Hello!

[Vulcan]

Hi everybody. I've lurking here for a while now and figured I might as well set myself up an account so I can get a bit more involved I probably heard of lucid dreaming at most a year ago (My friend had one or two and was very excited, though he didn't pursue it much further) but didn't really act on it. I then (Just a month ago exactly) was watching a youtube channel and the topic came up again. This time it stuck, I started a dream journal the next day and had my first lucid dream only 8 days later (23rd May), after reality checking daily like a possessed man. Since then I've had six more LDs and dream recall has improved massively - The past three nights I have recorded 7,7 and 8 dreams (only one or two were small fragments). For two of the dreams, I'm not entirely sure what I did to induce them, though I'm pretty sure it was a WILD (FILD to be precise) that started the first and then the second came with a DEILD. I didn't know that's what I'd done at the time, but I then went on to intentionally DEILD a few days later, scoring some nice flying action and also a very intense "being-run-over-by-a-truck", shortly after becoming lucid... I realised recently that I don't think these are my first LDs: I have a strong memory from when I was a kid of running in the school playground very fast, my body almost horizontal, and then taking off and flying around. This was a recurring dream, as was a particularly vivid nightmare I had every night for perhaps two weeks while I was three - four years old. At the moment I'm working on keeping my sleeping schedule in check and also working on constantly checking to see if I'm dreaming. Last night I had some sort of mishap and I only recorded a tiny fragment of a dream where my eyes had become glued shut with sleep, though aside from this, I've been jotting down at least 3 or 4 nightly for the last month. I think perhaps the lack of dreaming action last night was a result of Volleyball training close to bed time, and the fact that I wore a sleeping mask for the first time ever last night (hence the glued eyes). I'm also trying to get a WILD to happen, though at the moment I tend to lie on the brink of sleep but with no dreamlets coming to me for often more than an hour. I have had HHs though, one of which (my door handle creaking VERY loudly) woke me up a few weeks ago. The other two were more clear and distinct: one was a rushing sound, just before my 5th and 6th LDs, and the other was the sound of cars honking (before getting run over in dream ) Well that's me for now! I'll keep you posted on my progress. In future I'll try keep the length down a bit I hope my style of writing is pleasing enough though EDIT: (already). I'm sitting my final high school exams at the moment, so deliberate alarm-set WBTB is not an option I'm considering for the next two weeks until I'm done. I naturally have been waking up at 04:05 pretty consistently every night though, so I'm still getting my WILD opportunities.

[spellbee2]

Welcome to the forums! I've had that "eyes glued shut" feeling a few times. It helps to reach up and pull stuff off of your eyes once you're in the dream. I've had it be things from my sleep mask to duct tape that was holding my eyes together. Anyway, enjoy your stay. If you have any questions, feel free to let us know, or drop by the IRC chat.

[Vulcan]

Haha well I would have done that if I had been lucid . I was actually in third person (happens a lot in my dreams where I see myself acting out something rather than doing it first person) and looked like I had big swollen eyelids as if I had been beat up/ in some accident/had some serious infection... I was trying to open them by sliding my finger in the corner and doing a kind of letter-opener motion. Interestingly I slept last night without the mask until I woke up naturally (04:08) when it was already light enough to want to block out some extra. Tried my WILD thing and ended up falling asleep. After further reading I think the cause was rolling over... I did aaalmost have 2 DEILDs later on though, where I was aware of waking and tried to get back into the dream. First time I woke from an unpleasant one (mouth full of sewing pins) and couldn't make my mind up of what to go back into and ended up changing my mind too much and waking up. Second time I felt like I was rising up forward and pushing against my arm which was draped across my forehead (Not IWL. I assume was just HI) which puzzled me and I lost the whooshing dream momentum feeling that I get. I woke up briefly and then fell asleep again properly.

[ThreeCat]

Great introduction, seems like you already have a good base to work with! And I am quite envious of your recall. That will make it so much easier for you to know what your dreams are like, and what dreamsigns to look for. Keep it up!

[Vulcan]

.... That will make it so much easier for you to know what your dreams are like, and what dreamsigns to look for.... Keep it up! Haha well I've made up a list so far and I'm looking around for a way to remember them more clearly. I can recite the list easily and I do so before sleeping a few times, yet I've still managed to dream through about 5 or 6 instances of them already since I formally wrote down the list in my DJ... On the super duper up side, last night I managed to WILD Got a good five minute of lucid time out of it as well. Unfortunately managed to go into a "DEILD loading screen" in another dream when I tried to DEILD back in, losing my lucidity I was thinking about tasks I had set myself (ToTM basic i: Smelling something that smells strong IWL and my own permutation of that: Eating something that isn't meant to be eaten by humans IWL) and managed to remember to try the second ones. It turns out that plant pots taste like onions with a slight aroma of cat pee that you find in gardening patches, and have the texture of undercooked hash browns. Dream below: Spoiler for Full dream: I felt the "noise" rushing up past my like I was in a river/water flow. To hold onto consciousness I visualized holding onto my mantra as if it was a pole sticking up in the flow. I appeared in the world of Skyrim, with the beautiful mountains and snow around the place. Lots of trees as well. I was 3rd person and appeared as a sort of blocky/ low resolution man with a bald head and a rough beige shirt (Like the prisoners in the game in WL). I was being thrown around a bit like a ragdoll. I think at this point I was acclimatizing myself to the dream world (a bit confused). Like I had the impression that I was dreaming but I didn't have control or at least wasn't exerting it. I'm still counting this as lucid though. Once I regained control, I got up into the air to go fly, and basically just picked a direction. I flew over a lake that had a giant on the shore watching me, and then it occurred to me that this might be like what the perspective of a flying arrow might be like. I upped my speed a bit and looked forward to feel what it was like, and my vision sort of tunnelled and stretched as I went really fast toward a mansion. I landed next to a man who was throwing a rock in the air and saying "What the ****?" when it slowly glided back down to the ground next to him. I kind of laughed to myself because I knew the gravity was a bit off because of this being a dream. I wandered over past the front door of the mansion to see what was around the place and could feel the soft grass on my bare feet. There were also little flowers in the grass, like daisies or something. At this point I remembered my task, so looked around for something to eat, seeing the wall next to the door first and thinking of a dream I read on DV where the dreamer (Xanous I think?) was having a "relationship" with the ground and ate a bit of pavement to stabilize the dream. I tried to grab a chunk of the wall and I could feel and see my fingers slide into the stone. It felt kind of warm/tingly, but I couldn't actually grab anything. When I pulled away, the chunk I had "grabbed" just disappeared and all I could see in my hand was a sort of shimmering blob. I tried again snd tried to tell myself that this is a dream therefore I have a rock in my had. Didn't work so I moved onto my next snacking target. I saw a little tray of the small black plastic plant pots you get in gardening centers that you buy flowers in. They had soil and flowers in them so I grabbed one with a purple flower in it and took a bite. It made my teeth twinge, like the feeling you get when the dentist pokes a nervy bit. Also, it tasted strongly of onions and had this kind of cold, lumpy, raw hash brown texture. it wasn't good, but I kept chewing as I walked a little bit further. I walked while thinking about the taste and what to report about it and ended up on a golf green. A man in the distance just hit the ball and it was flying toward the green. I stepped back quickly and then went "oh wait no this is a dream so it won't be a problem if it hits me". I didn't get hit, and as it landed I did "magic hands" and a whoosh at it, which did nothing I flew up and away from the golf green and nearly got caught in a telephone line as I moved toward a modern(ish) residential area. I flew up and as I did I realized it was getting to be quite dark so I thought "I'll just make it day time again!". I closed my eyes and willed it to change but as I did so, I felt myself waking up. I thought about how some people wake up when they close their eyes, so I just resigned myself to DEILDing. I did the DEILD, it all felt right but then I went into a DEILD loading screen which was basically a computer application reloading the DEILD. I didn't realize this was a new dream: I think I successfully woke and slipped into another dream but confused myself along the way. The loading screen zoomed out into a cafe where my old computing teacher from a few years back was raving about how the advert that I had just tried to skip was important to watch because it starred a girl that one of my WL friends was dating (He wasn't actually and I had no idea who the girl was). I woke up for real shortly after this, unsuccessful in getting through my mind's DEILD loader Hope you enjoyed! I certainly did (minus the taste...)