Halls of the Lost Dream Creatures
OK, first off, its gonna be a little tough for me to categorize my dreams as lucid or non-lucid. Its very rare for me to have a dream in which I don't have freedom of thought and self-awareness, so technically most of my dreams are lucid. But how immersed and in control I feel varies, and most dreams seem to start off with a little bit of deattachment, so I guess most of my lucid experiences would qualify as DILDs?
My most recent really cool experience was as follows:
VIVID, BUT MINIMAL SELF-AWARENESS -I'm walking with some people, not sure who they were, but they were my friends, and we're in some sort of underground museum which was built into a system of caves and ancient looking ruins. We come across a partly boarded up archway with descending stairs and tunnel, "KEEP OUT" and "CAUTION" are painted crudely on the boards. We slip through the boards, and that's when lucidity starts to kick in
the closer we get to the bottom. We're in an ancient ruin-like room, and the first thing I notice ahead is an animal that looks kind of like a cheetah in form, but with slick, reptilian looking skin and insect like features standing in a pool of water. At this point lucidity kicks into full gear, and I'm completely immersed in this room (it still gives me pleasant shivers), aware that I'm dreaming and trying to keep from getting too excited and frightened. Real sound is audible, as is a sense of atmosphere, aided by the water and dripping sounds, echos,phosphourescent plant growth, and draftiness. I look to my left and there's this swarm a triangular insects buzzing over the water,
and I hear one of my friends say "Come on, let's explore the tunnels". I turn and look towards the dark tunnels, dimly lit by the plants and strange animal sounds echoing, and, I don't know, I guess the reality of the depth and detail was just too real for me to handle so suddenly, and even though I knew I couldn't really be harmed, I turned around and bolted back up the stairs and things gradually became less "real" as I made my way back up to street level.
I was still aware that I was dreaming, but things were becoming more hazy and the town up on the streets had that flat, fake look. Then I got pulled up into the sky, but there wasn't any sense of feeling or continuity of vision, kind of "blurred", and everything became very abstract and 2D as I sat on some sort of floating shape while something was talking to me (not sure what it was, my memory just puts random things in place of it; a big floating head, some kind of cartoon character, a trumpet (?!). Although sound wasn't really audible anymore, I got the impression that I was being "counseled" about my fears. Makes sense, because when i woke up, all I could think of all day was how much I wish I had explored those tunnels.
I'm such a wuss.
