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17-Dec-2016 - WILD + 2 OBEs - Explore town, become a giant

Wake up ~6AM, no ND recall, I attempt a WILD

WILD
Several short scenes. In the longest part I am reading a "magic" book sitting on a chair in my tower. Then I fall asleep

OBE #1 I am in my bed, on my wife's side, head resting at feet side. I am shaking uncontrollably, teeth chattering. I know I can exit my body
I need to put a lot of force to get up, but I manage to do it. Bedroom is dark; I move to the living room, everything is still quite dark but I can see a bit; Xmas tree is not there. I go to the curtains and phase through them. I am in a nice town, although not my usual one, it looks more historical, with low stone houses, a cobblestone road, small gardens with pink and violet flowers. I fly slow and low on this town, I cannot help looking in awe at this place, which looks extremely real (waking note: although empty). I pass by a low stone wall and a flower bush; I decide going back to take a second look, but when I do, the scene is a bit different; I think, no wonder, since I am dreaming. There is also a well, I approach it; dream recall fades here

OBE #2 I am in my bed, same side as before, again shaking and teeth chattering. I know I can exit my body again, good ! I exit, easily this time. Again, bedroom is dark. This time I exit phasing directly through bedroom curtain. I find a town, not exactly mine, but more similar to it than latest LD. I think about the DHL Month 5 clone task. My SC does some mix and match here: for some reason I want to become a giant tree. I reach an open area and focus on increasing my body size. It works well, and I can feel my arm enlarging, my legs too, then my torso.

I am inside a building now. I look for a mirror, expecting to look like a tree-man, but I see something totally different: I am still human, my face is different, my clothing is asymmetrical, wearing red/grey robe on one side and a brown coat on the other. This is strange. I attempt looking at myself again, strongly expecting to look like a tree-man, but the result is very similar as before. I stop caring about it.

I am outside again, trees look very small below me, I eradicate some with my hands just to feel the power, I can feel the trunk and branches under my hands. Then I kick one very far away. Nice. I feel ready to fight.
I see a corridor now, a door to my left. I open it. It reveals a bedroom, my wife is in the bed; from here the subject becomes very different, not going to post details. Then dream fades.

__________________________


18-Dec-2016 - 3 ND - Horror circus - In the city - Skyrim + WILD - DHL clone fight

ND #1 - Horror circus 3AM
This ND has a deep horror theme, when I wake up I am quite unsettled by it, so I write it down, but try not to recall too much detail. I am successful in this selective erasing...

A building shaped like a castle houses a sort of circus. I free someone / something from the corner towers. I kill / main some evil people. At the back of the building, I use a giant balloon to go up, do something, then down again. There are fires around. I try to hide and escape from evil guys. Helping people reach the place, although I cannot meet them. I am successful in saving myself.
<JUMP>
I am half-looking-at-TV / half-remembering the scene of a dog who gets pushed through a path of raised stones, by some yellow moving / elevating rocks. I explain this to my son

ND #2 - In the city ~5AM ?
I am in an American city with C, looks like Chicago-ish. I am leading the way, although he knows the place better than me (FM?)
On the way I notice how the big buildings' shadows keep the place dark. Only in a spot, sunlight is passing through the space between some buildings. I look for the sun, but cannot find it (!!)
We reach our destination, a small square close to a big arch. I tell him I was sure I was somehow able to get there.

ND #3 - Skyrim ~6AM
I am half-inside / half-playing TES V - Skyrim. I am in a secret / Easter Egg dungeon. I know that the next room is an Oblivion (TES IV) citation. I find it, looks like a kitchen open on woods. A music starts, I remember it's from Oblivion (false - I think it comes from Dragon Trainer cartoon instead). I show it to my son. I reach the room, it's quite empty, made of bright wood. I observe the minute details of the furniture and remember how much time I spent there in Oblivion (I don't think that room exist in the game at all)

WILD - Skyrim, Become a dragon, Fight DHL Sensei clone 6:45 AM
I start from previous dreams. I become a dragon in Skyrim, gradually morphing, feel the spine changing shape and vertebres lenghtening. First I become a version with wings and no forearms and flap my arms/wings, then I become a winged four-legged version, cannot "feel" wings but fly well.
After some wandering around and dream stabilization, I recall the DHL clone fight task.

I reach a small city, covered in snow. To my left a small wooden granary. A newborn baby is there, it's cute, wearing just a camisole. While I am looking at it, it morphs into a black wolf and assaults me ! I don't want to kill it, remembering it's a baby. I use a "calm" spell, having a green aura around my hand, keep my hand on top of its head while not getting bitten. After some time, it stops attacking, then it returns to its child appearance.
A mad scientist talks from some speaker around that he's doing some tests, and that one worked well. I get angry at him.
I tell him I killed the Mad Scientist last time (actually false, I just stopped it), he answers the world is full of Mad Scientists. Hmmm, I suppose he's got a point there... He also tells me he's got some challenges for me.

I go to the right, the town continues that side. There as a snow-covered clearing. When I reach it, I fall down a narrow pit. I look up, I see the square of light getting small, look down and see the ground getting close. I hit the ground violently, but no pain arises.
When I get up I am in a small room, the walls lined with coffins / cages. A bear comes out one of those, I kill it with my sword. Then some walking dead (draugr in Skyrim), which I kill with sword and fire. Then other creatures attack me, I dispatch them easily.
<JUMP>
I want to fight the clone in a more "modern" environment, so I try summoning a modern city. I am partially successful, I am there, but it's kinda blocky / empty, but soon I find myself in the small snowy town.
Then the Mad Scientist unlashses its strongest weapon against me. He tells me he's chosen to clone DHL Sensei hero to kill me, his sword is indestructable and he can power himself at will. On top of that, he has made some improvements to it !

A guy in a suit runs with ultra-speed towards me, hits me like a truck, I drop on the ground. His suit is white and dark blue. When I get up, it uses his sword against me, I parry with my sword. He uses super-strength to push through my block and throws me on the ground again. I roll on the side, then use my sword to chop the lower part of his legs off. The leg and feet regrow at insane speed. Now I understand what the scientist meant by improvements. This is going to be tough !

I draw my black bow, but he's too fast and before I can shoot, he's on my with super-speed again.
I punch him hard and he staggers. I use some fire spells on him, charring his suit and face. He recovers from that very quickly, and is up in no time.
Need to change tactics: I open a door to the Oblivion realm, looks like a violet circle on the ground, and summon a Frost Atronach (an elemental). He sets his sword on fire and hits the Frost Atronach, melting its hands, the sword flames go off, the Atronach is destroyed.
I summon a black wolf, use my prokinesis to set it on fire and unleash it on the enemy.
The firey wolf fights hard with claws and teeth, but gets beaten hard by the enemy, I lose track of it.

The clone comes to me. Running at super-speed in a circle around me, he creates a dust tornado.
I aim my bow randomly at the dust in front of me, reasoning that since he's so fast I may hit him by chance, which happens but to small effect.

Then I summon a small wyvern close to me; it spreads a green venom cloud in the air, which mixes with the dust cloud.
Evidently this has an effect on the enemy, which slows down his speed, then stops.
I draw my bow, and start firing arrows at him. One, two, three, ten. I pin him to the ground, close to a rock wall.
For every arrow that he removes from his body, two more hit him.
I take few seconds to summon another Frost Atronach; the ice giant further slows him.
More volleys of arrows finally drain his energy; he's laying on the floor exhausted.

I hear the Mad Scientist mocking me; I will not be able to kill him because of his immense regeneration skills.
Again, he's got a point, but I get an idea.

Spoiler for Violence:

I push my hand through his chest and grab his heart. Then I feed it, still beating, to the black wolf, which devours it.

I win.

My next target is the (second) Mad Scientist himself. With the technology he's got, I am seriously worried for the people of the dream world.
I track his lab, but when I am inside this modern, hospital-looking building, the dream fades...

<JUMP>

WILD #2 - Short. I see three faces. I focus one, a white man with short black beard and a hint of Asian features. I deeply observe his face features, amazed by the stability.

Last night I had 7 lucids, the first I have no solid memory of, just a fragment. My first LD, all I remember was a white haired boy holding his hand up and everything burning. surprised that I can't remember it now as it seems to have been very memorable.

Lucid 2: I'm walking down a hallway and I enter a room. Everyone is sitting at a school desk and there is a tree in the centre of the room. Everyone is sitting around waiting for something, not sure what. Some male DC gets up and hits me over the head with a foldable chair, it does nothing and it simply bounces off. The DC looks confused and I say "this is my dream". I punch the DC 100 times in the least amount of time I could manage (around 9 seconds). I then fly and phase through the roof and explore space for a bit looking at different planets. I don't remember much after this but I do rember waking up. I successfully attempt a WBTB.

Lucid 3: I'm flying through a forest and I come across a rain forest. After exploring the forest, I lose active lucidity. I end up getting chased by a non human entity. After running I think to myself "this is a dream, why run when I can fly". I still don't really think about it and fly until I hit a large 1 floor mansion that looks like it was old Japanese architecture. I see two old reoccurring dream characters and I become fully lucid. We talk a bit about something and I explore the mansion with them checking how all the rooms changed. That's the last bit I remember before waking up.


***ToTM***
Lucid 4: I get water and try to go back to sleep. When I fall asleep, I see images of the house and the reoccurring dream characters from the last dream. After looking at this image for a while, I reach out my hand and try to touch it and the scene comes alive. The dream characters welcome me by saying "Welcome to another lucid dream!". It surprises me because I rarely ever get lucids from DCs telling me I'm lucid. I respond with "aren't there rules about telling me that" and they respond with "no, want to see something else we shouldn't be able to do?" And I said "sure". The female DC opened her pocket on her jacket and a paper came out and folded into the shape of a house. I was surprised as I haven't seen something like that before. The male DC said snap your hands and I did. The origami house burst into a blue flame. I asked why I did that and he responded "it's your task of the month, you just have one more basic but I'm not sure what it is". I was so shocked that I woke up. After waking up, I checked the forums to see what the missing ToTM was and saw that it was see what you can eat at a buffet. I will try to complete that one whenever i can.

Lucid 5: after falling asleep yet again, I find myself wandering through a hallway and I see in a room down the hall the kid I beat up in lucid 2. I see he's telling on me to a teacher and I think I'm in trouble. After going into the room, I focus on one child who said "I always wanted a pet rabbit". As he said that, the teacher drops 2 rabbits into the room and said here is your reward and punishment. The room starts to fill with water from an unseen source. I grab both rabbits and start to swim. The water over takes my head and I look up to see the water rising faster than I can swim. As I see a light shimmering from above, I think to myself "I could hold my breath to float faster, but that would wake me up". As soon as I think that, I become fully lucid and fly through the water and find myself in an Olympic sized pool. I fly out and drop the rabbits off at the side. I remember the task but get destructed by the basketball court in the side room. I decide to play a game against another team and I can't remember anything after that.


***ToTM***
Lucid 6: I find myself holding a long sword standing by a mall bathroom. I'm scanning the people who walk by looking for a friend but she isn't there. Everyone is looking at me and I'm not sure why. I see someone familiar but he isn't a friend. He is the white haired kid from lucid dream one, the one I don't remember well. I remembered it better in the dream and that's why I knew he wasn't a good person. After seeing him, I became lucid. I saw he carried a sword like mine, and asked him where he was going. He replied looking for a friend, just like you. He then requested to use my phone and I let him. I also knew that I should attempt the last ToTM this dream. After putting the phone to his ear, he said "they aren't picking up, they must be dead. Catch you later." He then walks away. At that, I hurry, sword in hand gliding through the mall to the food court. I go to a Chinese buffet restaurant and ask what I can eat. The lunch lady who was taking my order said "nothing for a dreamer without an identity". I look at my phone and see that the lock screen has been replaced by a blood red picture of a red butterfly with its wing fallen off. At this, I panic and have a false awakening. I walk downstairs and see my parents. I tell them that I had a lucid nightmare and they responded with do you think this nightmare will end? I say "oh shit" and fly through the ceiling as fast as possible. I crash through the moon and wake up for real this time. I get more water and go back to sleep.

Lucid 7: I'm walking through an amusement park. I take out my phone and see the picture of the red broken butterfly on it. I am fully lucid now. I see the kid with the white hair off in the distance making a call with someone else's phone. I take out my sword and half fly half teleport and attack him. He generates the sword he had and attacks back. At this, I tell him this is my dream therefor you follow my rules. I will the sword from his hands. He then said "You may control the mindless beings that walk this world but not the will of others". After he said that, I saw a flash of unrelated images while listening to sad music. After two minutes of listening to this, I woke up and it was 7:20.

That was my personal record for most lucids in one night. I'll see if I can do it again.

After being non lucid for a considerable amount of time I became lucid while spotting a family guy bag hanging from a pole outside a shop. We were actually there to christmas shop but I decided to change things and see if I could find a gift for Dawn as a dream task.It sounds easy but with the way settings and objects change it can actually be kind of challenging for me.As I was looking I saw a yellow bag that caught my eye but continued following the dc who was supposed to be my brother. Except he was wearing a black hood so I couldn't see his face anymore. The dc walked me into a mall where I took a look around.

As I was looking I saw a bunch of women picking out candy from a rack."Chocolate?"I thought picking up one with a huge elongated pole dispenser on it."Nope, too weird". I than put it back and kept looking until a women who felt familiar came to me and asked why I was going to spend money on a gift when I could just buy whatever snacks I wanted with it.

What she said made me rethink what I was doing but when I looked to the girls picking chocolates off the rack I thought it was valentines day and that I was supposed to give my guide chocolates like in Japanese anime. "No. I need to find the heart shape chocolate"I told her, convinced that it was something I must do. The women sighed than grabbed my hand."Alright,follow me" than walked me out of the mall and showed me the way into another store.We ended up in a small supermarket where an old man who owned the place was organizing food stuff.

The women went looking near the man while I checked the shelfs and decided to get peanuts for a snack. I than walked around for a bit till the women came up to me and said that they didn't have what I wanted. "No! We have to find it! Take me to a pharmacy instead!" I told her. She took my hands and showed me the way outside. As she did I thought about how long I had been in the dream and how great it was that i had been lucid for a while.But after I entered another shop with her I woke up.


(Pic is from an anime)

We are having technical difficulties today due to an ice front that has come in. I'll try tomorrow.

I try and take a box of a raving psychopathic man. This box, when opened, will destroy the world. I fail and run. I find my self in a dark room and a woman comes to me. She tries to help me, but I start spasming as the radiation from the box being opened IN THE FUTURE travels through time and touches me. She gives up, and leaves. Suddenly the light is turned on and thugs enter the room, and start eating at a table. I must hide. I hide in the toliet. It stinks terribly. The woman comes back and feeds me some salmon. Suddenly, ghe room starts shaking and all is destroyed.
I am thrown into a different world. It feels cold and not a 'rich' as the previous. It feels grey. I am being shown the contruction of a library. I feel depressed.

Last night bed 9:30pm - 3:30am

Remembered 3 dreams from last night

DR 1:
This one was a bit abstract. But I was above some water with deep sandy sides, like a quarry filled with water. I was bout to get into my spaceship, but first I had to do something. I threw some small shining ball made of energy down, it was suppose to do something spectacular. Someone with me said it's doing it, but I didn't really see it.

DR2:
Somebody, maybe aliens are releasing these tiny tiny bugs. They are suppose to come ot of the vents soon.

DR3:
I'm in a store and the sales person brought some shirts for me to try. I tell my mom, that they are all male and looks like she just grabbed the first ones she saw on the rack. I went and picked some that looked better.

First RC was triggered by my dream partner saying "This is weird, it's like a movie" about the way another dream character was acting. I got so excited when it worked that my whole dream body began to tingle intensely. Things began to gray and I attempted to stabilize by staring at my hands, they were grayed out and hard to see. The funny thing is, is that I thought my waking life's hands were doing it alongside my dream body hands- there was some lapse in logic here. Maybe it's because it felt so real? When I woke up though, to my surprise, my hands were crossed and folded and stuffed in the sheets and I realized that I couldn't have just been holding them in front of my waking life face.

During my second successful LD, I stabilized and then decided to keep taking notes (which is what I was doing before i did a RC) so as not to disturb or excite my mind too much- I didn't want to lose this one again.... Then I couldn't help myself and decided to fly . I floated upwards and soon enough, everything grayed out. Then I had a semi false awakening type-experience and told dream characters I just had a lucid dream! What I mean by "semi false awakening type-experience" is that after the dream world grayed out when I was flying, the same setting came back but I was on the ground and when I was running around telling people I LD'd I wasn't fully lucid anymore and I think that my dream brain thought I was awake? I'm not sure!
I have this impression that dreams are supposed to feel as vivid and sensory as waking life. But when I awoke from my LD's, upon remembering them, they felt distinctly different than real life in that they did not feel as vivid, at all. I wonder, and maybe y'all will have insight to this as well, if it was because of my over-excitement and the resulting graying-out? I'm not sure what to think. Maybe I'm just prone to fuzzy dreams? Is that a thing? I hope not!

A couple random dreams before my WBTB, including me playing a LEGO version of Skyrim. During my WBTB, I decided to read Hyu’s DJ again (for like the 4th time) for lucid inspiration (specifically this entry).

I fall back asleep, and find myself in a quaint little neighborhood, going from house to house playing Christmas carols on a flute. One of the houses I enter has an entire wall that’s just a screened-in patio. There’s a ton of plants growing through the ground inside, and a lot of the panels on the walls have fallen or broken. I suddenly realize that I was just going to sleep, which makes me become lucid. I prepare to make a portal through the floor to teleport, but as I’m deciding where to go to, everything goes black. However, the dream still feels incredibly stable, so I try to focus on making something else appear. Before I can do that though, Vi casually walks into my view. I’m somewhat surprised, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen her. Before I can say anything, some lights behind her start to turn on, and I can finally see where I am.

I’m in a large white room - actually, I’d hesitate to call it a room. There’s no walls, the white-ness just extends on forever in all directions. In the middle are a ton of small, white, floating platforms, but other than that there’s nothing on the “ground”. In fact, I think for a moment what exactly I’m standing on, but I try not to dwell on that fact so I don’t end up falling through whatever it is. I turn back to Vi, and beside her is a humanoid robot, who explains that this is a futuristic dream control and dream fighting training complex. I get incredibly excited - like seriously, I’m freaking out more than those families on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition when they first see their new house. I start asking if I can make my own weapon (thinking something like Hyu’s katana), but Vi insists that I start with something a little more simple.

Following that is a montage of me doing various training. First is agility, where I have to cross the floating platforms quickly while staying light on my feet, since some of the platforms won’t support my full weight. At one point, I fall through the platform and plummet into the abyss. After I reappear on the platforms, a hologram version of me shows a “replay” of my failure so I can learn what I did wrong. After that, I’m back on the platforms slashing a holographic sword at holographic enemies. After the training is over, I’m back in a side room of the complex, with a tablet that shows my progress report. There’s only two stats listed on it:

Confidence: 38%
Fart Noises Made: 8

I see Vi and shove my tablet in her face, rubbing in my (admittedly mediocre) score. “Ha, beat that!”
“Well, I don’t think anyone could beat that fart score even if they tried.”

I wake up and write down my dream before lying down again. I start to have WILD transitions, but my dad barges in and wakes me up to ask me a stupid question about his phone. I get up from my bed (which is now in the living room) to help him, and then quickly lie back down. I quickly get the intense vibrations again, and suddenly my bed is back in my room. I manage to roll out of my bed, but I can’t move my limbs. However, I’m still able to move around the room by making myself float around in a luge position. In the middle of the room are a few large floating star-shaped rings, and as I fly through them, I regain control of my limbs. I get through all of them before landing on my now-movable feet. I’m still in my bedroom, but I can’t take my usual exit through the window, since the window isn’t there. There’s another window right beside the bedroom door, but it’s small and kinda high up. I try to jump through it, but my butt gets stuck. I can still look out though, and I see a whole rooftop terrace with tables and chairs. I go back inside and try to think of how to get out there. Wait… shouldn’t there just be a door? I shut my previously wide-open bedroom door to find another white door behind it leading to the terrace.

I open it and walk through to see that there’s an entire restaurant seating area out here, complete with giant umbrellas over the tables and christmas lights for some nice mood lighting. However, the place looks fairly rundown, as next to the door are a ton of spider webs and wasp nests. I really want to explore it, but I’m afraid to go out because of all the bugs.

“It’s okay, this is a dream. You are lucid. Nothing can hurt you in the dream.”
“...unless the dream makes a bug that can hurt you.”
“..........Why did I say that?...”

Immediately, a red bug crawls up my back, with the body shape and legs of a spider but the body thickness and large pincers of a beetle. It gets right in the middle of my back before taking a big bite of my skin. It stings quite a bit at first, but that doesn’t compare at all to the extreme burning that comes after that. I try to reach back to kill the bug, but it’s just out of reach. Meanwhile, it keeps biting, each time getting more and more painful. I honestly think about trying to wake up, since the pain is too unbearable. Instead, I attempt to channel my rage into making flames come off my back to burn the little f***er. It takes a couple tries, but I eventually generate enough heat to make it stop biting. During the lull in pain, I finally manage to reach back and grab it, smashing its head between my fingers. I turn to see two more black bugs on the railing, and I get ready to smash them.

“Woah woah woah! Listen man, we’re real sorry about Roger, but we don’t want to hurt you. We’re just looking for some booty.”
“Yeah, some booty! Specifically Greek booty.”

I grab one of the umbrellas off the table and jump up on the railing beside them. Looking down, I see this terrace is about 30 floors up. I open up the umbrella, turn back to the bugs, and in an epic movie voice, I say…

“Do I look Greek to you?”

I dive off the edge, using the umbrella to glide my way down before waking up.

Had another lucid dream this morning using the Here & Now technique. I actually got to the sleep paralysis stage. It was scary only because I was expecting some loud noises or demonic crap to happen based off of other user stories. None of that happened. Here's the thing, I couldn't move my body but I could open my eyes. I opened them, expecting a lucid dream, but my body reanimated and I wasn't fully asleep yet - just in a void.

I tried again and managed to pass the paralysis, the void, and eventually was able to move around in the lucid dream. It was probably 30 seconds of me walking around in the rain outside my house.

I managed to fly, though .

...

Ritual: I'm coming out of my longest dry spell yet, but it was clearly a problem of motivation. Even when I had the superficial motivation to LD (I always do), the deeper motivation that makes it actually work was thwarted. In time I came to recognize the reason for this. At the end of last semester I started talking to a colleague that I knew was very interested in dreams. Even though their interest had been shaped by Freudian principles, I ventured to reveal my interest in (and practice of) lucid dreaming in the hope that we might have an interesting dialogue across perspectives. Well, the colleague promptly stopped talking to me, and I was so annoyed and embarrassed that it took a terrible toll on my dreaming. Not just lucidity—even the quality of my NLDs and my ability to remember them faded drastically. And even after I finally diagnosed what was causing the problem, I couldn't seem to dismantle the emotional block. I would just get irritated whenever I thought about it. I think this combined with the natural cyclic tendencies of my dream practice—I have too many interests and hobbies so all of them seem to wax and wane at various points to make room for one another—but hopefully my dreaming is now on the verge of a comeback. I can't think of a better New Year's resolution.

I went to bed early last night (11pm) hoping that would help to get lucid, and for good measure spent some time browsing DV. I woke up a few times during the night and it seemed like it was going to be a bust, since I barely had any dream impressions. But the last dream I had before waking (at around 7:45am) was lucid and controlled and clear, if not ultimately successful in completing my intended task.

DILD, "Making Rainbows": I was in a warehouse-like space with tall shelves crammed with every imaginable object, though everything looked old and used. I was having a conversation with someone about the place, though I don't feel like there was anyone walking with me; I think I was speaking aloud, but the other person was answering in my mind. I was observing that many of my own dreams (the comparison suggests that I did not yet recognize this as my own dream) included environments just like this, crammed full of objects, often taking the form of stores, libraries, archives. I proposed the hypothesis that these kind of object-archives were a metaphor for the mind, for the way it stores impressions or information. I wondered if I could put that idea to the test. (This idea suggests that I did recognize that I was in a mentally-constructed environment. What did I think it was, if not my own dream? Maybe the dream of the person I was talking to.)

This next section is ambiguous in that I can't be sure if I had the name and was looking for the object or holding the object and was looking for its name or shelf location, but it was definitely a matching exercise between object and name. The object was a tool of some kind, flat strips of somewhat oxidized metal bent into a particular configuration with a short chain attaching some sort of polygonal fastener. It vaguely resembled one of those old metal spring traps, but not exactly, and its function was unclear. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, but I learned that it was called a "streng." I either got the name at the outset from the voice I was talking to and then found the object, or (and I think this is more likely since I have memories of holding the object as I walked), picked up a random object and then had to find out its name by looking for its shelf. But this is a false dichotomy... dreams don't always divide so neatly between what, in waking light, seem like the logical possibilities.

At any rate, I was putting the idea of this warehouse as a kind of memory archive to the test by trying to match an object with its name. The mental effort took, I reasoned, as long as it actually took me in the dream to find the shelf. Given that it sometimes takes me a day or more to recover some sought-after piece of information from memory, this doesn't seem too far-fetched. I'm sure my archives are, like my physicial spaces tend to become, terribly cluttered with extraneous matter, making it hard to find anything. I actually commented at one point, looking at all the crap on the shelves, "I can't stand to throw anything away." But the details that make this whole exercise less plausible as a valid hypothesis of mental functioning was the object itself: neither the name "streng" nor the metal object it described corresponded with anything in waking life. The whole process seems at best to have been metaphorical.

After this improvised task was complete, I wondered what to do next and remembered, sinced I'd just browsed DV before bed, that I still had a couple unfinished TOTY. At this point it occurred to me that if I'm now taking conscious control of my intentions and the dream environment, I must be lucid, but it didn't feel like there had been any qualitative change in my mental state. Rather, the difference between being non-lucid and lucid seemed in this case to come down primarily to whether I was acting spontaneously within the structure of the dream (as in my former task) or whether I was accessing memories and intentions that I had earlier established with waking consciousness.

I wondered if I should try basilisk or leprechaun, and decided on the latter. Its no wonder that I'm stuck on these last two. I think I have a mental block against leprechauns because my mental imagery is composed primarily of cheesy cereal commercials; maybe that's why I have yet to actually meet one. Meanwhile I keep avoiding basilisk because it explicitly instructs killing DCs, which I am reluctant to do. I have no problem killing NPCs in RPGs and computer games, or experimenting with different ethical alignments in those environments, but dream feels different, like the stakes are higher. I'm not sure why. At any rate, given the options, I went with leprechaun again.

Would it be possible to create a rainbow indoors? I thought it over and figured that in dream, that should be entirely reasonable. And even though the shelves in this warehouse were only a bit over head-high, the ceiling itself was vastly higher overhead: the space was huge. So I started trying to conjure a rainbow. At first nothing happened. I put my hands together in front of me, touching at the sides with the palms up, and tried to use this as a focus to create a rainbow directly from my hands, arcing upward. I managed a weak one a few times, but they quickly fizzled out.

A young girl, maybe eight years old with blonde hair, noticed what I was doing and approached with an offer to help. "Sure," I said. I don't remember exactly what form her help took, she might have just added her concentration to my own, but with it my rainbows were getting better. I managed to make one finally that had bright colors, though there were only four of them and they were oddly separated into tube-like strips resembling neon lights, and shining with the same fluorescent intensity. Good enough for the task? I gazed at it critically, annoyed that there were only four colors. In response, the second tube from the left split down the middle and became two different colors. Good enough, I figured, and started looking for the end of the rainbow. But then that one flickered out, too.

Every time a rainbow failed, I regrouped and tried to improve my concentration. The four-color failure made me realize I needed to focus on what the colors of a rainbow actually were, so I started chanting them as I concentrated: "Red orange yellow blue indigo and violet...." I had a hard time keeping them in the right order, and after I woke up I realized that I had completely left out "green," an interesting difficulty given that while awake, I can easily and accurately recite the colors of the rainbow without a second thought.

The little girl continued in her role as my assistant, and now that I was working on the getting the colors straight we managed to produce a bright, very proper-looking rainbow. Best of all, it touched the floor right in front of us, so all we had to do was dig, presumably, to find the leprechaun and his gold. But no sooner had we rushed up to the spot than the rainbow disappeared again. This was getting annoying.

Just then I became aware of a commotion in the building. We were now standing outside one wide entrance to the warehouse, which opened onto what looked like an atrium of a shopping mall, still an enclosed space but walled with plate glass windows. People were rushing over to the windows in excitement, and through the windows I could see the people outside down below (we were around four storeys up) moving in the same direction.

The view through the glass looked out over an urban street and the row of buildings on the far side, beyond which the city ended at steep brown hills of nearly barren rock and earth. Everyone inside with us was pointing and staring at the hills, or hurrying outside to get closer to them, and the moment I looked out the window I could see why. An extraordinary rainbow had spontaneously appeared outside, and its end was clearly visible where it touched the side of one of the hills. The rainbow actually resembled the four-colour neon one that we had created earlier, but this one was exceedingly large and bright.

The hills were probably at least a mile away and too steep to climb by foot, so I knew I would have to fly. I started pushing out the large square glass panes in the wall above me, wondering if this was the most efficient way to leave the building, or if I should just walk the thirty yards or so to the exit everyone else was taking. (The exit occupied the space to our right that had formerly led into the warehouse, which was no longer visible.) The exit led onto a sort of sky bridge that crossed the road, so it would also be a fine place to take off from. I chastised myself for wasting mental energy deciding between trivialities and decided to just continue with the window.

After pushing out four panes to make a larger square, I grabbed the girl's hand and asked, "Have you ever flown before?" She shook her head. "Well, hold on tight." I levitated both of us up and through the space I had made. I did not feel physically obstructed by the metal frame that criss-crossed between the four panes of glass I had removed, though I felt a bit annoyed by the way I had so blithely floated through it. It felt careless. I mean, why bother taking out the glass at all if I was just going to pass ghost-like through the frame? I realized that again, I was letting myself getting bogged down with unnecessary and unhelpful mental baggage, but I've never felt comfortable "cheating," even in dream.

We flew high over the street and buildings bordering the city, and I realized how startling the experience of flight must be to someone who was unaccustomed to it. Indeed, the girl felt very tense at my side, and murmured plaintively, "I want to sit down." I felt it would be cruel to ignore her terror, so as soon as we cleared the city, I aimed for a flat outcropping of rock at the base of the hills. We came down fast and landed hard, much harder than I had ever landed when flying on my own, so I attributed it to her fear weakening my own buoyancy. As soon as we landed, I asked her, "Are you alright continuing?" She shook her head and I prepared to take off on my own, but even as my feet left the ground I felt myself waking up and was unable to forestall it.

INT. CHURCH - DAY

A breakfast of pastries, cheesecakes, and cobblers on two right-angled tables with white tablecloths invites a crowd of diners. They mill about indecisively while women stand ready to dish out the food with plastic spatulas.

A white inclined plane appears in space. I rest on it. Suddenly it turns on a hinge. My astral body falls with that familiar jolt. Still conscious enough to self observe, i smile in my half sleep, recognizing what just happened: "Ah yes, that might have been an OBE!"

1. I was running in a race of some kind but it wasn't here because there were mountains. I am not used to running any kind of elevation. I knew I was dreaming but it felt so good to be in the mountains that I wanted to enjoy the run. I didn't notice many people and I felt I was really gliding up the steep hill. I noticed a tree on the right side of the mountain with a large nest. I was drawn to it. I saw a HUGE eagle perched on a branch at the far end of the tree, not on the nest. I noticed it staring at me as it flew away. It was beautiful and I thought I want to become an eagle to see how it feels. I really wanted to. I felt myself vibrating and all of a sudden I was sitting up in the tree looking down on the runners. My vision was so good, I could see so much clearer. I looked down and saw two eggs beneath me. I felt a real sense of love and my instinct was very protective. I could see the other eagle flying around as it darted down and grabbed a squirrel. He was brought it up to the tree and he was banging the squirrel against the tree very hard. This was going to be the meal. I could see out of the eagles eyes but I still did not want to eat the squirrels bloody meat so decided this was not a good idea. With my partner close I decided to take flight. I left my nest knowing he would take good care of it and I flew above the runners enjoying my view much more, the wind was calm and I could feel my wings. It was different than flying as a dove, I felt so massive. I could dive with great speed and then change direction quickly, it was awesome, but I felt the need to return to my nest, and I immediately went back. I had no problem finding it, it felt very instinctive. I landed beside the other eagle, assuming he was the male, all I knew was that was my partner and that was all that mattered. There lie the dead mangled squirrel and I watched him tearing it apart. I woke up as I leaned down for my taste.
2. Riding on bus around tight winding roads up steep steep narrow roads afraid of falling off the edge but knowing if I felt the bus went over the edge it would I tried very hard to keep that out of my mind. I was afraid but closed my eyes and woke up.

I had a whole night of nightmares about Mike. I didn't get much sleep at all. When I went to bed I had a raging headache & it was making me not lay still so I felt queezy too. Mike said I was saying "Don't tell Mike" while I was sleeping, lol. I told him yup that would be me telling a cab driver that you were acting insane. I only remember fragments & I didn't want to ruin Mike's day so I just talked to him when I woke up instead of writing it down. He's on vacation & he didn't need little crazy me to interrupt his vacation by saying "hey I have to go write down all my creepy nightmares I had about you last night". I just told him why I had them. He was w/ my while I was Christmas shopping & he doesn't really like to shop for Christmas especially on his vacation so both of us were stressed out. I'll just be glad for it to be over this year. I have a better plan for next year after some success w/ some online shopping this year.

I had a whole night of nightmares about Mike. I didn't get much sleep at all. When I went to bed I had a raging headache & it was making me not lay still so I felt queezy too. Mike said I was saying "Don't tell Mike" while I was sleeping, lol. I told him yup that would be me telling a cab driver that you were acting insane. I only remember fragments & I didn't want to ruin Mike's day so I just talked to him when I woke up instead of writing it down. He's on vacation & he didn't need little crazy me to interrupt his vacation by saying "hey I have to go write down all my creepy nightmares I had about you last night". I just told him why I had them. He was w/ my while I was Christmas shopping & he doesn't really like to shop for Christmas especially on his vacation so both of us were stressed out. I'll just be glad for it to be over this year. I have a better plan for next year after some success w/ some online shopping this year.