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Sunday, 9-13-20, Core 2

After a couple of long, regular dream fragments I found myself in the upstairs bathroom, sitting on the toilet. It was night and I was spacing out a bit, staring at the fan grate in the wall (which was on the wrong wall though I didn't notice at the time.) For a few brief moments, the grate I was looking at blurred and faded, and in fact everything in my visual field seemed to "glitch" and become less solid. I stared hard at the grate to try and unblur my vision, and it seemingly popped back into existence, becoming even more sharply defined than before. This whole experience was very similar to common waking life experiences where one might defocus one's vision when tired or consciously refocus on an object in order to sharpen one's vision on it. However, I found the extreme degree to which this happened here unnerving as it seemed as though the reality around me was liable to disappear altogether without constant attention to it. This is very likely a dream. I thought. My mind threw up the requisite resistance in the background due to the realistic, mundane nature of my experience up to this point. No, this could be a dream. I insisted mentally. I thought backwards, remembering the previous two dream fragments as if they were part of my day, then thought back further to remember myself getting into bed for core 2. There had been something a little strange about everything after that point, when I thought about it. I haven't woken up since then, I realized, I am dreaming!

I decided to test gravity by seeing if I could think myself into floating, as I habitually do upon first becoming lucid. However, this time I felt heavily weighted down, as if my body were made of lead. Everything was vague and I knew I needed to stabilize the dream. I went to raise my hand in front of my face so I could stare at it to bring more clarity, but I couldn't raise it a single inch. I was genuinely surprised. Why do I feel so heavy? I asked myself, If it's just my expectation I should be able to change it with a thought... I tried this and failed. I then noticed that I could seemingly sense my waking life body where it lay. I could even feel where one of my feet was hanging off the end of the bed. The sensations mapped to the position I remembered falling asleep in. REM atonia? I wondered. Am I closer to a waking state than in previous lucids, but still deeply enough asleep for the atonia to be present? Is my brain translating my bodily sensations into this dream experience of extreme heaviness?

I looked around again and realized the dream had faded more. Brute forcing things wasn't working. While I didn't feel close to waking up in terms of sensation (the level to which I could sense my body wasn't changing), I was reluctant to sit in a blurry dream scene for an extended period of time. If this is due to atonia, maybe I can work with that. I'll let images come and go they might in a WILD, observe them and wait for them to stabilize to a more solid dream. After a few moments, the fully blurred out scene randomly gave way to a vision of water, waves, the surface of an ocean. Before the scene could fully form, however, my consciousness lapsed. I know I dreamt some more before waking, though I don't remember the content.

Spoiler for Additional Notes:

Although this lucid was brief in terms of dream time and actual action, I'm very happy with the ease of logical thought in this dream, whether or not that reasoning process was completely accurate. There was definitely a greater awareness of myself in relation to waking life and a higher degree of observation within that context than is usual for me. I've certainly had other lucids where I recalled what I wanted to do with the dream from waking life, but I don't remember ever tracing back through my dream memories all the way to a waking memory of going to sleep before! The recall process isn't usually that effortless, either. It's just too bad my dream control wasn't equally effortless this time.

9th May

Dream:

I was in Texas or Arizona or such. A hot and arid place in America at any rate. I remember only a few details from the end. I could see through a panoramic view of an online maps thing; I was looking up Niagara falls. To my surprise there was a city there. It was grand, modern and overall beautiful. The water courses ran under and through the city. It was a sunny day in the view.

Then the next thing I remember, I was packing up or something, to walk there from where I was. There were others doing the same. One of them was a Turkish or Arabic man, not much older than me. We knew each other vaguely. As we said goodbye as we both got ready to leave, he said to me "may God be with you in your travels". I simply replied "goodbye", and quickly regretted it. I realised I could have said goodbye in my own language and not in English, as it would have had a more similar meaning to his own, longer, expression.

I walked through a flat and rocky, dusty area. There were rock cliff faces to either side, or perhaps ancient ruined buildings. I came to a Y shaped road junction in the middle of the desert; this bit had a few hills but was mostly flat otherwise. Cars went by. I remember noticing a car drive past and I noticed the driver somewhat clearly, a woman, medium length hair, tied at the back. The car was a faded cerulean blue and quite old and blocky-looking. I was getting ready to cross and I looked towards the horizon beyond the road. Big red canyons, piled up in an abnormal way. Dream ended shortly after.

Dream:

Again remember little of the dream's start. I remember being at the foot of a mountain, then teleporting or entering some dark place. Then there was fighting as I was going through this cramped and strange factory place. It did some laundry of mine as I went through it. Some pants and hoodies, they became a warmer colour as they were made ready for me. Some boys, two twins I think, got my attention and they lead me out from the place. I think I was getting stuck on some mechanism when they started talking to me. The place had many traps anyway, when I first got in, there were flying needle darts and other things.

The reality and history of this place were just somehow known to me to be different from normal. I didn't realise I was dreaming even so, but it was like a mix of Trigun and Path of Exile. I remember then being in a shack of some kind, made up of corrugated panels. There was an old man? Some gadgets scattered about. I remember we talked for a little while about this world of theirs. I made some surprised remark about how they had all this technology but seemed to live otherwise primitive lives. I don't remember his reply but he was amused I think.

Then I remember being in a basement of some other shack place. It was night time, but I think I had walked there. It was in the middle of a town of sorts. This woman owned it and we talked. As I stood next to her at surface level, there was some kind of dust storm outside and I could see people in sorts of brown power armour. There wasn't much light and so through the dust I mostly just got glimpses of things, even though I think I'd seen the surrounding area earlier in the dream.

The woman told me a story about how she got this bit of land, and then I could "see" a memory; not far at all from us, less than thirty yards away, the vision began with a medieval gate to a different area of this town, with a cliff to the right. It was day time, and this little girl, no older than eight, walked toward the gate with her dog. They looked cartoony. A massive castle tower fell from the high cliff, crashing on the gate. The impact made a small shockwave and the girl and dog were blown back a small distance, the dog landed in some deep water and yelped and drowned, the girl crying and trying to save him. This vision made me sad and the feeling carried through when I woke up later.

The woman told me that the girl was her friend when she was younger, and that she didn't know where she was anymore. She seemed sad for not knowing, but she also seemed to convey the feeling that maybe the other girl didn't want to be friends with her anymore. The woman's face seemed to imply regret and guilt (from inaction?). I remember we walked outside for a bit in the area in front of the gate, it was sunny and clear.

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Notes:
- Although the second dream did so very allegorically rather than in a literal sense, it reflected a lot of my thoughts at the time of these dreams. Firstly how we all live in a world of technology, but we are otherwise primitive without it because it is not a part of us. Also in the same way, technology did not necessarily makes these peoples' lives any better and this reflected my trend of thoughts about how many of us simply take what we have for granted.
- It was odd that I was aware of the dream-world to be a different one from the waking one, but I did not come close to any thresholds of pre-consciousness, as far as I can recall.
- It is not often that a feeling within a dream carries on into waking except when it was the last thing felt, which wasn't the case here.
- My regret about not saying goodbye to the Arabic man in the same manner comes from the value I put on words sometimes and also reflects how I struggle with not being able to say what I actually wanted to have said to someone.