Hmmm... When you post messages you've written in Microsoft Word all ' and ... changes into ? . A little annoying.

Linus

I sent you a text, that might help you with the question mark problem. Thanks for your flying report. Very inspiring!

Hi!About this flying thing Linus,I found that if you dance while you are flying you could go up very fast. I did this kind of sensual dancing while flying and soon I was up looking at a planet that could be the earth.

Hi, lucid folks!

I'm glad I could break my dry spell this night. It was like in many nights before: I laid down with the intention to awake and rise and notice dreams at 0445 am. I did my relaxation exercise to cross the boarder into land of sleep consciously. But this night something was different. I slept in, but woke up again and again, continued counting, going through my body. I had three times felt the OBE - like take off, I then had a dream with clocks (analogue clocks, no digital ones) that displayed strange times and indicated me being late for work. This one was prelucid, I awoke in the dark and continued counting. The next thing I remember was me driving in the dark, with no lights on. I thought this is a good occasion for a reality check with lights. I searched for the right button to turn the light on, found it on my trousers' belt. But it didn't work. "Jippee!! I'm dreaming" that is what I thought and automatically took off for a flight. But I awoke immediately. Next time I will at first stabilise the dream and calm down. I have been too excited after this long dry spell. Feels like tasting a glass of water after a long walk in the desert. The night went on and I could write down three more dreams, all these were DSA2, I was testing and sharpening a sword, what caused the castle I was in to tremble, like it was an earthquake. I had a dream about polluted environment, where something seemed out of place. I dreamt about my father, who looked strange and so on. I've got no time to write everything down in detail, I have to go to work soon. I think, the difference this night was, that I was really good motivated by Joy's postings. My night reminds me of her frequent awakenings to scale her dreams and sleep in again. Mine is only a short LD, but nonetheless it is a success for me.

Sweet LDs

Ralf

Go Ralf!

I was only briefly lucid last night but I, too, was driving: a long, black, beat-up 1930s Packard. When I got into a very narrow alley it became a motorcycle. "Packard motorcycle, eh?" a bystander remarked. I said, "Yeah, I dream it's a car when I need a car, and a motorcycle when I need a motorcycle." Then I thought, "Oh, hey, dreaming! Great, I'm lucid - I ought to be able to fly this thing!" And I did. Flying a Packard motorcycle was fun but I was on my way to fulfilling a family obligation, with which I became preoccupied at the expense of lucidity....

Happy to have been the purveyor of motivation,

Joy

Hi, Joy and fellow lucid dreamers! I'm happy, that I can post this one. Yesterday it has been a glass of lucid water, today it is diving into the lucid ocean...

Yours Ralf

Lucid smoke I'm just lying with my head on something, then get the smell of a cigarette. I take it in my hand automatically, take it between my lips and suck. It isn't lit. Then it dawns on me that I quit smoking and throw that thing away. (It exactly looks like the lung - dart, that a colleague of mine made by himself yesterday) Then I stand and wonder, if it is necessary to act that dismissive. I take the fag, light it and do some deep tokes, enjoy the taste and the feeling of the smoke floating through my airways into my lungs and out again through nose and mouth. I'm even feeling how the nicotine enters my vessels and finally reaches my calves, which are getting somewhat weak. I very well remember that feelings, I quit smoking in the beginning of June. It is good to feel that and to know, that it doesn't matter. I walk around, there are among the crowd that is here (seems to be a party going on) some people, who know me and are astonished to see me smoking. I say, it doesn't matter, because I'm dreaming. Everybody is sitting on long tables, talking. It is a hall. I join some people I don't exactly know. I sit down. A woman I don't know is crawling under the table, coming up now. I help her and let her sit next to me, kind of flirting with her. As I look around, I see my beloved Astrid sitting some feet away on the same table. OK. I say very loud, so that all people may hear me: "This is a dream!" Most people get quiet and turn around. I want to prove it (to them), stand up and am going to fly. There is a brief moment of doubt. Am I really dreaming? And if I do: Am I really able to fly now? I try it and succeed through high jumps, until I reach the ceiling, that is ca. five meters high. I think, it would be funny to turn around and walk like a spider on the ceiling. It works for me (the body position), but what I wanted to see (the sight reversing, people sitting with heads down) doesn't work that well. The view is fuzzy. I turn around again, the sight gets clearer. I let myself sink down again, stand on the floor and will just walk outside, as I remember, that my Astrid is still sitting there. Surely, she is a dream - character, but even so she deserves my attention, my care. I turn around walk to her, hug her, give her a kiss and say tenderly: "I didn't want to hurt you." She looks at me tenderly, it feels good. So now I walk away, I come to the buildings two - winged red door. I think: "Everything is like I remember" (Now, as I write this down, I'm not sure, how I did come to that memory. Maybe a nonlucid phase I forgot, maybe my memory has been fooled.) I open the door and it is like opening the eyes for the first time: Beams of brilliant light enter through the first gap in the door (maybe a ND - cue, I did wear the mask - mode2), I open it up entirely and see the brilliant, but mild light of an autumn day. I step outside, into the light. It feels like a different world. I think of many tasks. But the dream feels stable enough, to try the flying thing again. At first I force myself to calm down a little. Then I start cautiously with long jumps, until I reach the tree - tops, until I fly over them, all this while the view is brilliant, the colours are intense, the details are maybe richer, than in waking life. It is surprising to get this great view while jumping over a tree. I'm still jumping, not really flying. I'm wondering, that the dream lasts that long. I see an acquaintance (the realistic, anti woo - woo type at the age of my father) driving in his car below me. He seems to notice me, waves, I wave, too. I remember Beatrice's advice to dance, while flying. I like dancing. I do it and this boosts me like a rocket to a high speed horizontal flight. Yeah! I stop dancing and just drift along, suddenly the dream begins to fade. I try dancing, it doesn't work, I try handrubbing, it doesn't work, but suddenly "it" starts spinning and that stabilises me in a fuzzy environment. I remember Joy's experiences with spinning, maybe this fresh memory was "it". I try very hard to spin and tell myself the next thing I see will be a dream. Letters, short words appear, but vanish, as I focus on them. I focus on spinning again, my feet almost feel physical, maybe I'm going to awake soon. I think, this is like the hypnagogic imaginary and I know I never have been able to simply watch it and enter a dream this way. I hear music. OK, that is an acoustic dream environment at least. Then I see an old radio. The song goes (in English): "Do you believe in magic? ... You know, that magic can change your life,.." (Only later, when I recalled the dream I was laughing at the deeper sense, that this song makes in this situation). I think, I'm trying too hard, try to relax and keep on spinning. Again, letters appear, printed on green squares. The squares turn into cubes, the cubes are lying on a table, and there is my dream body. I move hand and feet like dancing, look around and here I am, in the dream again. I did it. Calm down, boy! The letters on the table seem to be a kind of game, a puzzle, that is waiting to be solved. Hm. There are some empty bottles of beer on the table. They remind me of my habit to have a bottle in the evening. I think maybe I shouldn't do it for the sake of LDing. I tidy the table at first, putting the bottles onto a washing sink. Suddenly the dream fades. Too fast to do something. I'm awake.

Comment: The onset of the dream may be that I smelled a cigarette, that someone in my house below me smoked. (I sometimes smell it in waking life. We sleep with open window). And the special cigarette recalls a meeting with colleagues yesterday. The smoking thing is a good application of LD, at least for me: I can enjoy the taste without sliding back into smoking. The onset of lucidity has been mild, not abrupt in this LD. This may be the reason, why it was that stable and why I have been able to control it. The mild onset reminds me of Joy's last LD report. And it may be due to my decision, to take a different attitude to LDing: More relaxed, but still focussed. It is the first time I successfully used the spinning technique. And maybe this will help me for a future WILD, too. The flying thing was very nice, thanks for your tip, Beatrice. And last, but not least, I have to report, that this LD emerged during a morning MILD session. Thanks to Stephen LaBerge to work out this powerful technique.

Ralf - Positively wallowing in the lucid ocean!

I'm especially impressed that you showed caring and compassion within your dream. (The dream yoga guys advocate this in a big way!) - Joy

Hi, everyone. I just wanted to report that I finally got lucid again! It didn't last, but I was so pleased that it even happened, I'm satisifed for now. For about three weeks I didn't even have decent dream recall, and absolutely nothing lucid. (As far as I know.) But I've been really trying, and there were signs my brain may be working on some adjustment. Don't know much about physiology. Anyway, the other night I became lucid without recalling how. I wanted to try spinning to make sure I stayed lucid, but I was so aware of my real body just wanting to lay there that I didn't attempt it. Instead I started transforming things. I was sitting cross-legged on a car, holding a wand or baton, and I was turning white cars into rainbow colored ones. I could probably have stayed lucid, but I was so close to the waking edge that I could hear my husband snoring. This was so reality-based and distracting that I ended up waking completely. I got up to go sleep in the living room, and my body seemed very tall, with long limbs, so I was still in some kind of not-totally-real state. I had a dream later where I was kind of aware that I could make things happen and that it wasn't real, and yet I wasn't really lucid, either. Is it possible I'm training my brain to work a certain way in sleep, and that a change is actually taking place? If anyone has an answer, I would greatly appreciate hearing it. Thanks, Kate

Hi, Lucids

Kate, congratulations and thanks for your posting. This thing with your long limbs is interesting. I think it is good, that these borders between dreaming and waking get more permeable, yes, maybe they should get membranes, that are able to let pass dream and waking stuff in both directions in a controlled way (forgive my biologism). Every LD is somehow important!

Joy

maybe that is an addition to what I said about dream interpretation: Dreamers tend to produce the therapist's symbols in their dreams, i.e. Freud's patients dream of snakes, Jung's of squares. We can definite state, that dreaming is a learnable skill. A good message for anyone who wants to learn lucid dreaming.

Linus

Glad, that I could help you. And interesting LDs and NDs. And you didn't beat up the mirror - characters. Wow! ;->

CU in wonderland

Ralf

Ralf - Were you serious about the membranes? If you have any thoughts about how to increase the flow between the waking and dreaming mind, could you share them when you get a chance? I know about what SLB suggests in his one book, about going around considering that everything is a dream, and I do this and find it enjoyable. But I am anxious to hear other suggestions as well. Thanks, Kate

I have been using LI's dream report sheet trying to generate data, and recorded these two dreams:

10 Nov 01'I was in an outside area, people were around. I saw Rev. Randy and his wife Bev. I was happy to see them and curious how they have been. Randy was busy, going off somewhere. Bev wanted to tell me something that I didn't understand. She tried again and though I strained to listen, I did not understand. I suggested that we step inside a building that I sensed was a co-op of some kind. We were on a landing with steps going up. Bev again tried to communicate something, and I realized that I was dreaming. Upon realizing, my vision went gray, but I didn't lose the dream. Bev and I began kissing. I wanted a sexual charge but felt uneasy kissing someone that I couldn't see. I thought Bev might have morphed into something else, some kind of surreal creature. I tried to overcome the uneasiness and continue kissing anyway. Whatever I was kissing, its tongue became long and forked at the end and I was flung up and away. I lost the dream and became involved in hypnogogic images, then walked back lucidly into a city street scene, but I don't remember anymore now.

11 Nov 01'I had a long non-lucid dream about being in high school. I was returning to class after lunch, and realized how bored I was with school and wanted to communicate this somehow. I said, "I'm bored, I'm bored, I'm bored!' emphatically and loudly, looked up and realized I was dreaming, became excited, looked around at the campus buildings, and immediately the visual acuity dropped and everything became a shimmering gray. I looked around trying to make out forms to regain my vision. What appeared were buildings, tall brick, all around, and I sensed that I was in a large open area or courtyard. I had the feeling that it was Nazi Germany and there were soldiers marching around in formation and I was right in the middle. They were marching through me, but I didn't see this distinctly, it was a feeling, blurriness. I yelled, "This is a dream, a dream, you can't hurt me,' ecstatically. Then I heard a knock and thought that I had awakened. I thought that my brother was picking up my son to go hunting and my son had not heard the door. I went to look out my bedroom window, but it was the front door window. I saw a man dressed in camouflage, wondered if it was my brother, but it wasn't. I then realized that it was too late in the morning to start off hunting, and that I was still dreaming. I went out the front door. I wanted to experience sexual energy so I figured I would make sure I was dreaming by jumping. I got lift, landed in the man's arms, wrapped my feet around him and put my lips to his. I questioned to myself whether it was wise to kiss or share energies with someone that I didn't know, and then thought, "You've been praying a lot lately (i.e., would only attract good energies) so it's OK.' I felt someone come from behind and touch me. I felt a vaginal orgasm, but awoke before it rose up my spine and throughout my body. I felt very pleasant sexual stimulation after awakening.

I like getting charged up in dreams, but I would also like to make contact with characters and have meaningful, informative conversations. I hope to precipitate dreams like that soon.

Hi, Kate

Permeable membrane...

Hm. That is getting a more and more vivid connection of day and night experiences. It is working on the thick wall separating experiences of day and night, conscious and unconscious - seemingly built up in the process of growing up in this western society - and morph it into a flexible selective permeable membrane. (And I don't mean that there is or shall be no line drawn between dreaming and waking, this may only be the case for the non - dual awareness. But as long, as I'm not consciously in this state, I need to know and feel the difference) How? My first method has been to write down dreams, to care for all nights experiences. Then I thought about what they mean for me and tried to let this meaning flow into day's consciousness and actions. Then, much earlier, than I met with the LI - Forum, I had the idea to be more conscious during the night, that is have OBE's or dream lucid. With that concept in mind I tried it for the first time over 15 years ago, but didn't succeed. Stephen's approach did work for me. The suggestion to see everything as made of the substance of dreams is surely worthwhile. That is an approach I'm using in the last few weeks. There are many things, one can do: Reality checking, remembering dream situations in daytime to get a different look on some situations, talk about dreams, paint dreams, sing dreams, dance dreams, maybe play dreams, feel dreams. Set intentions for dream recall. Learn to induce certain dream themes. It is the wider frame of creating your own dreaming culture. We need our own (sub) culture, to morph these walls, to make the membrane permeable. This forum is a vehicle of this kind of culture. I wrote about it elsewhere in this forum.

Hope that helps

Yours Ralf

Hi, Mary

Nice to hear from you again.

Thanks for your dream reports. I admire your openness. I always wonder, why I don't seek sexual experiences in normal or lucid dreams. I have a lot of dreams with very tender touches and very rarely real sexual dreams. But I'm satisfied with this. If it was my dream, I would ask myself, why these sexual activities were somewhat distorted. But they seemed to be pleasant experiences, anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter. Seems that, again, expectations and thoughts largely influence ongoing dream - plot. Lucidity helps with Nazis: Maybe a fine recipe for us Germans to deal with Neo - Nazis. I very much admire, that the false awakening didn't deceive you.

Awake in dreams!

Ralf

"Endless Green Membrane" written 5:53 a.m., Mon, Nov.12, 2001

I'm walking through a parking lot, holding in my hands a computerized device of some sort - about the size of one of the first calculators, very bulky. I have a fairly low level of lucidity at this point. I walk along, morphing the device by pressing and pulling it with my hands - making it thinner, the screen bigger etc. I try to make it very thin, but beyond a certain point it doesn't change. There is some strange handle on the back that I try to make disappear but it refuses no matter how hard I try, so I give up on that. I think to myself that dreams are a great place to design things because you can change them around, and decide to mention this on the forum. Around this time I become more lucid - at first I think I was morphing the device "as if" I was dreaming. I come to the entrance of an amusement park, which I "remember" is a frequently occuring dream theme of late; however, now that I am physically awake I don't think that's true - I don't think I have ever before had such a dream. The entrance is a strange green substance that you go through, a circular door. "Usually" I just go through it quickly, but this time I decide to be very aware of the process itself. This extends it, so I am going on and on in this green membrane, never quite getting through. I think, "Come on, baby, let me in!" and see details of the room beyond, including a malevolent devil face. Then suddenly I am in a non-lucid dream which carries on for a while before I wake up.

hey! I just now caught up on the dream reports from the last few days in this thread - so much talk about membranes! I had not read these posts before I had my green membrane dream, honest...

Ralf, I like what you have to say about bringing the dreaming and "waking life" experiences closer together. These days I tend to think in terms of the "physically awake" and "physically asleep" periods of my life. It's always been difficult for me to come up with terminology that is fully satisfying.

You may be interested in reading something by Arnold Mindell, the founder of process psychology. According to process theory, we are dreaming all the time. Apparently Jung believed that also, and said we were too distracted during the day by physical reality to notice our dreams, just as we don't see stars in the daytime sky but know they are there. Process psychology is a further development of Jungian thought, in which Mindell asks, how can we become aware of the dreaming process during the day? He believes it manifests in such phenomena as slips of the tongue, "accidents," incomplete gestures, body sensations, illness, momentary hallucinations etc.

Lately he has gotten into lucid dreaming but takes a slightly different view of it than the mainstream oneironautical approach. He seems to believe that the sort of stuff we talk about here is playing around in "Dreamland," an intermediate state between physical reality and the Dreamtime, the fundamental level of reality where everything is dreamed into being. He sees conventional lucid dreaming as being a useful way to approach this deeper reality.

I won't go on further about this now, but will recommend a couple of his books. An accessible approach to these ideas can be found in his book DREAMING WHILE AWAKE: techniques for 24-hour lucid dreaming, and a much more in-depth treatment can be found in QUANTUM MIND: The Edge Between Physics and Psychology. The latter book goes into great detail about modern physics and how it relates to process psychology concepts. Lucid dreaming is one of many other topics discussed in QUANTUM MIND.

Hi all

Thanks for reports, Joy, I really enJOYed them!

Adastra. Did you enter the fun part of LDs in your dream? Thanks for the Mindell hint, sounds interesting. I said elsewhere, that I'm reading a book by a lucid dreamer in Jung's tradition. That would be a nice complement. Hope to find the time, the Forum is too exciting...

Ralf

Here, copied straight out of this morning's dream notes for the sleep position experiment - I'll be out of town a couple days, might check in once more before leaving -

Joy

12/13 November 2001

Such a forum-inspired dream, think I'll post this one. It's also a good example of pushing, pushing, pushing on that lucid membrane to where it thins and becomes entirely transparent, finally breaking through.

The lucidity process began when in the bedroom of my childhood home (good missed cue right there) I met a young woman who was just graduating from college. She showed me one of her final projects: a beautiful guitar she had made herself, with an unusual slightly elongated shape and an iridescent, pearly white finish on the front, that had a subtle all-over pattern. I was very impressed by her skill and creativity. She played it for me and it sounded sort of muffled, but I figured that was because it was supposed to be amplified. In the background, sort of shy and reticent but smiling knowingly, was her friend - another woman with a guitar. I got the notion that these two women had something to do with dreams. (After waking I realized they probably represented Barbara and Kate.)

I went into the bathroom to take a shower. How annoying: a bed in the shower. I couldn't run the water without getting it wet. "Hm'. I'm always having dreams that have beds and baths mixed up somehow. This is just like that. Well, I can deal with this, then!" and by mental effort I dissolved the shower wall, moved the bed just clear of the shower and remade the wall closer in.

After a nice shower I floated out into the hallway. "Ah - flying! Just like in a dream!" Propelling myself with swimming motions at first, I wondered if I could just move by will alone as I sometimes do in dreams. It worked. Great!

I flew along a long hall and into a long, high-ceilinged kitchen where I found my mom and youngest sister. Flying around over them, I queried my sister as to her opinion on whether I was really flying. She suggested that most likely I just thought I was flying. My impression then was that, although I perceived myself to be flying, they perceived me to be walking on the floor.

I felt a little disappointed, but my sister suggested we consult the dream goddess's book. We sat down beside the dream goddess, who was a fairly ordinary-looking woman with straight golden-brown hair, and looked through the pictures in her book with her. I don't remember the pictures, if I ever saw them clearly, but at any rate I ended up with a determination to go and resolve something that had been bothering me much earlier in the dream, before meeting the guitarists: This issue of whether I was still supposed to be in college. My supervisor had asked me, "You are working on getting your degree, aren't you?" and I'd realized I'd been out of school for - a year? Two years? - and had enrolled in classes without ever showing up for them. I was pretty worried about how I was going to work this out.

So I took off flying to the university with the intent to find an academic advisor. On the way - it was a long flight over the city - I gradually remembered that I was last in school in 1993, this was 2001, and I did get my degree. I thought to myself, "So maybe this means you should be considering getting a degree in something else. You're into that lucid dream research; instead of sitting back and critiquing LaBerge's experimental design, why not get your master's or doctorate in - what would it be? - psychology, I guess. But you really don't want to go live in the city again, and you have so much to do already'. Community college extension? Nah, they're not going to offer anything but introductory. Correspondence courses? Seminars? Could ask my psychologist acquaintances but probably they'd only know about courses in clinical psychology'."

And so on, with a fair degree of cognitive clarity but not much lucidity, I flew my way to an academic advisor's office. An unidentified male friend had joined me and he devilishly slipped through the window while I landed on the ground and knocked on the door. I thought that was too audacious of him; as soon as I was in, though, I was inspired by a mild sense of rebelliousness and flew up to the ceiling. I continued considering my options while flying around over the head of the advisor, who didn't seem to have much advice for me. Meanwhile the idea that I was dreaming continued to gradually take a firmer hold.

Suddenly I was multiplying my calico cat by five and putting all five of her into a long display cage in which each of her represented one of five emotions. I thought, "This is not what I meant to do with a cat in a dream!" - in fact I'd been thinking about transforming into one. But I went to the end of the cage and hurriedly started drawing on it a picture of a cat in orange wax pencil that represented the sixth emotion.

Friend GB showed up, took the pencil from me and continued the drawing while rapidly speaking in Spanish. I could make out less than half of what he was saying. Meanwhile I leaned up against him, enjoying a sexual feeling, thinking, "I couldn't normally do this but now it's okay because it's a dream."

He paused in his narrative to remark, "I don't know how to say 'wide' in Spanish." I said, "Wide is ancho." I was pleased that I could think of that in a dream. My voice sounded strange to myself. That's because I'm dreaming, I thought.

Somehow I was startled into a different level of awareness: Dreaming! Dreaming! Wait! Don't wake up! I started the spinning thing; remembered from the old dream I posted yesterday that it took a long time that time; persisted, aware of both my vertical spinning body and the one lying in bed, until I was definitely realistically standing beside the bed. I took two or three good dream steps and then woke up. I remembered all the long scenes of low-level lucidity and figured it was lucid enough that I'd better write it down for the experiment, so might as well stay awake; but I did drift off enough to see the words "Red Cat" and a computer window with a tempting button to click: OPEN. Oh, all right: I clicked, but the red cat dream didn't open. Maybe tonight!

Ralf

Alas, I did not get into the really fun part of the LD; it ended while I was still going through the membrane. Although, morphing that machine was a lot of fun. And, going though the membrane had a certain Freudian flair to it, heeheehee.

Joy, I'm curious about one detail in your dream: how realistic was the sensation of showering?

"And you didn't beat up the mirror - characters. Wow! " Hehe... yup. Yesterday, friday, I had three LD:s. Pretty short all of them. In the first one, just as I got lucid, a male dream character was getting very close in a kind of way I didn't like. First I thought of removing him with violence, but it seemed a little risky because the dream was rather unstable. Then I thought of that "transforming thing", so instead of eliminating him I transformed him into a girl from a movie I saw a couple of days ago. Nice non-violent solution right? I think deserve a nice golden star...

A scintillating golden star to Linus!

adastra - I don't remember what the shower felt like, just being satisfied; so probably wasn't very vivid. The next night I had a long lucid dream with very vivid tactile sensations (as well as visual and audial) and near the end, I had both hands in a potful of water - squeezing excess water out of cooked rice - and noticing how realistic it felt, I thought about going and taking a shower so I could report back to you. But then a couple of Tibetan lamas showed up in the kitchen....

Why do you ask?

(By the way, I love your idea of entertaining any idea that entertains us first! Well put!)

Sort of continued from above: This matter of senses is awfully interesting. Tactile sense isn't prominent in my dreams unless I really pay attention for us. Sight and sound are vivid and internal senses are very prominent: I think all of us have a notion of a "dreaming body" with internal sensations like position, balance, movement, sexual desire, etc. - finding it at odds with our physical body being one of the things that wakes it up, and the spinning thing for staying in the dream seems to work by sort of overwhelming the physical body's internal sensations with those of the dreaming body. What's your experience?

The evening after adastra enquired about my dream shower, I happened to complain of stiffness to a friend who is a skilled acupressurist and he gave me a treatment. As I understand it, acupressure involves working with the "subtle body" or "energy body" or "subtle energy body" (seems plausible - I can feel something like a mild electrical current sometimes during treatment). During the course of the treatment I started wondering how that relates to the "dreaming body" and experimented with imagining my dream body rising up and flying while my "subtle energy body" was being manipulated via those connection points on my physical body.

Well, that night's lucid dream was exceedingly lucid and all senses were vivid and realistic. And - this is really interesting to me - usually awareness of my physical body has tended to pull me back into it, but that time I was simultaneously aware of both my physical and my dreaming body, lucidly impressed with that, and spent an hour alternately dreaming and playing with going back and forth between bodies entirely at will.

I don't know but guess that maybe the acupressure treatment, and my thoughts during it, helped prime me for that. If you know an acupressurist, go try it and let us know what happens! It's very relaxing, anyway....

Here's another fun thing: That dream followed a long, restless 3 a.m. waking spell. I finally began to drift off and suddenly conceived of my mind as a powerful internet search engine into which I had entered the key words "Sweet Dreams," with the result that all restless thoughts were eliminated and a long list of good dreams stood ready to be explored! I found that so amusing, I came right back to wakefulness; but after several more minutes of tossing and turning I tried the same thing intentionally and slipped right into lucid dreaming, starting with crouching on the floor of the room in which I was sleeping, looking at a computer screen crowded with bright images of children's toys....

Playful dreams,

Joy

P.S. My funnest thing from last night's LD was when I flew up to the top of a tall corner cabinet and found two mirrors on the walls that formed the corner, reflecting clear, bright, multiple receding images of me. Such realism! Oh, yeah, watching the meteor shower was fun too, both in dream and afterwards in reality.

Howdy all. Just thought I'd post and let you know that I have started a place on the web for those of us who want to share our dream paintings and sketchings.

I haven't been able to scan any from my dream journal yet because my scanner needs a new AC adapter and the manufacturer is taking their own sweet time in mailing it to me.

Ralph's painting is there right now along with a description.

All forms of art are welcome from paintings, crayons, pencil sketching, even quilts and rugs that were inspired from a dream. Heck why not? Any musician's out there? Send in sound files of your dream music.

I would rather have links sent to me to your own paintings on the web rather than having to put them on my server, however if you don't have a web page available I will be happy to upload the picture and descriptive text to my server.

Lucidity to all and to all a good night Barbara :-))

Oh, and why not poetry too? Or short stories that were inspired by dreams? Send them too. But regular dream reports can remain here because I don't have but a certain amount of space :-)

:-))

I had an ld! I think it was a WILD, because I had woken uo in the am, couldn't get back to sleep, then finally did. I was already dreaming, the setting was a big, old house. I was sitting down on a bed against the wall in a child's room, and I saw a cloud floating right near my head. I wanted to touch it, so I reached out for it, and ended up holding the cloud, which instead of feeling cold and misty as I expected, was more solid, but very flexible and kneadable in my hands. That's when I asked myself if I was dreaming. Everything looked so normal, but I figured I had to be dreaming, with this cloud in my hands, so I decided to start exploring. I opened the door and started looking around. I thought about the need to spin or something to maintain the lucidity, but it seemed very strong, so I didn't bother. I wanted to go to a part of the house I recalled from other old house dreams, but wasn't sure where it was and so was just heading towards big rooms with an overhead outdoor light source. I kept on holding my cloud. I went to a really big area with lots of people in it, and I decided it must be a mall or hotel. I wanted to try transforming things about the people. There was a little boy whose hair color I tried to change, and it seemed like his skin was changing to blue, but then I saw he had kind of a glittery blue on his face, and I realized it was already there, just kids" makeup fun. I decided I wanted to interact with characters, and I called out to an older woman who looked like she probably worked at the hotel. She had her back to me and had been about to go through a door but turned around suddenly, smiling, and apologized for not hearing me well enough. She was very friendly and grandmotherly, very vivid and real. I was asking her about something and she was telling me about it. Then we were both sitting by a small table and she was asking me about this decoration on the table that was two small trees entwined together. One of the trees was strange to me, didn't look real, with brushy red and yellow foliage. I told her what I knew, and then moved on. The cloud had become more of a shadow box that had the decoration with the trees set into it, and I realized that the lady had apparently smushed the trees so that they were all disintegrated. I figured she didn't do this on purpose, and I discarded the cloud. Then I was outside walking down a sidewalk outside the building. I thought, everyone is always flying in their dreams, I have to try it. So I tried to lift off, and it worked! I flew to the railroad tracks running alongside the street. I was looking down at some coppery-colored trees, and a whole realistic scene. I joined a man who was flying over the tracks with a little boy I figured was his son. Trying to fly right was like swimming, in that I was trying to keep my body straight instead of hanging down. I even tried doing some strokes but it didn't seem to be much use. The man said something about how it was good to be able to fly when you don't have a car and have to go to the store. We touched down by his house that was alongside the tracks behind a fence and some trees. I don't know where the boy went, and it had suddenly gotten dark. I asked the man to help me make it daylight again. I was looking at some trees further down the tracks on the horizon. I squinted, trying to picture light there, and was playing the morning song from Peer Gynt in my head to help me. The man said he was going to show me how to make it light, or something, and pulled me down with him on the ground. He was showing me something in his wallet, a picture or something, but I figured he was just BSing me in an effort to get sex, and I was planning to get up and leave. Then a little girl knelt beside us and said "You're both 60% naked,' as if delivering a statistic. I couldn't figure out what that meant since we were all fully dressed, but I was a good time to leave, so I did. But then my alarm went off, so the dream ended.

PS - When I woke up and reviewed the dream, it didn't seem as if it had really happened. It felt as if I had only dreamed I was lucid. Is this a common sensation? Kate

High, Kate

A nice and long LD. Congratulations.

The symbol with the trees is surly worthwhile to interpret. The turn on the light experiment: I did it in late LD. Very interesting, but I can't say more due to our Maui - experiment.

"It felt as if I had only dreamed I was lucid."

I sometimes have this feeling. But with the years I get used to simply be lucid in dreams and take this as a somewhat "normal" experience. (I wish it would be an "everyday - experience"). Sometimes it is not easy to integrate the fact of dream - lucidity. It may seem strange to the physical awake self. It may see this as an attack on its integrity and therefor tend to judge this experience as: "Unreal".

That is just my two cents

Ralf

In my today's LD I noticed interesting thing -- my last thought before I regain consciousness was "Since I'm dreaming I want to try this and this". I was fully aware that I'm dreaming, but I was just unconscious watcher. Then I became lucid just because I thought more deeply that I'm dreaming -- there was no need to do RC. It's a second time in my life when I'm becoming lucid without doing RC, just by joining my conscious awareness and my mind.

I quickly turned around several times to see if any dream companion around. No luck, I was alone. I went to my room to carry out some planned experiments on physics of the dream world, but unfortunately everything dissolved and I woke up

Hi, Ralf. Thanks, it was a nice long ld, and what's great is that it wasn't even over - not til the alarm went off. Is making darkness into light difficult for most people? I figured I couldn't do it because I already doubted I could, just as when I wanted to transform the characters, my heart wasn't really in it, and I didn't feel it would necessarily work. I continue to perceive the characters as not liking my exprimenting with them, so I guess that's just how my mind wants to see things for now. On the other hand, my heart was in wanting to interact with characters, and with this I got excellent results after my second try at getting the lady's attention. I love trees, and notice them all the time and have bonsai, but I agree the entwined trees probably mean something, particularly since my mind put them in a shadow box setting, as if trying to draw my attention to them as an illustration of...something. The idea that my waking mind is trying to deny that I was lucid makes sense, and I don't appreciate my mind doing this. The sensation is confusing. I guess, if I enjoyed the experience, it doesn't matter whether or not it was "real"...And maybe this is a lesson. Dmitri - I didn't totally understand the sequence of when you were non-lucid dreaming, awake, and lucid dreaming. It sounded interesting - can you explain? Also, the I'm curious about the experiments on physics of the dream world. Is this something you can share at all, maybe on the open conversation site, or experiments site? Excellent dreams, Kate

Hi folks,

Happy Thanksgiving Day to those of you celebrating it. I have not posted for quite some time. I'm still alive and still LDing.

I'm not having much success with MILD but I do believe I can on occasion generate some whooshes. I have the problem now (unlike when I started last year) that I fall asleep too readily thus cannot, I think, develop sufficient intention to remember, but I'm working on it.

I've managed to do a couple of nice things since I posted last. I did eventually succeed in putting my hand inside my body to feel my heart ' it wasn't beating. I've pulled predetermined objects from inside walls, eg a golf ball; now I'm aiming for a small dog then a dream guru. I also have an excellent RC test that works well for me now, insert my finger into a solid object. It's lovely thinking I'm awake, but suspicious, then pressing my finger against the surface of a table and seeing it slowly enter.

I'm also studying a book mentioned on the forum, "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. I'm not religious, but this has given new practices and a fascinating new perspective that has a calming influence, calms the frustrations of not being as good at LDing as I want to be.

Best wishes to all,

Owen

Hi, all you lucids!!

Dmitri

Did I get it right? You got lucid, but did only observe the dream. Then you got clearer and acted lucidly. Tried to find the dream - companion. He wasn't there. Maybe one point for the theory: Your dream companion wasn't there, because conscious awareness and (dream) ego joined, that is: You got lucid. Just a theory, after all...

Owen

Glad to hear from you again. And pleased, that you are still on the track of LD experiments. The MILD thing: I tried it this morning. And failed. My "mistake" was, that I didn't get up. I simply have to be awake and get up, before I re - enter REM stage, otherwise I simply dream nonlucid. So it seems for me.

Your RC is one, that very rarely works in daytime, but most of times in dreams. I had lucid dreams, where I wasn't able to penetrate walls. They felt as solid as in physical reality. Funny, that you nearly did it with the "rip your heart out" experiment. I wonder, what Linus does these days.

I sometimes peek into "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal. But I'm reading three books parallel and spend most time with the Swiss LDer Zurfluh. It is good. I think both give new perspectives or look at LD from another point.

Kate

"Is making darkness into light difficult for most people?" Refer to: http://www.lucidity.com/NL52.LightandMirror.html

QUOTE:

The NightLight study was designed to assess how successful people would be at accomplishing certain well-defined tasks in lucid dreams.

1. LIGHT SWITCH TASKS

A. Find a light switch (indoors).

B. Turn it on, and see what happens, then turn it off, and see what happens.

C. Turn the lights on and off by willing it to happen and observe the results. (These two tasks were counterbalanced so that some tried the "magic" first and some second.)

...

"Expected" for turning and willing a light on and off meant that the light went on and off as it would in waking. "No result" meant the light did not change. "Unexpected" meant something other than the chosen light turning on and off. Examples of unexpected light results were: "the bulb slowly filled with what appeared to be thick, black tar," and "When I threw the switch, the outside porch light came on instead of the room light...didn't really increase the overall illumination."

...

Looking at the number of "expected" results, that is, cases in which the action produced the desired result, it appears that "willing" a light to turn on or off and using a dream switch are about equally easy. There seemed to be more cases of "no result" with willing the light on, but the difference did not pass a statistical test. The data hint that it may be easier to get a dream light to turn off than on. However, this conclusion may be premature, given that in the majority of cases, before trying to turn off a light, the person had already succeeded in turning it on. There may be a condition in which if you can turn on a light in a dream, you can also turn it off.

...

In their studies, the Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys and Alan Worsley observed something they called the "light switch" phenomenon. This was an inability to change the illumination of a room on demand. From this study, it seems that this phenomenon is sometimes present and sometimes not. Some people who were able to turn on lights reported no concurrent change in general illumination, but others reported that there was an increase in brightnessÑabout half and half. So, "the light switch phenomenon" is not dead, but merely seems to be sleeping some of the time. A prime target for research would be to discover what the brain is doing under both circumstances.

...

In the final analysis, the Tibetan Buddhist view that all dream images are transmutable may be exactly right. If so, we wonder if it may be possible also to learn to control the stability of these images, creating lasting dream scenes and objects, achieving a state of virtual reality far beyond the wildest dreams of the computer programmers.

END QUOTE

"On the other hand, my heart was in wanting to interact with characters"

I suspect cognition and emotions have to work together to make the best of such conversations. I had a similar effect in a LD, when everybody laughed, as I addressed them as "dear parts of my ego..." They were communicative, when I asked them for help. That was a more heartfelt action.

Ecstatic LD for all

Yours Ralf

Hi, Ralf. I posted a reply to your response to me on the Research, Theory and LI exp/dreams are thoughts concepts site. Hope this was a good idea. Have frequent and amazing ld's, Kate

Hi, Owen I'm new to the forum but have been influenced by some of your old postings. I was very taken with your "normally" cat and the German-speaking hunting dog. The cat has become a kind of ld mascot for me. "It's lovely thinking I'm awake, but suspicious, then pressing my finger against the surface of a table and seeing it slowly enter." I know that feeling, the thrill of realizing I'm lucid. What a gift. I like your idea of pushing through a solid object for a reality check - I will try it. I often don't have text in my dreams, so reading text doesn't seem to be the best RC for me. But objects are almost always there. Continued great ld's, Kate

Hello there my fellow dreamers!

I haven't had any lucid dreams since last Friday. But I've had several "half lucid" (or pre lucid?) dreams the last couple of days. Like yesterday, I was in this dream were I was playing a Japanese computer game. Extremely cool, I mean jumping around with a two metres sword in matrix-stile and throwing magical lighting and bolts of fire on your opponent. Hehe... But then everybody just flipped out. They did as they wanted. Nobody cared about any laws or physical restrictions. I had this word, "dream", somewhere back in my head all the time, but it didn't bubble up to the surface. Too bad...

This morning I had another half lucid dream... I was hunted (loved it, quite a while since last). I was in a train yard when I jumped a thing. I had expected to bounce away really far, but I didn't. I wasn't satisfied so I rewound the dream and made the jump again, this time flying as I had expected. If I believed it was reality, how come I could do like I did? I should have become aware of that it was only a dream, because you can't rewind reality! Stupid me...

Well, yesterday I begun thinking of the best dream experiences I've had. I begun thinking of in which dreams I've had most control. Then it struck me, that in the most coolest dreams, both non lucid and lucid, I've always been controlling myself and the dream in some way. With a remote control for example. Or sometimes it have been like a map editor. And in the kung-fu dream yesterday I had this game pad. I don't really make it fit in the dream. But I remember I sometimes looked down on my game pad when I tried to do certain specialities.

I decided I should try to reach that village I've been talking about. I've named it "Mossgrift" by the way. But how? Well, when I realise it's a dream I will first just try to ask someone for the direction. It worked with Leonardo da Vinci's workshop. But if it doesn't work I will instead look down on my arm, where I hopefully find some kind of control panel. Then I will just type in "Mossgrift" and press enter, or something. When I look up I'll hopefully be where I want to be, in my village that is. I'm convinced this might work. Because this combine several techniques. First of all it has this control thing. Then you also have the "look away and back"-technique. And both yesterday and today I've almost been brainwashing myself about that this will really work. I almost succeeded this morning. Several elements from my village appeared in a dream. It wasn't lucid, but still. I was in a big jungle and there were these cute little intelligent lemurs and a dragon. Pretty fun...

Hmm... Now I believe I must go to bed. This night I will succeed. I will finally get to my village. Nothing can stop me. I will succeed! I will succeed!!! I WILL SUCCEED!!!!!

Hi, Linus

Glad to see you again!

I hope you did succeed, if not today, then tomorrow.

All the best

Ralf

Hey! Nope... I didn't succeed. But I will this night... Anyway, even though I didn't succeed I'm still very pleased with the night's experiences. I had several really cool non lucid dreams. I visited wonderful landscapes, china for example. And I had a whole dream in slow-motion. Something I've never experienced before. I was hunted by FBI agents in some kind of motel. This was as much "matrix" as it can possibly be. Running around on the walls and such. Very fun... Well... now it's time for me to go to bed again. And in exactly five hours, 33 minutes and ten seconds I will have a lucid dream, and in that dream I will visit my village. Just so you know...

in response to Ralf's and Kate's question:

I became lucid and I catch a thought produced in my brain when I was not lucid: "Since I'm dreaming, I will do this and this". Means I knew that I was dreaming, but I was not lucid, I was just watching my dream. Definitely this thought leads me to the lucidity, but it was born in non-lucid state. Sounds crazy, but may be I catch the moment when non-lucid state changes by lucid.

Dmitri- What a nice photo! Anyway, until recently I thought we were either lucid, or not lucid when dreaming. But now that I've been trying to train my mind to lucid dream, I see some changes in my non-lucid dreams. I think the changes are a good sign, and show that my mind is transforming in the direction I want. Right now my realizing I'm lucid is usually a logic thing - if someone has three heads or I just caught a cloud in my hands while indoors, I must be dreaming. But I'm hoping the RC's will start to work for me on a regular basis. Now that I got the idea from Owen of trying to push through solid objects, I do it all the time. Kate

Here is a lucid dream report I posted elsewhere. A fun thing I wanted to do, and been trying to do for several months, is to go back to this building that I periodically dream about that has a copy of Sherlock Holmes' sittingroom on the top floor. I always have a sense of magical adventure when I dream about the building but haven't been able to get inside it. Several months ago in one lucid dream I was able to make 'the building' appear. In each dream the building looks different, therefore I wasn't really concerned with it's style. In the dream I became lucid, how exactly I don't recall, and then said that when I opened the front door and looked over at Mary Ann's house across the street, I was in a dream version of my real house, I would see the Sherlock Holmes sittingroom building. And I did. Very vividly and realisticly. Woke up before I could get to it though. This morning I was able to again become lucid, remember the dream I wanted to have, and again told myself as I opened the front door there the building would be over at Mary Ann's. And I remembered to be calm about it and expect it and then open the door. And sure enough, there was the building. This time it was a small house with an attic area sitting behind Mary Ann's house which I don't recall what that looked like. The lights were on in the Sherlock Holmes house and I smiled wondering if Sherlock Holmes was home. The dream tried to change, but I brought it back by concentrating. I walked across to the house passing close by the neighbors along side my house and noticing that there were two graves. One said something about my Grandmother was buried there. I used to own the land in reality where a duplex now stands and have had several dreams in the distant past about burying animals and relatives along side my house on that property. At any rate, back to the S.H. Building dream. I tried to tell myself that the graves were only a dream, but was unable to convince myself. I said out loud that I would check this spot in reality when I woke up and then I would know for sure. It wasn't important to dwell on it and it looked like the neighbors had cleaned and cared for and respected the graves. Then I think here is where I started dreaming that Holmes was a woman with a male Watson and they were riding in a carrage to a building to go detectiving or whatever. I then changed the dream to make it a male then I remembered I wanted to explore the sittingroom and find out what stuff my mind put there and how realistic it would be. To make a long story short I ended up getting lifted by an invisible person up through the floor boards to an attic area. The whole of the house inside was old, worn, decaying, neglected. Which could reflect my passion for Sherlock Holmes because I haven't written any stories or read any or watched any of the movies for a long time. There were supposed to be people in the house but I could not make them appear in physical form. They were fans too and had a club there. There were also a group of grim reapers that I couldn't see either. I tried to imagine black robes but didn't get any manifestations. I also thought to myself there is only one grim reaper and my brain is not cooperating. They told me that I could get to the sittingroom if I gave Holmes what he needed. They didn't say what that was. I thought for a minute and said, "A grave stone. If he is dead then I have to find his grave and make a grave stone." I thought of other stuff too, but don't recall just now what they were. The group laughed at me when I said grave stone. I woke up without ever getting to the sitting room. Right now I am feeling fustrated, annoyed, and wondering how does one incubate a dream? I know it can be done, I've influenced dream plots before and made different characters appear. This was not in lucid dreams though... Also, I am concerned that this dream was not in REM. It was the last dream before I woke up. I think it was in another stage of sleep because I was unable to feel anything and the imagery was not very realistic. The past several times that I have been lucid the dreams take on a very real feeling. I am in the dream copy of my body, I feel it's muscles, the floor against the feet, the solidity of the enviroment around me. I can touch walls, and other objects and they are quite real. I can even slap my hands against a tree and hear the slap, feel the sting of the bark on my hands. How does one incubate a dream or make it easier to get to where you want to go in a dream without loosing the reality or the dream alltogether?? Thanks Barbara :-))

Hi! Yesterday I had a lucid dream. I was hunted, as usually, but I had fooled my hunter and he was far, far behind me. I knew he wouldn't catch me. The road I had before me was straight and boring, so I begun thinking of if I could make it funnier, travelling the distance, some way. I stretched my arms out and suddenly I left the ground. I had kind of known it was only a dream all the time, but it was first at this point I really became lucid. I didn't remember my village, but I remember I had read here at the forum about people training themselves of transforming things. So I looked at this warning sign (red out in the edges and yellow in the middle) and tried to change the colors. It was this huge pulsing flash accompanied by a really cool sound and the colors flipped. Then I flew around a short while until I remembered I should try to leave the atmosphere. I immediately went of as a rocket up in the sky, a giddy and thrilling feeling. But I got caught in some clouds and suddenly it was just white where ever I looked. And so I woke up.

Soon it's time for bed. I hope I dream of speaking Spanish, cause I have a test in that subject tomorrow.

Sweet and lucid dreams to all of you!

Linus - You have some of the funnest dreams. I tried to leave the atmosphere last night too - my destination was the moon; but it didn't look like I expected it to when I got there - too much white light. Good luck on your test! In a lucid dream a few days ago someone asked me how to say "wide" in Spanish and I reminded him it's "ancho" - maybe that'll be on your test...

Joy

Linus -

You sound as if you love challenges. I wonder if this helps with your pursuit of lucid dreaming. You seem to do so well! I wonder if your youth is a help, too. Or rather, whether moving away from youth causes some of us - like me! - to lose things that would help with lucidity. Things which I am now trying to rediscover. Nice to have someone so young contributing your particular stuff to the forum. We've got such a great "patchwork" going. Poetic, adventurous and hilarious lucids to all, Kate

P.S. There was some discussion in the past on "multiplying lucidity." Could anyone expound on this topic, at some appropriate site? Thanks.

!Hola hombres!

"I wonder if your youth is a help, too." I read somewhere that the amount of REM-sleep you have decreases after passing your twentieth birthday. I don't know if this is true. And I don't know if my youth improve my ability to have lucid dreams some way. Maybe, maybe not. My father is very interested in dreams too. He don't have as many lucid dreams as I, but lately he have had a few experiences that I would classify as lucid. I've tried to make him read "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" but he haven't yet. Don't know why. He don't seem to have less dreams then I, but there is still a great different between us. His dreams mostly seems to be short on-the-spot accounts. He is, for example, out walking in the forest when he sees a deer. Then the dream landscape changes and he find himself sitting in a chair in his home as a child. Stuff like that. Unlike my dreams which nowadays mostly are in movie length. Many of my dreams also picks up where the last dream ended. I remember one morning for maybe two weeks ago or something. Everything I remembered from that night was somehow connected to each other. All dreams picked up where the last one had ended, one way or another. I just keep getting more and more astonished of what my brain can do. I have had such wonderful experiences the last week. Some pictures I've seen have engraved themselves on my memory forever. In one dream (yesterday?) I was in a hardware store buying all kinds of stuff. They also had a computer there on which they tried to sell fantasy pictures. I remember two pictures. One was picturing a wolf howling under the full moon. Very nice. But the other one was the perfection itself. I've never ever seen a more beautiful picture in my whole life. Describing it in words is impossible, and the fact that I'm not too good on English doesn't make it better, but I will still try to give you a explanation of how it looked, even though it won't even be close to what I saw. It was an old ruin city situated up in the mountains and surrounded by several peaks. This must once have been the most magnificent city in a civilisation greater then everyone else. There were gigantic broken pillars, beautifully engraved with snakes, monkeys and whatever you can imagine, partially covered in clinging vines. There was a big square with old fountains and statues which all had been roughly treated by time. A square surrounded by old dark ruins leaning alarmingly. The whole town was covered in morning mist in a magical way. At the horizon, the first rays of sunshine could be seen, but looking up at the sky you could still see randomly placed stars. On the stairway to a particular significant building a female warrior stood surrounded by four temple dogs, chow chows. They were adornment with golden harness and helmets. The warrior had long dark hair and purple eyes. Around her head she had a diadem with a gem in it. I believe she had a bow in her hand, but I'm not sure. The light was perfect and the whole image had some kind of distorted symmetry. There were so many details and you got this magical feeling. It was just perfect. I have never seen it before. The warrior looked a little as a woman from a painting made my Luis Royo. And the surroundings looked as taken from Peru, up in the Andes. But still, that was a picture created by me. By my own brain. How I wish there was some way to get it out! I wait for the day when you can record your dreams the same way you record a TV-program? Would that be cool or what?

Talking of funny dreams by the way. A couple of days ago (was it Wednesday or Thursday?) I dreamed I and my class and several other people from my school played a computer game with each other. It was very similar to Half Life. Suddenly someone realised we was forty minutes late to the history class and everyone quitted and rushed of. I didn't think it was any idea going now when we already had missed forty minutes, so I stayed behind checking the screen shots I had taken from the game. They didn't have much to do with the game, but they were incredible. The thing is that I've tried to explain to my friend, Lukas, how wonderful it is playing games in your dreams. I've said it can't even be compared to sitting in front of a computer. Now when I sat there watching these pictures I realised I was wrong and I thought: "Damn. These pictures are just as cool and real as a picture from a dream. Maybe even better. Now I must tell Lukas I was wrong." Tsss? I should have realised it can only this fishy in your dreams.

Well, I had two lucid dreams yesterday. They were nothing compered to the experience I described above, but still, lucid dreams are always fun. I didn't do anything sensible. Just flow around practising my flying technique. My dream recall isn't that high. I also tried to fly to the moon. But I didn't believe I would succeed. And well, you get what you expect. I had a lucid dream this morning too. But it was very, very unstable. Sometimes it almost went over to being ordinary fantasies. It was only short parts I could move around smooth.

Visit www.arthistory.cc by the way. If you don't know where to go in your dreams, visit that site and I guess you get some tips. Check out Luis Royo, he's one of my favourites.

Stay lucid everyone!

Hi, everyone. I got lucid again! The dream was pretty long but I don't recall how I became lucid, or the first part of the dream. I was almost always moving along ' hardly ever just sitting, standing or lying. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, or even everything that happened in the part I do recall. I know I transformed some things at the beginning, but have no memory of it. I was mostly walking along in a calm way and trying to make use of my ld state. I was in an old house, and I was looking for the special rooms that show up in my old house dreams. I crossed through someone's bedroom ' there was a couple in the bed and I apologized to them but I didn't feel that bad because it was only a dream ' and went through a door. It was a nice room, with a hardwood floor. At some point I was in a school, another place that shows up in my dreams a lot. It was as if, because I wanted to get to those special rooms, my mind was coming up with various familiar dream locales. I don't recall much of what happened at the school. At some point I went up to three women who were sitting in chairs and I took one of the women's hands to see what it felt like, but it was more like a social gesture, and she was smiling. Her hand was just like a real hand ' warm and firm. And she commented on my hand being that way, as if she was aware we were from two different worlds. Then I was moving through a hallway in some big old, unfamiliar building. I decided to look at text, and found some things posted on the walls. I couldn't read anything, because not only could I not recall any phrase I read, but the text itself kept changing. It was actually "bubbling,' with words churning around and moving all the time. For some reason I thought this was hilarious, and I enjoyed it very much. Later I had moved to an unfamiliar urban scene, and I was kneeling in front of something like the underside of a highway overpass, and it was kind of dark, but not night. I was digging through some sand with my hands and I wanted to create a diamond ring to find in the sand. I had to remind myself that I had to believe I could do it to do it. So I did, and I found a ring, but I didn't think it was very attractive. Then it turned into my real-life engagement ring. Then I started thinking this was a dangerous place to have my back to what was going on, so I turned to look behind me. There were just some young couples strolling along, and none of them seemed to notice me. Later I tried the text thing again with some new signs, because it had been so fun, but this time the text just stayed normal ' I don't recall what it said. Then I was in a familiar dream locale of a small town, and I wanted to check out my grandmother's old house, which now belonged to someone else. I had two dogs with me. I don't think they talked, but I knew they didn't want to go to my grandmother's house because we might get in trouble because we weren't allowed to go there, and I manipulated them into going ' I wanted to at least peer in the window, and was looking for a certain room off the kitchen. My personality was different ' I didn't like the way I pressured the dogs. Then I was with my son instead of the dogs, and I wanted to pretend I was in a movie (or something). My son is 16, but in the dream he was younger, more like 11. We were in this sweeping rural scenery. I wanted to go down the hill to a farm on the left to do the movie thing, but my son wanted to first check out the place where the road we were walking on forked right. We went right and the road ended in some steep grassy cliffs behind a road barrier. My son wanted to slide down the cliffs, but I wouldn't let him because it was dangerous. I think I was fading out of lucidity into a normal dream, because I didn't seem to think much about using control anymore. My son saw a spot that was safe to slide down and I seemed able to feel what he did, especially the feel of the damp grass when he hit the ground and slid. He interacted with another boy ' there were several kids taking turns sliding. Then we left, but a woman came after us and said she was watching the kids and if I let my son stay she'd take care of him. So I did. Then I just basically found myself awake. My head felt all swimmy. Then it seemed to clear as I tried to recall the dream. Then when I was going to fade back into sleep, my head felt swimmy again. But I wanted to really imprint the dream, because I already couldn't remember the first half of it. So I never went back to sleep. Kate

Hi. I thought of something to do tonight to help foster the idea of believing I'm dreaming when I'm not. I pretended to be changing the traffic lights, so that it seemed as if I made them go red, green, or yellow. Happy dreams, kate

Hi, Kate

Congratulations to your long LD. I appreciate the tender way you interacted with your dreamcharacters. And the way, you experimented with writing. It is always interesting to see, how the basic things work different from time to time.

Keep on good work

Ralf

Hi, Ralf. Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate the feedback. What aspects of my experience with text were "different?" Because I thought, when reading about text experiences on the forum, that I recalled that text usually is stable in my dreams. But I didn't bother mentioning it because I had no strong memories of this. Although, I seem to recall even reading whole passages and understanding their meaning. This may be because I have always written a lot, and so have a strong sense of control with text. I just loved the dancing text in my dream - probably because everything was so out of control and so far away from the normal. It was a fun, free way of feeling helpless, like being rolled around by the surf. Except that this was somehow really, really funny, too. For me it was more fun than the flying. Odd, huh? Frequent lucidity, Kate

Finally had a lucid dream after a few long dry days. My recall isn't really good. I've been 'stressing' a bit lately about getting an article done for an editor...

Here is my rather short lucid dream:

I am laying on a couch or in a bed. I am looking at this rather large clock. I keep looking at it and I realize that this clock is odd. I don't know what kind of odd or why I thought to do a reality test, though I did and found that when I looked at one of the numbers on the manual 'hand' clock it changed. This isn't possible. Its not a digital clock, I must be dreaming. I further test by jumping in the air and yes, I am hovering again. I get happy, I start to think about hey this is a dream and start thinking mechanically about how I can do what I want and suddenly the dream is rather more like a distant daydream. The world doesn't have the same 'solidity'. I get angry. I want the reality. I relax. suddenly the reality comes and just as suddenly I am in a dream body in a 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea submarine. The Captain has long blonde hair and looks like David Bowie. I am pleased. He even has his own voice and starts talking a whole script. I get dramatic and say I won't eat unless I am let off the ship. I don't really forget that I am in a dream, though I don't bother to control and try to open a door to find that Sittingroom I've been trying to get to for MONTHS. Getting very depressed and upset at that.

I woke up after getting bored. The scene felt like I was in a real world. I think the next time the dream goes 'flat' I'll remember the relaxing technique. Kind've reminds me its like yoga where you don't push into the pose you just do it. Nike school of dreaming: Just Do It.

:-))

Hi, everybody seems to be lucid dreaming, that is fine!

Kate

Yes, the interesting thing is, that in your dream you had both phenomena: Stable and unstable texts. Your thought on why texts are mostly stable in your dreams is interesting, too. It is said, that longer texts, not only two or three words, are never the same on reading twice. Maybe you should prove this hypothesis in a LD.

Barbara

Congratulations!

"I get angry. I want the reality. I relax. suddenly the reality comes and just as suddenly I am in a dream body..."

I will try that next time. My LDs are so short these days. I think it is, because I try too hard to work on certain experiments or am too tense. If you look at the dreams I lately posted in the Open Conversation - "Dreamcamp Maui" thread, you may see, what I mean. And the following is a similar example, too.

Hope, anyone has advice for me re other means, than spinning to prolong these dreams. I know a lot of techniques like handrubbing or dancing, but may be someone, who has worked on creating / going to special environments in LD could give a hint.

Yours Ralf

OBE fools me I'm lying down with the intention to watch and stay aware, while body sleeps in and /or regain awareness, when I'm dreaming. I won't tolerate this sleep of mind in the night any longer *|-) . I do the 61 points and see, what happens The next thing I remember (after some hours of "normal" sleep) is, that I feel like being out of body. I experiment with this state. It feels strange. Not like the other OBE - like dreams, I had. The dream body isn't very clear or sharp shaped. It is fuzzy. I try to roll out of bed /body. I can't see anything. Rolling works, but then I'm drawn back. Then I simply stand up, I can see now and think, I'm out now. But I'm drawn back again. Then I awake and tell Astrid, that I had another OBE - like dream. Then I awake again and recognise, that I've been fooled. I've been fooled, because I thought, I was in the physical reality while out of body. But it wasn't our bedroom. I've been fooled, because looking back, there was no feeling of bodies separating or re - uniting. It was just one body, I felt. Or at least a very fuzzy body, maybe two sometimes. And then I've been fooled by a false awakening. The next time I will diligently test my state and the environment, once I've stabilised the scene. The latter hasn't been the case in this experience, again. I wonder, what makes my dreams this unstable these weeks.

Hi, everydreambody.

As to maintaining lucidity through being calm and relaxed, that seems to be working for me and I'm doing it automatically, I think. It seems that the lesson I got in October has really stuck in my dreaming mind. In Oct. I got totally thrilled when I realized I was lucid and dropped to the ground in thanks (talk about dramatic) and instantly woke up. So now I seem to have an overall mindset of calmness in my lucid dreams, and they seem to be long, the last two. Again, this may have to do with experience in my waking life, where I've learned to contain emotions because they could get me in trouble. Ralf - Your psuedo OBE experience sounds very frustrating and disappointing. Since I don't know much about it, I can't help you. I always thought of it as astral projection, maybe this is not the same thing. I recall trying to astrally project when I was a child, and it seemed as if I made it to my family's back porch. I was so scared I never tried it again - especially I was scared by the idea that if someone disturbs you, you can detatch from your body and not come back. But that's probably not even true...Anyway, I always assumed my "OBE" was just a dream, but it seemed very real - the porch was in perfect detail of reality, including the old metal box for the milkman to put milk bottles in. I suppose I'll never know. There was certainly no experience of bodies separating. I'm not really clear about the "dream body" thing anyway. To me I'm either awake, or in a dream, but it's always more or less me, and in a stable state. I hope I get the chance to experiment agin with text. I never did necessarily read the same sentence twice in past dreams, so I'd love to experiment with this and report back. I think about Joy's "Luke Comfort/Look Confused" experience. It sounded fun. Barbara - another interesting dream, although not so full and complex as the last one. Hope you're not blaming yourself for the failure to reach the sitting room. Have you tried actually sketching yourself into it before going to sleep? The stimulation might be good, and you're lucky to have the talent to be able to do that. I think I might have had my last ld because I had a lot of pleasant stimulation that day. Also, circumstances seemed to pull me around that day as opposed to more concrete planning, so in a way it was like being pulled from scene to scene the way I am in dreams. Happy and successfull dreams to all, Kate

I'm going to try doing yoga after awakening in the middle of the night. I usually do yoga everyday. If I do the balancing postures in the middle of the night I might be calm and my mind relaxed and in a more receptive mood.

OBEs. It really bugs me when people talk about OBE's and astral projection. It is like saying aliens built the Pyramids :-) It is an insult to The Egyptians and thier talent and it is an insult to yourself or modern people to think that "it must be a real experience because the mind just can't make up stuff that seems that real and detailed."

Kate Dream body is a term used to describe yourself in dreams. It is used for clarity when talking to others about your dream. It shows that you are lucid and aware that this body is just an imagination of the real one both while in the dream and while awake talking about it. Have you read any of La Berge's books on lucid dreaming?

:-))

Hi Ralf,

Regarding your question about "creating/going to special environments in LD": I've had some success with conjuring desired locations, via spinning, by imagining that I will arrive there when I stop twirling about. If I spin without a set location in mind, the scene usually changes randomly. And as this can be somewhat disorienting, it's a good idea to chant a reminder that "the next scene will be a dream!" As I recall, only once did the original location remain -- and I was surprised by this ('twas not at all what I expected!). Since spinning tends to blur the visual imagery, I prefer to use this technique for location changes and hand-rubbing for prolonging the dream state while preserving an established scene.

I've found imagination, desire, intention and association to be key factors in conjuring. Over the years, I've had mixed success with dreaming up familiar faces and places, sometimes finding desired friends around a corner or mingled in with a group of vague dream characters a short walk away. Other times, the sudden appearance of what is desired has a dramatically magical quality to it. I've tried employing various senses such as imagining hearing a person's voice or the feel of an embrace, but I've yet to find any method that works every time. This is a skill I would very much like to improve.

If I'm able to conjure up a conjuring expert in my next lucid dream, I'll be sure to ask for advice on this matter. In the meantime, does anyone out there have suggestions?

Spinning my way to DreamCamp!, Keelin