I had my first lucid in about a month. :shock: This is my first since I actually started trying to have a lucid intentionally. I wrote down about everything I could recall. I'm sharing the experience in case it might help someone else.
I don't know if it was a DILD or a CILD because I was short on sleep and I had a couple chocolate brownies before going to bed. I also listened to this hypnotic track I made in an audio program. I read on Wikipedia that alpha waves occur in our heads "during periods of relaxation or sleep, with eyes closed but still awake". It said alpha waves are from 8-12Hz, so I made a soft hi-hat track at 480bpm (which is 8 beats per second). I relaxed and listened deeply to this before going to sleep. I don't know if it was the lack of sleep, the chocolate, or the alpha waves, or a combination of all three (CAWILD?). But I felt happy and in a good mood before going to sleep. I wasn't trying too hard to lucid dream and I wasn't overexcited about anything.
As I was drifting off, I remember watching the so-called "hypnotic imagery". It always seems to be random stuff, but this time most of them were actually entertaining to watch. I tried multiple times to enter the dream scenarios, but each time I would start to wake up. I eventually decided I would have to wait and take what I could get, then go lucid once I was in the dream.
Much of the beginning of the dream was fuzzy. I think I was going somewhere. I went to my old house in another state, but the floor-plan had changed some. I went to check out the bathroom, probably because I had remodeled it in waking-life, but the light wouldn't come on. Now that I think of it, this should tipped me off that I was dreaming, but the lights would always blow out in that house, so I didn't think about it. Actually, the changed floor-plan should have tipped me off, but I think I was still in the passive "I'll take what I can get until I'm dreaming mode."
When I left the bathroom, I found a bag of Starburst candy on the floor. I only ate a few, thinking I should save the rest for next time I come back to the house. Then I saw a piece of Bit-O-Honey candy and ate that. They were both delicious.
This is when it started to get weird. I was at some strange building, which I think was in a small town. I had the feeling that I was lost, trying to find my car. Perhaps this came from the fact that my car in waking-life is having problems. The sequence is hazy in the beginning, but at some point I was talking to my grandparents. I was telling them my story of how I was going to my old house, when I realized the old house was all a dream (not realizing I was dreaming then). I told them I didn't know which town I lost my car in, because I was dreaming the last time I was driving it. My grandpa was not impressed.
Again, at some point in this conversation I wondered off to this strange building I mentioned earlier. It was kind of the layout of a community building or a rest home, but it had a big parking lot full of cars and it was packed with all different types of people.
I remember sitting inside on a beanbag chair or something. There were lots of people around talking, but I was there alone and wasn't talking to anyone. A young girl on a couch facing away from where I was sitting turned around to look at me. For some reason she looked like a Wendy, so I asked her, "Is your name Wendy?" She smirked as if she thought I was hitting on her and replied, "You're not very good at this are you?" She then got up walked away acting frustrated and making some mean comments. I actually found her kind of attractive but remember thinking she was a bit too young to flirt with.
There were then several boring events that happened at this place and I don't recall the order of any of it. Most of it involved talking to strange people or my car. Often times I was trying to find my car or doing something with my car in the parking lot. I'm not sure why my car was such a big deal.
Then I start walking to the downstairs of this building. These two guys were walking behind me. One was older, about 40-50 and the other guy looked about 30-40. The older guy started walking closer. He had what looked like a thin-cardboard box (about the size of a box of 500 envelopes) heaping full of papers. He began bumping into me, pushing me with his box of papers as we walked down the stairs. I ignored him and tried to be polite. When we reached the bottom he was still intentionally bumping into me, pushing his box of papers into my back. As I finally walked away from the guy it occurred to me, "That's strange." I normally would never let someone push me around like that. Then I finally realized I was dreaming. I immediately went back and punched the guy in the face. He fell over. Then I punched his friend in the face. He fell over. He never bumped into me, but I think it was guilt by association. Then I punched this somewhat ugly older blond chick with a lazy eye in the face. I normally would never hit a woman, and I can't even remember where she came from or what she did, but I really thought she deserved it. Her right eye didn't seem to have a pupil and she just stared at me, so I think she had it coming anyway.
Then, somehow I ended up upstairs again. At some point, I ran into an old friend from college and this is almost where the fun began. Eventually, he turned into someone else, an unknown person. I don't even remember him having a face, but he was fun to hang out with. I was then downstairs again and I knew we were leaving this building. We admired how cool the basement was. It was unfinished and there were dozens and dozens of doors down this long hallway. Even though I knew I was dreaming, I was going with the flow, not changing anything.
When we got outside, it was cold. I snapped my fingers and alas, I had a nice warm coat on. "Where should we go?" I asked my new faceless friend. Before he could answer, I remembered reading an article about France and the increasing number of female sexual predators over there. We were then in my car driving up a hill faster and faster. In a single flash, ala Back to the Future, we were transported to some back alley in France. I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a wall in front of me.
When we got out of the car, it had turned into a purple Ford Escort (yuk!). There were a few stereotypical French people there, but they were laying around in some garbage in the alley. One of the guys started saying something to me in French, but I didn't understand. I recalled talking to my uncle about how French people hate Americans and basically everyone who doesn't speak French. I don't know if this is true or not, but I felt like we would be uncovered if I couldn't speak the language. I got another idea, I snapped my fingers and a Star Trek style com-badge appeared on my shirt. For those unfamiliar with the series, they act as universal translators. I said some phrase (don't remember what) and sure enough, the French guy laying in the garbage understood me and we remained undetected Americans.
For some reason, my friend thought it would be a good idea to disguise the car before we left the alley area, but he had a strange way of doing it. He sliced the car up into several pieces (not sure how he did this) and turned each piece into a low-profile used tire. When he was done, he had a huge stack of tires, but apparently he had a friend as well which I didn't know about and which he apparently forgot he left in the car. So some of the tires were all bloody from his slice-fest. He seemed upset about this. I thought about it for a second and then said, "No problem. We can just go back in time." Then I snapped my fingers again and everything rewound (like rewinding a tape with the screen still playing) back to when the car was still whole. I then saw a tall purple plastic container (like one you would put potato salad in) sitting among some junk in the alley. I snapped my fingers again and shrunk the entire car down to 3-4 inches and put it in the plastic container. After I put the lid back on, I poked some air holes in it so his friend could breath while we were gone. I never did see his friend.
Just then two white vans began to pull up. We didn't think much of them, but there was something slightly ominous about them. Thinking back, this may have been another Back to the Future association from the car transporting. Ironically, we now needed a car to go somewhere. I asked my friend "What should we drive." Immediately I pictured a black Lamborghini Diablo. Before I could say anything, he replied "A black Lamborghini Diablo!" So I snapped my fingers again, and sure enough, a sparkling clean shiny new black Lamborghini Diablo appeared before us and the vans.
I wasted no time getting into the car but my friend my was too busy playing with one of these two gas pump handles that was on the side of the car. I have no idea where they came from, but once I was in the car there were these two gas pump handles on the sides of the car, level with the rear-view mirrors but in front of them. Accordion-like fuel pipes seemed to extend from the engine to the handles which went back into the engine as if it was fueling itself. I thought they were cool in the dream, but my friend couldn't stop playing with the one on the right side of the car.
Before long, a biker pulled up and said "Wanna race?" It looked like a real-life version of that guy from the movie Waking Life who talked about lucid dreaming and 360 vision. Immediately, I dumped it into first gear and screeched off for a healthy start. I watched the biker as I progressed through the gears, second, third, fourth. The biker guy caught up with me at 60mph or so. He would pull ahead of me a bit, then I would pull ahead of him. This time I watched my RPMs, letting them rev up to the red-line before dumping into fifth. I finally got the lead. Although it doesn't make much sense, I could hear him trash-talking something like "You're not gonna win this one." I looked ahead. We were both blasting at over 150mph towards a huge wall. It slowly curved up like a half-pipe used for skateboarding, only it was about a mile high. We both shot up the half-pipe and flew up about a mile in the air. His bike soared down and crashed into the ground - it didn't look pretty. My Diablo somehow spun down and landed safely as I took off on the pavement again. It struck me as so weird that my mind did an instant replay in third-person from the distance. I could see the little black car from afar as it drove up the wall, flipped through the air, and then magically landed perfectly on all four tires like a cat.
At this point, the dream seemed a little too much like a Bruckheimer film and I felt my self slowly beginning to wake up. Realizing this, I was able to stop myself and float between the two states. At first I thought, 'I'm in France and I haven't slept with a single French woman'. Then I thought, 'If I stay in France, I'll forget all of this. I should write it down in case it will help someone else get back into lucid dreaming.' So here I am. I highly recommend the finger-snap method of dream control. It gives you control, while preventing you from accidentally creating something you don't want. Just imagine what you want to happen, then just snap your fingers. I hope you enjoyed the story and appreciate the good times with French women I sacrificed for you, because now I'm kicking myself.
Au revoir, du rêve voyageurs!
