Hovering on the Border

Last night, after suddenly becoming interested in lucid dreaming again, I decided I'd give MILD another go. So, before I fell asleep, I mentally repeated to myself "I will wake up after every dream, and I will remember it."

And it worked. I woke from a dream in which my friend Charlie and I were wandering around a poor neighborhood, using a mentally-disabled man (don't ask why; I have no idea) to steal a bunch of money from somewhere. As soon as I'd written this down in my dream journal, I lay back down, and imagined that I was back in the dream, only this time, that I was aware that I was dreaming.

For one reason or another, I decided that I would re-shape the dream. I don't know why, but I wanted to dream about a malevolent Artificial Intelligence. And so, after much imagining, I drifted off again.

I found myself back in the dream, in that same garage where Charlie and I were stealing the money. Mentally, I conjured my mother, and had her install a circuit breaker on the wall (apparently this was a necessary part of the whole A.I. plot).

Then, I began to influence the dream. Since there was no computer in that garage, I somehow made the wood paneling on one of the walls slide up, revealing an alcove in which the aforementioned computer sat. It spoke with that creepy kind of almost-but-not-quite-human synthesized voice (if you've played "Portal," the computer sounded exactly like GLaDOS). It threatened us, we tried to be heroic, and then, the dream sort of degenerated into senselessness. The computer produced a minion, some sort of very pale-skinned cyborg, but then randomly started insulting him. I can't remember what the computer said, but it resulted in the minion curtly saying "Yes, that's right...I'm sexually inhibited." I don't really remember the rest.

The strange part about the dream, though (and the reason for the title), was that, as the dream went on, I began to realize that I could feel both the dream world, and, to some extent, the real world. I still heard and saw what was going on in the dream, but I could feel the cold wind through my window, and hear a faint buzz of the reporter on the radio. I suppose my real question is: has anybody else ever had one of these strange, half-in, half-out dreams? If so, how do you keep the real world from interfering?

Last night and it was my first night to LD, second LD of the night. I was walking through my living room but yet I could feel myself laying in bed and knew that if I walked through my bed room door I would see me sleeping.

I've never conciously induced an LD, however as a small child DILDs occured quite frequently, and during the majority of them I was able to feel the bedcovers covering my body as I lay in bed while simultaeneously moving about in my dream. I think the best method for losing awareness of the physical world is simply to tell yourself to ignore it and be fully enveloped by your LD. However, if all else fails, you could try to summon up, for example, a howling wind to cover up any realworld noise pollution.

Benjamin