lucid

I'm trying to keep my dream journal together but little time to do meditation and got other things on my mind. Nevertheless keeping the detail in when I can and ensuring my phone is available and charged for me to write stuff down.

Most interesting non-lucids were yesterday when I had a weird one where I am teaching kids in a strange building. At one point I remember weird things happening like spaghetti spontaneously moving from my plate to a plastic bag. I'm at the top of stairs running after a lady that helped me in teaching.
Next one I'm discussing the film Chinatown with a friend and we've missed an art house film showing - I could have spotted I was dreaming if I had noticed how difficult it was for me to recall details of the film, but it didn't.

Anyway - had lucid on Wed where I'm walking through my home town and I'm 16 again. I'm reenacting my teen years as I wanted to live them. I kept stability without trying but as fears my Mum would realise I was lucid dreaming kicked in I gradually lost stability.
Next lucid was today when I had a dream of snogging some girl, who then starts to choke me, next thing I'm snogging Nicholas Hoult after which I wake up. I am a little bi, so enjoyed that too.

Considering I have a heavy project I'm working on and not doing lucid practices all the time it's quite encouraging, hopefully I can get back to controlling dreams as I feel like what I'm doing is random stuff from a disoriented mind rather than like being in charge. Only thing lucid I'm doing is reality checks, where I try and think of doing a different one each time in the hope these checks become natural and more about thinking than automatic mindlessness. The crux is going to be getting back to full lucid practice without overdoing it - e.g. a girl in my meetup group once said that the worst thing she ever did was thinking too much about lucidity when joining the group, as it reduced her lucidity and she didn't become lucid until she relaxed again. Her lucidity is overall better since joining the meetup group, but initially there was a drop.

On Fri night I gobbled down a 37g box of lozenges with menthol in them (Cherry Tunes).

I had one vivid dream during the night - where I'm teaching and I was reading a question - instead of realising it was gibberish I thought it was in German.

Nevertheless after waking up and getting back into bed I had another dream. I can't remember how I became lucid, but I remember as the dream went a bit crazy I had decided it was a dream. I also took control and decided to change the dream completely - ended up in a hotel room about to have sex with a lady. I found it difficult to control - never got to the deed and kept changing from one woman to another as my concentration wasn't 100%. Thinking I was about to wake up I did stabilise it at times mentally. It would have been better if I had gotten tactile, but I was lucid for a good while. After not completing sex I tried the TV which just had static - I remember it having 50 channels, then saw a report of Sam Allardyce bitching about opposition soccer players having AIDS (the idea that he would speak like that is completely mad) as I was losing control and then woke.

Dream recall last night was poor again, but remember one dream which was lucid.

At the start I'm back home at my sister's talking to her neighbours about work and the benefit system, which isn't helping them out. It's a bit of a mix up because the characters are in real life families that come to the wildlife centre I volunteer at. I'm vague on what happened next, but I think I false awoke and decided to go back to 'sleep' to go directly into a dream again - I didn't shut my eyes, just lay down and ended up in another part of the dream.

I'm vague again on the next bit, but a little while (maybe 30s-2mins) into the lucidity I decided to get tactile (even tho the dream was stable in its own right). I rubbed my hands together and I'm suddenly rubbing a girl up with a blue dress on. (Given my matress sheet is similar in colour, would this have been symbolic of me rubbing the bed in real life? Surely my body was paralysed at that stage?). Anyway I snogged the girl, which didn't really behave exactly like real snogs I've had (probably because I don't do it enough and need lessons, lol - for instance I had a 2nd date today with a girl I'd kissed on Sat last, the first kiss since Aug 2012). I false awoke from that, did a reality check - my finger never went through my hand but I could tell from the groginess I was dreaming still. I was in a clasroom tidying up. I was getting annoyed/tired until it occured to me to use some dream magic and automatically clear it up - rather than picking things up I rubbed them out (felt a bit rubbing stuff out on an image file using editing software) and cleared up in no time. Last thing I remember was hearing the voice of a teacher from secondary school, as I brought a pile of books to a desk in the corner (which looked more like a kindergarten/nursey/playschool than his classroom) and debating with him whether or not a concept was covered in his Business studies class or in Economics.

What is intriguing is that I feel my technique is close to fruition. My routine is 25 mins of meditation prior to bed - it can either be standard meditation saying an anchor word like 'MARANATHA' or, in accordance with a lucid dreaming video I did, where your anchor is pretending you're comfortable in bed and in a lucid dream saying the phrase 'I am lucid the world is vivid'. I follow this with the second video, a subliminal induction video. The tricky bit I do at the end is saying affirmations as I fall asleep like 'I will have lucid dreams' and 'When I dream, I will becom lucid'. The issue is that I was too intense previously and couldn't get to sleep easily. The trick this time, particularly this morning was to say the affirmations 10-20 times, then drift asleep. I'm not sure what worked/didn't but will discuss this at one of my lucid dreaming forums in London tomorrow. Something tells me there's one or two things that can be trimmed out of the routine, but that I've got something good going.