lucid

I dreamed about a cop who looked a little like one of the people I work with (but not really), and he was harassing a woman about her ID card. She'd had her ID stolen, and it was a tribal ID, and the cop was giving her trouble over it not being a valid ID while both of us argued with him that it was. I was particularly irritated since the person that the cop reminded me with would never be such a jerk. Eventually, we convinced him, and he recovered the ID, which had been discarded in a parking lot.

I kept waking up and dozing because I was cold. I finally woke up completely and put a warmer shirt on and turned the thermostat up. I tried some visualization exercises, but fell back asleep.

I don't remember much about my dream, but someone was throwing a party, and there were 3 rooms, and each had a different activity in it. One of them was scrabble, but they were using 5 scrabble boards all at once, and people would keep letters they "won" by spelling words with them. One guy had won a lot of letter tiles and had built a tiny tile city out of them. I recall there being furniture in the room in the most awkward places, like a desk that was just sitting in the middle of the room.

I wake up, back to sleep, again visualizations. I'm frustrated because they haven't been working well the past 2 nights.

I dream that I am eating an apple, and it is delicious. It's huge, the size of a grapefruit. It's soft and juicy, and it's purple inside. I somehow know I am in an alternate dimension on an alien planet, and wonder if the seeds will grow new apple trees if I discard or plant them here. I try to convince another dream character (a recurring character, sort of a witch or sorceress) that she ought to eat some of the apple.

Wake up. Lie on my back and try to relax. I'm making some progress with visualizations and then I snore and startle myself. Ooops. Back to square one. Ok, time to turn on my side so I don't snore again.

I'm visualizing and dozing off and bitching to the wizard-cat (another recurring DC) that I'm frustrated with how things are going this morning. We are both drinking coffee out of mugs. I figure that maybe if I hold a conversation, it'll help draw me in. It's actually starting to work, detail is starting to creep into things (but it's still all very hazy and not at all real or anywhere near a dream). I sniff my coffee but instead of smelling like coffee, it smells spicy-sweet. Suddenly, out of nowhere, instead of the dream gently forming around me I'm fully lucid and the mug is completely real. It startles me so badly that I drop the mug and wake up.

There's a weird interlude before I fully wake up where I'm trying to find my arms and they're invisible. I know I'm dreaming, but at the same time I'm not sure, and I'm also half awake, so it's more like a weird semi-OBE than a lucid dream. I finally manage to actually move my arm and wake myself up.

Naturally, I'm irritated. I sigh and work on visualizations again. I explore an imaginary room. I'm in the great room of the cottage near the fireplace when I start to slowly ease into sleep. I'm sitting in front of the fireplace, wondering why there's a fire going and logs in the fireplace, but there's no pile of wood. I reach behind myself, produce some logs, and set them in the bin next to the fireplace. There's suddenly a desk in the middle of the room, the one from the scrabble dream, for pretty much no reason at all. Unfortunately, I lapse into unawareess.

After a gap in time I'm on a bus. I realize that it's almost a completely fully formed dream, but it's so thin and I'm so close to being awake that if I make the "push" that I need to make it super-real (i.e. feel like reality rather than a super vivid visualization) I will probably wake myself up. It's all very flat, like watching a scene rather than being in it. There is another DC there, a sorceress, but she flickers and turns into the warlock character (recurring DC). He is a smart-ass but generally helpful when it comes to gaining lucidity. The bus flickers and fades. I wake up and doze. I am now in some sort of weird geometric environment. Everything is made of white square tiles but it's also like something out of Escher. Warlock DC is there with me, silently walking with me through the scenery. Again, it is close to clarity but not really "there". Instead of trying to brute-force it and try to push through the membrane of the dream all at once to bring it into full focus, I dive to the ground and start running my hands and face on the carpet (that wasn't there a moment ago). I can't make anything focus or make it clear, the sensation is a lot like being really drunk. I go through a door and try to will a scene change even if the dream's not fully formed, hoping it will be easier that way. The room only half-changes, and everything is still white. I rub my hands together, hoping to make things more vivid, but it doesn't really do anything. I get frustrated and wake up.

Non-Lucid: Rat Circus
Prior to my lucid, I had a regular dream. In it, a bunch of hamster, mice, and rats took care of a bunch of human babies that lived inside of an aquarium. Somehow, something happened and the aquarium was contaminated with radiation. The rats were distraught, since a hazmat team had sealed off the aquarium. They managed to save all but one of the babies.
The aquarium was in an apartment that one of the rats owned. For some reason, some other rats (and a mole? I can't remember) dug up his garden. They would do this by digging holes under it at night and grabbing vegetables by the roots. The mole could also turn into a sort of sentient gas if he needed to.
Anyway, after the whole aquarium baby fiasco, another group of rats decided to build a tiny circus in a corner of the parking lot. There is sort of a time lapse sequence as the circus is built and illuminated, until there is a bustling rat city built around it. I woke up bewildered. I have weird dreams, but that one is pretty up there.

Lucid: The Cottage:
I settled back into bed and did my relaxation exercises on my back. Once I had begun working on my trance, I very slowly rolled onto my side and began visualization exercises. As with the prior night, I began the exercise where I explore my cottage (a location I have been "building" as a placeholder to get kicked back to, rather than something like the void or my bedroom or a stupid laundromat in Nebraska).

As I continued the visualization slowly gathered intensity. Lucidity actually snuck up on me on this one, since I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn't notice my body falling asleep, and the change was so gradual that I didn't realize the dream had fully formed until I looked around and realized that I was actually standing in a hallway rather than imagining that I was standing in a hallway.

I decided to explore in earnest. The floors were polished wood, sort of a dark honey color. I decided that I needed to find a mirror so I could reinforce my lucidity. I turned to my left and went through a door.

I found myself in a small alcove right before you enter the great-room, and there was a small wooden table against the wall, of the sort you would put in an alcove. It was dark wood, with turned table legs, and on top of it was a porcelain bowl with potpourri in it. Above it was an oblong oval mirror with a baroque-looking gold frame. This wasn't exactly what I'd envisioned (the furniture was a little more elaborate and fussy than I'd normally pick out). They both looked like antiques, though, so maybe it was the antique-lover in me.

Anyway, when I looked in the mirror, I saw that I was wearing a green-gold bodice with a cream colored chemise and green skirts. My hair was chin-length, and it was red, but it looked like I had a bad dye job. I laughed at how bad my hair looked and made some faces in the mirror before reminding myself that I didn't want to get too fascinated by mirrors again.

I went into the great room. The walls were white plaster. The floor in front of the fireplace was stone. The fireplace itself was made of irregular stones, fitted together. The fireplace had moved from where I initially imagined it. I decided to find the DC I'd been looking for (because I have some questions for them) but I didn't see them. I went through a door to my right, where there was a small den, but he wasn't there. Since the den also connected to the kitchen area, which led back into the great room, I decided that I would simply wander around the cottage in circles until he did appear. Lo and behold, on my second lap, there he was.

He looked different from the DC I recalled, far different, so I was a little irritated. I couldn't decide whether or not he actually was that DC. For one thing, he had very short hair, and it was a chestnut color rather than ash blond, and in sort of a faux-hawk. I told him that he didn't look the way I expected, and asked him to at least change his hair.

He responded, "I'm a warrior and I don't want long hair. It gives my enemies something to grab in combat." I actually couldn't argue with the logic of that, to tell you the truth. I took my glasses off and put them on again (made things blurry and then clear again, basically) and every time I did this, his face would shift a little bit. His eyes were kind of a dark blue-green. I still couldn't decide if this was the DC I wanted, and how much I could rely on his answers to any questions I asked him, so I decided to wander around the cottage a little more.

I crossed through the great room and opened the door. Rather than the snowy forest from before, or the temperate rainforest I was expecting, instead the rolling landscape was more like the Shire. It was bright and sunny out, and the sky was a pretty shade of blue, with white puffy clouds. There were some hanging planters full of flowers hanging over the door and windows. They were red and blue, and I don't know what kinds of flowers they were, but they spilled over the sides of the planters. I smelled them, but they didn't smell like much of anything.

I decided to go find Grimalkin (he is a cat in a wizard hat). I figured he might be in the kitchen, because he likes hanging out there. I went into the kitchen, and he wasn't there. I could feel that the dream was drawing to a close, so I wanted to find him quickly.

"Grimalkin?" I called. Immediately, as if in reaction to my attempt to summon him, the dream lost intensity. It became a ghost of what it had been. I tried to restore the intensity of the dream, but didn't have much luck. I could already feel that I was on the verge of waking up, so I let it go.

I woke up and looked at the clock. I'd slept a solid 8 hours, although my alarm wouldn't go off for another 30 minutes. I tried to doze, but my brain seemed to have decided that it had had enough sleep for the night, so I got up and made coffee.

My dreams are mostly jumbled and nonsensical.

I dreamed that I found a DVD case. It was for a Disney movie. I was worried I was ruining a collector's item, but unwrapped it anyway. There was a children's book inside, sort of a young adult's book, that was missing the first three chapters. It looked like they'd been ripped out. The subject matter of the book was Arthurian legends.

I opened another DVD case, and Minnie Mouse hopped out. She got into a fistfight with a Disney Princess (Tiana) over who was the best. Tiana won. Minnie was still pissed off over getting her ass kicked, so she challenged me to a duel to the death. I refused to fight a cartoon mouse, though. I picked the book back up and now the chapters were back.

I woke up, scratched my head over the dream, and lay back again. I woke up and dozed a few times while trying to visualize. I try the cottage from last night - no luck. While I am doing the visualization, I actually lose awareness as I fall asleep, but I must still be thinking about it, because as soon as a dream starts it's me sitting down in front of my laptop. I manage to link this to my prior visualization and realize that I am not actually awake, because the last thing I was doing was exploring an imaginary cottage, and I never got out of bed, but I am not in the cottage either, so I realize I am dreaming.

I forget to stabilize. Instead, I dive into the laptop screen, trying to use it as a portal, but everything goes gray. Not black... gray. I wander around in the grayness. I can see vague forms, and I can feel my feet shuffling along the ground while I try to conjure up a dreamscape... I'm afraid to open my dream-eyes because I'm worried I'll wake up. I open them, and I do. Still... it wasn't pitch blackness, so I guess I'll call that progress.

As I went to sleep tonight, I recited a mantra, "I will stabilize". I also firmly fixed in my mind that as soon as I began dreaming, I would know that I was dreaming.

This worked. I spent some time drifting, and then a dream began. I was lying in bed, and the lights were on. I looked to my left. There were 3 tiny, glowing playing cards floating in the space above my head. I thought, "Yes, I'm dreaming," and snatched the playing cards from where they were floating. It's hard to explain, but the cards were a cue for me - it was specifically seeing the cards that made me lucid. I don't remember what suites the cards were, only that they were 1/4 the size of normal playing cards, they were glowing, and they immediately induced lucidity.

I got out of bed, and my bedroom was very different and not at all like my real bedroom. The carpet was worn out, and an ugly shade of tannish orangy brown. My "dream room" carpet is always this ugly color, for some reason. The door was in the wrong place, and led to a hallway that doesn't exist, and there was no furniture besides my bed. The bed was a twin, but in real life, I have a full. I said, "Stabilize!". I went to the door and tried to visualize that as soon as I went through it, I would be in a rainforest. I tried very hard to convince myself of this.

When I went through the door, everything was dark. I saw shadowy forms that hinted that I was in another room. I got frustrated and lost lucidity.

I woke up, grumbled, and tried WILD. I got past the initial wave and felt as if I was sinking into my bed. I sat up out of my body. I tried to open my eyes, but it was very hard, and I felt like I was opening my physical eyes. I was really tired and had work in the morning, so I gave up on it and lapsed back into unawareness. I dreamed that my head had made a huge dent in my pillow, so now my pillow had 2 lumps of stuffing on either side and nothing in the middle. I tossed and turned (in the dream) and tried to make it comfortable somehow.

I dreamed I was shopping at a store. I've never been there in my waking life. There was a desk on a top shelf that I was interested in - it was $50, and I thought it would make a good room divider. But my cell phone was malfunctioning badly. The screen came off (how?) and then it got hot to touch and melted. I got some of the melted screen on my finger, and it burned me. I kept thinking about how frustrated I was that all of my money now had to go toward buying a new phone. I needed a smartphone, too, so it was going to be expensive.

I woke up. I tried some visualizations. I visualized a room full of dolls, where each doll represented a DC I knew. I visualized putting a doll on the floor and making it grow to full size. (I was not asleep at this time). I began drifting off, but the visualization didn't completely take hold, and I didn't become lucid. Instead, the room became the room of a woman with a group of really odd friends. My dream followed their antics, but I don't recall any specifics on what they were.

Review:
Dream clues:
- Playing cards (instant lucidity)
- My pillow doesn't have stuffing. It's a memory foam pillow.
- Unfamiliar store, without recalling how I got there
- Malfunctioning phone (malfunctioning electronics)
- Spectator perspective

Edit: Believe it or not... I actually figured out the playing cards while I was riding the train home. In my dream, they were glowing like they were lit up LEDs. On the train ride home, there's an installation where LED playing cards flash by the train windows. I tend to stare out the window at them because I'm bored and they're something to look at... which means I'm also staring at my reflection. So, since mirrors instantly make me lucid (for some reason), apparently my brain linked the playing cards with my reflection strongly enough that just looking at a card makes me lucid.

1. I dream I am working at a nursing home. I take care of an old lady, and take her to a doctor appointment, but forget to actually take her in to see the doctor. I send her off (to somewhere) and then remember that the doctor hasn't actually seen her, and start worrying that even though she is healthy she may have health problems that aren't so obvious... but there's no way to fix it without getting in a lot of trouble.

2. One of my less comfortable OBEs. I partially woke up, but my body was still 'paralyzed' and I was half asleep. I tried to settle down and catch onto a dreamlet or something. That isn't working and I'm not entirely lucid, so I try to sit up out of my body. My body "sticks" to me like it's glue, so I try to roll over out of it. I feel like I am tipping and sinking backwards into the bed. I am in the "wind tunnel". I start to panic, and after a lot of flailing around and struggling, I lapse back into unawareness.

3. I dream that there is a huge snowstorm and the whole city has shut down. The city I live in is one I've never seen before in my life. I go outside and start trying to shovel snow with everybody else.

4. I dream I am in a castle. I am moving through room after room. The floor has diamond floor tiles in various brown colors. I can get on top of the walls and run along them, and jump down into other rooms. As I am crossing a hallway, I see a mirror. Mirrors always make me lucid - I approach it, see my reflection, and 'push' into lucidity. Unfortunately, I'm sleeping too lightly, and it wakes me up (not a false awakening).

I grumble and roll over. A few minutes pass. Someone lightly knocks on my door, twice. I ignore it because if my brother is trying to wake me up on the morning I have a day off work, he's being a jerk.

Someone knocks on my door again, a little louder, twice.
I say "what?" but there's no answer. I get up and open my door, but nobody is there. I hear someone in the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and ask my roommate, "Did you knock on my door?"
She says, "No, I wouldn't do that."
My brother is asleep... my other roommate isn't home. My roommate verified that she was, in fact, making breakfast, and that I did ask her if she knocked on my door. Even though it was a hypnopompic hallucination, it still sounded very real, and was pretty creepy.

Review:
Last night was semi-productive, I guess. I'm having more lucids, but the quality has gone down. I don't think it's because I'm getting "worse" at lucid dreaming, so much as I am having a lot more lucid dreams lately and the quality will slowly improve again.

When I say OBE, I don't really mean that I believe it's an actual out of body experience. I mean that it's a specific kind of lucid dream I have where it feels like I am rising/rolling/whatever out of my body, and either end up in the void or end up in a facsimile of my bedroom, while my "body" remains in bed. I don't believe anything paranormal is going on, it's just a really specific kind of dream with a really specific feeling... and a specific set of challenges that I still haven't overcome.

Clues I was dreaming:
- I don't work in a nursing home
- We don't have blizzards where I live
- I don't generally wander around castles

I dreamed about abandoned, crumbling, overgrown overpasses and train tracks through the wilderness. I clung to the bottom of one, like monkey bars. Some friends and I went into the wilderness to explore, but we were afraid of getting lost. We ran across another group of people. In our explorations, we cut through a lot of grass and underbrush, and I was worried about the impact we were having on the landscape.

I then dreamed that I got a job at a shop in a historic section of a city. It was a job at a candy shop, and it was partly commission-based. My mother didn't want me to take it. She said the area was "too dangerous".
I was at the outside cafe section of a nearby restaurant when I went lucid. The restaurant was inside of a converted Victorian style house. When I realized I was dreaming, I immediately went inside to look for a specific DC I really wanted to see. I didn't see him. Instead, there was a waiter who was in his late 30s but mostly bald. I covered my eyes and tried to imagine that he was the DC. When I uncovered them, he had changed a little bit; his face had morphed, and was a little blurry, and tufts of hair were coming out of the side of his head, and he looked a little... melted. I got very frustrated.
I recall that my surroundings were hazy. I recall the restaurant having a lot of dark wood in its decor, and being a fine dining/upscale sort of place.

Review:
I think I went lucid because I realized the area I was in was unfamiliar and I did not recall how I got there, and this was a cue that I was dreaming. I have also just randomly gone lucid a lot out of "habit" - I am used to habitually questioning reality, now, so I also do it while I am dreaming as well, which I suppose is the whole point of ADA. This has led to a gradual but measurable increase in lucid dreams. Three years of practice are finally paying off.

For anybody who is just getting started, remember this: it took a year and a half of trying before I had my first lucid dream.

I need to work on remembering to stabilize and observe before trying to do anything. I've been frustrated at the haziness of my lucids lately, but I also have not been observing and stabilizing as I ought to. I need to work on vividness and stabilization. I miss the beautiful landscapes of my first few lucids... I've stopped observing and gotten too impatient, and it's backfiring.

I try too often to exert direct control. I think my attempt to change the waiter may have been a tad too direct. I still wouldn't call it a complete failure - I did succeed at partially changing his features.

Things I could have done:
- Asked the waiter to seat me, sat down at the table, and waited for the DC I was trying to find to show up at the time we'd agreed on.
- Continued to look for the DC in the crowd.
- Looked for the table that I knew the DC was waiting at.
- Used the restaurant doorway to go somewhere that I knew the DC was at (scene change).
- Reached behind myself and felt for the DC's hand.

So, tonight will be another night - and hopefully, another lucid. I need to remember to use my environment to my advantage.

I have a dream that there are basically zombie ghost things trying to get into my house. Somewhat like Minecraft or Terraria, I keep building better houses to keep them out. My mom and brother are there. It's a nightmare, but it's goofy. Something busts through a window with its arm and is groping around, but it's a silly cartoony looking arm.

Then, I'm having an actual nightmare. The tone is just creepy and foreboding. Something about tunnels beneath the city, and scary things that might be in them... that kind of nightmare. There's a character who's investigating it. I don't recall his name. There's also a shrine that goes down into one such tunnel, but it's unattended and has fallen into decay.

I go semi-lucid. I realize I'm dreaming, but am not fully "there". I see the main character descending into a tunnel - I decide to follow him and use the darkness of the tunnel to do a scene change. I leap into the air and fly full speed into the tunnel after him.

Instead, as I descent into the tunnel, I hear a buzzing roar and ghostly voices. One voice in particular is very loud. It keeps saying "HELP ME, ALEX". It's so loud and sudden and insistent that it rattles my nerves and startles me into non-lucidity.

I'm buffeted around in the tunnel and the buzzing, ghostly voices continue. I continue flying though the tunnel. I regain lucidity again after a brief while, and hear the same voice yelling for help. I still have no idea who the hell Alex is, though.

When I realized I was not going to be able to regain control of the dream, I woke up, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I dreamed I was in my old city, riding the bus around to get to work, but I couldn't remember where I worked and I was getting very frustrated.

This dream makes more sense if you know that I had minor surgery done on Wednesday.

I dreamed I was back in the back room of my aunt's old house. It was a very old house and the room was more like an add-on than anything. The floor was basically toothpaste-colored linoleum, and it was set about 5 feet lower than the rest of the house.

Everything was very dark and very dimly lit.
Anyway, for whatever reason, there were urine samples set out. I don't know why.
Also, my stomach and torso were cramped up (they probably actually were and it made it into my dream) so I was trying to lie down on the cool linoleum to make them feel better.

Then for some reason, I realized I was dreaming. There was no clue or sign, I just suddenly thought, "I am dreaming" and realized it was true. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the dark.

I tried to punch through the void, but nothing happened. I tried to feel my way through it, and I felt the wall of a corner. At the time, I thought it was really the wall and I was feeling the waking world through my dream, but I now know that wasn't true. My bed isn't near a corner; I'd have fallen out of bed getting to one. This wasn't quite a false awakening, but it was sort of like a quasi false awakening.

I backed away, worried I had actually felt the wall of my bedroom through my dream. I made a hop and tried to fly, and I was hovering, but things were still dark. I tried to punch through the void, but it was like punching air.

I tried to imagine a temperate rainforest (a trail in my favorite park), and I imagined it as vividly as I could, but it did not appear in front of me. I got a glimpse of a tree, but it was all cartoony and not anything like the park trail.

I think part of what I need to overcome is understanding that as soon as I have visualized something, it is. I don't have to visualize it to try to make it "appear". As soon as I have visualize it, it exists. Period.

I know this is a hurdle I may have trouble overcoming for a while, and the Void continues to be an issue.

I woke up and my whole torso had cramped up. I was sleeping in a weird position because of it, so my shoulder also ached.

I had 3 lucid dreams on the 20th. I actually had ONLY lucid dreams on the 20th:

1. I don't recall what I was doing prior to the first dream, but I "came to" in a room near a mirror (mirrors tend to make me lucid - something about looking at myself). I looked in the mirror after attaining lucidity and thought "I don't look like that!"
I closed my eyes and forced my face to conform to non-dream reality, and looked again. This time I actually looked like myself. I inspected my face, and decided I was satisfied.
I tried the "mirror trick" where I close my eyes and pretend a DC is behind me, then check my reflection. I was trying to summon Warlock, because he's a lot of fun to hang out with (lucid or non), but he wouldn't show up. I decided it was because he was busy, rather than it being due to a lack of dream control.
I decided it would be fun to make myself into a cartoon, but the dream was fading. I tried lifting my hand to my face, so I could inspect it and try to make it cartoony, but I felt my non-dream hand move. Interestingly, I "felt" myself bring it up to my face, BUT I know I couldn't have moved it that much with that much coordination. The "black fog" was setting in, and I think it was actually an illusion of moving my non-dream hand created by my mind because it was expecting the dream to end.

I woke up, rolled over, went back to sleep.

2. I dreamed I was in a Cadillac being driven by Buddy from Six String Samurai, and I think the kid was in the back seat. We were trying to find something, but the road was blocked off, so instead we went down a road that said Do Not Enter. I voiced my objections, but we kept going. We were on an overpass very high off the ground. It curved sharply, and was a very smooth and even light grey color, with no highway markings. We were going ~120 mph. I expected us to go over the side of the overpass... so naturally, we did. As we were falling, I realized I was dreaming. I tried to stop the car in mid-air, but when I attempted to exert control, everything went black. I woke up irritated.

I decided to try WILD:

3. I made it through the "wind tunnel", which tends to be uncomfortable.
I was hanging in the void, 3D darkness, aware that I was asleep, but there was no "Stage" to enter.
There were little ribbons of color sort of sparkling but not really sparkling in the void because there was no light. Think of it as being different colors of black, like an Aurora Borealis that is all black. It's black, but it's a color - red, or green, or blue, but with no light. Colored darkness. It drifts.

I saw curls of gray-white "smoke", more physical than the rest. I tried to form it into a dream, played with it, tried to make it into something, but all I could do was manipulate it a bit and blow it around.
Eventually, after playing with the "smoke" for a while, I got bored and slipped back into non-lucidity.

On the 21st:
I dreamed some people (a husband and wife) wanted to buy a timeshare. They were both kind of chunky, with black hair. They spent $1200 just to tour the place, and it was not what they were promised. They were out $1200 and very disappointed. It was basically kind of a crappily built poured-cement condo dressed up a little bit. The mall and pool area required you to cover your head with a towel when you wanted to be there. There were people there (a few) but they were oddly emaciated, looked sketchy, and weren't doing much.

I dreamed I was at a pizza place... sort of. There were children who spoke Old English learning modern English with some sort of weird alphabet system, and machines that made snowballs, and everybody was having snowball fights. Then I went into the school, which became a pizza place. Then I was at a coffee/tea shop that only served tea that was friendly to your kidneys and had a lot of info on kidney health and which teas were good or bad for you. I had a string hanging from my mouth that was attached to my gums somehow, or part of them. I wanted to pull it off but was afraid I'd hurt myself and it would hurt.

The pizza/tea place had tables with umbrellas, even if it was inside, so I stole one and dragged it outside. I was in kind of a strip mall place. I went out to the bus stop but it was pouring, so I dragged my table/umbrella with me. The bus was already passing as I was getting to the stop, so I waved my arms and yelled so the bus driver would see me.

As I stepped onto the bus, I became lucid.

I didn't do much in this lucid except practice maintaining lucidity. I sat down and looked around and reminded myself to remain aware. The dream was going in and out of focus - sometimes it would be clear, sometimes it would be blurry with little detail. I practiced bringing the DCs around me into focus and was able to give some of them faces. There was a youngish asian kid and a grandmother with a young boy. I practiced changing my own clothes (I changed into a red polka dotted bikini). I tried to summon Robert Downey, Jr. but was unable. Mostly, I just rode the bus around and worked on staying aware. When I felt things fading, I would periodically remind myself to stay aware. I think this whole thing lasted 15-20 minutes of me just riding the bus around. I made it day and watched light shine through the windows and cast shapes on the floor... then I made it night again, then I made it rain.

I woke up in a puddle of drool. I guess I was concentrating a bit too hard... haha

Had a dream, kinda... Austin Powers style, I guess? But I don't remember much.

Then I was part of a group of spies who were trying to infiltrate an office. We got seen by someone there but they assumed I was a supervisor (I was one person and a group of people at the same time). Then their boss called a meeting and we were recognized as spies. And the boss turned out to be... Hitler. No kidding. I was going to try to kill him, but...

Then it shifted to a group of people trying to infiltrate a place, and they were trying to infiltrate a blood elf camp or something. I was subconsciously changing the buildings because they did not look blood elfy enough. There were several members, and one of them was kind of a ladies' man who was embarrassed that it got found out that he'd set up a date with a superior officer's daughter, who was somehow also Rarity from My Little Pony (yes... a pony).

After that, I was running out of some sort of office complex, only it was more like an industrial building, lots of concrete. I then fully realized that I was dreaming, but it was dark and rainy outside where I was. I looked at my hands, rubbed them together, tried running them along a concrete pillar... I wanted to do a scene change (I was trying to get to an Inn) so I tried to see a light in the distance, but then everything went black. I tried closing and opening my dream-eyes, but it was still black. I began flailing my arms around and every time I moved I heard a sound like the bell on a cat collar. Then I lapsed back into non-lucidity.

Current Supplements:
Fish oil 1000mg 2x/day
B complex w/ Folic Acid and Vitamin C 2x/day
Vitamin D3 1000iu 2x/day

Techniques:
ADA/mindfulness

Night before last:
I dreamed my ex boyfriend and I piloted steam-powered mechs across a post apocalyptic desert landscape, think Fallout New Vegas style. At one point, we stopped at a ruined rest stop.

Last night:
1. I was in a crowd in a movie theater like setting. It was very crowded and I was trying to find a seat without disrupting peoples' view of the show. It wasn't dark, though - the seats were all outdoors.

The theater became stadium-like. I was moving through a large crowd. The dream became blurry, and then I was hovering over the crowd and the building, which was amphitheater like with a strange roof-like structure that had muticolored terra-cotta tiles.

I suddenly realized that I was flying, which caused me to realize that I was dreaming. All of the colors intensified as I mentally ramped up the vividness of the dream. There were sparkling, vividly hued, multicolored chunks of glass and shiny black, hard pieces of coal suspended in the air around me. I was carrying a stack of tax forms and medical paperwork. As soon as I realized I was dreaming, I tossed them into the crowd below. I watched the hundreds of papers flutter to the earth like falling leaves, glad to have let them go.

I reached up and grasped a shiny black chunk of coal. It was smooth and hard, and despite being black, it shimmered. I brought both hands together and imagined immense pressure and heat. I imagined that the entire universe was exerting pressure on it. The coal between my hands began to feel hot.

I opened my hands. The coal had fused somewhat into a yellow piece of glass, but it wasn't a diamond yet. I wasn't bothered by this - it was a process, after all. I closed my hands, pressed them together around the coal/glass, and imagined the immense pressure and heat again. I imagined that all of existence was compressing around this single object. The dream rippled around me. I heard a sound like a shock-wave, or sub-bass.

I opened my hands and looked again. There was an almond-shaped yellow diamond in my hands, roughly the size of an egg. The surface was polished and smooth, and I could see into the translucent diamond and see all of the facets and the inner structure of the diamond catching the light. I gently released it and it rose into the air, joining the suspended pieces of coal and shards of glass, sparkling brilliantly in the sunlight.

I woke up. For whatever reason, I just wasn't excited about what I'd done! I just rolled over and went back to sleep... d'oh.

I dreamed that I was petting a tiger. It had been brought over to my apartment by a different ex-boyfriend. Its stripes were made of paint, and they got all over me.

Practices: ADA, RRC, WILD
Pre-bed: small piece of chicken and a cup of apple juice.
My stomach hurt pretty badly last night (unrelated to the food).
Set my intent for lucid goals (taste something, crush a rock into a diamond, go eat lunch with some friends).

#1 - It's snowy and I think I may be a little kid. I'm not sure. I live in an arctic environment. My house is made of wood and snow. We might be fighting someone - I don't remember. I remember something about bosses (as in, video game bosses) and people hiding underneath the snow that would pop up and attack you.

Woke up. My stomach still hurts. Used the bathroom.

#2 - I am in a check-out line chatting with another person in line. We're talking about Grand Theft Auto. I'm telling him about a mod someone made where you basically drive around as Simba from The Lion King. You don't have hands or anything, you just drive around the city as a lion. During the dream, I think it's hysterical because I'm imagining all the reactions people would have to a lion just chilling in a convertible at a stop light.

I wake up. I have to use the bathroom, and my stomach still hurts. I lie back down and begin WILD techniques.

This WILD, I did not have any HI and I did not feel the onset of REM atonia. I used to but it seems like lately I just don't pay attention or filter it out. I don't continue repeating my mantra while making a serious attempt at WILD because it actually distracts me too much. Sometimes I visualize and sometimes I don't, depending on how much I feel it's distracting rather than helping. This morning, I did not visualize.

I get a "lapse" in the middle of my WILD where I feel like I do lose lucidity, but my mind is so alert for any kind of dreams or dreamlets that as soon as a dream starts it will grab my attention again. So I actually do zone out for a while during most of my successful WILDs and I feel like it's why they're successful - you actually have to let your mind wander and dream to have a dream in the first place.

A "flash" catches my attention - a brief but super-clear and fully formed dreamlet. Normally they shock me awake because they come with zero warning - it instantly goes from blackness to a fully-formed landscape. Since I've been working on not letting them startle me, though, I was able to 'grab' this one:

I am in a basement bedroom of some sort. It's very clean, with white walls. I'm standing on the bed. There is a small window high above me that is letting sunlight in. The window frame is made of dark wood.

I bounce up and down on the bed, peering out of the window. It is a brilliant fall day outside and the trees are vivid red and orange. There are leaves all over the ground; some dried and brown, others still brightly colored.

I haul myself through the window frame, ignoring the glass and making it insubstantial. Even though it ought to be too small for me to fit through, I still manage to wriggle through it. The sunlight is super bright and temporarily blinds me with a lense-flare effect as I haul myself out of the window well.

"LEEEEAAAAAAVES!" I crow triumphantly and plow into a pile of red and orange leaves. I roll around in them, kicking my legs and sending a whirlwind of leaves all over the place. I flop my arms around in them and rub my face in them. I remember my lucid goal and begin enthusiastically shoving leaves into my mouth. They are very thin and papery and taste like stale crackers, with a hint of glue. I sit up and spit out a mouthful of leaves. I wake up.

My lucid self cracks me up sometimes. I'm in complete control of my faculties, but I'm so enthusiastic about absolutely everything.

As I fall asleep, I meditate on my mantra and what awareness means.

#1 - Many dream fragments and incomplete dreams. I hover on the edge of lucidity during many of them, but they aren't cohesive enough and I never attain lucidity.

I wake up, and I'm very hot. I still have a fever. I peel off my socks and turn my thermostat down.
I attempt WILD. As REM atonia sets in - much more swiftly than I was expecting - I hear a great deal of loud static and what sounds like a modem dialing. I come very close to entering a dream several times but fail - for whatever reason - and lapse into regular sleep.


#2 - I have a dream about a castle that floats up in the sky. In my dream, I see a far-off view of the underside in a sunny sky full of puffy clouds. There is vegetation hanging from it. In the center of it there is something like a spire but instead of being like a castle it's like a skyscraper. I realize that this island is dominated by a small but elite group of people and everybody else on there toils for their benefit.

Then, I'm on the castle. I'm running around trying to get to the central courtyard or something, I'm not sure. But the whole thing is ledges with no railing and bridges that don't go anywhere. In the back of my mind, I think, "I wonder if I jumped over the edge, if I would fly or if this dream would end?" I realize that - of course - I'm dreaming. I immediately lift off and fly past all of the ridiculous fake bridges.

I land in an archway that leads to a hallway and begin to walk down it. I realize I'd like to visit the "home base", a location I've been trying to create. I see an archway that has heavy double wooden doors set into it with ornate handles, and I decide that I will use it as a doorway to get where I would like to go.

I pull on the heavy handles, and the doors swing open. Inside is my base - or, at least, a room that has many of its key features. They have been heavily altered, however, or some things are just missing. Part of it, I think, was to fit the castle theme - rather than my comfortable lounge, it looks more like a castle kitchen. I also notice that the fire in my fireplace is out. I try to light it by snapping my fingers, but it doesn't work. Not a big deal, I decide - I can breathe fire (obviously). I'll just start the fire that way.

I crouch down on the hearth (whose bricks are "wrong" but I decide it's nothing I can't fix with a little effort) and begin to breathe on the fire. There's nothing but air coming out of my mouth, at first. I focus on the sensation of the air passing through my lips and imagine that the blowing noise is getting louder. The air now has a yellow tinge, and the ash in the fireplace begins to stir. I focus on the yellow tinge in the air and it becomes brighter and glows more. Embers begin glowing in the fireplace. I blow on them harder, and they spread and bloom. The fire doesn't roar to life - it begins to slowly spread and grow like a real fire would.

I decide I would like something to eat. I'm not able to summon anything directly, so instead I call to a servant (they are there but I don't turn to look at them) and telepathically tell them that I would like some food. I consciously opted for telepathy because I was getting the sensation that the lucid dream was getting "thin" and if I attempted to speak to them out loud I would do so in real life and wake myself up. It didn't matter either way, since once they walked away, the dream began to fade. I wake up.

#3 - I dream about a group of high-schoolers, sort of Breakfast Bunchy, except they also have a little girl (a toddler) with them. Sometimes I'm one of them, and sometimes I'm just watching. They live in an apartment complex or condos or something and are wandering around outside in a storm. It's storming heavily but they don't seem to mind the rain, although they periodically lose the toddler and have to keep looking for her. They decide that they would like to go to the beach during this storm.

One of them, a guy with blond hair, says he needs to take care of some business first. The others don't know it but he's actually an assassin and has been working as one since he was 16, and he needs to check his secret base for something. While they're waiting, he gets completely sidetracked. His love-interest goes looking for him and stumbles across his base. Inside is a TV screen with another guy on it (he is hideously ugly) who is a rival assassin who wants to kill the guy... he manages to press through the TV screen and emerge from it physically. The woman starts throwing pottery at him, but stops short at a set of antique vases because she doesn't want to bust them.

The other high schoolers finally find the hideout. One of them is irritated because the storm is now nearly over. Blond assassin guy also finally shows up again. The whole scene ends up with all of the high schoolers in there, throwing pottery at the bad guy. Even the toddler.

After he's defeated, the whole place is full of clothing racks and everybody begins trying on clothing. I'm watching but I'm also the love-interest girl and I am trying to fit into a sweater but the sleeves are too small to fit my hands through (I highly suspect I was trying to punch through my blanket at this point). He helps by unbuttoning the sleeves and helping me work my hands through them.

I wake up. I'm still hot. I turn the thermostat down more.

Continuation of the previous dream - I'm with blond assassin guy and we're driving a very long distance to his family's home in the countryside. I'm talking about getting a Master's degree and a school I would like to attend in France, but I'm worried about the cost of tuition. We arrive at the house and see that it is perched on the edge of a canyon. I run down the steep incline to see what's at the bottom. When I look up, the guy is gone.

I don't know where he's went, but 2 people (hunters) are approaching me, and one of them has a ridiculous "hillbilly" accent. The girl (I've gone to 3rd person again) seems worried that they will try to ask her out and tells them that she can only interact with other people if she has won some clothing. They agree to help her win something.

Clearly, the way to win a prize is to hunt a bear, and the way to hunt a bear is to bounce up and down in a giant net. The 2 hunters tie the net to some trees and use it to propel the girl up into the air, where she waves at and taunts the bear. This pisses the bear off to no end, so it charges at the net. The bear gets tangled up in the net and they vanquish it. Once defeated, the bear transforms into a small pile of First Aid kits. They rifle through the kits looking for clothing, but only find an inflatable bed and a bunch of nonsensical instruction booklets.

#4 - I dream I live in an apartment complex but also a hospital. I live on the 6th or 7th floor, and all of floor 4 is designated for heart attack victims and full of nurses. The maintenance staff has deposited a bunch of bizarre looking furniture outside all of the apartment doors except mine. I'm irritated that I didn't receive any furniture so I run around stealing everybody else's.

Goals:
- Continue ADA and mindfulness on daily basis, as energy levels and attention span allow
- Daily journal updates, in particular, also seem to help
- I need to engage with my environment more

Practices: ADA, Mindfulness, WBTB, DEILD
While falling asleep, mantra: "I am aware"

Dream #1 - I am with my friend, R__. She's driving a car - one belonging to one of my relatives, according to my dream-memory, but in real life none of them own a gray minivan. We're driving around a mall parking lot. We can't seem to find a parking space. She accidentally hits another car while pulling into a parking space, and I cringe at the sound, but she's more angry about it than worried. She decides to try to use a note left on her windshield to explain why she parked in one of the restricted parking spots, by claiming she can't walk that far, but I don't think that will hold up under scrutiny. She finally gives up and parks pretty far away from the mall entrance. We can see it from where we are, but it's quite a walk.

I briefly wake up from the dream and try to carry my awareness with me into my next dream, using my mantra.

As soon as the dream reforms, I am instantly lucid. I'm inside of the mall from the previous dream, but R__ is gone now. The lucid dream has the crystal clarity characteristic of my lucid. Since I'm not outdoors (unusual), rather than the usual sweeping landscapes and storm-swept skies, instead the architecture inside of the mall is extremely grand. Super high vaulted ceilings, probably 80-100 feet high, with graceful arches carved out of solid pale pink marble and golden inlays. Intricate carvings and sculptures. White marble floors. The whole thing looks more like the inside of a cathedral than a mall.

I look around and think, "This is definitely a dream". I inspect my hand - it's perfectly formed. I do a reality check by trying to push one hand through the other, but I can't. I shrug it off - I know I'm dreaming. I try to fly, and hover in the air above the crowds milling around the mall. My lucidity tends to fade very quickly while I'm flying, though - there's something about not having my feet on the ground that does that. So I land, and then crawl on the floor and inspect the marble tiles. There's grime between them and they feel a little gritty - this place needs to be swept and mopped.

I decide to go treasure hunting. I reach into my back pocket - for some reason, I'm wearing a skirt with pockets - and feel around for a map. I feel crumpled paper and tug. I pull out a sheet of notebook paper, folded in half several times, and unfold it. There is a map on it, scribbled in blue pen, but I can't read what it says. It also has little pictures. I decide that I need to go find a dream character who CAN read it, and if I'm going to treasure hunt, I'm going to do it in style - which means having a whole group of treasure hunters with me. I run my hand along the wall as I walk.

I walk toward the food court - well, an archway I have decided is the food court. The floor slopes downward between it in a ramp, heading underground. I can see tables in the distance. I decide that's kind of boring and want it to be something more exciting. As I approach, it morphs into a Viking style beer hall. I'm pretty satisfied - this is definitely more fun.

I enter the beer hall, which is smokey and full of warriors eating and drinking. There is an empty space in the middle with a fire-pit that looks like it's used by entertainers - wrestlers, musicians, etc. The benches on either side are elevated on steps, sort of like bleachers, so everybody can see. Nobody is performing right now, though.

I see a group of 5 or 6 Tolkein-style Dwarves over to one side. They look like they're having a pretty good time. I approach them and introduce myself. Their leader is a pretty buff looking Dwarf. He has long, thick braided brown hair and is wearing a sort of heavy brown leather harness that has what looks like a lion's mane stitched around the neck and shoulders. He greets me respectfully:
"I am Lokmin, son of (I can't remember his dad's name)." He thumps his chest (which is more Roman, I guess, but whatever).
I hold out my treasure map. "I've found a map to potential treasure, but it might be dangerous."
The Dwarves deliberate over my wrinkled sheet of notebook paper, making sounds of interest and approval. Lokmin looks like he's about to make the decision to follow me...

But unfortunately, we never got to find the treasure. I live near an airport - one of the EXTREMELY LOUD jets that I LOATHE flies overhead, waking me up and ending my lucid dream. I was pretty upset. Even now there's another really loud jet flying overhead. I hate those things, and the airport by extension (it wasn't always noisy here - they moved the flight paths).

I go back to sleep, trying to re-enter the dream, but I'm too irritated to focus.


Dream #3 - I dream that I am taking naked photographs of myself using my laptop camera and didn't realize the curtain across the sliding glass door in the living room was sheer. I figure either nobody saw me, or they didn't care.