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Day 25... Nice.

So far I have had 2 LDs as a result of this regime... Either I am doing something wrong here or I need up stay patient. I feel like I'm not keeping up with my RCs during the daytime and that I turn PassObs when I am typing on my computer (like now) or when I have conversations with people. At these times I try to increase awareness as much as possible because I am trying to change my behavior and notice when I have fallen into routine. Hopefully, by bringing my attention continually back to the present moment, I will adopt a similar habit in my dreams, which have become more and more recurrent.

I am noticing similar patterns occuring in my dreams now. The major dreamsigns I have are
1) PassObs: This is a state where I am basically the camera for a movie with thoughts that roll through my head. I am a disembodied thinking machine basically. I analyze the situation, the voices, everything, even my own analysis! This dream-state I think is a result of my previous experiences growing up and trying to alienate myself from the world, zoning things out so as to not be affected emotionally. When this occurs today, I immediately RC and listen to sounds actively and notice what is going on around me.
2) HSfriends: This is where I am in my high school or see anyone from my grade. These people are appearing regularly in my dreams, and should be a clear sign that I am not awake. I have not developed the habit yet of recognizing this, however. This dream-sign is obviously because I attended the same school for twelve years so most of my associations revolve around that particular scene, which should be to my advantage actually in my attempts to gain lucidity.
3) FAwake: A false awakening. Usually I wake up exactly where I have gone to sleep, depending on the bed I am using. Surprisingly these occur in pairs or triplets when they happen instead of it being an isolated incident.
4) Levels/Video Game: Recently, I have run into dreams where I am in the middle of a what seems to be a quest. I need to perform an action or complete some task in order to beat a level or win the game. I don't know why these have only started recently, but they are very recurrent, and should be another helpful dream-sign. Maybe the root of this is my competitive nature or how I was brought up to view everything in life: as a challenge with a prize at the end.
5) Running without Speed: I have no acronym for this yet, but sometimes in my dreams I will try to jog or run but I will be moving excruciating slow. It's as if I move slower when running than when I am walking.
6) Checking the Time: I do this a lot in dreams, and I have not isolated the anchor as a reality check in real life enough yet. I am trying to RC everytime I check the time now, but it is difficult to remember. Checking the time espcially occurs when I look at my iPhone!
7) Teleportation.

Last night was interesting. My room mate came back at like midnight so I had to stop my alarm from sounding at 3am, which upset me a little bit because I couldn't perform my WILD technique that night, even though I had practiced it earlier that day! I didn't get as much sleep as usual, but the amount of dreams I recalled improved, which is strange. I'm trying to figure out why recall improves and decreases but there seems to be so little correlation to anything I can figure out in real life!

Mistakes from last night:
1) No CAN, no ability to test WILD techniques!
2) Rolling around too much and not resisting the impulse to shift in order to stay asleep.
3) Didn't type or record notes of my dream throughout the night.

Solutions:
1) Set CAN tonight (hopefully) and attempt to separate/indirect techniques.
2) Affirm intention throughout today and before sleep to not move and perform techniques upon awakening.
3) Keep iphone close to pillow to record little notes throughout the night.

Dream 1-- High School Dungeon

Here is another dream where I am forced to complete tasks, or levels, without actually knowing the tasks beforehand or how I got to where I am. In this scenario, I am in a dungeon, obviously below ground. In hindsight, it's almost like I am in a video game where I am really small in comparison to the structures and other charcters in the "game." At first, it's just me. I am travelling through this dungeon by jumping really far from platform to platform. Everything is tinted very dark and its all black or dark brown.

Then I come to this one level where I am travelling along side the wall of the dungeon. I hit the platform on the corner and turn to face the other direction. Below me and in front of me I see these giant wooden brown pillars with black disks around the pillars at certain heights. Judging by the heights, I need to utilize these disks to get from pillar to pillar across the dungeon. Below the disks, there are these Satyrs (this is the word that first pops in to my head during the dream to describe them) that are patrolling on the ground. They are huge. Some are red, some are grey, but they all have these fandoras on. They have swords in sheaths and fancy clothes, but they are walking back and fort in a mindless fashion because its a video game or something. As I jump from one disk to the next, I find myself needing to pull myself up because I can't make the jumps. Pulling myself up requires no effort, however, as I am probably in some from of PassObs at this point competing as if it were just a video game and I am a character.

After jumping from disk to disk, I land on the fifth disk and face the satyrs and what appears to be a giant gap between where I am and the column across the way. In my head, I start hearing cheering and people speaking. Somehow there is my mom talking, and I look around to see other people from my high school also playing in the level, specifically B. Mont and J. Stet and E. Sor. Now I must've reached a checkpoint or something in the level because I try to make this gap several times in various ways, but I keep ending up back at this point in my dream in this level.

The first attempt, I time it so that as the satyr is walking away toward the pillar I need to get to, I jump and try to land on him. I am floating somewhat in mid-air as I try to predict where he will be and where I need to go. I try to grab onto his grey hat, but I can't hold on and I start over. The next attempt, I do the same timing, but this time I manage to land on his hat. There doesn't feel to be any gravity or sensations or emotions. I can see my classmates on the other side of the pillar all sitting in benches just applauding. As I am trying to catch my balance on the hat, I hold on to the rim and wait until the satyr gets close enough to the pillar. Then I jump, and in mid-air I really focus on the applause and who I am looking at. I see 4-5 faces out of the crowd, who are all from my high school (Blatant dream sign!). I don't think I completed the jump because I woke up.

Dream 2-- Essay on Consciousness

This dream is rather fuzzy, but the premise is basically that I was going back and forth between having conversations with people and writing this essay about consciousness, its nature, and its difference between how I see it now and the truth.

Each paragraph represents a new argument and even though I can't recall who I was talking to specifically I can remember some of the basic theories I wrote in my paper. Whenever I would write in my paper, it would be a PassObs event. I would teleport and my field of vision would be focused in on this stack of paper with text on it. I could read the text, and there was grammar, punctuation, indentations, proper margins, and everything. It was as if I was writing a Writ 140 paper on this topic within my dream and presenting it to myself so that I could learn or teach myself.

Some of the premises were:
1) Consciousness is nothing that I imagine it to be, but the world it presents is total and complete like this one.
2) Consciousness is eternal, eternally.
3) There is another side to consciousness that I can't reach, but I can experience.

Dream 3-- Graduation 2.0

In this dream, me and everybody from my high school grade appears to be graduating again. We are out behind the football field in a cluster, and we are all in our uniforms. I don't remember saying anything during this dream or really knowing what was going on at all, but this was a particularly interesting dream because of this lack of control.

As we all stand in a group outside, there are pictures taken, and someone shouts "we're done!" Suddenly my "camera" zooms out to show a complete picture of all the blue shirts and grey shorts (the uniform). Then I hear some voices in what I feel like is my personal ear, and the camera immediately shifts to what I would consider a first person point of view. Apparently, we are now trying to escape this place, as if it were another level another competition, by evading all of the people who are trying to tag us and running to the other side of this field. I am kind of alone it seems like, but there are three or four other students who are distracting many of the taggers. I stand back at first trying to figure out what is going on and trying to devise a strategy. I honestly am surprised in hindsight that I immediately knew the objective of this dream and was formulating a plan to complete the Level.

I decide to start running forward, and I see three or four taggers focus in on me and start to converge. There is one girl in particular who seems to be focusing on me anyway, and the other three are these dark shadowy figures that I can't recall as being people or actual shadowy figures. There are these two volleyball nets aligned parallel to eachother in a line perpendicular to me so I see them as l l instead of = and I decide that this would be my best form of escape. I run and go underneath the first, but everyone seems to be closing in on me. As I cross under the second, I open and close a book I suddenly have in my hands and immediately become invisible. I know that what I just did will make me invisible, and I believe that is why is happened. I walk around with my new invisibility and easily make it to the other side.

Suddenly, I am now walking as if I were on the opposite side of the football field and there are many students who are not in my grade lined up on bleachers in order to take a picture. I start walking by and then I look up to see J. Mc who is looking at me, and then I turn to face the kids in the bleachers. I see that there are seniors interspersed with the underclassmen, and I wonder how they got in there and why I am not in there. They are all standing tall and smiling, while I just observe. After the picture is taken, they all yell an "ay" and then walk away. I see J. Mitch and start to walk up to him with a smile saying "we did it man, nice." As I am walking up to him, he turns into another classmate, but then when we slap hands he turns back into J. Mitch. Then I wake up

Dream 4-- Gym

This dream was pretty vivid and pretty long, it has a repetitive factor in it like my first one.

So I am in this weight room with some other people. Looking straight ahead, I see some crazy looking jet black machine with pulleys and a long inclined bench and handles. The matt it is on is also black and there is a TV behind it playing but no sound it coming from it. I am standing there watching as these two guys talk right next to the machine. Eventually, I look around and decide to go somewhere else. As I look around, I realize I am in an entirely different place but it is still a gym. I am walking around this carpetted area and it's a very nice looking facility. There are leather brown cushy chairs to my left facing a brown table. The carpet is grey and black. There are windows in the marble walls that reveal a bright blue, almost cloudless sky and bright sun.

I continue walking forward and I see Tom and his friend sitting down together with white towels around their waists but no shirts on. They appear to have just taken a shower based on their hair, but they don't talk to me as I walk by. As I pass, I have this thought like "they would be sitting down together" or something along those lines. I continue to pass and I sit down in this chair across from S. Lim who is writing something on a name tag looking thing. He has colored in a lot of it with marker and is now completing the final touches. He keeps repeating "blue bird" and is coloring in something I can't remember.

Suddenly, I transport back into the initial room and I am walking toward the jet black machine. I guess I am about to go on it. I introduce myself to the two guys. One guy says his name is Lance Armstrong, and I think about that name in my head as being totally fake but super manly. It's like a name you would create for yourself to make a good impression or something. My name is equally fake but more manly, sadly I can't remember what I made it.

I get on the inclined bench and start doing this ab exercise that requires me to totally stretch my abs out by pushing out my legs and leaning all the way back with my head. The initial position on the exercise is laying on the bench horizontally in mid-air. the middle of the bench separates the two parts, with my legs going out and forward, and my upper body coming down and backward. It stretches out my abs really well and then I have to come back up using only my abs. I feel the burn in this dream. I hear the spotters giving me some commands like "pull up with your chest" and "bring your knees to your chest and HOOOLLLDDDD." I think about doing thirty but stop after maybe 7 or 8. I don't remember stepping off, but I am immediately standing up next to it. I look out and see a cute girl using a machine that I wanted to use. This room has glossy wooden floors and white machines with black weights/cushions. This girl is doing an exercise for your lower back where your body is like this / with your legs on cushions. Then you bend down with your head and back in line and then come back again.

I really want to do that exercise, so I leave the room, and head to a hallway. I come to another work out room that looks like the one I used in a DoubleTreeHotel three weeks ago. As I look around, I see a sliding door with a note on it saying "mixed work out room, boys and girls allowed." And I immediately go in. I see the same carpetted, brown cushy chair infested work out room as before. I see the machine I want and I start walking toward it. I see Tom and his friend sitting in the chairs looking over at me and somehow that gives me the motivation to jog, but I'm not moving very fast. As I jog past them, I find myself suddenly in a chair laying down facing S. Silver and he has a red pen. He is marking up the front cover of this magazine so that it spells "KN" which is the symbol for some frat he calls "Sigma Nu" but that isn't how to do their symbol. I notice that I have a pen in my hands, but the tip is still inside because I haven't clicked it open yet. I am just holding it out in front of me over the magazine without doing anything. He starts laughing at his own creation and this blonde girl, who appears to be the owner of the store right next to us comes out and looks at us.

She says "you guys think you are so funny marking up this magazine, huh? Are you the same people who made this name tag?" And I immediately recognize it as the thing that S. Lim was marking up the other time I came into this room. It's corner were bent, and there are three birds flying out of a black hole in the middle of the tag. She says something about how that tag had the lyrics to a poem on there that described the horrors of living in a place less fortunate then this.

As she is describing the scene, I turn PassObs and become the camera for this video, seeing what she is describing. She talks about how kids need food and they have to carry guns and hide first thing in the morning in order to avoid being gang raped. The scene I see is these four blacks kids who appear happy enough running out of a brick house toward the camera. They are in a line without a particular order it seems like. They run past a white fence and the fence gets destroyed without them touching it. It flies up into the sky behind them in pieces.

They continue to run, but the camera stops. The camera follows them as they pass by though, and I see them running away and turning a corner. The woman is still talking but I'm not paying attention.

My alarm clock wakes me up.

Still no progress in terms of having another LD, but I am gaining a lot of experience and have come across very interesting things during this journey.

I now downloaded another application to help me track my progress for the iPhone called Sleep Cycle Alarm. This is not an endorsement, I'm just writing down what's real.

I went to sleep at 12:15 woke up at 8:57.

I recalled one dream at 6am when I set my deffered CAN to wake me up. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, posted in my DJ the one dream I remembered and then went back to sleep. I didn't recall any extra dreams after going to sleep like this. I'm interested in my own sleeping/recall abilities because I never get any dreams when napping or in light sleep. It appears that I need very deep sleep to have dreams, and then I can recall very many and in great detail. I'm wondering if maybe I really do dream in naps but I simply cannot remember or if my brain just doesn't reach the deepest parts of sleep necessary to dream. How would I test this hypothesis out?

Tonight's mistakes:
1) No plan of action upon becoming Lucid.
2) Woke up at 7 but didnt perform the indirect techniques aggressively enough.
3) Took too many naps during the day and went to bed in a not-so-tired state. I think this might have detracted from my overall ability to recall and have deep sleep.

Solutions:
1) Create a plan of action slash plot out an entire Lucid Dream.
2) Do 5 reality checks today based on the anchors of opening a door and checking the time on my iPhone.
3) Practice doing the indirect and separation techniques sometime before bed tonight.
4) Be physical during the day (i.e. workout or run) so that I won't be tempted to take a nap and will be more tired come bedtime.
5) Perform the indirect and separation techniques aggressively!

Dream 1-- Long Dream with Extended Family

Don't remember how this dream starts but one of the first scenes I remember is it is me and my family hanging out with my uncle on my mom's side and his family. That consists of my aunt and two younger cousins who are 7 and 5. We are outside, and it's day time. My dad wants one of the girls to reenact something that she had done earlier and my uncle kinda coaxes her into doing it. She is wearing a white dress and headband and starts to do something, but then falls down. IShe doesn't cry or anything which is good and I ahve this thought running through my head like she would have cried if she were younger. I think I'm PassObs at this point, but the dream still continue.

I'm looking straight forward at this glass door with a black outline. It looks like the entrance to a store, and suddenly everyone starts to walk through it. It's like a furniture store, and everyone splits apart. My mom and sisters go into this room on the left while I decide to continue to go forward. The whole time I can hear them conversing and discussing what to buy, but I immediately go over to these dual set of white chairs and take out a bright red pen and start to mark on them.

Something in my head tells me it will be fun to design and another part slowly starts to realize that me writing on these chairs will require my parents to buy them. I think part of me wants attention so I am doing something really bad and a aprt of me just wants to do whatever I want to do.

On one of the chairs I am writing the word "fence", but I forget to write then "n" and it's just fece, which I cant change because its written in pen. I can see myself drawing exactly on the seams of the fabric, following each line and coloring it in. This activity seems to be satisfying to me in some way.

Suddenly, we are driving out of the store and it's night time. My mom is driving the car, which I think is a large suburban that we usually ride around in. We drive into the driveway of this large brick house, which we are parked to the left of. She starts describing to us how this is her old house and all the memories in it, how she used to sleep and stuff. This is definitely not her old house in real life, however. She goes on talking about it while I continue to just stare outside the window. In this whole dream I don't really look at any particular person, I'm just doing my own thing and watching whatever pleases me while hearing dialogue occur in the background.

Then I transport into another car that now my dad is driving and we are in a well-known parking lot near my house. It's still me and my two older sisters, but now we are waiting for something. We don't exactly know what to do and I am very bored. I have a sense that something needs to happen. With that thought, two fire trucks drive by and all of us start to oworry about where they are going, me especially, but they seem to just stop in the middle of the street right in front of us, my middle sister says "don't worry, they didn't go to our house."

We start to drive, it's still very dark outside. We pass the fire trucks, and end up at the same house as before. We are going to pick up my mom, somehow I know all of this intuitively without having to be told. As we pull up to the curb where my mom is there are cars already parallel parked and my mom is walking away from the house she described as her old house with what I think are two steaks in a bag. As she comes in closer, I can see they are dark red flowers. She walks down a cement path to get to wear we are, and gets in the car. Then I wake up

I think there is another interesting dreamsign identified in this dream I will call "NoPerson." This basically consists of having a dream where there is conversation and events happening but there is no body in my field of vision the entire time. It seems like throughout this dream, I could hear things and intuit many more things, but I would never actually look at people or have conversations to their faces. Strange.

Tonight was awesome. I got my dream recall back, but I lost a lot of the length and vividness associated with my dreams, probably because I'm trying to remember them from the beginning of the night instead of writing down notes periodically. I will try a note-taking method tonight and see what happens.

I woke up at 5am from my CAN and I didn't move or open my eyes. I tried using indirect techniques and this was the first time I felt the physical vibration of the successful indication that I can separate, but I didn't remember how to separate successfully! So I ended up cycling through about 3-4 different indirect techniques, but didn't do them aggressively enough to be able to get back into the dream stage and merge into the phase. I kept sleeping for another 2-3 hours after this and had maybe 3-4 more dreams, but even though I can guarantee they were long, vivid, and complex, I am having more and more difficulty remembering details or the length of a dream, which is probably more important than remembering a greater number.

Today's Mistakes:
1) Didn't review indirect techniques nor how to separate successfully.
2) Didn't perform the indirect technique aggressively to achieve phase.
3) Didn't write down dreams throughout the night. Waited until morning.

Solutions:
1) Review the booklet today and practice the indirect and separation techniques sometime before bed today.
2) Perform the technique with some aggression in practice and reaffirm the intention to perform aggressively before sleep.
3) Keep a notepad with pen handy by bedside. Write down dreams periodically.
4) Affirm the intention to LD with these techniques and not fully wake up upon hearing the alarm.
5) Continue to write down in the DJ about this journey and my dreams.

Dream 1-- Camping Fight

I am in one corner of this large camp grounds. The ground is basically cleared of twigs and grass so that all that remains is hard brown dirt everywhere. There are a few tree scattered around, but I don't realy pay attention to them. What I do pay attention to, and seem to be ardently concentrating on is builiding up a campsite to defend against the enemies.

Apparently we are at war, with me and my family being one army and then two unknown armies doing other thing in different parts of the camp. I know we have to build certain structures as if it were starcraft or something, and so I try to get my parents to get to work. My dad is pretty good at following instructions, so when I get him to start building the tent, he immediately gets to work but he doesn't exactly know how to build the tent, which is is common downside!

I try to build a fire but realize that I have no tools to do so, I have no wood or ignition. I can't build the fire, so I go over to my mom and start talking to her. She tells me that she has to leave and go to this writing workshop in 20 minutes. I'm like "we are at war!" she says something and I say "ok" in a tone of resignation. I look back at the tent and look forward again, I am now in the driveway for my house and I'm watching my mom get into her car.

I was supposed to go with her but for some reason I leave before getting in the car. I think she is still waiting for me by the end of the dream.

Dream 2-- Ninja Gymnastics

This dream was rather long but I can only remember a little bit of it. I'm in this large box-shaped room with a lot of random wood planks made into large structures spread about. All the planks are intertwined somehow like a giant maze, and I don't know what to think at first.

I am there with two other people and I can't remember who specifically they were. One tells me to start doing level 1, and I do like 10 pushups and then he's like level 2... The next thing I know he's saying level 20 and I am up near the top of the wooden planks and trying to walk across with perfect balance toward the upper corner of the building.

Somewhere in this dream I realize that my mom must still be waiting for me so that she can leave to go to her writing class because we were going to leave together. I think about how she probably is still waiting or maybe she just left. This makes me think about how I would've handled the situation in the future and how my dad must still be working on the tent, so I think about texting him and telling him he can stop working. This whole thought process leads me to think about how my parents have abandoned me many times in the past, and they didn't pull through in helping me with this war thing at all. My mom had to bail and my dad couldn't complete any task competently.

Dream 3-- Raining Gate

In this dream, I'm walking at night toward a building, but I don't know specifically where I am or how I got there or where I am going, I just know to go forward. I come across this open, dark green gate that resembles the gate of my sister school's driveway entrance. I close the gate on accident by touching it, and it slams shut with a loud noise.

I realize that I need to reopen it because people will be coming in, so I get the gate open and try to swing it all the way open so it will stay. At first, it starts to close again so I have to redo the process. I open it all the way and it sticks this time. As I am in this situation, a white sedan pulls up with his lights on and I get the feeling that the driver is agitated having to wait at the gate. Futzing with the gate, I feel like either he thinks I'm some sort of worker for the school or that I'm just an idiot who is messing with the gate and making him late. After I open it, I step off to the side and tell him to go, as I am waving him off I see that there are these two circular objects on the ground right in front of his wheel, so I bend down and grab them away before he drives luckily. I don't say a word this whole time.

The next car that pulls up is my moms car, and the next thing I know I am in the back seat passenger side watching as we drive forward in the night. I can see the sidewalk pretty clearly, I am looking out the window, but I am not paying attention to who is speaking or what is being said, as per usual in my dreams. My mom is trying to explain something to me and my oldest sister is in the passenger seat. As we turn the corner and start going left, a thought crosses my mind, but I can't remember what it is.

Dream 4-- Computer in Bed

So I am in my bed at my house, but it's facing the wrong way. The top of my head is pointing out of the window instead of being perpendicular like it usually is. I guess I'm sick or something because I'm underneath all of these covers and my sister comes in to try and tell me something. I am on my laptop and she is asking me if I need anything or if there is something she can do. her presence is comforting to me, but I tell her I'm fine.

I look up at the ceiling and realize there is a binder taped up there. She looks up and grabs it for me, there is something written on the outside of this purple translucent binder, but I don't remember. I open it and there are two tickets for something inside and like 2 sheets of paper that have a lot of text on it.

Dream 5-- Modern Warfare

I am watching my friends play modern warfare on the X-box but I am completely passobs. It's not like I am watching the actual people play, I am in fact a random camera just observing the game and watching the characters shoot eachother. As I am watching, I somehow know exactly which character is which, and I am analyzing the game play strategy of my friend Zack. He is using an AK-47 and strafing while shooting. IT looks like he is having cross-fire against a bot and he is using a strategy I call pulse fire. After he kills the bot, he gets killed, I pop out of the game and start playing as his character without being a real person. I adopt the CT gun well know for its burst-fire capabilities, and I start going around killing people easily with these shots. I am in the level where there is airplane wrecking around and the surroundings are all cement and grey. Suddenly I realize that I am using the burst fire capabilities on this gun and turn to tell Zack that his strategy isn't optimal because he is using burst fire with an AK instead of a gun like the one I'm using that is meant to burst.

Dream 6-- Randomest Dream

I am in my room and it's another type of dream where I have to complete levels. I wish I could remember this dream better because it was awesome while I was in it and the complexities of it were really interesting. There was this evil monster on my computer who put me to some sort of test where I needed to pass levels in order to win (similar to the Ninja Gymnasium with the levels concept). I start doing these complicated tasks in my room, but I can't remember any. As I complete each task, there are different colored boards that get placed up on my wall. They are multi-colored by nature and change color as pixels or little squares. So there could be a large 4x4 red square that gets slowly covered in 1x1 orange or yellow pixels and it would look like a simulated fire. Or any number of different patterns. As I continued playing,the boards on the wall got larger and more complex and more interesting to look at. I would occassionally just stop and pause to observe the amazing board on my wall. After Icompleted all the levels, there was this really cool music playing and the board on my wall turned into a stereo set that displays the noise level of each component of the music. It was orange in the background and yellow were the verticals bars that were going up and down depending on the music. I was really fascinated by it and thought that it was so cool to have achieved this in my room so I could show everyone else what I did and how I got this in my room. I wish I could remember more of this dream too.

I'm going to remember more details and have more vivid dreams tomorrow.

Days 15-22:

There has been no relative improvement in my ability to WILD. I am reading more literature and have gotten back to campus. After a week of the most stressful work I have had to do and no writing in my DJ, I have come back to square one and am reclaiming my desire to get this handled! I am starting to use indirect techniques, intention and affirmations before sleeping, and waking up with an alarm about 6 hours after falling asleep. As a general pattern, I will fall asleep anywhere from 11pm to 1am and set my alarm accordingly for approx. 6 hours after. From days 15-18 I was getting very horrible sleep. There would be no ability to stay asleep or fall asleep. I would end up needing to simply give up trying to sleep altogether in some instances.

My main problems are as follows:
1) When I try to go to sleep, I try too hard to focus on WILDing and remembering to wake up in the dream state. I do this right when I am falling asleep instead of after I have woken up 6 hours after sleeping.
2) I don't focus on relaxation and falling asleep, which keeps me awake. I am aggressively approaching this topic instead of letting the progress some as it will.
3) I am not keeping up with my journal daily. This includes my WILD journal and my Dream Journal.
4) I am not documenting my attempts and what I was doing each night of sleep to figure out patterns of success and failure.
5) I am not focused throughout the day on LDing.

My future solutions will be:
1) Relax at the beginning of the night. Keep the intention to LD, but do not focus on staying awake or prolonging consciousness at this point.
2) Wake up from the alarm without moving or opening the eyes. Perform cycles of indirect techniques and then separate.
3) Practice these techniques during the day.
4) Perform reality checks based on specific anchors (i.e. a bike, the moon, my hands, a girl)
5) Maintain my DJ and create a new thread for my WILD Journey that I will update daily.
6) Keep a positive outlook and become certain that I will LD. Imagine the experience happening and the benefits.

Dream 1-- Dane Cook turns into Adam

So I am at a show for Dane Cook. I feel like I am alone, but maybe I'm there with people I know. There is a massive crowd, and of course Dane Cook is in the normal set up where he is on a little platform in the middle of a large audience. He is wearing his usual dark green shirt and dark jeans, with his normal spiky hair. He goes around and starts telling jokes, but then he drinks from this glass that turns his mouth/lips a little bit black. He says he's going to start singing a song, and he does a rendition of Bo Burnham's 3.14 Apple Pi, which I instantly recognize.

People start coming down closer to the stage from further back. I see two guys do this at first wearing a blue/black plaid jacket and his friend. They get close, and others start even getting on stage. I am on one of the people who gets on stage. About midway through the song, Dane starts to leave, but somehow I am rolling with him. We are talking and he is still telling some jokes when I ask him to do an impression. Right then, I look at him and he is no longer Dane Cook. He is my friend A. Eichenwald and he is not happy that I asked him to do an impression.

The setting also changed to what looked like my school's cafeteria, and what sucks is that I didn't immediately RC because I had put the intention in my head to RC whenever I was on my high school campus or when I saw one person from my class. I think this was my subconscious trying to give me a blatant access to a LD. Anyway, after I ask him to do an impression A. turns kinda mad and he starts to throw punches and elbows at me without really hitting me. He keeps throwing them and stopping right before hitting me. He is wearing all black, and I am putting up my guard really well so he isn't hitting me. I have these thoughts like "He is a black belt so I shouldn't fight back because he will win" and "Just keep guarding he will stop eventually" and "I think A. is drunk."

After a barrage of fists and elbows that never actually strike me, I somehow end up lying on the ground next to a baby. The father asks A. to do a joke as if he were still Dane Cook. A. gets upset and then I wake up.

Dream 2-- Passively listening to Daniel's Sister (I need to come up with better titles)

So I am laying down in a house, not one that I recognize. I am looking directly at a white wall that hangs down over a railing and poles that support the railing. The railing is brown and wooden while the poles are white. The carpet that I am laying down on is also white, and I am laying down with my hands behind my head, elbows up and out.

From my left, I hear Daniel's younger sister start talking to her parents, while I just continue to stare at this blank white wall. As I stare, an object starts to form out of the pattern in the wall. It looks like an infinity sign and it starts to become 3D and project a little bit out of the wall as I continue to stare intently at it. The conversation between his sister and parents involves her telling them something wrong that she did. She is hesitant to tell them at first because she doesn't want to get in trouble, but they tell her that she should tell them because it will make her a good person or something. When she tells them, they say she is in trouble, and she asks them if they just "hypocrited" her into telling them. They say no and I wake up.

Dream 3-- PassObs Smash Bros

This is an example of me playing a video game without knowing that I am physically a body. Instead, I am just watching the game and able to control my character with my mind. When I'm playing the game in real life I know the physics and the controls so well that I can predict what the buttons I press will do, so it's almost as if I am using my mind directly to play the game. I stare at the game in real life, not stopping to ever look away. I get so concentrated on it that I lose sense of anything else occurring in the surrounding environment. This is reflected in my dreams.

Me, Daniel, and TJ are playing Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64. We are playing on DK's level. I start of playing as DK, wind up my punch roll down to the bottom level where they both are and punch them into a tornado that usually exists in the Hyrule level, and they both die. I get a double kill. I feel pretty good about myself, but then I die pretty soon after that. When I come back, I come back as this guy wearing a yellow shirt who is riding a bike. I have never played as this guy before and so I don't exactly know the controls. I get super competitive and have this feeling that I am pressing the button "A", but it doesnt seem to be doing anything. Daniel, who is playing as Chun-Li from street fighter, immediately kicks me off the level. I come back and hold down A this time. There is suddenly a trail of fire from my bike wherever I go. I don't know the effects of this fire or how to use it in any way, so I try to jump on top of Daniel with my bike, but he just moves out of the way, and I end up cycling off the stage and into the camera. My guy's face gets squished by it hitting the camera, and I can see his cheek up against the camera.

My recall hasn't been awful lately, but I've been really stressed out over papers and finals. I haven't been really motivated to do the work necessary to keep up with my dream journal and I think my ability to retain my recall has dropped considerably. I know throughout the night last night I had in my head over 4 dreams swirling around, but I can only remember 2 right now, and not very much of either. I feel like I need to get my brain back in the habit of remembering, so I'm committing to writing down whatever I have recalled in the morning regardless of how little it may seem.

Dream 1-- High School Debate

So I'm sitting down in a chair next to my old debate partner A. Miles and we are talking a little bit. I don't remember the conversation at all but I do remember thinking that he is pretty cool and that I'm probably not as cool as him. As we are talking, my debate coach comes up from behind us and starts talking. Suddenly, we are standing up and A. Miles stands right next to coach and they being a conversation while I just stand apart and watch.

THey seem to be having an argument of sorts, and my coach's face changes dramatically after each response, it's actually kind of funny. I am watching his face scrunch and then change again.

After a little bit of that, I walk towards the cafeteria because

(I just remembered another dream while I was writing this, Dream Journals are such a good idea)

I want to buy some food. I go over to the cafeteria which doesnt exactly resemble anything I can remember. There is a large counter and the guy is cutting food on some wooden board with a lot of crevaces. I'm watching him do it and I'm really intrigued becasue I've never seen anything like it before. After he cuts the food, he comes over to me and asks what I want. I'm looking at the menu and tell him I want the ANOVA sausages.

When I turn around I see my high school friends (Dream Sign), and we sit down together. It's M. Runas and T. Smith specifically. When I go back up to get my food, there are three girls that had come over to order as well. I go over to get my sausages and I end up talking to this really hot blonde girl. I notice that the lights in the cafeteria have dimmed considerably and I think music is playing in the background. I see my friends in the background standing awkwardly not really knowing what to do, but I quickly disregard them and continue talking to this hot blonde girl. We start grinding somehow, and I get her up on my right leg.

I keep my eyes open and continue to grind, which somehow lets me have total clarity in my thoughts and actions without being lucid. I am literally controlling my actions and have mental clarity, but no awareness I am in the dreaming state right now. In fact, I was extremely concentrated on whether grinding with this girl would give me a boner, I was really wondering what would happen! I end up not getting one, but as we are grinding the background shifts without me really noticing. Somehow we teleport from the cafeteria into this outside playground place and we are standing on grass... Then I wake up.

Dream 2-- College Soccer Game

Maybe this dream is influenced by the face that my school's football team is about to face its biggest rivals in the nation and there have been two consecutive days of revelry. Last night I got woken up by my school's band who went dorm to dorm just playing as loud as they could our school's fight song. Everyone was pissed, but I found it kind of funny that I got an extra chance to WILD. The world of a lucid dreamer, huh?

Anyway, this dream is exceptionally fuzzy and I can only remember a specific part where I am at in this crowd of people cheering for the soccer team. I am at the front of the crowd, right up against the metal poles that separate the audience from the field. Happily, I did not go into PassObs at all during this dream, but I stayed constantly aware of my surroundings and talked to many different people. Mostly, I was noticing what the people around me were doing and trying to do that more because I had never experienced the front lines of a soccer game before. Somehow I think I end up in a grocery store....

Dream 3-- My Friend's Lake (I just recalled this while DJing)

So I am apparently back at my high school friend's house W. Hicks who I said I looked up to in a lucid dream. It is me and basically the entire grade coming back together for a reunion-ish event at his house. Me and about five guys are walking toward W.'s pool, we are all talking and laughing about something, I am particularly bad at remembering conversation, maybe I should practice that in real life. As we get to this clearing, there is this massive lake that spans as far as the eye can see in almost every direction. There is a boat way off the short, and an island to the north east of where I am looking. I am taken aback by the size of this "backyard pool" but don't consider it weird enough to reality check.

Everyone in the grade starts jumping in except for me and a couple of guys who hang back, and I can't remember why. I turn around and see some ships on the other side of the dock we are standing on. As I turn back around to look at everybody, there is a giant cruise ship that appears to be heading straight for us. No one is making any noise, it's eerily silent but I can see this ship slowly making its way toward where we are standing. At first, I'm completely passive, unable to decide what to do or whether this is real. Eventually, I make the decision that standing there and standing won't do me any good so I turn around and run the other way, but as soon as I make this decision to run I wake up.


Also, I've just started practicing indirect techniques and separation techniques. I feel like they are already having an effect but I have not quite gotten them to work yet. I can see that this massive improvement will occur in the next few days and am pretty excited to have another lucid dream by Monday.

Dream 1-- Peter Breaks my computers

I am in my room. I am on my huge bean bag chair (called a LoveSac) and I am typing on my laptop. I have a huge blanket over me so that I can only see a sliver of reality, the rest is blocked out by the blanket. As I am typing, I look above my computer because I hear a noise coming from my bathroom. I concentrate really hard on the little space that I can see in my bathroom without moving. I have these thoughts running through my mind like who could it be, what could be happening, and I think I come up with a scenario in my head that ends up being real.

I continue to stare at the open space for about a minute, suddenly there is a shadowy figure that I see pass from left to right. It startles me, but I try not to move, thinking that if its a burglar or something he will come out side and not be able to tell I am underneath the blanket. I wait, and I see him pushing a black box to the side and messing with some wires behind it. Randomly, I get an insight that this is Peter and he is going to throw my computer out of the window. I get up quickly and jump out of one of the windows furthest from the bathroom. I am now outside, there is snow around here but I do not feel cold. I see a black fence to the left of me and the brick building I just jumped out of to the right. If I continue to look straight, I see piles of snow on the ground all the way down the aisle until it turns into a large square courtyard at the end of the brick building.

As I am looking ahead, I see my computer smashing out of the window and crashing to the ground. I run over to the computer, and verify that it is mine. Then I have this flash of insight that he must see my laptop and will throw it out the other window. So I run over but he jumps out of the window and tries to fight me. He looks really evil, but he also looks very normal. At this point I am super pissed actually. I am really angry, I throw two kicks to the stomache that both land, but don't seem to do anything, and then he charges forward, but I kick a third time and land one to the face. There is a "thud" sound as my blow lands. He says 'when you kick me it sounds like "omph"' I get more angry because I can't seem to punch or kick very hard. We fight for a while but he isn't landing any blows on me, I just feel like I am getting lucky. I will kick him twice in the stomache again, and he rushes forward right into a kick to the face. Once I do that combo twice, he runs back into my room, and I immediately realize he is going to throw my laptop out.

I sprint over and as he pushes the laptop out the window I push it back into the room. Then I start screaming and crying at him like "How could you do this at this time? We have been friends for so long why are you fucking everything up? I hate you" I can barely get the words out of my mouth because I am screaming so loudly and the crying is clogging up my throat. I keep trying to speak, but I evenutally can't anymore and I wake up.

Dream 2-- Mall Cop Busts Me

My mom and I are walking through a mall. We are trying to get to the school talent show, so we are trying t o hurry. As we are hurriedly walking, I see a path that goes straight and two paths that curve a little to the outside around a counter. These two counters on either side of the straight path appear to be the cash register and check out line for a store, but I don't want to waste the time. At the other end of the counter, I see three men standing there talking. A flash of insight makes me think that they are the owners of this little store, and they all look over at me and I approach the straight path.

At first, I feel kind of embarrassed and stupid for walking straight when I have the feeling that it would be trouble, but inertia and the sense that I need to get to the show quick makes me just go straight anyways. When I approach the end of the counters, a mall cop to my left says something like "You can't walk through there" and I say something snappy in return like "I just did" The mall cop doesn't like that response and tells me to come with him. We walk over to this corner where there are 4 chairs and a podium arranged so that if you are looking at it head on it appears to be an upside down U with 2 chairs making one vertical line, 2 chairs making the top, and the podium making the second vertical line. The cop starts filling out a form or something.

Then, a really hot girl walks by me gets about 1-2 ft in front of me, and turns around. She is gorgeous. blonde, a little short, blue eyes, white, freckles, white teeth, necklace, brown overcoat, pink shirt, Jeans. We start talking and she isn't breaking eye contact with me the whole time and we are both just smiling while we speak. I see her brother come in out of the corner of my eye, and he starts talking to her. Then this third guy comes over and starts hitting on the girl. I am still standing the in the same place this whole time and just looking at the hot girl. As the third guy tries to talk to her, the brother walks in really close to the girl like he is telling her a secret with his whole body, and then moves himself inbetween the girl and the guy, but I'm still able to talk to the girl freely.

Then the cop says "fill this out." I turn around facing the podium and now my mom is to the left of me. I see that there are random scribblings on the sheet, so I don't really do anything specific but it ends up letting us go. We start walking away.

Dream 3-- Piano Talent Show

As we walk away, we pass through a door way. There is secondary blackness and then I find myself carrying a piano into the backstage room for the talent show at my school. It's in Dechard Theater and through the side stage doors I can see my wrestling coach and some other people that are just crowded in there. I lug my keyboard and stand in there and walk a little toward the back. Then the person in front of me in order finishes, and I go out on stage. I walk rather slow and don't really look to the side. I'm starting to feel really nervous and I have this feeling like I haven't practiced anything. My whole mind is blank. I plug in the keyboard to this outlet on the side of a huge cube. I walk over to the piano, look out at the audience and start playing.

I don't know what I am doing at all, it sounds really horrible, but somehow I am taking pleasure from playing this badly. I close my eyes and start to play. I don't even know if I am hitting the keys anymore but I can vividly hear the music in my head. It sounds really familiar to me because I would play the exact song whenever I was just messing around on my keyboard. I play for maybe 1 minute. I think that I am doing pretty good but it must seem rather novice compared to some others, luckily I am not making mistakes though. I'm trying so hard not to show any emotion this whole time. I don't smile, I don't get sad, I don't do anything except clench my jaw I think. I feel like it gets really hot and my face might've gotten red. At the end of the minute, I open my eyes and stop playing. No one applauds, and it's kind of awkward.

So I unplug my keyboard and go backstage. I see Lyle and he gives me a smirk that seems like he is going to laugh at me. I just keep walking and don't pay attention. I see another guy and the same thing happens. Then I stand so that I can see out the side doors and watch the next performer. As I am watching H. Huffines perform, Frisen starts talking to me. He is a little taller than me and he is standing to my left.

After talking to him for 10 seconds, we are suddenly driving in his car. I still have to do the same motion to talk to him/look at him but now we are driving down a road. We start having friendly conversation, but I get massively PassObs and in my head about what we are talking about. I feel like the conversation is getting awkward, I don't really know what to talk about. I am listening to how he is responding to me and his silences freak me out and make me feel really awkward.

We pull up to these two black poles that are just sitting in the middle of the road. We realize we cant pass them without getting in the left lane, so he backs up and then goes into the left lane. I don't remember what happens after that.

FA-- Dean texts and Sullivan talks

I false awaken on the coach I'm sleeping on, and I get this text message saying how facebook is totally closed down except for the Blair Account, which I interpret to mean Blair Witch and that it's a secret. I get this message from Dean and I want to respond back what he is talking about or what the account is, but J. Sullivan comes up and starts talking to me. I can barely see his face over the couch, but we are having a conversation. He keeps pacing back and forth during our conversation while I am just looking in the same place not moving at all. I get massively PassObs because of my immobility, and the same thing happens like the other conversations, things start to go black and I wake up for real.

Dream Fragment 4- College Class Gone crazy

I am sitting in a college classroom at the back right corner of the room. There is one guy sitting next to me and there are other people spread out all over the room sitting in chairs facing away from me and toward the teacher at the front. The teacher is describing some concept, and everyone looks bored as shit. When I realize that everyone looks bored, they all start to freak out and do the craziest shit. One guy knocks a whole bunch of materials off a table and then he jumps into a wall. Others start drinking and putting on costumes. As all of this is happening, I am just not moving, and observing and thinking to myself whether I am being ethical by not doing anything so if there are any ethics at all. I am having this massive debate in my head, which is the main symptom of PassObs, and things turn black and I wake up.

Day 11-13: No progress. Had shitty recall, didn't post anything in my DJ even though I could remember maybe 1-2 dreams each night. Had no real motivation to complete the task because I'm at home. I didn't get good nights sleep because I would keep tossing and turning throughout the night.

Day 14: Thanksgiving.

Throughout the day I was saying little things I was thankful for like the house, my senses, air conditioning (it was 38 degrees outside!), cars, roads, etc. This would be like a constant reality check for me because there was so much that I wasn't paying attention to that would snap my attention back into place. Like a fork, or a a phone call.

Last night, I went to bed really exhausted. I had like 4 desserts and so much food yesterday I feel sick today. I didn't have any dreams until my CAN woke me up. I shifted a little in my bed and focused my consciousness on my hands, did a few multiplication problems in my head, got comfortable, and fell right into my lucid dream! I am excited that the distance between days has shortened, as my last LD happened on Monday, only 4 nights ago!

I'm not even 25% done and I've already WILD'd two times with this method. I'm starting to feel more confident in my ability to actually induce this thing called a LD! Also, the CAN is helping a lot.

Another thing of note is that I was reading about 10 pages of a book by Carl Jung called "Man and his Symbols" which involves the concepts of dreaming and reality. This reading might be something that spurred the onset of my LD, and I will keep reading this book before sleeping in order to test that hypothesis.

Didn't get to post because I was in Boston, but day 7 and 8 and 9 were failures. On day 7 my biological clock got all screwed up because I flew for 5 hours and there was a 3 hour time difference in Boston from LA. I fell asleep at 2am anyway, but the bed was too uncomfortable for me to be able to get any reasonable amount of sleep. I still set my alarm but my phone was set to vibrate and it didn't wake me up.

The second night, day 8, I go woken up by the noise at 4 30 after going to bed around midnight. I went to the bathroom and came back to bed. I didn't have an FA or anything so I didn't manage to keep enough consciousness in order to facilitate the WILD. The bed was too uncomfortable, I couldn't remain in any one position and resist the temptation to roll over without thinking about it too much.

Day 9 I went to sleep at 3am boston time and I didn't get very much sleep at all. I had to wake up at 10am so I had no interval to actually set my clock without totally screwing me over. I ended up not getting very much sleep anyway because the bed was so too stiff for my preference! I flew back to Dallas, my hometown, today though.

Day 10, Finally! My first night sleep in a really comfortable mattress with amazingly soft pillows. I think the contrast really helped me to have a deep sleep that facilitated my WILD! I had my second lucid dream ever and multiple false awakenings! My dream recall was amazing tonight and I feel like I could have achieved lucidity multiple times had I not been exhausted from all the traveling and lack of sleep. My alarm woke me up at 5am after going to sleep at 11pm. This was perfect and led me to have 2 back to back false awakenings. Now I am super motivated to continue to work with my WILD technique all this week while I am back in Dallas!!

Tonight was ridiculous. I went to bed at 12:00 and I couldn't fall asleep until 1am because of all of the vivid memories that were swarming through my mind. Some nights when I try to WILD it takes me a really long time to transition, but others it happens in a flash. I decided after about an hour that I was causing myself to remember and that I needed to relax and give up any conscious control. So I stop recalling memories and stop giving myself the command to RC repeatedly, and I end up sleeping.

I had like 10 dreams last night, with two False Awakenings, but the dream was very light sleep and I woke up many times throughout the night while continually asking myself, "what did I just dream about" so I could have it all fresh in my memory for when I woke up in the morning. Maybe I need something to write these down with in the middle of the night, but I have a roommate who might get pissed at the idea....

My CAN-WILD didn't exactly work because I didn't hear the alarm at 5am, but I think that I still had 2 FAs right after it, which indicates to me that even though I didn't consciously register the sound of the alarm, my consciousness level shifted within the dream world and caused me to "wake up."

I'm really motivated now to actually have my first LD through deliberate techniques because I can feel it coming. Already from tonight, I can clearly see all of my dream signs just being blatantly displayed in front of me, and I actually took control of one dream without being lucid, so my level of consciousness is definitely getting elevated. For tonight, I will try to go to bed a little more tired than last night, and I won't try to reminisce as much before sleeping.

I will still time my alarm for 5 hours after going to sleep and we will see how it works. It's going to happen tonight so I'm excited to report tomorrow!

Tonight I felt massive improvement in my ability to WILD. I was reading so much on the forums because I want to get this skill down, and I'm really starting to understand that this could potentially allow me to LD every night and every nap!

So I went to bed at midnight, which I feel is going to be my consistent time to sleep because it gives me room to experiment with the amount of sleep I need to appropriately time my WILD. I think I have found that setting my alarm for 5am works best because 4 30 was too early. I would wake up just before my alarm would go off, and then have to wait for it to ring.

Maybe I am not so anxious about this journey anymore so that I can relax into sleep better or maybe I was just exhausted from working out, but I slept very well last night. I got to bed and fell asleep in 20 minutes. I didn't wake up until the alarm clock beeped at 5am. When the alarm clock beeped, I successfully woke up, and tried not to move. I remembered that I was trying to WILD so I started counting my breaths and trying to stay at least semi-awake. I can tell that this method was successful because I had my first FA in a while right after I fell back asleep. I was in my bed in my dorm room, which is the most common way to RC after WILDing! So I'm definitely making progress on that front.

I didn't successfully realize the dreamstate yesterday, but I'm really optimistic about today. I'm doing RCs all the time during my day and repeating affirmations along with continuing to read guides/forum posts about WILDing on these forums to keep the idea fresh in my head.

Tonight, I'm going to look at my hands while I'm dreaming and realize that I'm dreaming. It's going to be awesome.

This journey is getting ridiculous because I don't know whether I am doing things wrong or whether this is part of the whole process in order to get over some hump and have my body just relax into it.

Last night I went to bed at 11pm and set my clock for 5am. I couldn't get to sleep for what felt like 2 hours, but the whole time I was having these vivid and fantastic flashbacks to everything I had been doing in my life, ranging from age 7 to age 18. It was amazing, but it also felt inopportune. I know that I shouldn't attempt to WILD before getting at least 2-4 hours of sleep, so I wasn't exactly trying to get myself to transition into that state, but I was occasionally reaffirming my intention to recognize the dream state, which I think kept me conscious longer.

With this trouble falling asleep, I am also having trouble staying asleep. I will toss and turn throughout the night and I can't fall asleep as easily when I do find myself awakened mid-night. Before this journey, I would very systematically just fall asleep within 10-15 minutes of going to my bed, and then have the ability to drift off to sleep if I woke up after a REM period or something.

I think my alarm woke me up at 5am, but I didn't register that I was trying to CAN-WILD, so I just rolled over and tried to fall back asleep, which is the cardinal sin of CAN-WILD! Do not move when the alarm sounds! So, with that being said, I have school today so maybe I will be better distracted from this effort and will be able to just fall asleep more easily. Let's see what will happen, I'm excited!

Maybe WILD isn't for me, but I'm not giving up yet. When I finally get the access to post I will ask these questions in a forum.

How do I fall asleep quicker?
How do I WILD without giving myself the conscious intention to do?
Did others have this similar setback when they started a WILD Journey?