non-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.

My dream recall is overall poor, although it has been a week of 2 lucid dreams.

Last night I remember my pants being down a lot. Very vague, but I distinctly recall looking at how black my legs became with mud from all this not wearing pants.

Final dream was interesting - I could tell after waking that if I returned to sleep I would return to the dream, however this did not happen lucidly. I replayed my last dream in a different form. I'm going after my evil twin who we hook up to a machine that makes him blow up. I'm being helped by ex-IRA bombers, who point out that the picture of a man on a tool box was the man that taught them how to do this. We watch when it finally blows in a big mushroom cloud, them describing it as a "fine bomb", with a shock wave that extends out for miles. I wake up as it catches us. It's bizarre how in dreams I would allow working with scum like that when in reality I hate them.

This demonstrates 2 reasons meditation may help. 1 - remember dreams better. 2 - drifting back into dreams lucidly should happen easily.

I just summarised my dream themes in my personal journal.

4 themes keep coming up:

1. Being in trouble for being naked (usually pants down publicly).
2. Work related stuff (teacher training)
3. Memories of moving flat (I've moved 3 times in the last 18 months)
4. A lot of celebrities appearing in my dreams

With these themes (particularly the first 2) I seem to end up controlling the dream (even without lucidity). Perhaps it's because they are common themes? Last night I had a dream where I was pulling a sickie and didn't turn up to teach class. I also meet my students 20 years on who say they were not inspired by me. Throughout the dream I keep changing bits of the dream so I don't get sacked (e.g. when caught out and about by my boss I change her memory and click my fingers to end up in bed). I had control, but no lucidity - perhaps my mind is beginning to recognise the common themes and will end up adding lucidity to the control at a later date.

Also I dreamed later on about being in a restaraunt and having a discussion about why their final course is free. I'm also introduced to a girl who becomes interested in me, but ends up going home with a different guy, following which I'm slagged off by her friend by not being direct enough with women.