riverboy

Dream
Lucid
Fragments

I am in my hometown and for some reason I'm riding a moped. I remember driving it one way up the dual carriageway but my recall is poor until my return trip. On the way back down there are some features of an american highway, concrete boundaries are on each side before the big roundabout and the traffic is much more frantic than usual. I accellerate onto the roundabout with too much speed and almost come off the road due to one of the lanes abruptly ending. I managed to stay on however and check my speed which is shown on a cross between an egg timer and a milk carton. It shows that I'm doing 50 and gaining speed fast. I try to slow down a bit but even when coasting my speed doesn't seem to be affected. On the way back down I realise there are police in front of me and that I'm reaching well over 80. Applying the brakes doesn't work but luckily I manage to naturally slow down to 50 when I reach them, assuming that the relaxed speed would draw little attention to me. I'm then aware that I've overtaken them and that a truck which was accompanying us (I have no idea why I know it's "us") is having trouble sneaking past the police, we're worried that they'll realise we gave two women a lift on the back of the mopeds earlier and arrest us. Luckily it overtakes them on the inside and somehow gets past. We're watching from the roadside. Dream ends.

I wake up in my room at night with overwhelming fear. I have no idea why but jump up immediately and RC. My finger works its way through my hand with some effort but I am unconvinced so only become semi lucid. There is a child standing by my window and this scares me further. I run over to her and shake her, asking who she is. Upon closer inspection she is my ex's younger sister and I calm down. But then I get a bad feeling about downstairs. I open my door (which has become cupboard doors) and look down to see a baby at the bottom. Again I am inexplicably afraid of this and shout at it to go. I close the doors and open them again, repeating this shout several times. Finally I open the door and bang against the wood to scare the child off, this almost works as it backs away for an instant but I decide to escape anyway.

I am tempted to fly jump out of my window but due to the unconvincing reality check I try hovering first, this works so I fly straight through the window, ignoring the glass. As I fly around the edge of my house I realise that the imminent danger is gone and that I should ground the dream. I closely inspect the bricks but stupidly focus on the silence of the night, this brings the ringing of my real life ears into focus and the dream collapses instantly.

I recall a few more interesting scenarios throughout the night.

I definitely remember having quite a detailed dream but don't record it as I attempt to DEILD or WILD. I cannot remember the main events but remember speaking to my Mum in it.

I also remember nearly becoming lucid and frantically rubbing my hands together to bring everything into focus, I think this didn't work unless it was a prelude to the above lucid dream.

In the last hour or so of my sleep I started telling myself "lucid dream" over and over again. I started visualising different dream scenarios and these become vivid to the point where they were no longer visualisations, yet I didn't feel I was asleep either and could have easily stopped thinking of them.

EDIT: I think one of my vivid visualisations involved somebody cleaning a table with a spray on cleaner, the thing which prevented this from becoming a full on dream is that my finger started twitching in real life, as if I was doing the spraying myself. This made a scratching sound on my duvet and I woke up.

Overall then a pretty successful night, I seem to be making quite a bit of progress and I put some of this down to the fact that I'm now home and therefore can get a good nights sleep and a lie in. Absolutely gutted that I broke the lucid dream, but knew this would happen at some point as I remember reading about it happening to someone else so it lingered on my mind.

Interestingly I knew I'd LD last night because I'm home, and I know I will again tonight. I just feel strongly that practicing in such a challenging environment at Uni will make it so much easier when I'm relaxed at home.

Last night was somewhat successful, was out clubbing so slept like a log, apparently I even slept through a fire alarm!

Dream signs are shown in red.

Dream fragment

I'm in my home town walking near the library. I want to walk down a somewhat dark alleyway but see two figures at the other end and sense danger. I run. Despite taking a different route these two people bump into me, this is geographically impossible. I realise that they are actually two good friends of mine, Sam and Squibs. I remember hoping thet didn't realise that I ran away from them.

Vivid recall

I'm in my halls of residence and have a tv on my desk. One of my flatmates asks to watch it and I say that I can't as a) I don't have a TV license and b) I don't have the cable to connect it to the wall. They point out that it can use an aerial to pick up signal and to my surprise it works, although the quality is quite low. I somehow start playing fifa on it with my flatmate Blake, his friend comes along and asks to join in too. Blake points out that it is an old edition of the game as there are 6 "pips" above the players heads, rather than 4. By pips he was referring to the icon that appears above the selected player. Therefore 6 or 4 pips are an impossible occurence without 12 or 8 players.

I realise thats the halls have been relocated to a beach location combined with the location of nearby Hurn House. My friend Toby excitedly leads me to the back of The Old Firestation where there is an alleyway, he says he plans to pay tramps to fight eachother there fore entertainment. I think that this is fundamentally wrong but keep my mouth shut. I return home and see out of my window that my friend Rocky who doesn't live here is leading a large group of people to see the fight, the two tramps are very tall, like to golem out of Sherlock Holmes, and are wearing bright red coats. I try to tell Toby that what he's doing is wrong but he ignores me, telling me that the adrenaline and the thrill of the fight are all worthwhile. I end up at the beach instead where people are being taught to fight. Spiderman is there teaching us. However all of a sudden another Spiderman gets punched to the ground and we see that Robert Downey Jr is pretending to be a duplicate. He gets angry at this and tells me that I've come to the wrong location, he takes on an appearance more like Iron Man. He then starts trying to stab me and gets me in the stomach despite my attempts to dodge. He then charges at me again, stabbing me in the face a slipping the blade in so it doesn't pierce my skull, but slides under my scalp. Once again my attempted dodge has failed. I then woke up.


Why does Iron Man haunt my dreams?? I'm not even a big fan!

Not much dream content to report tonight. I recall a fragment of a dream where I was shown around a flat with a group of people and there was a lot of damp on the ceiling. That's it.

Hopefully made a bit of progress towards WILDing as I felt the wild vibrations on at least one occasion.

Afternoon napped for 2 hours and got absolutely nothing from it.

Last night I had pretty good dream recall, but as said I didn't have much opportunity to record as I was sharing my bed. But here's what I got down anyway.

Dream fragment I know I had a dream detailed before the one below last night, and I know
I tried to memorise a key word which would remind me of it in the morning when it came to writing it down. Unfortunately my ipod was out of hand so I didn't have the opportunity to type in any notes, or even the key word.


Dream fragment/intro The intro to the more detailed dream below started with me at a motorway services. However some of the layout was like an airport, in fact this had some of the exact same features I had in a dream a few months ago where I attempted to fly a plane. Somewhere in this scenario there was something to do with cars. I also vaguely remember it being day time AND night time, although this could be a memory mix up with the aforementioned dream.

Rest of dream I remember the tail end of a dream fragment where I had prevented a car from being stolen and I know, but cannot remember, making the thieves regret it. To reward myself I went into subway (definitely a dream sign as I cannot afford subway!) and waited in line. In front of me in the queue was a man eating a folded in half pizza. Suddenly it was snatched out of his hand by somebody who ran out of the store. I decided to chase. Outside was a blue car, no idea what make it was as I'm rubbish with cars. The windows were down and inside the two thieves were rifling through a ring of keys, trying to find the correct one to start the car. The keys were all identical and I think this feature came from an episode of Top Gear I'd just watched where they said a particular car "could have been started with a teaspoon". I reached in through the window regardless, and snapped a key off in the ignition. There must have been a scuffle because at one point I had forced one of the thieves into a sports bag and zipped it up with the intention of delivering him to the police. This person had taken on the appearance of a person in my seminar group, Sam. I was holding him upside down and could tell he was getting dizzy, I put my hand to the bag to feel his pulse but instead felt a sort of throbbing sensation, as if I could feel his headrush in my hands. The police station was at the bottom of a hill, next to (or replacing) a pub called the terminus in my home town. I got to the entrance way and was about to press the buzzer, identical to the one in my halls of residence, when I decided to give him another chance. I had a vague memory of a book I'd once read where a pilot forgave a worker for a disastrous mistake, he knew he wouldn't do it again because the worker was so shaken anyway. So I opened the bag and ask "Have you learnt your lesson?". He nodded and to show how much, started singing the song fireworks by katy perry (using her voice). The last thing I remember was feeling very emotional and then waking up.

My dream recall last night was pretty poor, I think I was excited after my first two nights of simultaneous lucidity.

However for the first time I set my alarm for a WBTB scenario. I awoke at about 6am and forced myself to keep my eyes open for 2 or 3 minutes. When I got comfortable and started trying to WILD the initial results were very promising. I experienced the ringing in my ears which indicates an oncoming lucid dream with a matter or minutes but for some reason I couldn't quite fall into an actual lucid dream. Still, very happy with this progress on my first attempt, not sure about the exact timings for the future as it took a while to get to sleep but I'll definitely be trying this again as soon as possible.

Only a couple of dream fragments to report other than that. One of which is a very vague recollection of there being a war scenario involve some sort of vehicles. The other is a snipper of my old geography teacher sitting at the a table by a pool in which I recognise to be a vegas-like hotel. He was lecturing myself a couple of others on how war is essential to the world economy and how without it the world would simply crumble. Although I remember this vividly, the fragment only lasted a matter of seconds.

Not sure how well I will progress over the next couple of days as my girlfriend is down and being in a single bed it is difficult to record dreams without disturbing her. However I found that having a break usually helps when learning new skills, so hopefully I'll come back to this better than ever.

I'll record anything that I do happen to recall from pure memory.

What a brilliant nights sleep, a bit of background information first. I have no recall before my last hour or so sleep, but I had a total sleep time of about 11 hours. I had every intention to lucid dream and my bed was incredibly comfortable.

Non Lucid
Lucid

I am being chased through the jungle on a very linear path, just like a level out of Donkey Kong. I'm not sure what is chasing me or who I am with. Eventually a see a red token fly past and try to catch it, assuming it would be a power up or something help me escape being chased. This token has a white stencil of Bowser from Mario on it, once I touch it it balloons in size and starts chasing me too, destroying everything in it's path. Eventually it gets stalled and I look round and realise that I am at home, he can't fit through the hallway door. At this point I realise that once again I'm being chased and that I must be dreaming. I don't quite get the opportunity to become lucid as I wake up seconds after making this realisation.

After this dream I got woken up by the phone. I turned over and tried going back to sleep and WILDing, I didn't really need to sleep but I really wanted to Lucid. I remembered some advice that I'd heard about focusing on internal stimuli to get back to sleep so started vividly visualising things. A thought entered my mind about how humans can't explain some learned skills such as riding a bike, we can just do them, so I started trying to visualise how exactly I balance on a bike no handed. I have visualised things in the past for nmenonics and have always found it very hard to "tame" the images I create, they always seem to morph into unwanted viewpoints or into different objects entirely. However I decided this would be my internal stimuli challenge, not only would I get back to sleep I would also try and help improve a useful skill.

The next thing I knew I was awake and really needed the toilet, after I was done it occurred to me that I had failed my WILD. I decided to do a RC anyway and was very excited when this worked.I decided to do further reality checks so tried to float, at first this didn't work but then I gripped onto the sink for a bit of a boost and found myself floating. This made me extremely happy. At this point I left the bathroom and went into the kitchen, I assume I was only semi lucid here for a moment because I decided that I still needed to reality check further and was going to see what happened if it cut myself on a knife. Upon seeing that my knife was actually a single blade of a pair of scissors and became fully lucid again. On my way back to my room I bumped into two of my flatmates. Not thinking that they were DC's I happily exclaimed "I'm lucid dreaming", from what I've heard this causes DCs to vanish, however I don't think they fully clocked on because they both got angry at this point and tried forcing their way into my room afterwards to find out more. I managed to hold the door shut against them but then it got smashed down. Donkey Kong was back, he seems to have been lingering on my subconscious. He overpowered me for a moment until I realised that I was invincible in a dream state and I forced him out, his appearance flickered to that of my Dad for a split second and also an unknown female. Once I had locked everybody out of my room I decided to try and fulfil one of my dream goals - play in the superbowl. I convinced myself that through the bathroom door was the stadium. Upon the first opening this didn't work but upon the second the appearance had changed somewhat. Clothes and drapes hung from the ceiling and I was excited that I'd managed to influence my environment even to that extent. This excitement woke me up.

At this point I was aware of being in my bed but could hear my infamous ringing sound which indicated I was about to lucid. I found that by holding my eyes in a certain manner I could increase this ringing. I started visualising lots and once again woke in my bed. I went into the bathroom again and reality checked. It worked, but the dream wasn't too vivid. I tried grounding myself by feeling the texture of the towels, the texture of the floor on my feet and I also bit my finger to feel the pain and stimulate my tongue. This grounding had surprisingly realistic effects, all of these actions felt extremely real. Unfortunately the next thing I knew I was awake for real. Unless I am still dreaming now.

Although I didn't do anything particularly exciting in these dreams, I'm very proud of the progress I have made. This is the first time I've had multiple Lucids in one night and the first time that I've had LDs on consecutive nights. Hopefully tonight will mean three in a row!

Hooray! Lucid dream number 3!

This dream journal business has really paid off, I never realised before how often I'm being chased down by "the man" in my dreams and it happened again last night. I immediately realised that this was a huge dream sign for me and RC'd. My fingers looked insane, almost like my hands were the wrong way round. So I looked up and took in the desert environment that I was in. My recall of this bit is a bit hazy but I think I might have flown a little bit. I remembered considering what to do and thinking of somebody on DV who wanted to fly in underground caverns. The dream started fading at this point so I looked at my hands again and rubbed them together, this brought the dream back into focus. After doing this a few times I realised that I could morph my hands into really weird shapes, I grew extra fingers and even took some away.

At this point I remember reconsidering what to do, I knew I'd planned something but couldn't remember what (I know now that this was play an american football game) and then a woman approached me. I was kind of reluctant to do anything with her as I knew this would be wasting dream time that I could use doing things that are impossible in real life. I got sucked in however but the dream quickly faded out after this as I wasn't really in the mood.

Had quite a heavy night last night, but my recall was better than usual in those circumstances - maybe I'm improving? Even so, I can only remember fragments of two dreams.

1. My friend Gareth wrapped himself up in clingfilm and went for a bike ride, trying to convince everybody that this was the perfect way to get fit.

2. Unwanted attention from a friend of mine.

I also had a moment where I woke up and just knew I was going to go lucid, I had a huge ringing in my ears which changed in pitch as if it was a siren going past me. I then found myself in the "floaty" SP state which I had encountered before. I had my eyes shut but could see my room around me but was quite over eager. Tried to throw my arms in the air and fly to get the dream going but this actually caused me to move in RL and wake up.

Still, very proud that I made this much progress with alcohol in my system.

No lucids last night but I remember three distinctly different dreams.

The first one involved me being given a verrry nice new car. I remember driving it from a holiday spot back home because I'd forgotten something. There was another car full of some old friends who were trying to keep up, they did surprisingly well until I got used to the car. I remember the view of my journey being similar to a sat nav at one point as it was birds eye view and I saw a dotted red line due to the fact we were going under a mountain through a tunnel. Tried some risky manouvres which nearly got me run over by a lorry. I ended up at my friend Brad's house and I remember admiring the car from the window. I was faintly worried about whether or not I'd locked it because I've done this in RL recently. Important dream sign could be that the logo for the car was an "s" for Saab, which is not their actual logo.

The second dream involved myself and another guy in iron man style suits (recurring theme?). I have written down something about stealing his drink which I do not recall but I do remember that a part of his suit was missing, I saw his flashback where he had detached this part from his suit and it robotically killed another man.

The final dream I recall involved me going to see Derren Brown live. I missed a very important dreamsign here as I remember being worried I wouldn't get in as I thought the tickets (which I own in RL) weren't for until June, not February as the dream suggested. When we arrived the interior was actually a theatre from my hometown, despite the fact the rest of the dream was in Bournemouth. I distinctly remember seeing that Derren had a black badge which said W.I.L.D's - 999. He then sat with me in the audience instead of performing and we had a conversation about lucid dreaming. I'm kicking myself now for not using that opportunity to RC. I also distinctly remember him wearing a grey jumper instead of his usual smart suit.

Not much luck during the night last night, but I went back to bed at around 1 for a nap and tried out binaural beats for the first time.

I was very pleased with the effects of that, I didn't get into a sustained lucid state but I realised that I was dreaming which was enough for a 30 minute nap.

Basically I was being chased around by invisible warthogs from halo and being shot at lots, somebody (also invisible) lunged at me with a sword which somehow didn't kill me. Instinct (from when I used to play the game) kicked in and I kept shooting at the area where I expected the invisible person to be. At this point I realised that this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life and that I was dreaming. Unfortunately at this point I woke into SP and then my alarm went off shortly after.

Very annoying experience! Had an afternoon nap (with the intention to LD!) and when I woke up found that somebody was trying to get into my room. One of my flat mates friends came in and I tried to usher her out as I was just in boxers and in my bed, so didn't really want her seeing me. She decided not to though and kept pushing me to get off with her, I didn't take the bait as I have a girlfriend and have no intention of cheating on her.

I woke up again.

All of the shenanigans turned out to be a FA which prevented me from being able to RC.

Hooray! I finally had my second lucid dream, it didn't last for ages but I'm really proud.

I live in student halls of residence so there was a lot of noise last night, however I woke up at one point and there was silence. I felt the urge to reality check but for some reason I couldn't be bothered but my thoughts lingered on lucid dreaming. The next thing I knew I was in a shopping mall and just knew I was dreaming, I did the reality check of putting my finger through my hand and on the third attempt it worked. There was a bright white light around the entry point which looked pretty cool. The dream faded quite a lot but I found that looking at my hands brought things back into focus effectively every time this happened.

After I succeeded with the hand test I decided to check for certain and tried to fly, to my surprise this worked! I remember being shocked at how easy it was and flew around the shopping centre a few times. After this I met a woman, but as my focus was so directed upon her and let the dream fade out hugely, and before I knew it I was flung into a dark abyss. I tried to "spin" out of this but failed, my second attempt was to close my eyes and imagine myself elsewhere but I think this took me back to proper sleep as I don't remember any more.

This whole dream was a lot less vivid than my previous lucid dream.

I was wanted for a crime i didn't commit and remember sneaking methodically through houses on the edge of a dark, lush valley. They were pretty nice houses, the one i remember most had a huge tv and a fireplace. I end up in my home town. Once there I go to where Waitrose is in RL, but it's a lidl instead. There's somebody else trying to escape with me and both decide we have to sneak in and get some supplies. We're doing fine but I spill marmite on the floor and we're spotted, the private detective from 21 is trying to catch us. He chases us down the alleyway which somehow becomes Bournemouth seafront where he continues to chase us as we leap over the groins and sand piles of rock etc. He has turned into iron man's silver friend at this point.

Next night

Once again wanted for a crime I didn't commit. My flatmate helps me sneak out of our halls of residence via a fire escape which isn't there in real life. He hits a release door button and we exit into a car park. Here i am trapped by the people who are hunting me down and after being chased through cars for a bit I managed to capture them. They are in a sort of yellow submarine and I magically shrink this and tie it down so they can't escape.

Last night

I remember my dream at one point, but over the day it has faded.

Had an amazing nights sleep last night, feeling so refreshed this morning. I fell asleep quite quickly and then found myself naturally waking so took the opportunity to wild. Once again I didn't quite make it to LD but I got to the point where I felt I was at least somewhat disconnected from my body. This happened on 4 separate attempts which all ended in failed reality checks, by the 3rd and 4th attempts I felt much calmer and didn't panic as much - seems like I'm making progress on WILDing quicker than I expected.

In the middle of the night I may have had a slight LD, but I only think this because I remember waking up and trying to tell myself to write down the dream as it was important/exceptional. Unfortunately I have no recollection of this now so if I did LD/work out the meaning of life it's lost on me now.

I woke up at 1130 and decided to give myself more of a lie in (more willing to do this now that I have potential to LD!) and this resulted in me having a very vivid but non lucid dream. It started off at home and it was my girlfriend Emily's birthday, she stayed over at my house but I found out in the morning that she snuck out the night before to go clubbing with two male friends. I get very angry at them all, one of the men is called Nathan who is wearing a brown trench coat. He reminds me of Arnold Schwarznegger in the expendables somewhat.
I go round the corner with a friend (possibly Izaac) and approach the local curry house, they beckon us inside saying that they have free food for him. However when we get inside the dream changes somewhat and the meal is for emily who is at home. I offer to make tea for everybody and whilst I'm doing so Emily turns up. I'm struggling to make the tea and her presence angers me until I give up. Next thing I know we're outside a sweet stall in London where I'm eyeing some blue sweets. I consider stealing them until a fish shaped waffle is placed on the shelf to the side of me where I can just about reach it (imagine being at the short end of a bar). I dismiss this idea as I'm scared of getting caught and instead search the counter in front of me which is made up of 2 overlapping shelves. Searching only results in me getting chewing gum on my hands. The next thing I know somebody grabs me "inappropriately" and I spin around to see who did it, my bad mood from earlier still hasn't worn off. I realise that it is another girl from the group and am actually quite flattered so direct my anger instead towards two young catholic students (according to the folders they were carrying). I shout to everyone that they're not as innocent as everybody thinks they are, and that they are in fact sluts. The teacher is rightly outraged at my abuse to school children but I am pleased as it hides who really did it.

Then I woke up.

Then I realised that my girlfriend is actually an amazing girl and that I can't wait to see her later today.

EDIT: Note to self: Need to look out for major geographical changes as a dreamsign. I dreamt I was at my house, not the halls of residence where I actually am. Opening doors led to hugely different places. Also Emily claimed to have snuck out through the windows which would realistically result in her just sitting on the roof.

Nothing much to report unfortunately, I'd like to blame my drunken state but that usually makes my dreams more vivid. Hopefully now I'm doing a dj my recall will improve though!

Only one thing to report - when I awoke I heard an alarm going off which definitely wasn't mine, not sure how to explain this!!

Oh and I just remembered that I MAY have had a dream about improving my grammar but it's a very hazy fragment.

EDIT: Just had a slight recall of a dream where somebody was trying to intimidate me with loads of psychobabble. The person next to me was shocked at how deep he was cutting but I came back with an incredible argument about how he was only using pop psychology and actually understood nothing about the subject so he backed down. I think he may have been the "Grint" out of the programme teachers. I could tell that the person next to me found this very impressive.