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Went to bed around 1AM.

Pre-WBTB

Fragment
Brief impression of a Punch-Out-like video game.

WBTB
Ratio: 6hr/20m
Supplements: None.
Sleep Cycle: Semi-stable.
I got up and walked outside of for a bit, doing plenty of reality checks. I try to make the entire time outside a reality check.
I also review my dreamsign list, trying to commit the top 5 to memory.

Post-WBTB

The Vanishing Plant
I'm walking around in my living room and I do a nose RC out of habit.
To my surprise it fails and I become lucid.
I remember that narration is supposed to help stabilization so I start talking out loud.
"I'm rubbing my hands, I'm rubbing my feet, I'm walking."
I think about what I should do next and consider taking a bite out of the kitchen table, but then decide against.
It wasn't all that exciting last time I did that.
I recall that my goal was to try and observe my dreamworld, to gain an understanding and hopefully a feel for the 'dreamlike'.
I leave through the front door and go outside.
It looks near identical to reality, sunny summer day, except there is a plant nearby that is missing the bottom.
Like in a video game where a texture is missing.
I note that daytime/sunny is one of the top dream signs, and wonder if there are more 'missing textures'.
I also connect this missing texture idea to my top dreamsign which is 'video-games or inspired by a video game'.
"I'm walking around, I'm observing the dreamworld, I'm rubbing my hands," I say outloud, attempting to stabilize again.
I decide that I want to go somewhere more interesting, so I close my eyes and attempt to transform the scene into something else.
I think vaguely about changing the season into fall or winter.
I open my eyes with hope, but the scene only changes slightly. Objects have changed position, but no theme change.
I recall flying through the neighborhood some more, but my lucidity fades.
...
Later I'm in somebody else's house, lucid and looking around.
There is a woman I don't recognize, vaguely Hispanic looking.
"Is there a portal around here?" I ask.
She replies in the negative.
Despite this, I open a closet nearby and try to imagine a green swirly portal inside.
Nope, just closet.
...
I'm at a sleepover at work with my coworker JM.
Apparently we have to sleep there because there is a test we are running.
We have sleeping bags setup on the production floor.
I feel as sense of awkwardness because there are people around us working and I wonder if I should be doing the same.
Recorded on waking at 9:15AM.

Notes
I'm going to start a series of 4 tests for the 6hr/20m/none configuration with this being #1.
Initial impression is my control and dream length were lesser compared to 6hr/10m/8mgGal (Galantamine). This could be unrelated to the configs, and due to the currently only semi-stable sleep cycle.
I want to test whether galantamine is needed for more vivid dreams, and also if my 10m WBTB wake time is limiting my lucid dream experience.
I know that changing multiple variables at once isn't the best science (but I intend to test more configurations later).
General guidance for WBTB seems to recommend much longer than 10m, so I perceive a likely improvement by making it longer, hence earlier testing of this configuration.

Tried to turn on the light above my bed, but it wouldn’t turn on. Neither would the lamp on the stand next to my bed (which isn’t there any longer in waking life). This is a dreamsign, so I did a nose pinch RC, I think. Then I became lucid. I remembered to stabilize, as I had planned. I felt the back of the couch that I was laying on. The dream might have faded at this point, but I think I held on to awareness and things came back. I tried the light above my bed again, but it wouldn’t turn on. I might have lost lucidity but regained it at this point. I think I felt the couch again to stabilize, but I also licked the chest by the couch that acts as another night stand. I realize that sounds weird, but licking things seems to help stabilize dreams for me. I got up off of the couch. It was dark in my room, and the lamp wouldn’t turn on. I directed the dream to give me more light, using verbal commands. I was holding the lamp as I did this, and at first I got a flash of light from the lamp. I might have continued my demands a time or two, but at any rate the room lightened up.

I decided to go outside, and wondered if I should phase through a wall. I decided to try for the door, a little worried that I might lose the dream before I got there. I made it though, and opened it after saying something about the Dream Base being on the other side (hoping it would be there when I opened the door). However, when I opened the door I didn’t see the Dream Base, as far as I could tell. It wasn’t exactly my usual surroundings though – more trees, and more parklike than the urban area I live in. I then said something like “Dream Base on the right”, and turned to look. There was a large building there, looking kind of like it was made of light colored brick. It might have just been part of the college campus or the parking garage that is there in waking life though.

I then tried to fly, possibly to search for the Dream Base or to help stabilize the dream. I picked up some gravel so that I could feel it and help to anchor/stabilize the dream. I tried flying, but was having some difficulty getting off the ground. Jumping didn’t seem to help...I think I lost the dream somewhere around here.

Aug 26 2018

I went to bed at 1:15am and woke at 5:45am. The first dream I remember was an NL. I was in a store at their early morning closing time, and there were only 3 workers present. I was on the frozen aisle. One of them said they would help me once they're done buffing the floors. I waited outside with an umbrella near the open back door of a van (I think they were going to help me load something). After this, I wrote something else in my DJ about a WW bus where I was dying and had to plan my escape. Not sure whether WW stood for WWII or Weight Watchers, both seem equally appropriate.

Before sleeping again I got up and went to bathroom (I find it's easier to return to sleep when I walk around first). Tried to focus on HI and WILD, but no success yet. Ended up MILDing with mantra "I will be lucid in my next dream".

Next time I woke was 7:35am. I had just had a long NL with a huge cast of DCs (was a family reuinion/party). I was hanging out with one of the non-family guests who I didn't know. For some reason it seemed like my family would or should have been angry at me for doing this, but they weren't. The dream transformed slightly and instead of being in my childhood home, I was in someone else's large house (I think I remember this house from a work party my Mom brought me to as a kid). I was now in a hallway that seemed like a bathroom but was filled with people. The doorway connected to the living room. I was speaking to Uncle B, who greeted me but was unusually curt (he's my godfather and is always very warm and talkative IWL). Somehow this triggered me to become lucid.

I looked at my hands and said aloud "I'm dreaming!". I looked at my uncle who had become sort of an expressionless robot (not literally but he looked confused, blank stare, furrowed brows). For some reason I poked him in the chest jokingly. His body turned towards me and he started approaching me menacingly. I felt fear at first, but then a surge of confidence. I put my hand out in front of me and said "You can't hurt me, this is my dream!". His face instantly turned friendly and he leaned back and laughed. He smiled and said "That's right ZAD! Excellent!" and he reached out and hi-fived/shook my hand. I walked around the party for a bit looking at the other DCs. They were all ignoring us and carrying on their own conversations. I don't remember if I lost lucidity or the dream faded, but I awoke after. I had a huge grin on my face when I woke up, it was awesome to have such control of the situation! I've had hostile DCs before and usually they kick me out of my dream, so this was a win for me.

I went to sleep with the same method again, trying WILD then resorting to MILD. The next time I awoke was 8:59am. I remember being in my childhood home on the couch, trying to fall asleep next to my fiance. Earlier my dad had come in and thrown at me making a joke about a roach crawling on it. Within the dream, I was actually trying to WILD! I felt my dream body fall asleep just as my waking body does, and was moving my dream-dream arm (i.e. visualizing the sensation of moving my dream arm without actually moving my dream arm). I kept waking back up and couldn't fall asleep in the dream. I remember being afraid of roaches crawling across my face.

At some point I was able to WILD in my dream -- I latched on to some HI that placed me in the same exact room but without the couch or my fiance. I looked at my hands and became lucid! The room was dark and I felt like I was losing visibility in the dream, so I walked to the light switch unconsciously expecting it not to work. Sure enough, it didn't. I was losing lucidity so I dropped to floor and felt the coolness of the wood with my hands. I also tried to use mirrors to stabilize, but I don't remember even seeing my reflection. I should have transitioned to another dream, but I didn't. I "woke up" in the previous dream and lost lucidity. From this dream I tried to DEILD in the dream, and the HI was really close to completing each time, but never materialized. It would be black and white outlines, with the camera moving in a similar fashion to the opening scene of Ocarnia of Time where the camera follows Navi through the village.

I believe the other dream (me on the couch with fiance trying to fall asleep) continued for a while. At some point the lights turned on and we were watching TV. A tall man in a white shirt and red shorts walked in front of the TV and my fiance asked me for some type of food from the kitchen. I yelled out at him, calling him Rob and asking for the food, but he didn't respond. So again I got up from the couch and walked towards the kitchen. At this point I became aware, looked at my hands to confirm, and became lucid. I don't think I said "I'm dreaming" like I usually do, but it was incredibly vivid. I walked towards Rob who was in the kitchen. He had that same furrowed brow and broken robot look about his face (his eyes and mouth looked like they were scribbled in). I approached him since he was standing in the way of the fridge, and he started walking menacingly towards me. I felt confident from my previous encounter, so I simply said "Rob, you were going to get me some "X food", right?" He instantly turned friendly and apologetically let me know that there wasn't any of that here. That was fine since my fiance and the couch had disappeared. I felt his shirt to stabilize -- it was now one of mine, a casual tan button-down. Feeling the texture stabilized the dream. I walked away towards the living room and the layout had changed. The hallway was gone and the curtains took up the entire back wall now. There were also more windows now. I looked out them and when I looked once, they would show night, when I looked again, they would show morning or daylight.

I started losing lucidity, so I turned around and faced the kitchen and curtains (there was no furniture in the living room now). I focused on my breathing. The visuals improved a hundredfold. All of the colors enhanced and felt like I was looking out of a kaleidoscope or a stained glass window -- especially with the curtains, which IWL are very bland. Although the visuals improved, there was a white bar blocking the bottom quarter of my field of vision. I tried to imagine that it was like eye black so I could peel it off, but I couldn't. So instead, I tried to take it out like contact lenses, and my eyes naturally rolled up. This almost caused me to lose lucidity, so I just accepted the white bars for now.

I approached the back-left window and opened it. I imagined that it was light and would slide right up. It did! But it was so light that it easily slid back down. I crawled up (and felt my legs here, something that rarely happens in LDs for me) and put my body through the window, continuously sliding the window up as I went through. I could see that there was an awning coming down from this window, and instead of being ground level, I was four or five stories up. It was a hotel, it reminded me of the Arlington in Hot Springs for some reason. The awning was more like a giant blue tarp, and one corner was tied to my window, the other corner being tied to the ground. I decided I would fly down. Unfortunately I unconsciously doubted myself and as I fell I started losing vision. I tried flapping and that helped a bit, but I ended up landing on my back. The dream almost completely faded, but I sort of DEILD'd (still within the outermost dream) myself back into it.

Now I was on a suburban street where I had landed. There were biggish houses lining the street, and a few houses in front on the right, I saw a man and a wife in a truck, possibly about to back out of the driveway or just arriving back. I manifested Animal Mother's gun from Full Metal Jacket (I think an M60) and started shooting at them. I could see the bullet holes in the cars and buildings, but I didn't hit them. Then I walked over to a group of teenagers on their phones outside a nice house. I pointed the gun at them and told them to get inside. I wanted to kidnap them and see if the police or someone would come to fight me. They sarcastically said "Oh no" and started walking into the house. From here the dream faded pretty quickly. I wrote all this down immediately with a huge grin on my face. I think this last lucid must have lasted at least 1 to 1.5 minutes, which is the longest I've had yet. Overall, awesome night!



*Note: The visuals overall in these lucids were the best I've had yet, but I forgot to enhance my sense of touch! I need to work this into my mantra or my memorized list of steps of things to do once I become lucid. So when I was holding the M60, I was really just positioning my hands as if I was. I actually couldn't feel or see it either, I just believed it was there. I don't think I actually pulled a trigger, I just made sounds with my mouth

**Other note: I think the dreams where I was on my couch was a type of false awakening, just not where I actually was IWL.

***Edit: Forgot to mention that in my last lucid, when I was walking through the living room the second time, I asked aloud "Subconscious, how do I make my dreams longer?", but got no response.

Today I had my first lucid dream/out of body projection into a desired location - my home in Bangalore.

Wall of text coming up. Keeping it succint, and the info useful and mainly discuss how I get into it, dream stabilisation techniques I used, and how I moved from one environment into another for those of you who want to get into what I feel is one of the most thrilling experiences of my life - being completely 'awake' and aware in dream world.

It was a mixture of feelings of joy, accomplishment, elation, amazement, wonder to move from one completely 'real' and solid dream environment to another one in my Bangalore home (on a side note, I realise that I don't call it my parent's place, but Home).

I started reading Jurgen Ziewe's Multidimensional Man yesterday. So that got me hankering for lucid dreaming again. I've also been a bit cut up about the fact that a lot of people count lucid dreaming, and OBE as separate, but Jurgen was clear that he felt they were both the same. This ties into the zeitgeist on the dream views forums where they class all lucidity in the dream world as lucid dreams, and not OBE's. As I felt that OBE's are out of body projections into consensus realities i.e. 'real' worlds, as opposed to dream worlds. Good to know someone Jurgen confirm they were the same. Then again, he can see his body in his dream in OBE, but probably wouldn't in a lucid dream - ahh, who knows. But we ramble, and somebody promised they wouldn't do that .

My usual habit is to get back into lucid dreaming is to start dream journaling, but I hit upon a quicker more effective solution - I voice recorded my dream journal yesterday.

It takes a few days of dream journaling to get into dream awareness to recall more than a few chunks of it. And that dream awareness making me recall more than a few chunks of it, also helps me more aware that I am dreaming in a dream, and allows me to get lucid.

I had about an hour of pretty much continuous back to back lucid dreams, and whilst this was my longest stretch of lucids, it's also my usual pattern that I do get back to back lucids, around 3-4 of them at a time. Mainly because once I'm lucid in one dream world, I can retain that lucidity into the next 3-4 dream environments.

I won't bore you with individual details of my dreams, but share what's relevant to those of you who want to try it. Mainly how I get lucid in a dream, and dream stabilisation techniques I was using and how I 'projected' to a different environment.

Journaling makes me retain slightly more awareness in a dream world. I thought of making a song that says if I'm flying, in a strange place, outside my home, traveling, meeting friends, or FLYING, that I'm in a dream world. So it's basically flying that gets me to realise I'm in a dream world, or strange situations that I'm not supposed to be in, like Minnesota the last time around.

So last night, I was flying in a dream, and showing off my flying skills, to people and realised, hey, I can only do this in a dream, and got lucid in the dream, but it dissolved.

The next dream, ditto - realise I'm flying, so must be in a dream, but it dissolved.

In my next dream, I find some tapestry before me and start feeling the intricacies in the tapestry, looking at them in fine detail, and I go in and out of lucidity though the dream stays relatively stable in that environment.

I then do a cross brain (Psych-K) belief change posture in my dream, and change the belief that I can't stabilise a dream world, into a belief that I can stabilise a dream world.

I'm then in a bed, where I wake up and step out of my bed, and it's a half formed, dark dream world, and I just keep my hands on the walls, and walk from room to room, up and down stairs, never taking my hands off the walls. And I'm able to extend lucidity for a fair bit.

Then come a whole series of back to back fully lucid dreams for about the next 30-45 minutes.

At the end of them, I think, okay, lets project to a different dream environment, and I think about my Bangalore home. I imagine the door, and how it would look like. I look down, and I see a part of the gate, and think it's part of the home, and then see the house and stumble into it. I'm so excited by this, instead of waiting to stand and look around, or see if I can meet my folks, I just try and 'project' into the next place I can think of, and the dream dissolves and I finally wake up.

Points to ponder:
1. Audio recording more effective, and easier than typing it out. I record it on a whatsapp message to a 'dead' contact.
2. Dream stabilisation techniques as a priority in the dream. Use all senses, touch, sight, smell, temperature, to get immersed in the dream environment. If the dream starts to dissolve, I bend down, feel the dirt, or the walls as I walk.
3. No sudden moves in the dream or it destabilises. Slow and steady work the stabilisation in.
4. Once stabilisation settled in, then attempt to project to a different dream environment by imagining parts of it. The brain fills the rest in, and I'm immediately transported there.

Catching up on my DV dream journals, posting one LD for now instead of getting hampered trying to do one huge post compiling everything up to date.

Sat, 30 Jul 2016:

~~!! Late a.m. !! Using GF incubation MILD, what I'd do got my mind thinking dreamy possibilities: Another later morning success around 7am!~~

There is this 2 part flying spaceship-like craft, I realize after first thinking it was two separate ships, one smaller with 2 pilots and a large one with many crew and passengers perhaps. The smaller part is trying to pilot the craft out of danger and I'm down below on a platform in a giant rectangular water reservoir of some kind like an enormous swimming pool. Someone is flooding it with a ton of water all of the sudden and my platform is being swung around wildly in the water. I call up to the people in the ship what is being done and that's when I see it is 2 parts connected and I see lots of crew/people in the larger section below the smaller section. The platform I'm on is pushed against a rocky wall with vines hanging down and I start thinking I should climb out and then get the more dreamy idea that it will be easy, and then heck I can just fly up out of here. I climb with ease and then fly andI am very joyful I have been liberated from a dire situation into a lucid dream!!! I am just away from the edge and don't hesitate to jump out over the turbulent pool and think about how wow I'm really sure I can fly over it and not fall in and then I suppress some emerging doubt (Sivason's lesson: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-yoga/139475-advanced-skill-1-suppressing-emerging-thoughts.html ) that could drop me down and make me lose lucidity, and I move on with confidence! I fly up to a few smaller buildings and then up to a larger building to see what's going on inside. Nothing interesting to see really. I start to get a few dreamscene fades where the whole scene is dropping out but I use the seeding ideas based on Sivason's but the opposite effect, flowering them instead of suppressing them - there is a time for each... and the ideas from Daniel Love about seeing patterns in things and I stabilized. I am getting very good at bringing back the same building or a building that looks a lot like the building that just faded away. I'm thinking about this while I do it and I am amazed at how well it is working and how clear my thinking is. Perhaps this is one benefit to late morning when you are closer to getting up for the day your head is more clear but the dreams tend to be more wispy so we need to incubate them and to feed them and keep them going with seeds of thoughts like "oh that didn't fade I see a tree emerging I see it for me…here!" and "that pattern over there even if that pattern is not there yet I create it and it grows." Before long my scene is stabilized. I am floating down a residential street with large 2 and 3 story properties and I see an old guy walking and I have a slight thought regarding messing around with him in some way but I decided instead to talk to him and see if he seems like an intelligent DC. I greet him and he says his name something like John Clare. I asked him what he represents and even think as I'm saying it in the dream, I think to myself that the question is not very clear if you're trying to ask something about your subconscious. The answer was he was an astronaut. I think about the astronaut reference recently in waking life and figure that's where this answer must have come from. It was an astronaut speaking on TV. I look up at this large two-story apartment house it seems it has a fairly large flame and smoke coming out the back right corner. I think I can be a hero in my dream and I fly down to see what's going on. The room next to it and the one before it look completely unfazed and I knock on the windows and tell the occupants there's a fire in the next room and I start heading down toward the fire. When I get to the window with the fire I can't see anything so I fly down to the entrance and go in the house and tell the mother of the house that they have a fire up in one of the rooms and I flew up their staircase and up to the room and lead a few other younger folks out from upstairs and down. The mother comes up and I see a tampon pad and say someone must have lit it but it looks like it's under control now. The mother says some of these birds were already here. We all head downstairs and as I'm about to leave I tell her "sure you can show your appreciation

Spoiler for sexual content:

by giving me a nice blow job."

There is another beauty across the way and she gets my attention. The mother, good looking in a "girl next door" kind of way starts

Spoiler for sexual content:

going at my ahem

as if to bring my thoughts back to her. I tell the other one she can jump on, in a moment, but the scene starts fading and I seed the thought that she has walked over to me and hopped on and I can feel it a bit before I fade completely back to bed smiling big!

The day after I noted in my dream journal: "Try heavy visualization and incubation again for late morning chance…"

This seems to have been a very long completely lucid dream, in fact once more I was utterly incapable of remembering the while thing from the beginning, despite thinking about it immediately after waking up. The order of things might be slightly messed up.

The first thing I clearly remembered was having a small asphalt road in front of me, a small or maybe medium sized city behind, behind that a large mountain and a castle on the far end of the mountain. It was a beautiful day and an awesome vista, the sky was slightly cloudy I think. I wanted to get to the castle, and instead of going the entire way I looked away, and when I looked back it was a lot closer and different than before. I'm not sure how I then actually got there.

I was in the castle in some tower and a toilet room, though the details are fuzzy. Some time later I was in my current home town [K] it was night and I was talking to myself for stability, which worked for quite a long time.

And... since I was too busy and lazy to write this up immediately some details have gone missing. I really need to make a habit of writing down everything within 24 hours...

Ritual: I've had a bit of a dry spell lately, and even worse than the lack of lucid dreams has been the sensation of diminished overall awareness: my sleep lately has been distressingly ordinary. I'm still waking up frequently during the night, but now I can't even tell what time it is—usually I can guess accurately within ten minutes or so. When sleeping properly I always wake up a few minutes before my alarm, no matter what time I set it for, but lately the alarm has been waking me. I've been having an ordinary number of dreams, but they too are lacking even in rudimentary awareness. In the past, stressful periods at work have boosted my LDing, but I feel like maybe I'm getting a bit burnt out, so I've started using sleep as a form of escapism, instead of an opportunity for more interesting kinds of work. I've become a lazy sleeper!

Probably because of this lack of awareness, this time even when I started wondering if I was really dreaming, I continued to find the environment and events extremely persuasive and followed the plotline to its end. Only then did I take the time to deliberately RC. The only aspect of this that isn't disappointing is the fact that, once having noted I might be dreaming, I did manage to hold that thought and then come back to it, instead of just forgetting. I also felt as though my rational mind was functioning well in the way it recognized the dream sign, something that hasn't always been reliable.

The dream plot was based on waking life residue. Last night (in WL) around 1:30am we heard the sound of someone going through our trash bins outside the house, even though the bins are through a gate which, although it has no lock, clearly demonstrates a property boundary. Unfortunately there is no window through which to observe that area, and by the time I went out with a flashlight the person was gone.

The same thing happened in the dream, except that the person had left behind bags of newspapers, and I was worried they might contain criminal evidence. I wasn't sure if I should call the police, as I had already moved some of the bags, so my prints were now on them too. There were many more minor details and events that would only be tedious to record here, so I'll skip them.

Later the garbage-pickers come back, and I realize I can see them if I get the right angle through a window (not true in RL). I want to take pictures for evidence, but I have trouble pulling up the camera on my phone, normally a very simple operation. Even when I do get the camera working, it is too zoomed in and I can't frame the shot properly. I recognize these technical difficulties as dream signs, but at the moment I'm too caught up in events to RC.

The garbage-pickers leave before I can get a good shot, so I go around the front of the house for another try. The camera is still giving me trouble, and once again I notice how much it resembles a dream sign, even though this doesn't feel like a dream. After a few more minor incidents that plotline wraps up, and I now realize that I can give my full attention to checking whether or not I am dreaming. Everything has felt very real and convincing, but I know well how little that sensation can be trusted.

I jump... inconclusive. I came down quickly enough, but the jumping itself felt easier than I think it should, as though I am not lifting my full body weight. I jump a couple more times, trying to draw out the moment at the apex. It might actually be lengthening as I focus on it. My suspicion grows, I jump a bit more, and then sure enough, I find that I can pause at the top, hovering in the air. That clinches it. It was a dream all along.

What now? It's been so long since I've been lucid that I just want to explore and enjoy the environment. I look out the glass wall of the living room and see an expanse of snowy fields and pine forest stretching to a distant low mountain, utterly unlike the RL scenery. I feel satisfied with this prospect, so I fly through the glass without hesitation and start soaring over the landscape, looking down and enjoying the clarity of visual detail. I'm reminded of a recent conversation with a WL friend who also turned out to be an LDer, who mentioned that he prefers not to do tasks but would rather just fly around and enjoy the environment. Today that feels just fine.

I fly to the top of the mountain and land, hoping to explore on foot. There is a problem with scale, however: I am huge in relation to the mountain. My feet cover its entire upper surface. I take off into the air again, hoping I didn't crush too many trees and little creatures. The distorted scale now makes everything feel artificial, and the dream destabilizes. I exert will to remain in the dream state as it deconstructs, and for a moment I find myself flying through a black boundless space marked with thin white lines running horizontally and vertically in three dimensions. It strongly resembles the conception of virtual space in the movie Tron. I recognize that this is unconstructed dream space, and try not to let it disconcert me that the dream has faded, and I feel very close to being awake... I remind myself that if I should be able to enter a new scene if I can just be patient and maybe suggest something.

I'm trying to stay relaxed, so I imagine lying in a bath of warm water. This makes me realize that my flying feels like swimming so I use the idea. I am swimming underwater in a pool of water that is no different from my body temperature—that's why I don't feel it. And of course I can breathe underwater, because why not? These thoughts in mind, I now think I can see the glimmering underside of the water's surface just above my head, so I fly up and break it, preparing to find myself in a new scene. I notice how seamlessly my breathing remains the same as I transition from breathing water to air, and again this feels too artificial for my liking, but I try not to let it disrupt the dream.

I am in an empty tiled space containing a pool. The lining of the pool is made of identical square beige tiles as the walkway around it and the low walls bounding the space. It appears to be outdoor because the walls don't go up all the way, but there is no impression of any surrounding environment, much less sky or weather. It is still very vague and plain and artificial; perhaps it could be described as "semi-constructed dream space." I look around for something notable, perhaps a DC, and I begin to hear music. It is a simple melody on a plucked string instrument, like a medieval lute. I don't see anyone else, but vision isn't perfect now, so I keep listening and looking. The song ends, and a woman's voice says, "Thanks, I really enjoyed this one song." There is a kind of parenthetical remark appended to the sentence in the same voice that I perceive simultaneously, though I don't seem to "hear" it as literally as the words just spoken. The parenthetical remark is: "...after a moment's reflection." In ordinary text one could write it as:

"Thanks, I really enjoyed this one song (after a moment's reflection)."

But that wouldn't quite convey the effect that the parenthetical part was not spoken aloud, and that it had a kind of simultaneity with the statement itself.

Feeling confident that I will momentary see the singer, I keep looking around... and feel paws on my face, my real face. The cat has chosen just this moment to come back to bed, waking me. Damn!

I had another LD, yay! Yeterday while running (50 min) I was practising awareness. Every song I changed a sense. It was hearing, seeing and touching - I took the inspiration from here: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...cid-dreams.htm. I did this also before sleep while laying on my bed (without songs, same as orginal method). I also drank 2 glasses of fresh apple-carrot juice at the evening. I feel asleep for ~4h, then I wrote one my non-lucid, played 2-3 logic games on my phone, read one thread on DV and tryed to WILD with counting from 100 to 0 with saying between numbers "lucid dream" (ginsan's gold method ;p) and focusing on my breath (I also thought about LD, bonus task from TOTM). When I finished counting I tryed to stay calm. I said to myself that I did everything and now I must be patient. I had some random thoughts about LD in my head anyway. I spend awoken ~2h.

Non-lucid parts
Lucid parts

#4 LD
During non-lucid dream I went to sleep (or at least I laid down). When I raised my head I saw an integrated circuit which was moving by itself (induced by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhR7DmSp1Zg, lol). I did RC and I got lucid. However I was going through different settings, all of them were dark, I think there were also FAs. I stayed focus hopefully. I was rubbing my hends to stabilize it but it wasn't working well. Then I sterted rolling on the floor to get any touching senations and it worked a little. I shouted few commans, like "Vivid dream!" (I was hearing myself) but it didn't work. I was in my room but it was empty and dark. There were some door/window and I tryed to see behind them some scene but it didn't work either. So I was clever enough - I went to the window, blinds were lowered but I saw faintly a sun behind them. I was pulling them up (there were 2 layers of them) and voilà! Light! I saw my old furnishings. There were dust everywhere and I looked at the moment at wooden cat which I don't have in RL. I again felt too certain and I went out to the kitchen. There was dark but not empty, I saw that it's snowing outside and I felt happy about it. I went to the balcony, I didn't feel temperature, the snow was too nice to watch. I flew up, I had to decide what to do and first thought was about 1st basic task from TOTM - "Hop on a bus/tram/train and leave for places unknown. Describe where it takes you." I live close to the railway tracks so that was easy to find. I wasn't into this task really but I had to decide sth. I passed some guy and I thought that he doesn't see me because I'm invisible (like it would an OBE). I was above the tracks, I did RC with nose and rubbed hands for sec. One train was going immediately, I tryed to catch it but it was too fast and I couldn't get enough speed. So I turned back, there was another train (and one more I think). I was floating in the air for a while because of changing the direction. It was going up through the spiral tracks. I catched the top of it - I knew that it will stop in a moment because we were almost on some station (I thought that it's similar to RL and I was disappointed a bit but it wasn't so I wasn't 100% lucid apparently, don't know if this counts for TOTM then). Station was called "Shirokuma" and the setting was from anime "Shirokuma Cafe". I don't remember it very vivid, however it was nice and green, there was a panda corner (like in ZOO, the anime is i.a. about it). There weren't any trains and tracks, I only remember a sign with the station's name. Probably because of my bad attitude and instability I loose the lucidity. I woke up I think (maybe FA?), I was too tired to wrote it down and I did it after some time of sleep.

I don't know why, I'm lucid since first moment. I did a WBTB (without the back to bed part, I woke up and stayed awake in my bed) and attempted an SSILD. I'm lucid since the first time.

I'm at the same square as in the last DJ entry, except that this time there is grass on the floor, with beautiful paths made of cobblestone. Kids are playing, some of them are running, some of them just playing with some toy cars on the grass. There are some benches around this park-square, kids' parents are sitting on those. As in nearly all of my dreams, it is dawn time. Really beautiful sunrays are irradiated from the sky. I decide to go for a walk
- Whoa, this is really vivid and beautiful, the grass, the paths...
I decide to levitate a bit, instead of walking I go levitating to another "patch" of grass, like those fairies in the films. I crouch on this grass and try to stabilize, I rub my palms and then I start touching the grass, which really wasn't grass, but really small round leafs of some herb, the touch is kinda "cold" like some dew
, I also smell it, smells like grass (what a coincidence!). I think:
- With this I should feel more my dream body and not my waking one.
Wait, my waking one, I shouldn't have said that. My dream starts to fade away. I'm in the void now.
- Quick, I got to think about something before I leave the dream.
I start feeling my body.
- This is it
I wake up.

Well, at least the dream was longer than the other ones and I could stabilize, at least for a while.

I am walking in to my old work and I start realizing that I don't work there anymore. I am getting a little embarrassed and then I stop and remember that I had a dream at this work the day before. I know that this is a dream now, but RC anyways due to the amount of vividness being trippy and what I was planning on doing next was gonna be weird. I look up in the sky and notice that it went from morning to night very quickly. I see the moon and it is bright and silver and beautiful. I close my eyes, but the sight of the moon doesn't go away. I "fall asleep" and the moon slowly changes to the earth and starts spinning quite fast and then slows down. I think that this is awesome since I was talking about seeing the earth in the sky yesterday.

I notice that there is a break in the sky and that it looks like legoland on the other side. There are all sorts of buildings and things. I fly around a bit and look in it, but it seems pretty far away and I had other plans. I go inside and go to sleep again, trying ~dreamer~'s way of having super long LDs. As I fall asleep I notice that I have a big ball in my hand. I focus on it as I fall asleep and then wake up outside. this time I am near a bunch of businesses and I can't seem to fly at all. I am quite confused and I decide to mess with gravity. I flip upside down and just float there like there is zero gravity. Then I start walking on the underside of the awnings with gravity flipped (Some DCs watching me a little here). I remember that I have a goal and I go off "into the distance" until I find something interesting. I notice a vending machine and stop there. I see a bar on the bottom that looks awesome and instead of trying to just summon money I open up the vending machine. I notice a lock and I phase it through and off. I grab the crackers and read the package. It is super clear and doesn't change, but it doesn't say anything about LDing like I was trying to get it to. I stop caring about this because dreamer is there. She doesn't say anything at first, but we decide (somehow) that we are going to try and find the right thing in a house near us.

We fly onto the roof and phase through. As we are doing this I feel like I have 3 different dream bodies, the two sleeping and the one awake. It makes sense to me that this would make a dream last longer, but I don't know how. I think about how all 3 different places exist at the same time as opposed to it just being a scene change. I land in a different room than her and I start checking the living room... I see dreamer outside somehow.
"Try and remember this when you wake up" She says "but you probably don't remember who I am."
"You are ~Dreamer~, I'll remember, I am very aware. You make sure you journal as soon as you wake up." I say. she is fading. I try to jump through the glass but end up spidermaning all over it.

I decide to continue with the lengthening of the dream and head to the kitchen. I open the fridge and realize that a drink in the fridge would make the dream last longer. I find one and put it to my lips... and wake up.

Ritual: wtb 1am, woke 5:45am, wbtb about an hour, take supplements (piracetam, bacopa, choline, alpha-gpc, l-theanine), lay on back, doze off, turn to side, woke 8am to record dream.

DEILD: I half-wake from an unremarkable NLD and realize I can DEILD. As I transition I can distinctly hear a woman's voice speaking, though she wasn't saying anything memorable. After a while I hear a new voice a man responding, and figure this is a good sign, suggesting that the hynagogic state is deepening toward dream. As soon as I feel like I am fully transitioned, I get out of bed. I remember the task I had intended: the storm TOTM. I go outside, intending to summon it, but the dream does not yet feel stabilized and my surroundings become vague. I retransition and realize that there's no reason I should feel constrained by concepts like "inside" and "outside," and decide to summon the storm from right in my bedroom. I look up at the ceiling and it becomes transparent, so that I can see the sky overhead. It is half-lit, with faint stars and gauzy clouds: I will the clouds to thicken and darken.

After another spell of vagueness, maybe a retransition, I go back outside to see if there is evidence of a storm yet. It is working! There is a patch of very heavy dark clouds overhead. It it not yet a full-blown storm so I work on it a little more. I raise my hands and shout, "Wind!" I am modeling this on the scene from the film Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) where he conjures the clouds so it will get dark faster. I decide to add a little more panache: "WIND AND FIRE!" I yell, still gesticulating at the sky. The clouds are roiling and I do see patches of fire, so when it is sufficiently apocalyptic, I fly directly up into the cloudbank.

The effect is disappointing: I have no real sensory impressions apart from sight, and the visibility is very poor. It is hard to distinguish the greyness inside the clouds from the greyness of unformed dream, except that I notice that the fire has coalesced into vaguely anthropomorphic forms that resemble elementals or demons. Although they are distant and none moves to threaten me, I feel vaguely anxious and start singing to reassure myself. The dream destabilizes and I retransition.

I go outside again, and find myself on a slightly elevated walkway; just below is a middle-aged white guy who seems to be gardening. He looks up at me and says with an air of disappointment: "You can do better than this." I feel as though he is chastising me for summoning the storm, and feel a pang of guilt, although there is no rational basis for this. After entering a building, I look down and notice that I am carrying a phone. It is not a contemporary model but resembles those old Nokias with the small monochrome screens that can render text but not graphics. Distinctly legible on the screen is the word: "SmarKu," a mix of lower-case and capital letters as though it were abbreviated from something. The word intrigues me, so I ask:

"SmarKu, what are you?"

"A phone," it answers simply.

Well, duh. I try rephrasing my question, "I mean, what do you represent?"

"..."

Since the phone seems confused or reluctant to answer, I finally resort to a term I dislike, speaking forcefully for emphasis: "What do you symbolize?"

"A pimp and a whore," retorts the phone with an edge of sarcasm.

I can't help but laugh at the inexplicable rudeness of the reply. What is this, a dream version of Tourette's syndrome?

I retransition and go back outside, running across two gentlemen having a heated discussion. I find their conversation boring and don't make any particular effort to remember it, but this reminds me of the thread (I think it was last month's TOTM) where we were discussing the fact that it feels different to "think" something in a dream versus saying it "aloud," even though it is hard to conceptualize the difference. To test this principle, I comment inwardly on how dull their conversation is, and pay attention to how this manifests. I do not "hear" the words with my dream ears, nor do I seem to "speak" them in my dream voice, so it feels no different from thinking something in waking life. I walk over to them and think it directly in their presence, to see if they will respond: "How dully, sir!" (In retrospect it seems like an odd turn of phrase, but it felt natural at the time.) They do not react to me, so it still feels like a private thought. I decide to try a little experiment: I silently will one of the DCs to say these words aloud for me. Without a moment's hesitation, he pipes up to his companion: "How dully, sir!"

This was so successful that I'm encouraged to try again with the second guy. Mischievously, I select the same words that the SmarKu used earlier. Sure enough, the guy says out of nowhere, "A pimp and a whore." At this point I go right up to him and ask, "What do you mean by that?" I expect him to be confused or uncertain about why he said it, but instead he starts explaining himself. This is really unexpected: he is taking responsibility for the phrase as though saying it were his own idea! All I could think was... so DCs rely on dream logic? I... guess that makes sense.

There is a destabilization, and before my eyes I watch the environment fluctuate from brilliant light and clarity to hazy vagueness. I suspect this is due to my own lack of mental focus, slipping too close to wakefulness again, and I tell myself that I don't have to wake up if I don't want to. Back in my bedroom, I maintain dreamstate through a rough patch by singing again and focusing on sensual impressions. As I sing, it feels like my voice is joined by invisible others, singing with me in harmony. This reminds me of my lucid dare—from last year—which I've never quite completed to my satisfaction.

I go back outside, willing it to be stable. I frame my arms around empty air as though around an unseen person and dance, hoping the invisible owner of one of the voices will manifest. No such luck. I notice a DC standing nearby, a middle-aged black man, and ask him, "Have you seen an elf around here?"

"Yes," he replies. Okay, I realize I might have willed him to say that using my new trick, but if it conditions my expectations into manifesting the damn elf, it will have been worth it.

"Who?" I inquire further, a specific name in mind.

"Thranduil," he says promptly, just as I anticipated.

"Where is he?" I don't have an answer to this one, so I'm hoping he'll say something helpful.

He points behind me. "Right over there."

I turn and look, hoping my expectations are primed enough that he will be visible. Afraid not. As I squint into the distance, the man explains helpfully, "You can just barely see him, in the edge of the forest."

I still don't see him but I'll take his word for it. The man goes on, "If you hurry, you might be able to catch him. The best way is to go left up those stairs."

I follow his instructions, wondering I should summon a horse to cover the ground faster, but I don't want to add unnecessary complexity and figure that on horseback is not the best way to climb stairs anyway. The stairs are very rustic and appealing, constructed of irregularly cut slabs of old grey stone, with small plants growing out of the cracks, and a low stone wall on either side. They turn to the right and continue to ascend. I'm climbing as fast as I can and observe that either the steps are getting smaller or I'm getting bigger, because now I'm covering at least a dozen with each stride, but I'm still only halfway to the forest's edge when I wake up and sense that the dream state is unrecoverable.

11/12/14 Turning left and next thing I know I am walking and follow a group of people into a store where a few guys are looking at ties.

I look down a stairwell and see a woman and turn away when I hear someone call my name from down there and it hits me I am dreaming. While lucid I think that this is a result of my recent adjustments to my awareness work but I notice the dream seems to be fading but I am determined to keep it going! I rub my hands and the rail as I go down and at the bottom is a cabinet with french fries and junk on it. I grab the fries and junk up and just start stuffing them in my mouth chewing them up for the sole purpose of stabilizing the dream.

It works and as I turn the corner I am in a parking garage.


To my left is a blue Volkswagen Bug. There are life size wood carvings/statues of two older women sitting in the front seat and two even older women in the back seat. I am studying the details and making a mental note to get a good guestimate of the ages of the women depicted in the statues. I settle on an age of late 60's for the women in front and 80's for the women in the back. I feel the dream fading again but much quicker this time...too quick and I think about the NREM conversations and try to stay in some form of sleep but quickly realize I am fully awake and have a strong urge to adjust my position in bed. I think it was too close to my normal time to get up. Now I have to consider if it is better to let the dream fade into the void and teleport since I have had some of my most memorable LDs that way or save the dream like this dream in case I don't get to the void but instead inadvertently "follow the normal path to waking" which I definitely don't want. Notes: previous awareness notes apply but also putting a larger sense of wonder in my RRC interaction statement leaving a hanging question as part of it and thinking about if it makes sense where I am at...where was I before...does that make sense? Did quite a bit of this while driving back from my league game. If CL is reading this, didn't you have a VW in a lucid? 231

11/11/14 Sexual LD with older woman. A "hot young thang" in fancy but classy lingerie then seduces me. Some fading lucidity. Afterwards I whip it out for my Wife. 230

I haven't been paying attention to dreaming much lately. Life has been getting busier. But last night I thought, "I'm going to lucid dream." And I did! It was a little different from other LDs I've had; there was no point at which I consciously thought, "I'm dreaming!" I just gradually became more aware. It was a very long dream.

I was part of a group of people who had to recapture some kind of relic from an underground place. It was being held by enemies of some kind, maybe orcs. I see it--a small glowing thing--on a ledge about 50 feet away. We manage to sneak by the orcs and capture the relic. Suddenly Sarek of Vulcan appears. I say something like, "Sarek, it's an honor to have your here." He replies, "Your name is no less esteemed." (Seems like a very Sarek thing to say.) I get the impression that we are doing a good job on our missions vs. the bad guys.

We casually walk out of the place without anyone stopping us. We might've had disguises; I don't remember. Just as we're going through some large double doors, there's an uproar behind us. One of the group, a white woman, shoots up in the air and starts flying. I think for a second that, "Whoa, she just did that. Maybe I can too." So we leave all our bags behind and just shoot up in the air. It was around this time that I became lucid. I was thinking that my dream-flying was different from any other time I've done it, that I was more "floaty". I was really enjoying myself. I thought about how I was really lying in bed, and I knew I was starting to wake up. I focused on the face of the woman beside me, in an attempt to stabilize the dream. I don't know her face. The stabilization works, and I stay asleep!

Later we are in a shopping area, a cute strip mall or something. I think, "I want my backpack." (The one I left behind.) I hold out my hand and make it appear beneath me! This is another 'first' for me. I felt like Q from Star Trek, making something appear just by willing it to happen! Later we are in a different shopping area. I remember the pumpkin challenge for October. There's one pumpkin right in front of me, but it's already broken open and there is trash inside. I go looking for another pumpkin. There's a nice orange one. I plan on using my hand to cut it open, but then I think, "This isn't my pumpkin.. maybe I should ask if I can cut it open." I smile at this person, a black woman. I ask if I can open the pumpkin and she says yes. But at that time the dream abruptly ends.

I have some funny dream logic. What do I need with bags in a dream, anyway? And do I really need permission to open a pumpkin in my own dream? Silly brain.

I'm standing in a strange room, not really sure where, and realize I'm dreaming. I feel a bit mentally tired for some reason, so I decide to mostly just go with the flow of the dream rather than change it a lot. There is an army general looking guy in front of me, like the Russian guy from November Man. At least that's the role he's playing in my dream. Since I'm dreaming, I hit him across the face a few times to teach him not to be so evil. He just sits there and doesn't do anything, then gets up and motions for me to follow him. He walks over to a door, and opens it to a black void and steps through, disappearing out of the room.

I tell him to, "wait, I just need to find a fortune cookie" as I remember one of the Tasks. I reach into my right pocket expectantly, but its empty. I try my left pocket - empty. I reach into my back pockets, and they are empty too. I notice a shelf on the wall, full of bags of chips. "There's always fortune cookies stashed away on the back of shelves like this" I tell myself as I reach far back. I have to stand on my tip toes to reach back to the end, and I push all the chips over to the right as I feel around back there. Then I feel it - "A'ha!" I'm excited to see what it has to say. Before I open it, I wish that whatever wisdom I receive from this cookie, that it is beneficial for everyone and helps me as well in profound ways. I unwrap it, break it open, and scarf down half of it as I pull the tiny paper out. I notice that it tastes just like a regular fortune cookie.

I look at the fortune, and everything starts to get really blurry and the room starts to spin, everything starts fading as well. It seems like I'm about to wake up. I tell myself that, "I'm in control here, I can do what I want!" and remind myself that I'm dreaming, I have a dream body, and I'm standing in this dream room, about to read a fortune cookie. I'm holding the fortune upside down, so I rotate it right side up. As I do so, the lettering all changes to become very cryptic. I remember from looking at it upside down that it said something to the effect of, "It's godly to have no delusions, but look in your garden" I want to get a more accurate impression of the punctuation, spelling and so forth, but the more I look at the fortune, the more cryptic it becomes until it's just dots and commas, maybe a y and a j on there, but the message has completely changed. I look away and look back, but it is still losing clarity - mark by mark on the tiny paper.

I decide that I've milked that task for all I can so far, and remember the shoe task. I sit down at the table in the same room, and put a shoe on each foot. They just spontaneously appeared in front of me as I sat down, and my feet were just wearing socks, so it was really smooth. They even fit! Just regular running shoes. The room spins a little, and I'm now standing in a hallway, walking through a dorm building to my room. I really have to go to the bathroom, but I again remind myself that I'm dreaming, focus on my body, and my environment, and some sort of plan. That's it, a plan! What was I doing? I remember the shoes task again, but am not really sure I ever tied my shoes.

I walk into my room, the middle of which is a shower, surrounded by bunk beds. I don't see anyone else in the room. The lighting is rather dim, and I'm dressed like I'm about to take a shower (well, not dressed at all it turns out). The water turns on by itself, and the whole room seems to have become a shower. As the water pours down on me, I enjoy how warm and relaxing it feels. Now for the shoes. I normally wouldn't put shoes on in this situation, but I'm not satisfied with how it went earlier. Bending over, shoes again appear next to my feet. Some sort of running shoes again. I put them on, and tie a granny knot on each shoe - now soaked through and through from the shower.

Having to go pee really bad, I question just going in the dream, but don't want to wet myself IRL, so I hold it. Holy crap it burns I have to go so bad though. I remember drinking a 1/2 gallon of water just before bed, so it's probably an accurate signal.
I lose lucidity, and find myself on a boat, being excommunicated from my town, sent south along a river to Mexico or somewhere. Basically anywhere but where I was. It is a nice day, and I enjoy the sun as my room mates and I are floating down stream. I ask where they think we're going, and they don't know. Then my room mate RZ grabs onto a rope, and opens a sail, then jumps off our boat onto a raft. Pulling at the rope, he builds up some tension, then leaps off the raft and flies through the air, leaving us all behind to watch him fly away.

Then I wake up, having to pee, but not that bad.

Ritual: wtb around 12:30am. Had to get up at 8am so no time for serious WBTB, but I had been reading about FILD and how it relies on short WBTBs that allow one to go back to sleep quickly, so thought this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I was waking up naturally every couple of hours and each time did FILD as I went back to sleep, but no results. If I was having NLDs, I didn't take notes and don't remember them now.

My fourth waking occurred at 6:50am. I did FILD again. This time, as I was nearing sleep I saw a tiny white light, rayed like a star and unusually bright, appear in the darkness behind my eyelids and seem to come closer. This reminded me: wasn't I supposed to be paying attention to hypnogogic imagery? Actually I don't think that is a part of the FILD technique but in my half-asleep recollection I was convinced it was, so I focused on that white star, and for whatever reason I felt like it was actually effective in helping me transition.

I had not been doing the "nosepinch" RC during my FILD attempts, as the tutorial recommends, because it struck me as potentially counter-productive to make such a large motion—if the body is not already in SP then one would end up moving one's physical arm and disrupting the transition. Plus, I figured, if I still had the presence of mind to remember to RC in the first place, then I could probably figure it out in some other way.

As I was trying to come up with alternate RCs that didn't involve physical movement, at one point it occurred to me, "Hey, if I'm lying here with my eyes closed, how come I can see my bedside table?" What a giveaway! So then I realized I must have transitioned without even knowing it, and got out of bed.

WILD: The first thing I did was go look out the sliding door in the bedroom. In RL it leads to the back patio, but in the dream, it opened onto a wide grassy lawn that extended a great distance. The air felt very real and fresh as it came through the door. I remembered my tasks, but after botching them last time because I rushed out of the house before the dream had stabilized, I didn't want a repeat of that failure. I realized I'd better take some time first and let the dreamstate develop a bit more strength. It felt unusually "thin," even for an early-stage WILD.

As I walked down the hall, I noticed three coins lying on the floor just inside the door to the library. This pleased me immensely, because I recognized it at once as waking life residue, the consequence of a conversation yesterday, and I was glad the dream was showing a bit of initiative. I picked up the coins and then wondered where to put them when I discovered that was wearing a skirt that had no pockets. "Don't be silly," I reminded myself, observing that this shouldn't be an obstacle in the dreamstate. So without looking, I slipped my hand down until I could feel the edge of the pocket that manifested on the skirt just where I "expected" it to be, and slipped the coins inside.

Shortly after this the dream was disrupted by a half-waking, but I was able to re-transition. I got out of bed again and realized I'd better work more deliberately on stabilization, running through each of my senses in turn to better engage them. Touch always seems the most foundational, so I rubbed my hands together and over various differently-textured surfaces in the room: the fluffiness of a sheepskin, the scratchiness of the wool rug, the smoothness of the wall. My sense of touch tends to be robust even in the most poorly-integrated dreams, so the results were satisfactory. What next? I thought of sight and sound, but immediately hesitated. The dream felt so thin and fragile that I felt convinced engaging sight and sound would expose me to RL stimuli and risk waking me. I thought it might be better to do taste and smell first to try to get a little more traction. As I walked toward the kitchen I saw a potted basil plant (much like the one I had bought yesterday from Trader Joe's) sitting in the door of the hallway bathroom. "That'll do for taste," I thought, plucking a leaf and putting in my mouth. It tasted very much like real basil, spicy and herbaceous, but somehow not entirely pleasant on its own. The leaf was unusually large and now it was filling my mouth in an unpleasant limp wad, so rather than chew and swallow, I took out what was left of it and put it on the counter. Surely there must be something else to eat? Ice cream maybe? I looked in the freezer, but remembered that I had finished the chocolate ice cream last night. I considered manifesting some more, but didn't get around to it. This might have been around the time the second half-waking occurred, and I had to re-transition.

It's not unusual that I have to chain a few WILDs like this before the dreamstate stabilizes, but this time it only seemed to be getting weaker rather than more robust, despite my deliberate attempts to gain traction. I guess my REM state wasn't very strong or I was already too wakeful. At one point I had opened the screen door by my work area and was standing with one foot inside the room, one foot outside on the patio, looking down the side of the house and thinking how unusually lifelike it looked, rather than showing the typical degree of dream-like distortions. And not long after that I woke up for the third time, too fully awake to retransition. I checked my clock and it was 7:35am.

It was a rather unsatisfying WILD in that the dream started out thin and only got thinner as time went on... there was one rough patch in the third part where I felt like I was holding it together through imagination alone before my senses re-engaged. By the very end, after it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to accomplish anything worthwhile, I think I just gave up and was indulging in libidinous pleasure—through thought alone, as it seemed too much trouble at that point to try to create a scenario.

I'll have to keep trying with FILD to see if I can get better results. On the upside, it has the advantage that it can be practiced during very brief WBTBs, so it can be used at times when other techniques that require more mental focus would be unsuitable.