My First (kinda) Lucid Experience
Hello everyone!
I came upon this site after reading an article that linked to this page on my new favorite web page, Damninteresting.com. I followed a link at the end of the article and it brought me here. I spent some time on this site, reading about lucid dreaming, and was so intrigues, that I left stopped at Borders on the way to work to pick up a book for further reading. I had heard a little about lucid dreaming years ago, and have always been interested in the science of dreaming. Although I had never actually experienced a lucid dream before, I believe I may have come close a couple times while experiencing sleep paralysis (which had occurred quite a few times prior to my research into lucid dreaming.) In the last 18-24 months, I have had more dream recall than I have ever had in my life, as well as I can remember.
The book I picked up at Borders that day was Dr. Stephen LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. I flew through the book, and within a week, I experienced what I would describe as my first lucid dream experience.
Here's how it went down. I was laying down, watching TV after awakening earlier than normal, after maybe 5 hours sleep. My landlord was outside mowing my grass, and I dozed off to sleep. Upon sleeping, I began to dream about my roommate, and our house, and within this dream, the two of us were in the basement and for whatever reason, he shot a gun through a window in a room that doesn't exist. Although the fact that this made-up room had no place in my home didn't occur to me in the dream, the fact that it was dark outside did occur to me, since I knew that my landlord was outside mowing grass. I immediately realized I was dreaming and tried to shout out "I'm dreaming, I'm Dreaming!!!!" I found it very difficult to make any sound, but eventually succeeded and was able to yell out. Once I became lucid, I had the sense that I was floating next to my bed, although there was no visual, only audio. I can't describe what the sound was, but I definitely had a sense that there was some sort of sound in the background. A struggled to "open my eyes" to confirm that I was, in fact, floating next to my bed. As soon as I was able to see, I immediately awoke. I jumped up and jotted this in my dream journal.
As exciting as this was, I didn't see it as a huge breakthrough. What happened to me last night, however, was truly incredible.
I was lying in bed, again watching TV, about to fall asleep. I had been out on my couch with my girlfriend watching a movie, and had fallen asleep and woken up a few times. My roommate came home from the bar and had company, so the two of us went to bed. I watched TV for about an hour and turned it off to go to sleep. For some reason, the idea of inducing a LD occurred to me, and I turned over on my stomach and lid there thinking about it.
Mind you, I am no expert on WILDs (if I am using the correct terminoligy here,) or on LDs in general. I just remembered reading about trying to stay awake while concentrating on becoming lucid, so that is exactly what I did.At some point, I began concentrating on bringing up images, and soon it began. I began to feel this intense buzzing in my head and as it began, the images began. At first it was random faces, and they were only partially visible. I began to concentrate on bring up specific people, which proved to be impossible. I tried concentrating on my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend, my other ex-girlfriend... I kept awakening, but was able to immediately repeat what I had done before and eventually decided to just try to make anything appear, which I was then successful at. Random women kept appearing to me, so I decided these random women should go ahead and be naked as well, which a couple of them were. After a couple of the random women appeared, I awoke with sleep paralysis, which for the first time didn't completely freak me out. I remembered reading that awakening with SP can allow you to immediately regain lucidity, I concentrated on doing just that. Suddenly, I felt a very uneasy presence in the room. As soon as this sense came over me, I felt as though something grabbed my leg. This feeling was so unnerving that it gave a me a chill just to recall it as I write this. Moments later, however, I was asleep and dreaming. I found myself in a big, rustic, old-west style building. Before me was a large set of stairs, and it immediately occurred to me to do reality check, so I decided to go ahead and try to fly up the stairs instead of climbing them. I have done this many times while awake since reading LaBerge's book, and of course, it never works. This time, however, I took to the air! It was easily the most amazing thing that has ever happened in my life. (chills again) I soon found myself reaching the beams around the ceiling and began to get scared of the impact, but then I remembered that it was just a dream, and that I would just fly right through it, which I quite easily did. After flying through the roof, I was then sort of hovering over the front of the building, looking down upon the street. It was a nice cool evening, and I could see the reflection of moon in the water just beyond the street and down a cliff. I flew down and dove into the water. At this point I think I lost some of my lucidity, however I do remember flying back out of the water and up into the clouds.
I don't remember if I awoke at this point or not, but I have a sense that I had another lucid moment at some point again during the night, because I remember, vaguely that in perhaps a dream, that I either pinched or poked myself, and was amazed at the sensation of pain, even though I was dreaming.
I'm pretty sure that the sequence of these events has gotten mixed up a bit, due in part to the fact that every time I woke up during this eventful night, I didn't want to get up and write in my dream journal, fearing I would lose an opportunity at lucidity.
Needless to say, I can't wait to get back to bed, to see what tonight brings me. I did write all this down in my journal this morning when I got up, but I had to share this with someone who wouldn't look at me like I had to heads.
Thank you, Mike
