First Occurrence:
I had a really long day (Early Classes), and I ended up staying up till about 4:00 AM finishing a lab report on ceramic superconductors. When I went to bed, I was still wired - probably from the sugar high that kept me awake to write the report. My body was completely exhausted, and I was stressing because I had to wake up for an 8:00 AM class. As I laid there with my eyes closed, I got a really strange feeling. It felt like my body was buzzing - even swaying. It felt like my eyes "moved closer" to something in front of me. I felt like it was sucking me in with intervals of varying gains of intensity. I noticed that I was breathing really irregularly; also, my heart was beating really fast. I heard a car alarm go off outside and lost focus - rolled over and went to sleep within a few minutes.
It does not seem like an odd thing sensation to me any more. I can get to this state every night while I am falling asleep. Each night, it feels like I'm getting deeper - but I usually get frustrated as I notice my breathing become uncontrollably irregular / the darkness in front of me never ceases / I hear strange noises in my dorm or outside. But it does feel like my body is trying to go asleep while I still remain conscious. I typically only try to initiate this once a night because when it fails to lead to anything (which it always has) I really need to get some sleep to be properly rested for the next day.
Also - if important - I get the sensation easier / deeper when I am lying on my back and facing up. Typically, I fall asleep on my stomach (which is what I do after my sensation leads to nothing).
My friend told me about lucidity a few months ago when I told him about my experience. He had never experienced it and could not help me understand what was happening. Initially, I was extremely interested. I kept a lawyer pad next to my bed to jot down dreams throughout the night (I wake up on my own 4-5 times a night and usually don’t have to set an alarm in the morning to wake up when I want to). I wrote down details of my dreams the following day, but they never felt that realistic (1-3 dreams recorded a night for about 3-4 weeks).
This got boring, and I then tried to see if I could remember my dreams on my own - without recording them in the middle of the night. To my surprise, this was extremely hard. I would wake up remembering that I had dreamt, but I could hardly put together the scarce clues about it. At this point, I felt that my attempts had been futile, and I was no closer to dream recall or lucidity.
All of a sudden (a few days ago) I had probably the most realistic dream I have ever had. I remember being tired when I carried something, cold when I touched someone that fell in the snow, and warm while we sat by the fire. I remember people talking loudly and softly. I remembered all the words just like it really happened a few minutes ago. But this did not just happen once - the very next night, my dream was just as real and life like. I woke up amazed at how I did not realize it was a dream… I was amazed at how much I controlled the dream without realizing it. When someone was talking annoyingly loud, they suddenly (mid sentence) apologized for being too loud – continuing the conversation with a more pleasant tone.
When I saw that my friend wanted to jump across the river, I thought that he had no chance in hell of making it – and sure enough he fell very short.
If you’re still following along, I really appreciate you reading everything I wanted to get off my chest.
Basically, I would just like to know if the sensations (best word to describe it) are / can be important in any way. Also, I would like to know if my realistic dreams show that I am making progress towards lucidity, and where I should go from here to attain lucidity.
Have a good one,
- Al
