Reading in a Lucid Dream

Date: 19/05/2021
Method of entry: direct
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 7.15am
Return to sleep: 12.15pm
Awakening: 12.30pm
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: Wohey of Stacey

WAKING STATE

I wake up at the sound of the alarm, feeling very tired, having slept for barely four hours. It's time to take my youngest son to school. I drop him off and return home an hour later to have breakfast in bed with my wife Stacey while we watch Melissa McCarthy's new film Thunder Force on Netflix. My eyes feel heavy and I am on the verge of zonking out halfway through the film when Stacey turns Netflix off and suggests that I take a nap while she carries on with the house decoration. I briefly think that it would be nice to have a lucid dream before falling asleep almost immediately.

PHASE STATE

I come to in a strange, dimly lit house interior and notice that I am standing in front of a fireplace. (Realism: 45%.) I know this poorly formed environment is not real and requires some deepening, so I rub my hands as I walk towards a doorway. I can hear my hands rubbing as well as my deliberate stomping on a wooden floor. I also believe I can hear the sound of the TV in the real world—as unintelligible voices from a news channel—superimposed on the dream world. I get the sensation that the walls surrounding me mark what's immediately behind my skull, and what lies beyond is the noisy, objective world which could potentially disrupt my subjective, phantom experience.

As I walk through the doorway and into a fading corridor, I do my utmost to stay grounded in the phase state—focusing on the sensations produced by palpating my phantom body and arching over to rub my surprisingly bare feet. I have neglected the notion of potentially interfering sound waves from physical reality and stubbornly persevere in maintaining the phase. Blind in one eye, I make out a dead end ahead of me in the form of a solid brick wall, which I magically penetrate with my body. There is some resistance; I feel like I'm going through gelatin and sinking my head into the malleable barrier darkens my vision. I aggressively struggle with an invisible force for a few seconds until emerging in a vibrant, indoor environment (realism: 105%).

I am surrounded by pristine colours sharply defining a furnished hall displaying doors leading to promising places as I remember Project Elijah's text experiment. As I move towards the nearest white door, which happens to be ajar, I deliberately shout, 'Yes! Yes! I need to find a book to read!' in order to activate my hearing in addition to the tactility of my footsteps and a well- established sight. Upon entering a partially untidy room, I notice a black and yellow book—identical to a Dummies book—amidst a few objects on the white, silky cover of a king-size bed.

I pick up the thick book, noticing its surface reflecting light from a nearby window, and pay attention to the standard, white text on the dark section of its cover. It reads: 'Wohey of Stacey'. I glance around the room as I repeat the words and look back at the book cover to find that its yellow parts are gradually turning orange and the black is changing into silver. I open the book halfway through to find pages replete with text; focusing on the side that rests on my right hand, the following words stand out to me: 'Sexually Stryked'. I become aware that the last word appears to be a misspelling of the word 'strike' and ostensibly, an erroneous past form of the verb, such as 'struck'.

Mission accomplished. I proceed to jump out the window and begin to gradually fall, in low gravity, onto a platform attached to the cream-coloured side of the building and right next to a massive crane. Landing softly on a metal surface, I realise I'm not alone: a colossal, faceless figure wearing a construction helmet with a prominent headtorch, and sporting an orange high vis vest, approaches and pushes me off the platform with one hand. Once again, I gently fall onto a lower rooftop resembling an orange bouncy castle. I take off in flight to move between and explore peculiar structures of limestone buildings under the sun, in a generally mundane, urban landscape. I see a pumpkin-shaped dome, not rigid but fluttering in a breeze like a tent cover, and as I attempt to land on its top, I end up falling through it to find myself at my previous address. I fall asleep ...

DREAM STATE

I'm engulfed in a vague plot that makes me believe I never moved and still live at my former house. Stacey appears to be doing something as she kneels on the green carpet of the hallway upstairs. Her buttocks are up in the air and she begins to twerk provocatively as she holds onto the banister. As I'm about to make love to my wife, I wake up.

WAKING STATE

I open my eyes and recall the whole experience. The TV is still on but there's no signal. I'm not sure if the text I read in the phase state was complete gibberish or partially laced with some meaning. Sometimes the words strike me as infantile, perhaps originating from a childish aspect in my subconscious, and the more I think about them the more associations grow rife. 'Wohey' could represent two sentiments: 'Woah!' in admiration of my wife and 'hey' to get her attention. Surmising further, 'Stryked' in reference to sexuality could mnemonically reflect that recently we went on strike from making love due to sore neck and backache on my part. The word 'try' is found amidst the apparent misspelling and seems to make a lot of sense when we will try to have sex when aroused despite concurrent discomfort.