A Lucid Dream From Last Night

The lucid dream I am about to describe I had last night. I’m writing it to share my experiences, but hopefully you will also learn something from it that will help you have (better) lucid dreams. I describe what happens in the dream, but also the techniques I used to help induce the LD, to maintain it and to increase its vividness. I had naturally induced lucid dreams throughout my childhood, but they had been occurring less and less frequently, until I got back into obsessing about and researching LD’s a couple of weeks ago.

I would like to thank BillyBob_001 for his advice [Real Lucid Dreams (the Guide)] (can be found in 'the 'Lucid Experiences' forum) about increasing dream clarity.

The dream started with a whole non-lucid section, which I will not go into. When I gained lucidity, I was running around the perimeter of a lake, and for some reason it just ‘clicked’ that I was dreaming. I had been using the ‘Reality Check’ method in my waking hours. You need to get into a habit of regularly checking whether you are dreaming in your waking hours, and hopefully that habit will carry over into your dreams. Things that I try to associate with ‘reality checks’ in my waking hours include reading words and using any technology or device, because they are common dreamsigns. In dreams, technology is often difficult to operate, or wont work at all, and words will usually change if you re-check them.

Anyway, back to the dream.

When I realised it was a dream, I tried to stay calm, and thought, “OK, good. I’m lucid dreaming.” In many past dreams that I had become lucid, I became too exited and would wake up. I then looked closely at my hands and periodically rubbed them together to create the sensation of friction in order to try and centre myself. I tried to focus as much as possible on the minor details of my hands. As I did this, I thought to myself, “ I am dreaming. Everything I am seeing is constructed by my own mind.” I then looked up from my hands at the broader landscape. I was in an outdoor, swampy lake area. I focused on some nearby trees and the vividness of their colours.

I then briefly moved on to my other senses: the bird sounds I could hear, the smell of the lake and what I tasted (I put a leaf in my mouth because I couldn’t think of anything else to taste). When I was awakening all of my senses, I was trying to increase the vividness of the dreamscape. I was literally thinking of BillyBob’s post [Real Lucid Dreams (the Guide)] as I was checking off the list of my senses.

I then walked over to the patch of trees, through which a tunnel-like path went. The branches were dense and they grew over the path and met together to create the tunnel. The tunnel had a mystical bluey glow to it. I focused as much as I could on the vividness of the colour and the details of the leaves. I then walked through the tunnel and came out on the others side.

The thing I had been intending to do (in the waking world) when I next had a LD was to walk through a mirror, onto a stage with a huge rock music crowd and play some of my original songs with my band members to the adoring crowd (I am in a garage band).

When I came out of that tree-tunnel, I saw a number of recent subdivision housing projects nearby; some complete and some still under construction. To do my plan, I decided that I needed to go to one of those houses and find a mirror to go through. Of course, I realise now that I could have materialised one on the spot, but I didn’t think of that at the time, and probably didn’t have the level of control required to do that anyway.

I then saw a pelican walking my way (a type of large bird), and thought I should fly on its back to one of the closest of the houses to find a mirror (how random, I know). Also, I don’t know why I didn’t just fly myself, because flying is the main thing I have done in past lucid dreams, so I have done it quite a lot before. Anyway, I grabbed the pelican and sort of sat on its back as it began to fly. I directed it to fly over a high fence around the houses and drop me on the balcony of the nearest house. My control of the bird was not great, so it took a bit of effort to manoeuvre it as required.

When I landed on the balcony, I opened the door and began searching the house for mirrors. I kept on going up and up flights of stairs. I went up about 4-5 stories, although from the outside the house was only 2 stories tall. I soon found a mirror, and then centred myself by looking at my hands and rubbing them together and saying out load that I was in a dream. Next, I focused on the scene I wanted to create on the other side of the mirror in as much detail as possible: my guitar, the band members, their positions, the crowd etc.

I then climbed through the mirror. That was a cool and recommendable experience. The mirror face sort of ripped around me as I climbed through. But the changing scene trick didn’t work as well. I fell through another mirror into a rather plain, domestic room (without 100’s of cheering fans). There was, however, my guitar lying next to me in its case (so at least part of change of the scene worked).

In my frustration and disappointment, my vision rapidly degenerated, and I soon blacked out completely. I then tried ‘the spinning technique’ to try and remain in the dream. A sense of motion is usually the last sense to be lost when fading from a dream. Hence, creating a sensation of motion from within the dream may help to keep you in the dream. This was the first dream that I tried the technique, and it worked surprisingly well. It was very difficult to start with because even my sense of feel was really poor at the time. But once I started feeling the spinning sensation from my ‘dream body’, the feeling started getting stronger and stronger, and my control of it increased as well. When I was spinning, I had my eyes closed tightly because I was worried that if I opened my eyes I would find myself in my bed awake. A tip I have is that even if there is only a small chance that you are still asleep, you should still try the spinning technique, just in case. I thought that I had awoken, but tried the spinning technique because I was desperate to stay in the lucid dream, and it worked. Beware false awakenings!

Once I felt the spinning sensation strongly, I opened my eyes, and to my delight I was still in the same room as the one in the dream A managed to bring back the dream from a total blackout. It sounds like a lot of effort, but all of this spinning only took about 15-20 seconds. Now, not only was my guitar in the room, but so too was the other band members, who are good friends of mine. Even knowing that they were only dream characters, I still complained to them about my inability to make the scene change like I had wanted it to. When they were replying, I took a moment to appreciate the accuracy of dream characters to their real world counterparts. Remember that I was quite lucid at this point, so my observation has more authority than my thoughts in non-lucid dreams (where I accept even the most absurd things). So much of the personality of these friends of mine is captures in my memory.

I told them to continue reminding me that I was dreaming when I would see them in the next scene. Many people say that this technique works quite well to maintain lucidity. I then made another attempt to create my crowd of fans to play for. First, I centred myself by focusing on my hands and rubbing them together and also said to myself that I was dreaming. I then thought of the concert scene again, and stepped though the mirror.

The feeling of going through the mirror was pretty cool a second time as well. As I was climbing through, I heard music and the cheer of a crowd. But alas, when I got through it was just another room. I was again disappointed. I willed for the scene to change to the concert, and I got a couple of brief flashes of it, but they didn’t stick.

However, my band mates were there, so I tried to make the best of it and started playing in the room that we were in. My conscious mind played the guitar, and the other band members played the rest of the instruments, which of course is just my subconscious mind. I heard the others instruments really clearly, which was quite amazing.

I then started hearing distracting noises such as a power drill from outside, and a computer printer making copies in another room. I ran towards the sound of the printing, and I was now in my house. I knew I was in a dream and could get away with anything, so I kicked in the printer, much to the astonishment of my parents, who were in the room.

I then tried to return to the music, but I began blacking out again. I did the spinning technique again, which briefly got my vision back, but then I opened my eyes and I was in bed. I did a reality check to avoid a false awakening, but I was awake.

This is not the best lucid dream I have ever had. Even my typical flying around aimlessly lucid dream is probably more fun. This dream had a reasonable level of lucidity, but little control and nothing really interesting happened. The reason I wrote about this dream is because it gives an overview of LD induction and maintenance techniques, and it happened only last night.

My two main tips:
1. periodically focus on your hands and then use all the other senses to increase your lucidity and the vividness of the dream.
2. spinning worked surprisingly well for me to bring back a fading dream. For me, it is most effective when I have lost my vision. If I had used it when I could still see, it would probably be disorientating and disrupt dream continuity by randomly changing scenes.

I hope you found my dream helpful, or at least interesting. Thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment and/or add your lucid dreaming experiences.