dream of "home", but with this not being a constant place or somewhere I've been. Is it common that an emotional feeling (in this case, homeliness) becoming attached to certain places to trick your mind into being grounded somewhere? I quite often wake up in (or return home to) flats, houses, castles etc. and feeling like I am home - in fact, my actual home is almost never visited apart from during false awakenings!