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Waking life Dream Lucid dream Comment

I wake up, not to the sound of alarm, but naturally. Well, I didn't have any lucid dreams tonight, but my memory of my last dreams is very vivid, so I might as well stand up and write them down in my dream journal. Well, it's never vivid enough, so I stay in bed for couple of minutes, to remember my dreams. Slowly, one by one, three of them come into mind, but somewhere along the way my consciousness slipped. Once I remember them, I rise, turn on the computer, boot emacs, use the handy 'journal' command. Then I carefully, in detail, type down one of my dreams. I produce a whole screen of text, even check for spelling errors.

But as I consider writing down the next wall of text, I wake up. I'm as frustrated about lost dream journal entry, as I'm excited about false awakening, and I ask myself: what if this one is too? Reality check. Wow, it really is a dream! What will I do? I jump out of the window and decide to travel away as far as I can and practice flight. Well, I manage to float a little, but with very little control. And it did last for a while, so I managed to get pretty far.

And then I wake up again. I stand up, and then a great idea enters my mind: let's try to induce lucid dreaming from waking life! Sort of like WILD, but faster! Then I come up with a curious technique to do this: I start spinning around, then close my eyes, and in my mind speak the names of all senses, and as I do it, these senses stop showing my bedroom and start showing the lucid dream. "Sound", "Smell", "Touch", "Taste", ... "Sight". As I speak "sight", I enter a lucid dream inside a dream: I'm running on some road somewhere, it's not too vivid, but I know it's a dream and try for a flight. But I wake up, still spinning around in my bedroom.

So why not, I repeat the procedure. And then again. And maybe again. Thus, I had three or four short not-so-vivid but quite lucid dreams. WILDs from inside a false awakening

Then I wake up again, and find myself in sort of an office, which (though I've never been here before) I recognize as my own. It's a rich place, huge desk occupies the center, it's reared by two blackboards (well, greenboards actually), there are bookshelves and flowers, and of course, a computer on the desk. A large window overlooks a beautiful scenery with trees and water. But I'm concerned. Though place looks familiar, I decide to reality check. I count my fingers, and they are perfectly normal, but I have that intuitive sense nagging in my mind. What the hell? This is my house, isn't it? It's perfectly normal. But still this strange feeling... Let's do another check. If this is a dream, I can fly, right? I try and fail - I can only jump, and jump just a little, like one jumps in reality. But still... Okay, I know! In a dream you cannot read the same text twice, it always changes. And here I got two perfectly serviceable blackboards, all filled up with equations. I read one of the equations, memorize it, look away. When I look back, it's still there, the same. I guess the evidence is undeniable, this is real (if only I asked myself what day it is, what am I doing here, and what are my goals!.. that's a reality check I usually do, and not only does it induce lucid dreaming, it helps in real life to concentrate on important matters).

A man knocks at my door and enters. He gives me a broken nose spray, says that one of the servants sent it to me. I realize the thing is utterly useless, but take it with "thanks". The man leaves. A few seconds later I awake.

And I wake up fully. It's very odd, isn't it? I mean, I had a dream inside another dream - a recursive dream. And my mind perfectly remembered where and how am I supposed to wake up. And I utterly failed the reality check inside my would-be mansion. Are those kinds of things normal?