Peter

I love the key chain reference. It reminded me of the guy driving the boat in Waking Life. All aboard. Regarding the overlaid images though I was thinking about two three-dimensional images layered over the top of each other. So, say you were in a space'looking into two totally different three dimensional worlds that never touched each other. The people and things couldn't feel or hear anything in the other, but you could transfer from one space to the next. Hmm'maybe not.

Most of the lucid dreams have been rather drab. The last one ended with me floating through my house. As I got closer to the door, I thought, uh oh there's a door coming up and I'm floating closer to it, and then I thought, oh well I'm dreaming and continued to float right through it into the night sky.

Hope all are doing well!

(:smyles

Hello, friends! Yes, I am well and hope the same for all. I just dropped in here sort of by accident on this occasion, though I was here yesterday reading & enjoying everyone's latest - but this morning I was about to go to my e-mail and answer a question that was asked of me: "Do you think you miss anything by being lucid?" Having "unconsciously" typed in lucidity.com instead of my e-mail URL and dropped into the Kalani corner, I now see the opportunity to pose the question to all of you!

Stephen in his book goes to great length to discount the idea that dreams are "messages." I disagree, and note that his "schema" schema is good up to a point but fails to account for, among other things, dream telepathy and precognition. Clearly at least some (if not most) dreams can be called messages from another aspect of consciousness, be it the dreamer's own deeper or more subtle consciousness, or higher, shared or universal consciousness. Dreams, for instance, that point out something obvious that we've been dodging in waking life are totally common and are great messages from ourselves to ourselves!

So there IS at least a theoretical danger of missing a message if we're intentionally affecting the content of our dreams. I personally don't worry about it and I have my reasons but would love to hear from you-all first.

Joy

Myles:

I understand now what you mean ' sorry I missed it last time. As far as I know, I've never overlaid two dreams in the manner in which you describe. The best reason that I can imagine for this, and for being pretty sure I couldn't do it if I tried, is that dreams, bizarre as they can be, have context. No wait; dreams ARE context. To combine contexts and still keep them separate may be hazardous to a dreamer's sanity.

A dream is a tiny universe, created from your own resources of images, memories, and emotions, built on your unconscious expectations, and meant to be toured by you under the guise of reality. When we seek lucidity, we're struggling to accept the possibility that the universe we're experiencing might not be real, or at least might be more elastic than we had expected before lucidity. A tough part of lucid dreaming is replacing, or maintaining the given context after we realize it's not true. Usually in our LD's we move somewhere simpler and easier to understand ' or we wake up, but we still have a context, a single universe, we can wrap our conscious minds around.

I have to believe that it's possible to have two independent dreams showing simultaneously without a merge into one perceived context. But, since order is crucial to sanity, I'm not sure a non-psychotic personality would be able to successfully create and, importantly, believe, two dreams at once. If you think about it, when a photographer superimposes two photos, isn't it her goal to create a third photo, rather than simply offer her audience two separate images in the same space?

Joy:

This segues nicely into your question. I believe that the better we are at consciously understanding the context our mind provides in dreams, the better we can understand our place in, well, everything. Plus, if while lucid you can avoid the simplicity mentioned above and stay with the dream, you might pick up far more meaning than you would have before you doubted that context. You can, after all, pay better attention to details when you're aware that they're there. So, lucidity might be a source for missing far less of what your mind, and perhaps the minds of others, has to offer. But then again, if you walk (or fly) away from the dream and on to new universes devoid of prescribed meaning, the lessons learned in the new universes you create, and from the new people you meet, might outweigh the messages you should've caught during waking hours anyway!

Peter

Myles:

I just reread all that drivel I wrote yesterday, and noticed that all I really had to write was the photography example. It said it all, because it illustrated that, no matter how many dreams you intellectually think you are experiencing (and there could be many), you will always perceive them as one. Unless, of course, you're nuts!

Peter

Hi everyone! I know I owe this board some dreams but I just have not taken the time needed to dig into my logbook(promised Peter that if he posted a long one so would I).

However, I'd just like to quickly post the LD I had this morning:

I was walking and talking with Stephen in a stairwell when suddenly his face changed into the actor William hurt (from one of my favorite movies Altered States http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080360 ). This was not "strong" enough it seems to bring about lucidity but I did manage to do some reality tests. I jumped down an entire flight of stairs and looked up to my actor friend to say "see, I'm not dreaming". Just to make sure of that fact, I check my watch to read the time outloud. Checking my watch again I see that the digital display is all funny... ahh ha, that did it! William Hurt is now standing next to me and I see that he has a sticker on his forehead that reads "I am you". I laughed outloud.

I do not remember the outcome of the dream.

I'm flying out to Vancouver Saturday to visit Andrea and to check out the film school there. Andrea has also invited me to me her local dream group meeting... I'm so excited! It's been so long since I sat down with a group and chatted about dreams... and we all know how fun that can be ;)

Love to all

Hi, everyone! It's good to hear from you all. Thanks to everyone with your interesting thoughts on "999" and to Peter for the response to my question: Do you think you miss out on anything (e.g. messages from dreams) by being lucid? Myles' wife Dana e-mailed me an eloquent answer to part of that question: Can dreams be messages? - and I have permission to post it here:

My husband Myles, for his own reasons, forwarded this message to me. Out of respect for Joy and Myles, here is my ignorant response:

Given that I am not educated in the study of lucid dreams, but find it a natural and innate part of my being, I concur with Joy. From what I understand, dreams, in some aspect, are an attempt to process our daily lives and occurrences. I have found since childhood, that the lack of social parameters in my dreams have given me the freedom to experiment and analyze situations freely, without the normal protocol of sociologic constraints. But, this freedom can often be tricky to control and accept, due to the forced moral interpretations of my influential environment.

How can we denounce messages being sent to us through our dreams? If we are to doubt the existence of precognitive dreams and messages, then we have to doubt the entire study of dream signs and signals, because I believe that they are one in the same. We live our non dream or daily lives metaphorically, and often misinterpret body language, words and intentions. How can that not cross over into our dream state, when we are truly one being with consistent filters and defenses, regardless of being awake, lucid or asleep.

Truly, omnipotence would be possible if we achieve awareness of all states and acknowledge them with an open heart and mind.

Humbly yours,

Dana Taylor-Cowherd

Hi all,

First, apologies for my long absence.

Second, I finally succeeded in practicing tonglen in a dream!

After a disturbing/inspiring dream on Saturday night where I did not become lucid I determined on a dedicated program of MILD for at least a week. I set my alarm for 4am and went to sleep around 11pm. Woke up at 1:28am from a double lucid dream, the clearest one I've had since the one I had during a meditation retreat back in May. In the second part I remembered my intent to try a compassion practice.

I finished writing it up (remembering to do a reality check upon awakening), got paged and spent a half hour dialed in to work, (I'll bet the fellow who paged me was surprised I picked up after one ring and sounded so awake), did some more sitting practice, did some MILD and went back to sleep after resetting my alarm.

Okay, this isn't the way MILD is supposed to work (I thought you got the dreams afterward :-) but I'm not complaining.

I hope to post the dream itself over at the Misc forum in the next day or so since I'm curious about other people's experience in trying compassion practices in dreams.

Well, it only took me 4 months to succeed in following Stephen's advice but I'm glad I perservered!

Bryan: Thanks for your technique of feeling one's surroundings. I used that to solidify my dream environment in the second part of the dream.

Joy: I'll add to the general disagreement of lucidity causing you to "miss" things. Aside from the usual observation that not all dreams are lucid I would observe that many of my most useful messages? realizations? have come about in lucid dreams. I suppose if you were in the habit of riding roughshod over everything/one you encounter (e.g., if when you become lucid you ignore everything you encounter as unimportant) then you might well miss things. But that is a question of attitude rather than the state of lucidity. You can miss a lot by doing that in waking life as well. And being aware of that I'd think you'd be less likely to miss something when you're lucid than when you're not.

Love to all, Jay

Jay:

Wonderful to hear from you again, and with good news! I'd bet that Stephen would say that it was your intent (perhaps even unconscious intent) that prevailed Saturday, and, since that intent was sourced in your decision to seriously work some MILD technique, in a sideways sort of way you did have an LD via MILD. Or maybe he'd say something else altogether"

I liked your point about attitude during lucidity, and wakefulness. One minor caveat, though: that same attitude, call it a receptivity to people and events around you, can be anathema to lucidity. It's a tough balance to maintain candid participation in a dream after you realize you are dreaming. You must, by definition, slightly redefine your place in a dream in order to keep it, and its import, intact. i.e., in waking life, it's no fun watching a magician if you know the secrets behind all of his tricks ' unless of course you become the magician.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Good point. I'm reminded of something that Sogyal Rinpoche says, that it's important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. During the dream I'd had the previous night I became very upset. I'd just been to a meditation retreat and I found that I couldn't remember most of what happened there. I complained that I was starting to doubt everything, I was even doubting that I had been to the retreat at all!

Well duh! If I had considered those doubts instead of complaining about them I would have realized that they were entirely true and become lucid. What I found most disturbing during the dream I found most encouraging once I woke up :-)

On a related note, hope we can get another NYC meeting together sometime soon. It's been awhile.

Hi everyone!

I've finally started working with a Nova Dreamer. I'd put it off for a while because I thought it would be difficult to learn, however, it was actually quite the opposite. I have to give part of the credit to Michel though. He was visiting from Montreal and was coaching me on responding to light cues, including flashing me with a little red/blue blinking light toy which he would pop into my glass when I wasn't looking or leave on a table for me to find, etc.

On the night I made my first attempt with the Nova Dreamer I listened to Stephen's induction tape and went to sleep. Then, during my first rem cycle, bingo! Lucidity, easy as pie.

I was in the living room with Michel and we were folding laundry or blankets or something. I seemed to come in in the middle of my own conversation and heard myself saying "Good thing we decided to pooh-pooh higher education" to which we both laughed. Then we put on Stephen's tape and the first thing we heard was Stephen saying "pooh-pooh". Michel and I looked at one another, mouthes open wide in shock with huge smiles on our faces, and I realized I was dreaming (later on I remembered seeing the lights of the Nova Dreamer and saying to myself "oh, there are the lights" but I was perhaps already lucid by then... I'm not sure).

I decided to go flying and invited Michel to join me but he didn't respond. I flew on my back (first time for that) out of my house but then decided to breathe underwater since I don't to that very often - I usually fly - and I knew that Michel can't breathe under water yet. Maybe I wanted to show him how. I was still alone, however. I woke up after a short swim.

It was especially cool upon waking to be able to walk into the next room where Michel was watching TV and let him know that I had succeeded!

I'm going to wear the Nova Dreamer every night this month and see how far I get.

Andrea

Hi, Andrea. Thanks for the report and congratulations on the success with the ND. I am going to try to find my ND tonight (hopefully it will turn up in one of maybe 4 boxes.) I've been thinking of using it regularly too. If I find I can sleep half-way decently with it this time, I'll do the month-long experiment too. It would be interesting to compare results. Continued luck, Kate

Battery dying...

Nova Dreamer, Stephen, Michel and lucid.tv(?) will be featured in an interview on Tech TV on Thursday.

http://www.techtv.com/news/scitech/story/0,24195,3395121,00.html

Superbe, Michel!!

A great initiative to forward lucid dreaming. I've been on the site. It's a pity I can't watch these channels in Europe.

Keep on good work!

Ralf

Michel:

I was sure you were destined for stardom, but congrats on dragging Stephen into the limelight!

Hopefully you'll be helping "wake up" many new dreamers.

All the best.

Peter

Dear Michel,

Can you tell those of us who don't have access to Tech TV something about the interview? I am eager to see it, but suppose I'll have to wait for a tape from Stephen. Did Nathen remember to tell you "Bonne dodo" for me as you nestled into the little dream chamber? Cozy, isn't it? A rather heady feeling (pun intended?) to know that the pillow one lies down upon has been dreamed on by many an expert oneironaut!

Brilliant lucid dreams to all, Keelin

Andrea! Yes, one MUST watch out for that higher education jargon -- and especially for Stephen and Michel's antics (inside or outside of the Land of Odd). Congratulations on achieving lucidity -- even before the ND had a chance to cue you. We'll look forward to further reports of your month-long experiment.

Speaking of which (and this, a reminder to all): There are two research experiments on the LI website for which much more data is needed... ;) Here's the link to make doing them even easier: http://www.lucidity.com/index.html#experiment

Dream on, dear oneironauts! Keelin

Well, darn, now I feel really left out having no TV! I would have loved to see Stephen and Michel in action.

I also find myself wishing I lived in Canada and could get together with Andrea & Michel... or in New York and get together with Peter, Jay... but then, I can & do get together with California dreamers but not often enough... so I suppose what I really wish is that we would all book Kalani some time and have a reunion en masse.

Dream on, indeed!

Joy

P.S. Keelin - Does the "2 lucid, 2 non-lucid dream" experiment have any use for data from people who have already contributed?

Aloha, Dear Joy & Calling All Oneironauts!

In response to your question:

Does the "2 lucid, 2 non-lucid dream" experiment have any use for data from people who have already contributed?

Stephen assures me he can find a variety of useful data in every research report submitted, so YES, please feel warmly invited to do it again -- and again -- and again! ;) By the way, this invitation goes out to each and every one. <-(a thinly disguised plea for your participation!)

In the meantime, perhaps Joy will tell us what inspires her to be a repeated contributor. ;)

Mega Mahalo! Keelin

Besides the broad hint and wink above, Keelin sent me an e-mail asking me to post what I wrote for her and Stephen a couple of weeks ago when they asked me to write a little something they could maybe use to inspire others. You Kalani alumni have probably all heard me say this so I'll grant Keelin's further request to post it to other topics too!

Why do I participate in LI research? I have a lifelong fascination with the nature and potential of consciousness. It's been a little frustrating for me that science always lags behind personal experience, unable to document everything the mind can do. Some scientists deny the existence of anything that hasn't (yet) been measured in a lab, while others struggle to gain the technology, recognition, funding, and volunteers they need to get the data.

LI is exploring one of the liveliest frontiers: the horizons that open up when we bring more awareness and volition to the dream state, where anything is possible. What psychological limitations can we overcome? How far can we go toward learning the conditional nature of our views of reality? What techniques promote more and better lucid dreams?

The hard part of science is gathering enough information to show that you aren't just guessing. As a wildlife biologist I know how important it is to get the data ' and how hard it is to get from elusive subjects like wild animals and dreams. I have the advantage, though, of being able to go out and catch my subjects with a net. LI can't do that! They need volunteers to hand over their dreams willingly.

So I jumped at the chance to help LI learn whether ancient dream yoga traditions have a physiological basis and cross-cultural usefulness. All I had to do was sleep and dream as I do normally and jot down a few notes on a form whenever I woke. I didn't even have to do it every night. The hidden bonus: With the motivation of helping LI and with the form keeping me focused, my lucid dreams soared from weekly to almost nightly!

Every time LI comes out with a new experiment I get right on it. It's fun, it's fascinating, it focuses my dreaming skills, it helps us all discover what is and isn't true about lucid dreams, it advances the science of consciousness and it makes the human adventure that much more adventurous for everyone.

Joy

Wow - with two real wakings and three false ones, I had to figure out six times this morning that I was dreaming and then decide what to do! This is the one where I saw you all, toward the end of all that:

I was lying curled up on my right side on one end of a couch with Keelin and Stephen sitting at the other end, and my dream-campmates from Hawaii sitting on other couches arrayed around the room. Keelin was passing out tall, slender glass vials of a clear fluid while Stephen was explaining how it could be ingested to possibly induce lucid dreams. Everyone took one and Keelin gently chided some for drinking it immediately!

I was happy to see everyone. I sat up and said, "You didn't give me one! ' but I guess you remembered I don't like drugs. If there's one for me I'll give mine to someone else.' I went on, "I was just having a lucid dream!' I was about to start telling it, but then said, "Wait a minute ' ha-ha, dream camp people, vials of fluid! ' this is a dream!'

Now what will I do? Impulsively, I did something very odd: I was drawn to a yellow wall, and flying to it, I hovered with my back lightly touching it, and began to rotate as if on an axis perpendicular to the wall ' spinning vertically head-over-feet like a wheel. I associated this with the spinning of a chakra and it seemed like a good thing to do....

Weird, huh? Good seeing you all! Let me know how the clear fluid works.

Joy

Aloha, Dear Joy!

I believe you've come up with a brand new variation on the classic dream prolonging technique! Thanks for the inspiration. ;)

Sweet dreams to all, Keelin

A warm aloha & a quick question for all of our Dreaming & Awakening Retreat Alumni:

Are there any among you who post to such groups as alt.dreams, alt.dreams.lucid, and/or alt.obe on a regular basis? If so, please contact me -- as soon as possible. ;)

Mahalo & Sweet, tropical dreams! Keelin

Now cold November has begun; I wonder, where is everyone? Though I and Peter haunt the Forum, we're not enough to make a quorum.

Yes, some of us have kept in touch, some a bit, some very much, some with many, some with few. I'd love to hear from all of you.

Another group of dreamers meet in island mist with dew-damp feet and though I could be there right now it wouldn't be the same, somehow'.

Though far from that enchanted place, Let's reunite in cyberspace. Come! Post an update, straight or funny: How's your life been, post-Kalani?

oo, chills...

I just posted the above and went to look for all your e-mail addresses so I could send it to you individually. In the course of doing that I rediscovered something I'd entirely forgotten: my very first, skeptical, guarded communication with LI, from October 19 2000:

Yesterday morning as I was waking up from some light lucid dreaming that authoritative-sounding but not necessarily trustworthy voice said, "You need to find your peers in this. Human beings aren't meant to spend so much time alone."

Yesterday evening my partner in such explorations (not a dreamer - we have complimentary skills) told me he had run across a reference to a website, www.lucidity.com, that day. Last night I looked at the website briefly just before going to bed. This morning I dreamed about lucid dreamers' camp: all these people trying to sleep crowded together in adjacent sleeping bags on the floor of a big cavern - how could they ever sleep, let alone dream? Just now, having been awakened early by a phone call from another time zone, I checked out the website again, read "Diary from Lucid Dream Camp," am writing this for fun and out of curiosity, and now intend to go back to bed for some real dreaming. Send me whatever you want in reply, but I'll tell you right now, I'll be most impressed if it arrives in my sleep.

I got back a stock reply: "How do you know you're not dreaming right now?" But curiosity persisted and I participated in the sleep position experiment, which led to an invitation to the forum, which led to an invitation to Kalani. Meanwhile I learned to know and trust that voice of dream-guidance. From way-out-here-in-the-desert, thank you, my peers in this.

Joy

Joy, I received your email today and I apologize to you and all the rest for not communicating for such a long period. There for several weeks I did not have any lucid or even interesting non-lucid dreams to tell despite fairly persistent attempts (mostly I have been working with the Tibetan Buddhist technique of focussing on the dream-like qualities of life and the environment). I am slowly getting better at keeping my mind focussed for longer periods of time and several days ago I was rewarded with a colorful, vivid lucid dream in which I did my favorite activity, namely flying (low level and high altitude). It was terrific fun but when the dream began to fade, I forgot (due to my excitement) to start spinning and then exploring tactilely the physical environment so as to generate a new lucid dream setting. I became lucid in dreams 2 more times later but I unfortunately failed to act quickly enough before awakening. I hope that you and others will tell about recent lucid dreams (I love to read them). Bryan

Hi, Joy, what a lovely poem. I'd been thinking of you recently since I started bellydancing again. Hello all you lucids, I must confess that I've strayed off the lucid path, not to mention the forum. I can't even remember this username and password and wonder if I'll be able to post this! I still follow my dreams and have occasional lucid ones by accident, though they're not spectacular. My excuse for my absence from the forum is that after staring at a computer screen full of DNA sequences all day I have no desire to look at a computer screen in my free time.

Happy dreams

Thank you Joy, for getting us back together here!

Haven't really upped my frequency, but then my intent has been a bit spotty. I was quite pleased about 2 weeks ago to succeed for the first time in reentering a dream.

After a long non-lucid sequence where I was living at the house I grew up in, was enslaved along with many others by a red dragon I greatly feared, and finally managed to escape only to be stopped by my father waiting for me in a car at the bottom of the road (okay, how many dream signs did I miss there?) I awoke. Not sure if I really awoke or if it was a false awakening since I never opened my eyes. I was only awake for a short time, thought about how I should have realized it was a dream, how I should have sought out the dragon and treated it with compassion rather than fear and obedience. I resolved to reenter the dream and I fell back asleep finding myself not exactly where I had left off but back at the house and closer to the dragon. I found it and after an initial wave of fear upon seeing it pushed forward and began directing compassion at it for it's own suffering in the hate it felt and fear it inspired. My own fear faded away and I spent the rest of the dream (indeterminate time, I didn't wake directly from it so I'm not sure how long it lasted) continuing to evoke compassion for it.

BTW, I've been reading through my notes from the first dream workshop I went to (hadn't done that thoroughly before). Among many other things I'd forgotten was a note to myself to try changing into a tree in a future lucid dream! So much for all my rationalizations as to when I came up with the idea for my ld at our dream camp.

Love to all, Jay

Hello everyone!

I have been steady on my lucid dreaming path. I am not much of a foreum person, but I do check in to read every now and again. It's just only begun to get cool here in Tucson, and the change is very much a relief!

I have been doing some art work related to lucid dreaming, and could use some creative input if anyone is so moved. I am playing with video installation. I would ultimately like to create a kind of alter lucid environment by using video and sound (any any other thing that comes to mind) in order to try to evoke the some aspects of the perceptual experience of lucidity. I have been thinking a lot about trying to find a kind of simple stream of imagery to represent the kind of parallels that exist between waking life and lucid dreams, and the way in which our spectacular lucid worlds are woven (in part) from what often seems to be our rather mundane daily experiences. (I think it was Joy who said that the beauty and detail of her lucid dreams made her think about how much of our waking lives is so amazing if we only look closely and carefully (and I'm paraphrasing there Joy))... So, I was thinking along those lines and I have this idea of havng three projections, one which is a close-up of my eye, where reflections of various images can be seen (if you pay close attention). This projection would be in the middle. The other two might be two projections of footage shot from kind of random events from my daily life. The footage in the two projections would be the same, but I am thinking I could edit it differently.. so ultimately there is sort of a twin projection of the same events being looked at and filtered in very different ways. I am wondering if people think this idea is compelling, or if it will be confusing. (The process of turning dreams into art has been kind of overwhelming for me - yet I have this compulsion to keep doing it. ) ... If you have any thoughts about the general idea of visually representing a lucid dream, I would LOOOOVE to hear about it. Another thing I have been doing is filming the shadows of people telling me about their lucid dreams, and extracting the sound, so you just see the physical, wordless, expresssive side of dream storytelling -it's very dreamlike. Wait there's more..... Another idea I have was inspired by my endeavors in learning about Tibetan Buddhism and dream yoga. I was looking at the Tibetan prayer flags and thought what a cool way that might be to incubate a dream... to make a series of photos based on my intention (I use a kind of color-transparent photo material) and then hang them across a room (much like prayer flags). Eventually, I could build up a kind of collection of my incubation process. Incubating a dream for me is very much a prayer-like process. My problem with this idea has been that my intentions seem to revolve around ideas that seem to be impossible to reduce to a simple image. How do you incubate your dream intentions? To single words? Do you have images that go with your intentions? I guess I could probably ramble on forever. I seem to have a lot of ideas, but often when I try to actually take the pictures or film the images, I am at a loss. I don;t know where to start. I haven't really been able to express my ideas and frustrations with anyone yet, so any thoughts (positive or negative or neutral or whatever) will be wonderful to hear.

I often have dreams related to dream camp and hawaii. I hope you are all doing well. And on one last note, a few months ago, I finally remembered to ask a dream character who they were. I was speaking to a woman, and she told me she was my left earlobe. hmmmmmmm...... much love to you all-shelley

Joy, that was a wonderful poem, and what an effective lasso! I was beginning to wonder if it really was all just a dream, and if I referred back to my Feb 2002 dream journal the print would be blurred.

It's great to read your notes again, folks. Thanks for checking in!

Peter

Shelley:

Those are some excellent ideas ' I especially like your take on the Tibetan prayer flags. That could prove very helpful for you. What are some of the ideas that you want to incubate? Maybe if you share, your fellow dreamers might be able to offer some simple images with which you can work"

Your video installation sounds excellent, but I can't avoid making two small suggestions. First, though its structure seems sound, you might be right about it being potentially confusing (and thus meaningless) to your audience. You could avoid confusion, and perhaps help your viewers wrap their minds around the concept by including context in the video. Though they often seem so, dreams are rarely truly random. Try to tell a story in your video ' the tale could be as simple as a walk down the street ' that allows your audience to register context. There doesn't have to be any meaning attached, or even real clarity, but the simplest context can fill a void in the audience's expectations, and what you are trying to say may get to them without being obscured by confusion. Second, try to fill your video with archetypes that the audience will recognize as dreamlike without having to think about it. They don't have to carry meaning, or even be a part of the above story, but they'll go far toward allowing them entrée into your dreamworld without too much fuss or external explanation.

I hope these thoughts help. If not, I hope you're able to forget them as soon as possible.

Good luck!

Peter

My Dear Joy:

Thank you for the Wake Up Call. I've been struggling with medical issues and am facing a spinal surgery next month after three excruciating epidural injections which did absolutely no good. What a pain in the neck. I try to minimize my time at the keyboard as it really hurts to type, so I have unfortunately not been keeping up with my correspondence and posting. I have often thought about all my Kalani friends, however, and every time I dream lucidly, I think about posting it, but somehow it never gets done.

Shelley, what fascinating ideas you have. I love the triple image projection as well as the shadow dream-telling. Perhaps instead of a close-up of an eye, you should do a close-up of your left earlobe. You'd have to wear a shiny earring for the reflection of the images, though. heheee

Bryan, my friend, I miss you and hope you will forgive me for not writing lately. I truly enjoyed our correspondence. I've been flying lately too. Recently I decided that I would fly over the water and look for dolphins to swim with. For some reason, I couldn't dive down into the water. So I decided to ask one of the dolphins down there to come up and fly with me. Boy was that fun!

I remember your tree dream, Jay. It was one of the highlights of my Kalani experience.

Last night I had a vivid dream where I was in a huge cathedral and the priest asked me to come up and read the first reading. When I got to the lectern, I thought I was in a courtroom and started cross-examining the priest! Yikes. Bad form. So after realizing this wasn't appropriate in church, I started giving a tai chi demonstration (I'm currently working on my Brown Sash project so I guess this is day residue). The priest started to object to my taking over his Mass with tai chi, and I said to him, "Father, you need to chill out and do some qigong breathing exercises." hahahhaaa! The priest turned into a peacock with a tuxedo on and waddled down the aisle and out of the church. What does all that mean? Boy, all those great dream signs and no lucidity. I need to go back to my Kalani notes.

Shelley, re dream intentions and incubation, sometimes when I'm falling asleep, I'll just remind myself to "Recognize the dream signs," and see myself driving down a highway with yellow diamond-shaped highway signs that say This Is A Dream Sign or You Are Dreaming or something of that sort.

I hope all of you beautiful dreamers are well and healthy. My best wishes to you, and thanks again Joy for bringing us back together.

Love, June

PS: Hi Keelin! I'm still waiting for a a T-Shirt.

Sorry to hear about your medical woes, June. I empathise since I'm trying to avoid finger surgery myself (saving my fingers is another excuse for my absense from the forum). About your dream: have you by any chance been questioning some of your long-held spiritual beliefs lately? Are your priests turning into peacocks?

Shelley, sounds like an interesting project. All the input I can give is that I think Alice in Wonderland (both Lewis Carroll and Disney) did a great job of something along that line. Carry on the torch.

Thank you all for your suggestions so far. Peter: thank you for the context suggestion. I very much see your point. Naomi- There has been a German film version of Alice in Wonderland I have been thinking of renting (called Alice). Ever seen it? June-:your dreams are so spectacular. Your peacock story made me think of a youth hostel I once stayed in Tennessee. The owner was a very pious and mysterious poet. Her property was just covered with peacocks. Peacocks on the lawn, on the roof --everywhere. I remember her opening the door to her house and smoke billowing out (clogged chimney). She had on gold slippers! The place doubled as a Christian retreat center it turned out --peacocks and prayers! T'was very strange. I am sorry to hear about your medical troubles. Have you had more healing dreams?

June:

That's very sad news, on so many levels. I hope you can tap (continue tapping?) that inner strength that flows so easily within you to help you get through this tough time.

Don't lose hope, and for God's sake don't write back if it hurts too much - we understand!

Peter

June, best wishes with the surgery. Shelly, I'm afraid I don't really have any good suggestions for how to represent the lucid dream experience. I love the left earlobe answer, could be interpreted as meaning that she's a part of you.

Well, I had my reward for posting again. As often happens when my attention starts turning to lds through posting, conversation, etc. I had another one that night. Maybe I should post here before going to sleep each night :-). After a long sequence with many missed dream signs I became lucid and decided to try the technique of eliminating the dream environment again. Unfortunately I apparently chose too large an object (the fellow who posted the technique originally warned that it should be relatively small) as after moving my eyes in a spiral pattern over it the object simply changed into a large sheet of ice displaying the image of a beautiful and incredibly detailed and realistic winter scene (trees covered in snow, etc.). As I stood there debating what to do next the dream faded. Should have spun while I was thinking.

Hmm, we should get the NYC group together for another dinner soon. It's one of those things I keep thinking of when I'm not at home with the email addresses handy.

Jay:

Yup. You should post regularly, if the posts do indeed inspire such cool moments in your dreams. Just out of curiousity, what was the object you were focused on?

Or should I save that question for when next we meet? ;)

Peter

Hi Shelley, I haven't seen the German Alice, but I've been thinking of one scene in the Disney animated version where the cheshire cat is sitting in a tree grinning, and then the cat fades out and all that's left is this big smile in the sky, which then proceeds to turn into a crescent moon. A transition like that from one scene to the next seems really dreamlike to me, so I thought you could do something along that line. Also I like the visual puns in the movie.

Wow - so good to see you all here! I just had a very dream-like drive home through a nighttime blizzard; choirs of angels singing, or maybe it was the tape in the stereo; all the road signs were pure, blank white; asked myself a few times if I was dreaming, or maybe dead! A warm bath, a good sleep and then I'll write again,

Joy

Oh, I just realized I drove home through Jay's winter dream scene!

As you've probably all noticed, when it's not "Science" but personal experience I tend to err on the side of interpreting events as at least possiblytelepathic or precognitive - which seems to encourage more of the same, including some "probablies" and "certainlies" - because I love the concept of our shared consciousness. That very first time I dreamed of dream camp, I thought it was absurd that I dreamed everyone was lying crowded together on one big floor - but that was, of course, the scene in our upstairs classroom!

June, there was a priest in my dream Tuesday night but he didn't turn into a peacock. Wish he had! What an image! I love that dream of yours.

Naomi - I just started bellydancing again too: I was asked to perform at a special event in December. Where do you dance in Berkeley? We could get together. Rakkasah in March?

Shelley, I've been giving thought to your three projections idea which I find compelling and confusing (like life)!

If I were trying to show the contrast between the inattentive way I usually go through life vs. the vividness of dream, the waking-life side would be a little blurry, the colors dulled, and would be constantly interrupted and sometimes completely taken over by a continuous string of unrelated thoughts. I can picture them as words superimposed on the image, gradually filling up the screen from top to bottom until something in the picture catches my attention and erases the words - for a moment - then they start up again.

The dream side would be sharply focused, with saturated colors, and uninterrupted. From time to time it would zoom in to look very closely at some detail. At some point it might go up into an overhead view as I took off flying. It might suddenly change scenes completely.

Like Bryan and the dream yogis if I understand them right, I try to work on focusing in a dream-like way on waking life, bringing it to that same level of vividness and clarity! Shelley, your idea might be a superb way to show the difference and how we mostly all waddle through life believing we're ruled by the physical world, yet only just barely engaged with it. There must be some way to introduce the idea so people would get what was going on in subsequent footage. Maybe a lama holding forth on this point.

Bryan, I'll go see if I have a post-worthy recent LD to fulfill your request.

Love to all, Shelley's Left Earlobe (a.k.a. Joy)

Okay, here's my intermittently-lucid dream from yesterday morning, which seems to say something about the gift of dreaming along with an allusion to Michel's "Higher consciousness NOW!"

Lucidity came and went throughout this dream. I was perhaps vaguely lucid as I drove along a road that ended abruptly by the sea: others had built a low rock wall to keep people from driving over the cliff, and I heeded it and parked carefully. A biologist whom I just met earlier this week was teaching a class; I've forgotten the topic but do remember that it featured a large talking chicken, which didn't surprise me.

Then I was in bed, felt a sweet caress, and with that became fully aware that I was dreaming. O how I wished it were a living waking-life human!

I got up, and it seemed that K was bringing a ladder into the house to fix something in the utility room. I didn't want him coming into what's now my house and not his. But I could only hear him; I couldn't see. And he wouldn't answer when I spoke to him. I started to feel angry and frustrated by my lack of vision and his lack of communication ' then remembered I was dreaming.

Now I could see; and I'd found, and was showing to K, old letters and photographs from his family. One showed his youngest sister asleep with her head on a gift-wrapped package as if it were a pillow. This reminded me once again that I was asleep and dreaming, and I began to wake. Although I could feel my waking-life body, I turned my attention back to the dream and engaged with it to regain it: "Open my gift!' I thought, and focused my attention on undoing a wide, bright orange ribbon around a package wrapped in paper printed with big rainbow-colored block letters, a repeating pattern formed by the words JOY ' NOW - JOY - NOW!

I opened the box. It held something soft and pillowy, wrapped in white tissue paper. I felt its soft springy resilience through the tissue but woke before seeing what it was'.

Joy, I liked reading that lucid dream very much. I am impressed with the ease with which you re-entered that lucid dream again before awakening. Reading the lucid dreams of yours and others helps to inspire me to persistently try to have lucid dreams more often. Bryan

Joy, is it possible that the K in your dream is the Josef K in Kafka's The Trial? If so, he would perhaps have been confused and bewildered by what was happening to him. Owen

Hi, Joy.

I enjoyed your dream also. I'm still wondering if the posting before that, about driving in the blizzard, was real or a dream. It sounds like it was real. There's no place like home... I'm on the net now and have been reading postings in my e-mail the last few days. But I don't have much to say because I haven't LD's since my last one I posted. But it's fun to read, anyway. I'm sure I'll continue to throw in my two cents, as Ralf would say. Good luck in dreamland to everyone, Kate

Hi All!

Thought it was about time I chimed in.

My lucid dreaming is about the same at this point. I haven't made too much of an effort, however, to increase my frequency.

Most of my time has been devoted to yoga school. I'm now just a couple of months away from getting my instructor's certificate. I've been teaching yoga several times a week as well as teaching the occasional software class.

I've also spent a lot of time with Michel, who has been to Vancouver several times since July when he first visited me. We did a little film project together about a very dreamy red and white mushroom that sprouted up in my back yard: Mushy (well, what are you supposed to name a mushroom?). Hopefully you will all see it some day.

I'm glad to hear that nearly everyone is well (Poor June - hope your surgery goes well) and I'm really pleased to see that we're all still in touch one way or another.

I read the forum regularly and until recently attended monthly meetings of Vancouver's Lucid Dreaming group. However, recently the group - only four members strong - disbanded. I'm hoping that I can get it going again in the new year with new and old members.

Best to everyone!

Andrea

The prodigal daughter has returned. I've had a few near-lucid dreams since I last posted. All the dreams about my Hawaiian twins are lucid. Some others, like the ones about my favorite singer, Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire, were either near-lucid or lucid. In these dreams, I didn't so much as control as try to understand what was significant about the dream. Business, family, and a recurring of the depression disorder has sapped my energy. I haven't made much effort at LD, but that poem from Joy was like the purr of a very sweet, very soft, kitten. It wooed me back here. Sweet dreams, Thea

Nice to hear from you all. This poem of yours really did hook a lot of us, Joy. Like Thea said, it was purry.

Where and when are you performing in December, Joy? I'd love to see you dance, and it would be great to get together sometime. There's a solstice belly dancing gathering in Berkeley on December 19 if you want to come. I was belly dancing in the last lucid dream I had, which was October 13. During the last couple of months I've been compulsively trying out every single class I can find in the area. So far I've tried 12 different teachers. The last time I bellydanced before that was over 20 years ago, so I figure I've got a lot to relearn, and want to see what other people are up to. I don't really want to pin myself down to one style, teacher, or group now. I figure once I've taken in all I can find my belly will digest it all and come out with its own dance.

Peter,

"You should post regularly, if the posts do indeed inspire such cool moments in your dreams."

Okay, I'm slow. That was a horrible pun. See you soon.

Jay

Jay:

Even glacial recognition of a bad pun is appreciated!

;)

Peter

Peter,

Keep that up and I'll be giving you the cold shoulder on the 26th.

Jay

Jay:

Okay. I'll chill.