lucid

Tonight, at 23:00 hrs EST (11:00 pm), I had my first lucid dream!!

(I know it was 11 because I have a reality check app on my iphone and the first nighttime check reminder goes off at 11, and as you'll see below, I woke soon after the second check went off a half hour later)

The dream: I was walking with some dream-friends (people I don't really know in real life, just dream "extras" and we were outside of a small shopping mall in a parking lot when something (I know now it was the "ding!" sound of my reality check) made me look at the sky. Something seemed off, and I thought, "Am I dreaming?"

I suddenly realized that yes, I WAS DREAMING, and the scenery surged into focus around me. It was exhilarating but I managed to keep my cool, remembering that excitement can cause the dream to collapse. I very calmly concentrated and rubbed my hands together and the focus improved.

I took a moment to take in the scenery. I've been playing lots of Grand Theft Auto V lately, and the scenery was definitely influenced by the game: beyond the parking lot was a gently sloping hill covered with amber grass, and beyond that was a freeway and a city skyline, and the sky was a beautiful cloudless blue. It was a warm day, and it felt good.

I turned to my "dream friends" and noticed my wife was with them. I took her hand and we smiled at each other and I told my friends to wait for us. I decided to just relax and enjoy it, don't get crazy with it yet, and to just explore.

And so we spent a while wandering through this shopping mall, browsing in stores and just enjoying being in this amazing situation. I was astounded with how real it all seemed.

At one point we bumped into my mom who was there doing shopping and I told her I finally achieved lucidity. She was ecstatic and started yelling and congratulating me (she gets carried away in real life like this too) and I politely had to tell her to calm down or the dream would fall apart. She congratulated me anyway and as she walked away she called out "Golden Glow, son! Golden Glow!" (this is an inside joke between us referring to an awful orange soft drink made locally in Port Dover, Canada at a lakeside restaurant. At the time it seemed odd that she should say that, but it later had a kind of meaning)

The last store we wandered into was a video game store, and I remember browsing the titles before we left.

We stepped outside and the air suddenly got a very yellowish tint to it... a golden glow, and I realized the dream was starting to collapse. I rubbed my hands together some more and the glow went away.

We walked to our car and to our dream friends and I looked at the sky. It was still blue but I remember thinking "I wonder if I can change the sky's color?" I concentrated a little and the sky turned purple.

It was then that I saw a man in his boxer shorts standing at the edge of the parking lot. He was wearing a white unicorn mask and holding a hand lettered sign that read "dream". I thought, "Oh man, can't get any more obvious than that!" Hahahah!

Then the dream did start to collapse. The golden glow came in and distorted everything, and despite rubbing my hands together it wouldn't stay together.

I had a few seconds of being in both the dream world and the waking world at the same time, when my reality check "dinged!" again, and I plopped right back into my body.

I grabbed my phone and opened the voice memo app and recorded as much as I could remember.

It's so weird: it was an exhilarating experience, but like any dream parts of it are missing, and I almost feel like it didn't happen. But I KNOW it did, and that is an astounding feeling. In my two other posts here I've discussed my uphill battle against bad dream clarity and recall, so you can understand how good this made me feel.

I'm not sure when I'll have my next lucid dream, but I know it will happen. I cracked through the veil!