Thread: Hi, I'm new

I find use of given names over the internet to be a bit creepy, so I'm just Hamiel. I'm twenty-one years old, and I live in Norfolk, Virginia. I was born in Lubbock, Texas, but I've lived in Seattle, Orange County, and Northern California. My mum was born in Ireland and spent the first few years of her life in London, so I've got random Britishisms in my speech and writing, and I'm barely aware of it. I am my mother's only child, and my mother and father were never married. My dad has eight other children: four sons younger than me, and four daughters older than me. I have an IQ of 136. I write and pencil, ink, & color comic books, one of which is slated for serial publication beginning in October or November. I also want to write regular novels, but I haven't ever finished one. For fun, I like to design and code websites, bake bread, and learn about any old thing. I used to consider going to college for history and anthropology, because I think it's about one of the most interesting things in the world. I have studied several different systems of witchcraft and ceremonial magic, and I have studied mediumship, tarot, numerology, and astrology as well, but I am not an adept at any of it yet. I have sporadic periods of precognition.

My favorite bands are Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Modest Mouse, Grant Lee Buffalo, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My favorite books are Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Road to Perdition, Watership Down, American Psycho, and Ulysses. My favorite movies are Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zodiac, Twelve Monkeys, Pineapple Express, and Iron Man.

I've had vivid dreams as far back as I can remember, since I was about two and a half years old. I learned how to fly in my dreams when I was four years old. I began having occasionally prophetic dreams when I was thirteen, but they have always been pertinent strictly to my own life or the lives of those close to me. I heard about lucid dreaming when I was fifteen, but I quit trying when my best friend died two years later. Then I let it go til now.

My dream recall is excellent and has always been but for a month here and there throughout my life.

Typically, my dreams take place in a world that is generally logical even by waking standards. The geography of my dream world is consistent; I could draw you a map of all its continents, and dot the dream globe with the places I've been and what happened to me while I was there. (I've looked at maps of the place while there.) If I tried in just the right way, I could probably even tell you the names of the countries and continents. I always know where I am and how I arrived there. The world itself has its own strict logic, and many of the reality checks that work for most people have no relevance there: lights turn on or off when I flip their switches, anything written stays the same no matter how many times I look at it or reread it. (A good example was a dream in which there was a wall with "Reality changes with every second. It changed just now. DID YOU NOTICE?" written on it.) Gravity always works. There is always full color, smells, sounds, tastes. If someone injures me, I feel it as if it were real. If I see something out of a window, such as a tilled field, I can leave the building and look at the field up close and examine its details. There are places in my dream world that exist in the waking world, too. Admittedly, I can fly, which is something no one can do while waking, but I've seen a few other people fly in my dreams, so it's not an unusual occurrence and fits with the logic of the dream world. Hell, I was taught to fly in my dreams by a dream person, and I have taught others to fly as well. The world is very... real. Of all of the dreams I have ever had, 95% or more have occurred in this world. I rarely realize that I am dreaming when I have these kinds of dreams; when I do, I wake up as soon as I figure out that I'm dreaming.

The remaining 5% occur external to that world and are like watching a movie, or they occur inside that world, but I am observing the goings on of dream people. These dreams always have a definite beginning and a definite end. In most of these dreams, I have realized that I am dreaming, but I have been unable to control the events in the dream or wake up from the dream until it has finished. Most of these dreams are either prophetic or significant to a past life experience. Some of them are epic dreams.

What I would like to achieve is lucid dreaming while in my primary dream world. I don't care as much about the other 5%. I figure if I can realize that I'm dreaming, but cannot dream lucidly during them, then I'm probably not supposed to. But it's the bulk of my dreams that matter to me. I want to be able to wander through the world and explore it at my leisure, or to leave it for weirder places.

Random facts about my dreams:
1. The place where most of my dreams occurred til I was 16 years old was a place I refer to as the dirt hills. I left the dirt hills in June of 2003; it took me three weeks dreaming about hitching, flying, and walking to cross my dream equivalent of the United States and reach the west coast.
2. In my dreams, I am friends with John Lennon, but I only realized that it was John Lennon last year.
3. When I learned to fly in my dreams at age four, it was raining in my dream, and the old man who taught me was, apparently, a Mexican Indian.
4. I have never had the naked dream or the falling dream.
5. No one in my entire family can ever remember their dreams except for my youngest brother, my oldest sister, and me.

Congrats, you must be bored if you actually read all of that.