Daleth
Lurker

Intense but non-lucid dream this morning in which I attended the rehearsal of small, intimate play that had a ridiculous number on onlookers. A celebrated Portland actor was the star — she was playing a cancer victim or something like that — and she was totally surrounded by spectators, to the point where she was nearly hemmed in.

Seated in front of me was a popular area political commenator, who was whispering to one of the producers; she was there was a consultant regarding life in rural Oregon. (In waking life she’s from San Diego!)

At the break there was this big conference with the creative team, of which I was one, serving as the production’s dramaturg. There had been an earlier workshop of the production with a different team, and they were present and apparently had a big stake in the show’s outcome. I was holding the floor about different aspects of the process, and these people were at pains to show off their prior knowledge. It was all going fine — I was able to keep a decent balancing act going in which their input was accounted for yet we were still able to move forward — but this was also a bit of a strain, and I was glad when I woke up and could leave the project behind.

Because so many people report that they got their first lucid dream while taking a nap, I decided to try that route today. I started by taking about a half hour to do some induction work—progressive relaxation, primary center stimulation, binaurals, etc.—and then listened to William Buhlman’s chakra guided meditation. Noticed going into the meditation room that this was at 3:59 pm. But I only got as far as Bill asking me to envision the root chakra when apparently I dozed off.

I didn’t know until I got to a point in a dream where I was going back to my car. By the car on the trunk side, a young man and woman I didn’t know where talking. When they saw me coming, the young woman pressed herself onto the closed trunk so I would have more room to pass, which was silly; better to have moved out of the way altogether, of course. Rather than participate in that, I walked about the front of the car and let myself in with my key.

Once I was seated, I realized the driver’s side window had an enormous crack in it. I ran my finger along the crack, which revealed the whole window was now loose in its frame. My car must have been broken into! In that same instant, I noticed the radio was playing and the cognitive dissonance of it all made me feel something like an electric shock. Simultaneously I remembered that it was all okay, this wasn’t my real car—and I think I must have been on the verge of realizing this was a dream car. My body began coursing with energy. But instead of going lucid, I began to see a familiar set of images that I associate with hypnogogia, in which I’m seeing something like an Persian carpet except that the patterns are actively moving across my field of vision.

Unfortunately at that point I had become aware of my body again, and the whole experience just evaporated. I looked at the clock and it was 4:51, so I’d been snoozing for nearly an hour when this happened. This may not seem like much, but I’m really glad for it; in three months of trying to have a lucid dream, this is the closest I’ve come. I figure I was either semi-lucid, or lucid for just a couple of seconds.