lucid

Let's start from the beginning, I was born in Jan 7, 1999 and I had nightmares and bad dreams when I was really young. Floods and monsters were reoccurring themes. I remember some sleep paralysis that was pretty bad. I was bullied a bit in school in China and that was reflected by the lower dream quality, I think the handful of good dreams were as low as my six star rate overall.

When I moved to US near 2011~2012, I had Fish and Superheroes, my first truly potentially good dream, then I had My Heroine, my first 4/5 dream which I originally rated as 5/5. My first recorded lucid dream seems to be Defeated sister, but the date looks really wrong and I probably randomly assigned it. The true first LD is likely "Too easy, let's go back".

After Nice Meal With Sister, (2013) my best non-lucid dream, I had a year gap with nothing significant, except Table Turn, the first time I had turned around a nightmare, which was from lucidity. The "Great Adventures" hinted at the pattern of awesome dreams that would soon come next.

Within half a year after I watched Sixth Sense, I had a series of excellently unpredictable dreams. The real catalyst was SERENDIPITY, which was so incredible that it took three years to have another dream better than it (not including Enigma and OZ). I attempted WBTB sessions, MILD, dream journaling, etc. resulting in an overall 20% LD rate in that time. After only four months I had OZ&SHIOM, my best dream ever, which has not been beaten for 5 years, as a result of wanting to defeat SERENDIPITY.

After 2015 I was satisfied for the most part and mostly only LD'd a little. Nothing that impressive happened until mid-2016's with the best flying dream ever, SOAR. Within three months I was off to another small streak with DEJA VU, RISING AGAINST, X-Rated, and at a stretch SPORTSFECTION (induced on purpose). I like to nickname this the "silver age". [visualization: https://prnt.sc/tsfs9s]

2017 however was not a great year, I got split up with my crush Abby and I had no awesome dreams for three months in a row. I was therefore extremely goddamned lucky that I had ACTION! ROMANCE! my second favorite dream, in August. It was incredibly ground-breaking and even challenged Oz for its title. The rest of 2017 was relatively uneventful though.

2018 was a weird year. It started off with my worst dream, and one of the best. I still wasn't over the split up, especially since A!R! didn't help, and so that explains why I had "Angry Abby". However, what makes this really unusual is that the very same night I somehow, somehow managed to have A Piano Battle of Fire and Ice. I have a bunch of weaker awesome dreams like IT COULD HAPPEN and THE CONCERT, before one night I watched a comic-based music video and had "Badass Soul Mate", that let me regain a bit of my sense of self (along with 50% lucidity rate across two months).

Sadly, 2019 was/still is the worst year yet. I think the grades pressure got to me. It started off with a very promising True Path to Victory dream relating to my intuition, but nothing else matched it. After "Hidden Falls" I decided irl to go to a boot camp to reset the mindset. In boot camp I ironically still had two awesome dreams which were silly but nice -- dream quality actually went up which was cool.

In 2020, my mind was refreshed, and I built up a mystery involving Virsieras, the dream architect. Then, I had ENIGMA, an incredibly unique dream revolving around finding Easter eggs in past dreams. I had been determined to have at least one awesome dream each month and I've been successful so far. The year is looking good. The dream titled "L" in particular deserves a mention due to its incredibly strong gimmick. Had it not been for Enigma, "L" would've taken the cake for this year.

2021 was sadly not very eventful overall. The first half of the year I got busy with school, outside activities such as DND, internships, etc. however, I had played Genshin Impact extensively and influenced a non lucid dream rivaling the power of Nice Meal —AQUARIUS, an astounding display of flying red fish in space. With the dwindling of dream recall, only Alter Ego and Ingenious Gauntlet kept the awesome dream streak going.

The dream begins in New York City and I sense something out of my vision, so I go to check it out. Now then, it must be noted that NYC is actually the key area of my favorite dream, so it's natural to say I kind of incubated this.

I re-experience my best flying dream, SOAR, where I see the clouds trail by in the blue sky, feeling the wind blow past my face. I grab a cloud and feel it against my skin, with my previous shout "Sugoi" used as a powerful anchor.

This transition is actually kind of similar to the original SOAR. Although I didn't use an ability to help someone, the casual manner in which I twisted myself with the scene transition is almost like deja vu. Here is the original for comparison: "The blue peaceful field fills my vision, as the white fluffy clouds trail by, some big, but most of them long and thin. Gentle music begins playing in the background, a bit like a movie soundtrack (but soft enough to be unrecognizable). With the wind blowing in my face, I feel exhilarated. I feel a little bit nervous with butterflies in my stomach, however, as I tilt left and right, up and down, soon enough the pleasure of flying overcomes that nervousness. I feel free, I feel liberated, I feel fulfilled, I feel astonished. With the music slowly building upwards, the scene is so impressive I cannot help but exclaim: "Sugoi!!!""

So now you know more about SOAR. Let's move on.

The scene transitions and I lower myself down to the ground, where I am in CHARISMABBY, a dream where I hung out with my crush in Taj Mahal. With the sweet nostalgia remaining in the background, I see a golden diamond trinket in the middle of the hallway, and pick it up.

Now, CHARISMABBY is a remarkably short dream with not much to mention other than the fact that a country pop song played near the end, and I ran out of time for goals. However, I forgot to mention in the short version, it's a golden diamond because it represents my crush herself. In an excerpt of the dream, it says "Her laugh is contagious and her smile dazzles with light glinting off of her teeth, and with the light reflecting off of her hair too. Though I cannot remember an actual conversation, I feel greatly fulfilled merely by her presence and happiness." As you can see, it's clear that the dream and the girl was precious to me, that's why it was shown as me gathering a diamond.

With CHARISMABBY out of the way, let's talk about Beautiful Garden and New Telekinesis.

" I then see myself in a big beautiful garden from my dream New Telekinesis, and pick a flower from below. "

Okay, so this one's really short, and might actually be kind of a false memory, but I could've sworn this happened. The main reason why this is a little strange is that Beautiful Garden is a dream from really long ago, with details that imply I felt trapped, with a house filled with security and an overly strict mother sheltering her child. I used my powers to help her out and show off while standing in a field of flowers. However, you could argue that it's perfectly natural for this dream to be in ENIGMA, after all, SOAR displayed my freedom, and without the locked door shown, the red flower both represents a devotion to the new life, and could be a tribute to the previous scene about my crush.

This leads to another completely different scene: I'm in Ice, Ice Baby, where I had experimented with ice powers in a cold landscape. I see a hint of the northern lights...

Okay so Ice Ice Baby seems like your classic lucid dream, except I actually had a close call in the beginning as I was in camera view and had trouble stabilizing until I waited a while. The dream also kind of speaks volumes about my independence and my rational nature (as related to Piano Battle, but that's another matter entirely). What's curious is that in the original dream "Let it Go" and "The Greatest Show" started playing as a remix, while in ENIGMA it focused more on the visuals, with the next scene inferring the music that would happen in the background.

I transition this to complete darkness, resembling TRUE SYNESTHESIA, where I had seen music as colors. Here the colors flow very nicely, as if the song originally from CHARISMABBY had been transposed to this dream.

Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to recall the exact colors. I think it was a little of... red? Blue? Purple ish? Pretty normal stuff. With the songs from CHARISMA and Ice Ice not played directly, it's cool that this scene implies what they would look like. Overall, it's quite curious how all the re-experiences dulled down the sounds, but had visuals to compensate, and a mystery feeling overall. The soundtrack was kind of ambient, actually. It was brooding in the background, seemingly building up to this moment.

I become lucid and summon my dream guide to talk to her for a while. The rest of the dream is in darkness, but it is reaffirming the strength of the beginning.

So the ending is actually very unusual for a 6/5 dream, and still unusual even for a 5/5, and still yet somewhat strange for any dream. I've never really kind of "meditated" in the dark for what seems like half the dream, but that's what it seemed like occurred near the end. I just sat in the dark. Also, I forgot to transcribe here that I asked for permission to show the dream in different order -- because it didn't seem to matter at the time-- and she agreed. But I honestly am not sure what dream me was thinking. Yes, It seems somewhat logical that maybe I could describe this ending with SOAR, a powerful climax, but that would just lead to it being compared to the original dream. I believe that it started out with the strongest and best, so that the rest could complement well without having to compete (as such, why I don't list ENIGMA in my top 10, as it is a different kind of dream).

And I feel like TRUE SYNESTHESIA should indeed be the ending as it is here, as the rest of dream is dark just like the original. There's no point going bright again. Now, you can argue that you can swap around CHARISMA, Ice, and Garden, but it's actually pretty hard. The two slightly romantic scenes separated the two independence theme ideas, which is actually critical. If Ice happened right after Flight, it seems a strange transition as Ice is still a great exploration and dominance of power. Garden afterwards is also a little difficult, as I am standing completely still, making it a little too quick of a movement stop. In a way, ENIGMA is already perfect with the flying upwards gradually slowing down to a stroll to take the diamond, followed by picking up a flower, then moving to a landscape complete opposite where everything is cold yet still shows the same theme, and finally the dark conclusion.

(Just FYI, if I had these dreams in the order they occurred IRL, it would be: [2015] Garden, OZ, [2016] SOAR, CHARISMABBY, [2017] TRUE SYNTH, [2018] Ice)

Of course, the dream guide wasn't necessary to solidify the dream. But I feel like my question is actually quite interesting. I wanted to make ENIGMA even more mysterious than it currently was; I even made a puzzle IRL to correspond to the easter egg feeling of the dream. But it's clear from analysis, the dream was through and through perfect.

Alright, you're probably curious why OZ wasn't re-experienced and what that means, considering OZ is my favorite dream. Firstly, OZ's beginning is actually quite dangerous; I tried experimenting the bad side of that and it was not good. Cars were zooming by dangerously, and that is risky. Next, the main idea of OZ is breaking the limits of lucidity. I had asked my subconscious to : show me something hilarious, inspire me, go to the sea, go 20,000 leagues under, then ask Mastermind how he faked his death. Now, the first four could definitely be redone, so what's the problem? ENIGMA actually clearly has its own themes.

Except for the last scene, I am completely alone, and so each scene stresses my freedom, and my exploration of these past scenes. The funny scene was necessary to leave the dangerous cars behind and establish a strong break away, while ENIGMA does not need that. The Inspiration is also not needed as SOAR is more than enough. The big question is then, why not under the sea? This is quite difficult to answer. Online it says sea means "your calm mind, fluctuating emotions and internal strength", which doesn't exactly contradict anything from Enigma. My personal interpretation is that I already know my feelings, I'm already confident in myself. In the past, I've needed to seek forth my feelings and tackle them. However, by collecting the diamond in CHARISMA, the flower from Garden, it's clearly shown that I understand and accept these feelings from the past and their effect on the present.