task of the year

Ritual: The new Twin Peaks started last night, so I watched the usual Sunday shows in their second round and didn't get to bed until after 2am. I woke around 7 or 8 and looked at my iPad a bit, enough to wake up my mind, with the usual vague intention to make this into a WBTB, but the only other mental preparation I did was to remind myself that dreaming involves proprioreception, so I should pay attention to my whole body as I fell back asleep. It was 9am when I woke after the dream, which I felt had lasted only a few minutes.

FA-WILD: During my WBTB, my husband mentioned that he was going to the grocery store this morning, so when I was half-woken by the sound of the garage door, I knew he must have left. This much was evidently a real perception, but right after that, still believing I was half awake, I heard voices. I knew my brother was in his room on the other side of the house, but I couldn't account for the other voices. [DL: My brother lives on the other side of the country, and the room I thought he was in does not exist.] Was he on the phone? But there were several voices, and the sounds of people moving around. Had he invited friends over? Then I recognized one of the voices as that of my maternal grandmother. [DL: She died over twenty years ago.]

Despite the dreamlogic, these observations did actually make me wonder if I was dreaming the voices, not because of the incongruities that would have been obvious to a waking mind, but only because of my conviction that if my husband just left for the store, then no one else (besides my brother) should be in the house so early in the morning. I tested to see if I was getting any dream imagery, and sure enough, when I partially closed my eyes, the four flaps of a manually closed cardboard box appeared superimposed over the rumpled covers of the bed that I had thought I was seeing with my waking eyes. [DL: In retrospect, is it apparent that everything I observed after hearing the garage door was already in dream, so I was mistaken in believing that I had woken up. My mind was half awake, despite the dream logic, which is what led to the confusion about which perceptions were dreamed and which were real.]

I realized that if I was already seeing dream imagery, then if I was careful I could probably "get up" out of bed and into the dream just like I do in WILDs. This was easily done. I crossed the room, an accurate likeness of my bedroom, and opened the window to look outside toward what I understood to be my brother's room, on the second floor above the attached shed. [DL: The shed has no second storey.] The ground was covered with snow, and I did recognize that this was incongruous with the current season. It gave me the idea to do the TOTY that I had attempted a couple times earlier, the sled ride.

The last shot of the final show I watched last night was a woman diving backwards over the edge of a boat to go scuba diving. It made an impression on me because I had only ever dived into water face first, and at the time I had tried to imagine what it would feel like to enter the water that way. Now, as I was about to jump out the window, I decided to do it backwards like a scuba diver. For a moment I felt like I was falling and wondered if I would actually hit the ground, but then the nongravity of dream caught me pleasantly in an inverted arc, and I settled gently to my feet.

I remembered the last few times I had attempted the sled task, and how I had overcomplicated it to the point where I kept waking up before I could finish. This time I decided I'd better just get it done, even if my solutions weren't elegant. So instead of going to the trouble of finding or manifesting the necessary sled and mountaintop, I just asserted these conditions into existence. I'm on a sled, riding down a mountain. As is typical when I "brute force" things in dream, initially it felt like a fiction, but soon I began to feel plausible sensations of sitting on a sled and sliding down the snowy slope. It was far from my best work, but it sufficed.

I was sufficiently familiar with the task that before I had even intended it, my sled slipped through an irregular opening like the mouth of a cave, into a wide dark space. But then I wondered if this was good enough—I hadn't read the terms of the task in ages. Would a cave suffice, or did it have to be a proper hole through the surface of the earth? I couldn't remember, so I decided to play it safe and conjured a perfectly round hole, like the sort of thing you might see in a cartoon, just in front of me on the lower floor of the cave. My sled and I slipped right through, and at this point my interest perked up, because I didn't know what to expect, and had not planned or intended anything past this point.

It was dark down here, and I had no sense of the borders of the space, yet I could see the details nearest me perfectly well in the nonlight of dream. The place felt public and even familiar—familiar as a type rather than a specific location—but I can't think of how to relate it to anything in WL. A "town square" might be the closest analogue, but of course in WL town squares don't tend to be in enormous caverns underground.

I felt my mind shift over into observation mode and began to take deliberate note of the things I saw, but at the same time I felt really hungry and couldn't resist impulsively tasting everything. [WL: I hadn't eaten much for dinner and had even felt hungry again by the time I went to bed, so this was a genuine bleedthrough sensation.]

My sled had disappeared in the transition through the hole, so now I was on foot. The first object that I passed, on my left, was a piece of fabric that had been fashioned into the form of an elephant, about about eighteen inches wide. It was attached to the top of a pole stuck in the ground, elevating it to just above waist height. I pulled the fabric elephant off the pole to give it a closer look as I continued to walk. White was the dominant color, but the details were stitched in brightly-hued threads, red and blue and green. The base fabric had a thick pile, almost fur-like, akin to what you might see on a stuffed animal, but the object overall was flat, lightly padded like a thin quilt. My hunger impelled me to take a big bite, and in my mouth it had the taste and texture of a sort of bland taffy. (Tastes are rarely very distinctive in my dreams.) I dropped it and moved on.

The next object I encountered was also on a waist-high pole, and about the same size as the elephant. This one was made of paper and a bit more three-dimensional—it resembled a large origami fish folded from patterned paper. The taste and texture were even less remarkable, but I was so hungry it felt good to be chewing something.

As I observed with mild amusement the way my hunger was driving me to try to eat things that didn't even resemble food, the rational part of my mind responded that this being a dream, there was no reason I shouldn't try to eat literally anything I could see. I put this to the test, breaking off random bits of any surface I came across and nibbling on them. One thing I remember distinctly was a table. It was a round table covered by a long, dark-hued tablecloth. I think there was a vase of flowers in the center but otherwise it was bare, so I grabbed a hank of the tablecloth and started noshing on that. I was cramming far more in my mouth than I ever would in WL, but I didn't worry since I knew that this stuff had no real substance.

I was still in snacking mode when I came across a white-bearded gentleman in a navy blue blazer. The bronze buttons caught my eye, and without so much as saying hello, much less asking permission, I reached out and twisted off the top button, bringing it to my eyes for a closer look. Tiny convex letters around the top spelled out "Bartholomew," and a small human figure occupied the center of the button. "Saint Bartholomew?" I asked the gentleman from whom I had taken the button, while trying to remember if there was really such a saint or if I was just free associating. [WL: I still wasn't sure so I googled it. Apparently Saint Bartholomew was an apostle, and although I was not consciously aware of that, I suspect the influence of day residue, because in The Leftovers last night several disciples were mentioned, and I've never been able to keep disciples and apostles straight.] The man shook his head, and when I looked again at the button I saw the letters rearrange themselves into the name "Balthus," which seemed to make a bit more sense... in a way that I can't entirely explain. Still hungry, I licked the button. I thought it tasted a bit sour and metallic, a bit like licking a D battery but without the tingle. The bronze button had been darkly tarnished but now gleamed where I had licked it, so I licked it a few more times to polish the highlights. I looked at the letters again and now they read "Ubewiz," a name meant nothing to me, though I thought it sounded vaguely Polish. [DL: I just noticed the symmetry between the verb "polish" and the adjective "Polish," so I suspect dreamlogic lay behind this observation.]

FA: I woke up (so I thought) and immediately fished my dream journal out of the bottom drawer of my bedside table. [WL: This was a realistic detail, because although usually I keep it right on the table next to the bed, for the past few days it has been in the drawer.] I flipped through it and couldn't find a single blank page, but I didn't want to waste any time so I started writing my notes in the margins. I was jotting down keywords: "Bartholomew, Balthus, Ubewiz," read the first line. Then I included brief notes about the fabric elephant and origami fish. I hadn't gotten very far when I woke up again and realized that I had been taking my initial notes in a false awakening and would have to start over, so once again I pulled my journal out of the drawer and wrote—grateful for the blank page this time—"Bartholomew, Balthus, Ubewiz."

Hidden words!! Ooooooo how mysterious

Tsunami and a Solar Eclipse:

I became lucid while outside with ~Dreamer~. We were on a grassy area. The ground and the houses were covered in a light layer of snow. As I was taking in the beauty of my surroundings, I noticed a city off in the distance that was about to be crushed by a giant, ~500 foot tall wave.



I smiled at the wave while focusing on a warm, loving feeling in my chest. The wave gently receded. ~Dreamer~ was feeling a bit mischievous and she decided to block the sun out with a black circle. I imagined the circle disappearing and chunks of it exploded with bursts of fiery sparks, a bit at a time until the circle was gone. The circle immediately regenerated though. The dream faded as a disembodied old lady’s voice was saying something about the black circle weakening.

Floating City!:

I was part of a small mathematics research team and I was talking with one of my colleagues about music. I was also feeling quite sleepy and lying down on the couch when he said to me, “That’s weird that you don’t like classical music, most of the people that I meet in our field love classical music.” I responded, “Of course I love classical music!” I closed my eyes as I recited the names of various composers that I liked, “Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Haydn, Stravinsky…I enjoy playing some of Chopin’s music the most…” I drifted off while focusing on maintaining awareness, I was trying to WILD for some reason. I heard a loud voice speaking to me and I knew that I must be in a dream. I opened my eyes and ~Dreamer~ was there. She had a gentle smile as she gazed at me quite lovingly. I smiled at her as I moved toward the window. We were on the third floor of a university building. I floated through the window/wall to get outside while expecting to see a plane nearby.

I saw a tiny airplane flying towards me with a strange, miniature alien-like creature inside. I jumped on the plane and threw him out of there.
I then stretched the plane out with my hands until it was a comfortable size. I also added better steering and a dial that I had hoped would make me fly faster. I turned it and it made snow start to fall all around me. A mist also began to rise from the ground. I was now in my childhood neighbourhood. I noticed a medium-sized bonsai tree in front of me that was slowly floating upwards. It was emitting this beautiful, soft, warm-coloured light. I added another button to the plane that I was sure would make me go faster if I pushed it. Sure enough, the plane really took off the second I pushed on it. I tried to imagine going through a time breach as I flew upward through a heavy set of clouds.

When I finally came out the other side, I was awestruck by a magnificent, floating city that was basked in warm light. It looked very much like the city from bioshock:infinite.



These carts on floating tracks kept going past me and I had to keep dodging them by doing flips and barrel rolls with the plane. I got too excited and woke up. --> DEILD

Creepy Dog:

I slowly opened my eyes and I was back at the starting point from the previous dream. I saw three people sitting on a couch in front of me, where ~Dreamer~ was before. I jumped up, bent my knees slightly, got a crazed look in my eyes, then pointed at a lady at the far end of the couch while shouting, “ABRACADABRA!!!!”

She immediately picked up an invisible round object with her hands and, in a very deliberate and mechanical fashion, placed it on the lap of the person next to her. That guy did the same, moving the invisible object to the lap of the person next to him. The last person threw the invisible object at me. I felt a gust of air as something moved past me (they missed ). Before I had time to react, I felt ~Dreamer~’s arms wrap around me from behind. I turned around, smiled happily, and grabbed her hand, leading her outside. I remembered that I wanted to play fetch with a doggy, this part is pretty hazy. I yelled out, "Fetch!" Hoping a dog would appear. I saw a golden retriever running towards me with what I think was a….dismembered human skeleton foot, complete with a boot. I threw it off into the distance, expecting them to bring me something cooler. The dog ran off and I don’t think I ever saw them again. I saw a giant airplane ahead of me down the street and I turned to ~Dreamer~ as we were running towards it and I said, “Let’s get to the plane!” She said to me, “I’m too much in a torrent for this right now!” Haha
What I took that as meaning though, was that she was waking up. I tried to ignore it but I woke up a few seconds later.

Flying Saucer Attempt #1:

WILD in bed (a couple days ago). I started in what was supposed to be my house, but there was a massage parlor with a lot of scantily clad young ladies waiting to be massaged. I ignored them and walked downstairs so that I could get outside. There were about 7-10 doors that I had to open, all lined up, quite obnoxious! I was worried that more were going to appear but luckily I didn't have to open too many. My front yard was what looked like a car junk yard. I walked around looking for a UFO and found one on a grassy hill that was overlooking a highway. It was a pretty tiny flying saucer, it kind of reminded me of the Rick & Morty one. I hopped inside and adjusted the seat, then made a glass bubble cover my head. I pressed a button and told it where I wanted to go and it started to fly at hyper speed. Then I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep.

Giant Jenkees and Lemon Tea:

WILD in bed (last night). I slowly got out of bed and waited to open my eyes until I was pretty comfortable with how deep I was into the dream. I remembered that I wanted to do some tasks tonight! I strolled out of the bedroom and saw Jenkees in the kitchen. He is normally a pretty tall guy (~6'7 I think), but in this dream he was more like a 8' tall giant treant.


(I know, the image isn't perfect, Jenkees is actually quite skinny, but I thought it was funny We have very narrow halls and that's often how I feel when Jenkees is walking down the hall in the opposite direction and at the same time as me!)

He was holding a bowl of cereal and walking down the hall. I asked him, "Hey, Jenkees? What does my DV avatar represent?" He responded, "What is your DV avatar again?" I told him, "You know, it's like...a bunch of leaves on a tree!" He ignored my question and started talking about poo as he walked past me and into the shower with his cereal. lol weird.

In the dream I thought to myself, "NAILED IT!" haha that's okay, I did that task again later in the night.

I moseyed on over to the kitchen, very relaxed, and tried to summon a cup of tea. Instead of a cup, I ended up getting what appeared to be a pitcher of hot water. I guess my unconscious didn't want me to be too lazy. I searched through the cupboard and found some green tea leaves and threw them in the pitcher. I tasted the tea, it tasted like sugary, lemon flavoured green tea, yum! I drank it down really quickly as I was starting to get a bit stressed about rushing to do tasks and then I had a mini-awakening and got back into another dream pretty quickly.

Flying Car:

I got out of bed again and walked outside to find a car to fly!
I found what appeared to be a car frame with no inner mechanical stuff, but it did still have wheels. I first tried to make the tires fly off, but they didn't even budge. So I tore the frame away from the wheels instead, leaving merely a car frame with bare axles. I jumped inside and made it start flying, but it still made a mysterious engine noise. I was talking with ~Dreamer~ about the car noise thing the other day - neither of us usually hear an engine noise when we are making cars fly and we thought that was a weird detail for that task. But that car frame was sure sputtering along.
I didn't fly anywhere cool with the car, I was actually struggling a bit to get any elevation but I still thought it was fun! I did a few flips in the air before waking up and writing down the dreams.

A Task of the Month:

I struggled a bit to get back to sleep and spent maybe an hour trying to sleep again. I eventually found myself in the middle of a parking lot, in the middle of the night, with the fading intention to go get a haircut. Haha dreams are weird.

I was lucid but I still decided to walk into the hair salon because I figured...I was already there...so why not! And I was hoping that there would be some people in there so that I could retry a task of the month. I went inside to find a completely empty room with gray walls and a white floor. There were three people in the room - a blonde lady behind a counter, a dark haired man sitting at the counter, and a little brown haired girl sitting next to the man. I asked them all, are any of you able to represent my unconscious mind? I felt a strong, loving aura coming from the little girl. I knew that she was the right DC to ask. I asked her the question - What does my DV avatar represent? She told me, "It represents hunting, dreams and excitement! Lucid dream hunter!" I looked outside and was about to ask one of the people to come to the road with me so that I could escort them when I woke up slightly. I waited to slip back into dreams.


Flying Saucer Success!:

I started in my room again and I heard a voice that was accompanied by a written message. The message suggested that I should do the crossing road task last. The voice said I should believe in myself because I can definitely do the alien ones! I felt really happy about that and, even though I was still a bit uncertain, I wanted to try the space flying saucer one again!

I walked outside and there was a really bright light in front of the house. A plump british woman in victorian garb and her two red-haired children shoved me out of the way as she made her way into my house with groceries. I love when random stuff like that happens.

Unfortunately, she turned off the light and it was very dark outside again. I tried to make the sun rise and a few streaks of orange and red light spilled over the horizon before quickly disappearing. I thought to myself, "Oh well, I can do this!!!"

I ran down the street, hoping to find a flying saucer when, in the middle of a cul-de-sac, it dawned on me, there was probably one above me right then. O_O

I started to slowly float upwards. I looked up and there was an enormous UFO above me, seriously, ENORMOUS, it looked like the mothership from independence day.



I was suddenly inside, there were dark, metallic corridors all around me. I stood by a window and started controlling the UFO. I made it fly super fast into space, through an asteroidfield, and then past numerous stars. It finally stopped at an orangish-yellow star with many gigantic rocks orbiting the star in a spiral pattern. There was a green-brown planet hidden among the rocks and I sent the flying saucer to land on it.

I was outside, my hands and face lying on brown soil, with green vegetation and strange looking plants all around me. I surveyed my surroundings, hoping to find an alien to talk to. A man that looked very human popped his head up from behind a mound. I had the feeling that he was either a farmer or a vagabond. He walked up to me. He appeared to have stumps for feet, but upon closer inspection I saw that he just walked on the tips of his toes, and he only had four toes on each foot as well! I said to him, "I come in peace! Please teach me yours ways!" He started pawing at some plants with his toes while he said in a strange accent that I could only describe as mix between accents from Louisiana and India, "Iron your food...iron your food is good it mix fats. It's CURRY!" I laughed really loudly, I don't know why but I thought that what he had just said was the most hilarious thing that I had heard in a dream in ages. I was scared that I would wake ~Dreamer~ up and I intentionally woke myself up. I was relieved to find that my body was still paralyzed and I hadn't actually burst out laughing and woken her up. Phew!

I'll just skip the earlier, NSFW lucid...

6-7.45am
(WILD)
Feel whole body shaking sensations and my face being crushed into the pillow. After this fades I can see the bookshelf next to the bed clearly, in a presumably identical state to real life. I stand up and phase through the curtains to get outside. The phasing results in black shapes obscuring part of my vision. It takes several attempts to clear it - cleaning an imaginary visor/lifting a visor, rubbing my eyes.


At this point the last Task of the Year comes to mind - the saucer one. So I hum a song that an Italian work colleague shared with me yesterday - a cover by an Italian singer of It's the End of the World as we Know it by REM. The sky fills with fighter jets involved in aerial battles with smaller, round, saucer-like alien vessels.

I spot a small round drone which looks like a smaller version of the alien saucers. Leaping high into the air I grab it and disassemble it, making the battery run low so it will return to the mother ship and take me with it. Sure enough the drone flies off and me with it.

We reach an empty warehouse. There are other people inside, moving around the wreckage of various space ships. All sort of weird aliens start arriving, but there doesn't seem to be a usable saucer here.

The dream destabilises and dumps me back in bed. I don't fall for it and remain lucid. This time I use the door to exit the bedroom. Four guys, room-mates - are making breakfast. One is holding a frying pan. The other side of the kitchen there is an open window. I climb outside and start looking around for another alien space ship.

A silver saucer swoops down and lands on the lawn. It is large enough to stand on, so I just jump on top and surf it. Controlling the saucer with my mind, I make us fly higher and higher through the skyscraper buildings around us, looking for empty sky. Then, up through the clouds, we emerge into space.

The blackness is filled with distant stars and a collection of larger planets. I fly towards one of the planets and surf down into the atmosphere.

Strange buildings formed from orange clay surround an open square. The ground is also a reddish-orange colour. Two humanoid looking women walk past. They don't look that weird - tattoos on the sides of their heads but still pretty. "Hey! I'm a human. From planet Earth!"
"No way!" She replies.
"Yeah true story! I come in peace too. Teach me something!"
"Um, like what?"
"Well, uh, what's your name? Tell me about yourself."
"My name is Blancmange" She replies.
*cough* (trying not to laugh) "Neat."
She then introduces her friend by singing a song. She explains that in their culture everyone has a song that describes them. It changes over time. The two alien women take me on a tour of their city which is all made from the same red-orange clay.

Blancmange continues singing her friend's song. The other woman looks very unhappy at her 'private' song being sung and taught to me.

So after a lot of reading up on the subject I've decided to get into the wonderful world of lucid dreams.

I'm beyond excited

Just a little background... I have had a number of Lucid Dreams in the past, but I never really understood them. After doing some reading and lurking on the forums, I've decided to take it to the next level(I don't know why anyone wouldn't )

With that being said welcome to my first dream journal. I plan to update daily for anyone who's interested in a first timers experience.

With that said, peace and love to all of you... and happy dreams.

As I was falling asleep last night, at one point I became aware that I was just below the waking threshold and was able to take some control over the hypnagogic imagery. I wanted to try a TOTY and decided to attempt sledding again. I figured my problem last time was that I had gotten fixated on looking for a mountain to sled down... wouldn't it be more sensible to establish that I was on the mountain to start with? Then all I would have to do is go downhill. And find snow, of course.

I successfully turned the hypnagogic imagery into a scene of sliding down a mountain slope. Initially it felt more like imagining than dreaming, in part because I was not yet fully embodied in the scene, only seeing it in my mind's eye. But already it was manifesting some of the ornery characteristics of dream and resisting my attempts to imagine snow, so I was sliding over bare earth. I let the scene play along and pretty soon I started to feel physical sensations: the bumps along the ground (I thought wistfully how snow would smooth out the ride!) and the surprisingly realistic smack of low hanging leaves against my face as I passed under trees. I was on a round metal saucer sled, barely big enough to seat me, but by concentrating I could prevent it from spinning out of control (unlike the similar sled I have in WL!)

Before long it started to feel like a real dream with physical embodiment, but I was still lucid enough that I was not concerned when my sled went over a steep embankment and into freefall: I just applied some mental "brakes" and came down gently, landing in the yard of someone's farm. The farmer was there, so I realized this would be a perfect opportunity to coax some snow into existence.

"Can you believe the weather we're having?" I asked the farmer. "Such thick snow! Hey, where is the snow the deepest?" I tried to make my tone convincing, despite the fact that there was still no snow in sight. Apparently this worked, because the farmer pointed into the distance, and when I sledded off in that direction, soon I was surrounded by snow everywhere!

I was back in the mountain forest, but there was a slight problem. I looked around and saw no way down but steep rocky cliffs, rather than slopes that looked suitable for sledding. I figured I should just pick a cliff and sled off it anyway, since freefalling posed no real danger. But at that moment, for no good reason, I felt a subtle pang of anxiety about completing the task, and this woke me up.

Dreams are a wonderful laboratory for discovering all the ways that our own minds can get in the way of our intentions!

This would not normally meet the threshold of being an interesting or very memorable LD to put in my DJ online, but doing it since it is for the TOTY. The night I previously did this task (my previous DJ entry here) but didn't read the instructions closely enough was more interesting. I used to list every LD but I think I stopped that somewhere in the 300's…too lazy to double check.


Wed, 01 Mar 2017


MILD then SSILD falling asleep during my version of the combined cycles (very common now - to doze off during).

I'm trying to remember what I was doing when I realized I was dreaming . It seemed like a typical SSILD realization making me wonder if it involved a false awakening. I'm thinking back looking for the moment of realization and my initial thought which is still the strongest is that it had something to do with a dreamy transition which I was talking about earlier today. A transition from one scene to another or from one person to another that didn't make sense without the context of being in a dream.

What I do remember is realizing that I'm dreaming and I float up flying around a little bit thinking about looking for some of those girls that must have been part of the previous scene but then thinking how I wanted to get back to the car task of the year. I land and visuals have faded but I imagine and take the actions of opening a car door sitting down and turning the key and I'm apparently in a muscle car from the sound of the engine and I thought it would be fun to drive it around a little bit before doing the task. It obviously has a lot of power jolting around the dreamscape.

Anyway I pull over and consider taking the engine and tires off of this car but I decided to go to a neighboring car that looks like an 80's model 4 door Toyota sedan. I reach down ripping each tire off as the car sits on the ground as planned. I then open up the hood ripping out the engine and then ripping out a few miscellaneous parts around the edges. I get in the car and turn the ignition "knowing" the key is already there and get a smaller engine sound (did not summon an engine), nothing like the muscle car before. I drive around a little bit on a dark windy path. The whole dreamscape is dark with shadowy figures as I drive with light shining dimly like headlights on a dark road but it looked a little different than typical headlights. I believe I lose lucidity in a false awakening.

WBTB

I become lucid. I am in a car with a DC who I do not know. The figure is female, and teaches me a lucid dreaming technique. "Relax your eyes... YES that is right. Now, make everything orange."
I succeed. "Good! See, the key is to relax your eyes."

Somewhere along the trip, I remember the TOTY and stop the car. I remove the engine and wheels, and it starts moving again.

These are some rough notes I threw together. I may try to clean it up later and add some pictures.

Finish 30 minute WBTB and BTB around 430am *Several times I think I woke but didn't look at phone/time in order to give me best chance to keep going back in. Finally do look at phone at 637am and am dumbfounded at amount of lucidity and scenes and time lucid! Some waning of lucidity but often quickly recovered and seems like at least 90% of the time and experiences that I remember were lucid.

Letter tags: HMS HM_? House mall stars hands 2nd m? 6th letter tag? May be one of the scenes below.

Seems not more than 10 minutes of SSILD and I start with, what I told myself during one of the FA's, must have been an NREM lucid. It was short maybe 1 minute and very basic mostly dark but interacting with a woman. It leads to multiple FA's each one different. Several were in a busy house with lots of kids and a few adults. Hands clasp from IWL in bed become hands in bind by girl trying to free my hands. House party like. Outdoor patio girl, wife voice, both can have me! Later indoor house gathering (one of several house scenes) with an older lady still beautiful and I tell her I'll make her young again and morph massage her face and it works in the end with odd results along the way. When I finish I see a female, her niece it seems, with her back to us. She has long curly black hair and I gently take her and lead them both to a bedroom. Mall ladies sex and after a while of that I say I need to do the TOTY, car one sounds good. I try to form a car inside the mall main way but it never becomes solid enough so I look toward an exit and see a whole street of cars parked parallel, not the typical big parking lot you'd see outside of a surburban mall. I see a maybe late 80's Honda that has seen better days but it was the first car I really focused on. I open hood just from front of car but do reach my finger in for the typical final release lever under hood and open hood, it stays open and I reach in and grab the whole engine block and all and rip it out easily like picking up an empty cardboard box. I think about breaking the window with my elbow but I am able to just open the door. I decide keys will be under the visor and yes one key on small key chain tab. I stick the key into the on position and start driving like a maniac. Very quickly transitions from asphalt to dirt trail on a hillside area that brings back memories of bmx trails. I get to a top look out point and see 8-10 guys in bathing trunks just below me maybe 20 feet. Maybe they're heading to a hidden beach below. At first I guess a couple of them near the back of group look gay but as they gather it doesn't seem like anything sexual, just a bunch of guys who may even want a lone guy to beat up on. No worries though, this is my dream. I call down to them to look up at me and shoot off into the sky quickly. It becomes night and I float in the sky and marvelling at the stars. They look fairly normal but a beautiful experience none the less. Visuals fade after a minute or so and I spin in the air, still a black void, so spin few more and a FA. / some busy outdoor area at night sexual with several girls. Also at Mall and at house scenes. Unbelievable! I just keep going from scene fade to scene fade after early part where it was from FA to FA. Also Vegas casino hotel with wife she found which hotel, nice but great deal, lucidity fading, maybe gone for this final scene before waking. I am forgetting so many details. I was setting reminders in the new scenes and I have whispy memories of what those reminders were but still trying to grab them fully - I'm sure I haven't caught them all. Lots of solid, vivid dreamlets including snow falling on a couple in dark brown or black winter long coats.

Hi, call me Kairos (means "Time" basically) I have what some would call "sleep disturbances". To list a few, Sleep Paralysis, Consistent Nightmares, Sleepwalking, and sometimes Night Terrors to the point where I had to go to the doctor. Now my nightmares actually have been proven to be useful in my profession, I am a writer, mostly horror hence why it's useful. Now don't get me wrong I HATE them but they're a condition I've come to live with.
I've been the last human being trapped on a dying earth, sucked into space, been attacked by animals/creatures, and seen horrific things happen to people to list a few. I don't think I can get into too much vivid detail on some parts to avoid breaking any TOS rules, but my doctor suggested I get a dream journal. I googled something actually (Why is it nighttime in my dreams) and it brought me here so I thought it would be perfect.
I am not going to list any past nightmares because there are only fragments that I can remember like most dreams, but I bookmarked this page so when I wake up from a terrible/pleasant or just plain old strange experience I can write it down here.
Get feedback that sort of thing. So anyone who happens to stumble along stay, go, it does not matter. Just know what you're getting into, I don't want any suggestions from my dreams leaking into yours.

Last night bed 9:46pm
GPC - 3:30 am - went back to sleep, didnt fall asleep till after 4am
GM - 5:06 am
sofa - 5:23 am - fell asleep shortly after 6am
woke up 7:45 after last part of a dream was non-lucid

Estimate - about 45 min long lucid
No transitions at all. No realizing that I'm still dreaming and standing up. Just one long event.

After GPC

DREAM 1
I'm falling asleep in a dream, telling someone "shhh" when I start to transition. Then I have to "shhh" my mom. I'm mad, how come they don't understand not to talk to me when I'm WILDing, since I told them about it so many times.

But I pull off the transition, tilting my head and body back to invoke the falling down sensation that helps my transition. I feel my body being lifted out and moved around and I falsely remember "just like that member described on DV".

DREAM 2
A perv walks into my house and grabs me from behind. I squirm but he is not letting go. I'm starting to be scared that he is up to more.

Interesting thing is, that I can clearly feel his touch. Very realistic.

DREAM 3
A group of female activists from some organization are at my house about to call Hillary on the phone. I'm looking at one woman's name badge and I note how fast they were able to make badges with all the hashtag names since I just saw them on twitter that day.

LUCIDS after GM

I'm on a busy road, at night. I remember the car TOTY so I raise my hand in effort to stop a huge truck that's approaching me. It's black and silver and I realize he is too close to stop on time. I duck and decide to let him pass over me and to experience how that feels. I didn't regret it, but I got kinda scared with that big, loud and longer than should be truck rolling over my head.

After that, I picked out another car. I opened the hood and ripped the engine right out. I didn't expect any trouble doing it and so it was very easy to just do it. I lifted the car up and ripped the tire off, one by one. I remember thinking if I got it right, if the wheels should stay and only tires should be removed.

I sat the car back down and I see to my left that a beautiful, shiny blue Formula 1 car just stopped next to us. I was kinda blocking couple lanes of the freeway, haha. I considered ditching the task and do it some other time and take the Formula instead for a joy ride.

I decide to get into my car and just as I imagined, there were no keys. Looked in my right pants pocket, but no keys. I tried to make engine sounds in hope that it will make the car go, but no.

TOTM - Book of Secrets

Later on while running around doing all kinds of stuff, I remembered the book TOTM. I start looking through drawers and cabinets. They are all full of cool stuff. Collections of rocks, all kinds of hardly identifiable things. I'm looking on the streets in campers, in houses, in many rooms. I finally start finding books. Looking at many covers, none come even close to saying "Secrets". For a while I amuse myself by reading, looking away and seeing how it changed. I'm even trying to will the title to change to secret. I try to write it on it with my finger too, but nothing works.

I'm exploring this house. Opening the doors and checking out the rooms. Nothing interesting. Everything is white and chrome colored. I find one room that looks like a bathroom. For some reason I like dream bathrooms, or rather, showers. I step inside while still holding the door. I don't want the door to shut and me getting stuck in there.

The more I look the bigger the bathtub - swimming pool in the bottom of the room gets. When I look third time, it's a size of a small lake, but it's empty. Looks like it's smooth, concrete sides have a bottom that's filled with desert rocks and sand and some small, dry bushes.

I see a light from a camp fire in the distance. I'm hoping there is someone who who would wanna get it on with me so I hover glide there. Not sure if we do it, I think we do.

After that, or before, not sure, I'm in a large, modern sex shop. All the tools are behind glass with lots of attendants ready to help you. There are some almost nude guys ready to help you pick your size, haha.

Ended up having tons of sex, good 20 min of it. I suspect the end was already not lucid, or just barely.

6.30-7.15am
Back in school. Drama class. Ring of chairs around the outside, with a female student in the centre doing a performance art dance type thing? The performance finishes and my friend JR, in the chair to my right, gets up and enters the ring. Crap. That means I'm next. Is there a specific set of actions we are supposed to do? I get nervous at the thought of having to stand up in front of the class with no clue what is going on.

Thankfully, it occurs to me that this is a dream and I RC by looking at my hand. It's weird and twisted. I do a pinch-nose RC too, to confirm. Phew. Then I stand up and exit the classroom.

Outside I recall the plane TOTY and look around. A few trees. An empty road. No planes. Well, fake it 'til you make it: I squat as if sitting in a seat, arms forward as if clutching an imaginary flight stick. Then I do a vertical take off, thinking about a eurofighter shape until the plane forms around me. Now inside a reasonably realistic looking plane, I push the flight stick forward and start flying over the forest. It's quite speedy.

Now to find a time breach. A swirling pattern appears in the clouds and I fly towards it. The swirls lead into a wormhole of blackness filled with yellow 'dripping' dots falling in all directions. Gravity is screwed. Who knows which way is up anymore?

I get through the time breach and emerge in the future flying over a city on a mountaintop. There are a cluster of spires covered in metal spikes and radio masts. A river runs through the city. It looks fast flowing and drops into several waterfalls heading down the mountain. In the middle of the river are several silver structures that must be futuristic hyrdoelectric generators.

The sky is clear. I fly through the towers and look down at the streets below. They look mostly empty, no sign of cars. One building seems to be made entirely from black glass. There are no signs or screens or adverts. I spot something that looks like a motorbike and land. It has a very stylistic frame and is presumably an electric motorbike as there is no engine or exhaust pipes. Also it only has half a handlebar - the right side, with a throttle. So, no clutch or gears. Twist'n'go. I gotta try this thing out!

After swinging a leg over the frame I grab a fistful of throttle and it immediately wheelies down the road. Woah! I'm not sure what to do with my left hand, without a handlebar to hold, so I just sort of rest it on my knee. Anyway, rolling down the street pulling dank whoolies has attracted attention - a couple of other riders on similar machines join the road and start chasing me. I head down a narrow alley and see a blue and white droid at the end, which barely gets out of the way... I smash through into someone's back yard with grass and a shed.

The air is filled with flying fish! They are glowing blue. What the hell is this now? I stop the bike and wander over to a tree, where there are several fish hanging out in the branches. On closer inspection, one of the fish has a chameleon ability and changes it's colour to black. It's eyes look bloodshot. At this point I wake up.

Sun, 05 Feb 2017:

I think I came into this scene with some awareness from a WILD style entry perhaps from DEILD but I don't exactly remember. I am in this rocky canyon area and feel boldness to fly and start to fly fully realizing I am dreaming. I then remember the plane TOTY I tried last night with some challenges. I land and start rubbing my hands together and saying how I will have a nice long lucid dream. There is no great spot to take off from traditionally with good size rocks everywhere on the reddish brown dirt but this is a dream anyway and it's a better spot than the empty sky off of the building I was hoping to materialize an airplane from the night before.



So I imagine I am climbing a small ladder up making the movements and I get into what is a vaguely forming cockpit. I imagine the key is in front of me and go to turn it with my right hand and the cockpit is looking good now with some controls and instruments that look like they belong in a plane. The engine sputters and is very rough sounding and I say okay that vague shape there on my right is one of the wings and I see them form like a small Cessna plane in off white color. The nose then forms with the blurred image of a quickly spinning single propeller on it and I have blue horizontal stripes on the nose and feel the rest of the plane behind me.



I take off using a gas pedal on my right foot to accelerate the engine and propeller, moving forward now and then pulling on the two-handed rectangular control (yoke?).

I fly up over the rocky area and off of a cliff with no issues. I fly around the canyon area a bit and remember that I need to open up a time breach before getting to my destination so I decide that what looks like the end of the canyon area is my destination and I mentally will a time breach to open and it looks like a big light-blue tunnel. As I go through, the visuals fade but not to black, more of a blur of shapes. I continue to hold my hands on where the controls were and fly forward willing myself to slow down but keep going forward.

Having exited the time breach perhaps, I eventually a small European village looking place forms with 2 story stone buildings and narrow cobblestoned streets forms.



I fly around the corner of one of the buildings having gone from a sitting position to a standing flying position. I see what looks like an attractively shaped girl with long black hair in a red dress from behind and I float up a little, like like I am exiting the no longer there cockpit.



I land behind her and tap her on her shoulder. She turns around and is indeed attractive and we start kissing passionately. I take her hand and we walk around another corner that becomes a room. She wants to

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

have sex

in front of her girlfriends, at least 5 of them and there's one guy as well.



Sounds good to me as I

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

lean her against a bed and whisk away her clothes with a swoop of my hand and take her from behind. It is very exciting having sex with her while other attractive girls look on eagerly. After a bit I feel like I could experience ejaculation

in this dream, because it feels so real. Instead, I start

Spoiler for Sexual Content:

having issues with it slipping out and needing to stick it back in multiple times. While back in

and losing sensation I start to wake, smiling ear to ear! My WBTB hour didn't seem right for choline or galantamine but I did take 5-htp before bed for the REM rebound effect, which may or may not have helped.

Ritual: WTB around 2am. Drank a lot of wine last night, so woke up many times to rehydrate. Just before dawn I felt the slightly anxious insomnia that often helps me get lucid, so I decided to confirm my intention with a little piracetam. For years I've been trying to come up with a good dream mantra/affirmation but never found one that stuck. Since I got lucid in a recent dream from seing the word "awaken" I decided to start with that. I wanted it to be longer and have good rhythm, so I tried "Awaken into (seeing) dream," where the word in parenthesis could be varied with any other two-syllable verb with the emphasis on the first syllable: seeing, hearing, feeling, being, dreaming, etc. I liked the versatility and hoped the variations would help keep my mind active. It seems this mantra was actually successful because it was still going through my mind well after the dream had started, although, curiously, the words had changed (see below).

WILD, "No Snow for Sledding": The transition was very smooth, and I think the mantra actually served as a good anchor this time. At one point I was inspired to see if I could move my dream limbs, and felt that familiar ambiguity about whether it was dream movement or real movement. I was 65% sure it was dream, so I kept at it until I gently 'flumpfed' in a loose heap right off the bottom of the bed, and then I knew for certain. This dream version of my bedroom was remarkably accurate to WL.

I was crawling at first, and from that low perspective had a good view of my two cats. They looked a little different—shorter hair I think—but I could still tell them apart. Dream logic made me wonder if I could somehow better communicate with my anxious cat in a dream. I crawled over to her and put my hands on her head, reaching toward her with gentle thoughts and telling her that she didn't need to be so anxious. It didn't work: she bit my hand! After that she went into the hallway where I was surprised to see our older cat chase her, an inversion of their usual relationship. I moved toward them and noticed a third animal, a remarkably lifelike grey squirrel—even more vividly rendered than the two cats. [Source: I had recently remarked to my husband how odd it was that I had never seen any squirrels near our house here, but he said that he had. Then just two days ago I glimpsed a grey squirrel outside.]

I thought I had better remove the squirrel from the house, so I picked it up by the scruff of the neck—it was so realistic I thought I had better handle it carefully lest I get bitten again. I peered down to it, wondering if it might have anything to say (this being a dream and all), but no, it just twitched its nose like a regular squirrel. So I opened the window on my side of the bed, the place where in WL I toss out the miscellaneous bugs that stray into the house, and tossed it out.

Around this point I noticed that my mantra was still going through my head, though slightly changed from what it had been as I fell asleep. It had taken the form: "Awaken, dreamer, I am dream." It occurred to me that once I was already lucid, the word "awaken" was no longer useful, and in fact might be detrimental. I thought about how the meaning of the word depended on its context: from non-lucid sleep one can "awaken" into lucidity, but from a state of lucidity, to "awaken" is to wake up. With the precarious thought of waking I felt the dream begin to destabilized, and hastily altered the mantra to: "Dream on, dreamer, I am dream." I managed to restabilize, and with the natural musicality of dream found myself adding a bit of melody to the words.

After this my thoughts turned to more practical ends. Wasn't there a task I wanted to do? Right, the sled ride. I thought over the details. I would need to sled down from the top of a snowy mountain and then through a crack in the earth into... who knows? Finding out would be the fun part. It was snowy outside, like it is in WL, so I thought that would make a good start. I just needed to go outside and find a sled and a mountain.

I opened the window again to fly out, but now there was a pane of what felt like transparent plastic covering the opening. I was annoyed because even in WL this is one of the few windows in the house that has no screen, so there should not be anything barring my passing. I decided to shatter the barrier with my mind, concentrated, and... nothing happened. Disappointed that I could not resolve this more stylishly, I manually peeled aside the flexible plastic panel and slipped out onto the lower roof. (This part was not quite accurate to WL: although there is a sloping side of another roof to the left, there is no level area just below the window where one could stand.)

I willed myself to fly, but nothing happened initially. I kept focusing until I began to float up and across the yard. There were a lot of random pavilions scattered below, and I reminded myself to be observant so I would remember the details later. I flew over to the roof of a small outbuilding—the environment no longer bore any resemblance to WL—where I found two sleds. One was child-sized, the other larger, and I noticed approvingly that they were the old fashioned kind on runners, much easier to control than round saucer sleds.

I picked up the larger sled and looked it over. The details were wonderfully vivid: it had a painted metal superstructure consisting of thin round bars painted white, and flat wide bars painted green. These encircled a small rectangular seat of heavily aged and distressed wood. I noticed an odd detail in the very center of the sled, a transparent glass sphere about four inches in diameter, half full of water. I peered closer, wondering if it was some sort of gyroscope, and saw words printed on the sphere: "FAST WATER." I decided that this was a device for boosting speed, and that I would name my new sled "Fastwater." I felt very pleased with it.

Sled in hand, next I needed a mountain. I resumed floating through the air and scanning for suitable topography. I soon found myself approaching a steep hillock, but since it was at most a couple dozen feet high, I didn't think it qualified as a "mountain." After that was a second, taller hillock, but I rejected that one too on the same grounds. Then in the distance I saw a much taller hill with a massive castle on top of it. I had the impression that it was a German castle called "Schwanzstein," though even in the dream I recalled the meaning of schwanz (which, in common with many Americans, I learned long ago from the Mel Brooks film Space Balls). That seemed like a peculiar yet somehow familiar name for a castle, and I wondered why it came to mind. [Source: German castles have come up in conversation twice in the last few days, both the one at Wernigerode and another whose name I couldn't remember. I just asked my husband and he reminded me it was "Neuschwanstein." So there you have it. Sorry Freudians, you can go back home now.]

I figured that the type of hill on which one was likely to find a German castle could qualify as a small mountain, and decided that this would be a good spot to sled down from. I floated closer, noting a number of stiff and oddly sepia-hued guards standing around the courtyards, as though peopling an old postcard. I noticed a perfect straight chute for sledding that ran down from the top of the mountain, so that's where I landed. Everything was in place... except... there was no snow anymore. Could I just sled down anyway, I wondered? No, I distinctly recalled that the task specified a snowy mountain. I peered around, hoping I could at least spot a few patches of snow and call it even. But the grass was as brown as the guards—there was a hint of sepia about the whole place, like a movie scene shot through a filter—and no snow was visible anywhere.

I sat down with my sled, willing it to snow. I concentrated my expectations, imagining how the first tiny flakes would move erratically through the air. Once again the distinction between imagination and experience—which seems so improbable in the dream state—was reconfirmed, because even though I could clearly see the type of snow I envisioned in my mind's eye, the dream air remained stubbornly free of flakes. This TOTM has a lot of moving parts, I thought. It's as hard as a TOTY! A moment later I woke up and was amused to recognize my error; in waking life I would not have misremembered the category of the task, since the TOTYs are linked by a common theme.

A bunch of people are sitting on a wooden floor watching a small screen. It shows some weird film, and this makes me lucid again. I remember the elephant TOTY and walk straight out the closest door into a jungle. There are vines hanging down and the noise of hundreds of birds and animals nearby. An elephant walks out of the trees towards me.

I climb onto the elephant and start to ride down the narrow trail, reminding it that this is a dangerous war-zone. Angry natives jump out of the trees and try to attack me with spears. I swing my arms and kick them away. One of them angers the elephant which then starts charging through the jungle and trampling everything in it's path. I concentrate on holding on.

The charge becomes so fast that the scenery blurs and I wake up.