Dream Blog: Catchup

I haven't been writing consistently because I haven't really remembered any dreams. This week I've been out of my element, either because I've gone to bed really late and got little sleep, got up early, slept in places other than my bed, etc. But here are some drips and drabs:

***
August 28, 2006

Went on a yacht with this rich guy. Group of two other people, one was telling us about him. He may have been an older version of Justin. The guy was semi obnoxious, showing off all his stuff.

Driving to my house at night (in a rural area) and there are cops driving around looking for people.

Watching tv in a movie theatre, but it’s at work. I decide to tivo what I’m watching.

August 31, 2006

I’m in Philly, looking for a barber shop. I want an old fashioned one with a Man Show fat guy from the 50’s picture on it. I wind all up all over the place and end up at the intersection by Ben Franklin Parkway & 16th St, and I have to stop with an old lady because some cops are nearby and we don’t want to jaywalk.

Later, a neighbor’s black dog is growling at me from behind a fence, but maybe it’s mine. I feel/sound like/am Howard Stern and I'm talking about it and how I was mad at Beth for not training the dog to just attack or be outside at night instead of just the winter.

I was on my way to an old house to put an offer in on it, and I call the owner from the house aross the street on their porch. I pick up a piece of wood, a 2x4, while doing this. I think we can’t work out a price.

A dog at the house that's barking slips out from an opening in the fence and we fight for a bit.

I’m at Maged’s house with Gillian, we go to his room and start to bang, in order to get back at him for something. I try to put some semen on his lock, Gilly asks if we can keep going and we do although I’m pretty much spent.

Cait's going back to Penn State, after we go somewhere they are in a hot tub (this is all on camera, and she, Dana, Gilly, and Rodney are naked in a hot tub although you can't see anything because they're underwater from the chest down. I’m watching this with Mike and Gilly and Cait. Cait says this is basically porn cause you can see half of her nip.
***

Dream Blog: Day 8

I'm in a bit of a dream slump it seems. I can only remember a tiny bit of one, where I walk upstairs into a restaurant, and I think my friend Shawn is at the host stand. He brings me over to a table in the middle of the room and there are many people around. I don't remember who they are or what else happened, but I believe it was lively.

This is the third dream since that start of this dream blog that have involved restaurants/tables in the middle of the room. The first was from the first day when I pushed John Locke in a wheelchair to an empty table, the second was when those people were chasing me around that room full of tables and the maitre d' threw 'Ask and it is Given' at me, and now this. I just googled "dream symbols - table" and this is what came up: Delaying an idea or decision, tabling it. Hmmmmmm.

Let's work with that for a sec. I do have feelings of procrastination, particularly in regards to my budding real estate career. Let's take the analysis a step forward now. In my dream with all the tables and the waiter chasing me, he was chucking the book at me so he probably wanted me to read it. I wish I would have stopped running, picked it up, and asked him about it. So maybe I should finish that book and follow its advice. Also in my dream where we quit work and ran away, I ran down a narrow curvy bridge over an ocean and it scared me. So maybe all this is criticizing me not taking enough action or something.

I just checked another site and this is what came up: The table stands for your responsibilities and obligations at work. Looking at an empty table is a signal that you need to take care of your family and house. Holy crap!

Hopefully I'll be able to sleep long hours this weekend so I can get to the bottom of some of these dreams, and hopefully get some hot lucidity action while I'm at it.

Dream Blog: Day 7

What better way to celebrate my one week anniversary of attempting to lucid dream than to not remember any dreams at all? To be fair, I went to bed very late, some time between 1:30 and 2 and then got up at 6:30 so the hot dream time never happened. But still, I would have liked to have had the tiniest recollection. I did wake up in the middle of the night and sort of remember something happening, but the only thing I could recall was the word 'earthquake.' I didn't remember seeing any earthquake or anything, just the word earthquake.

I'll try to get some earlier sleep tonight to get some quality dream time. Hope there's lots to report!

Dream Blog: Day 6

Last night I had another challenge: unfamiliar environment. The gf just got a new apartment and so it was the first night either of us slept there. Some differences between this sleeping environment and my normal one is no wall against the bed (which I find comforting), not being in control of the lamp and alarm clock, and not having my laptop to quickly type up the stories from my dreams. This last part was a problem, since this is the product from the first time I woke up last night scribbled on a piece of paper:

Rescue Rangers
Rescue
Olde[sic] lady having
heart             attack

Awesome. I don't remember any of this. I tried out the MILD technique (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) from my new book after this. The MILD technique you use after you already had a dream, and you tell yourself 'ok I just dreamed...but next time I dream, I'm going to remember to remember I'm dreaming.' Similar to how you tell yourself 'next time I'm in the super market I need to remember to get tissues.' You're supposed to repeat this to yourself and make sure that it's the last thought on your mind as you fall back asleep.

Also you should recall your previous dream and envision yourself recognizing one of the dream signs and becoming lucid. You sort of play a 'what if' from your last dream. Like what if I recognized that Chip and Dale don't typically rescue old ladies from heart attacks or whatever they were doing? If I actually remembered that dream, I could have played it back in my head but then stopped it when something crazy happened. This I guess brings your mind into a state where it's used to recognizing dream signs.

I woke up to the alarm and was disappointed to not have any more dreams. I laid down for a while and eventually got up. At some point it dawned on me that wait a minute, I did have a dream, and I do remember it! I quickly jumped back in bad and closed my eyes. According to my book, when you wake up you shouldn't get out of bed right away or think about your daily tasks. You should keep your eyes closed, remain in your sleeping position, and go through your dream from end to beginning. Then get up and write stuff down. Here's what I recalled:

***
I'm at some sort of national park, talking to a park ranger. There are other cars there and people. The ranger tells me about how he had to cross a creek in his car to get here.

Me and some people have jobs as auditors in a typical office floor. Dave is a regular and Andy appears later. New auditors were coming in and hanging in our room, one of them even lounges on Dave's bed (no it's not normal to have a bed in a break room), and we didn't want them there. We go through various tasks and then decide we're going to quit today, purposefully screwing the company. I guess Andy and Dave were with me and we come across a narrow, sharp-curving bridge. It's almost like a ramp and there is an ocean underneath. It's a scary bridge and we're running so I'm scared I can fall in. I believe we get to the end safely.

At some point we're back at a house, and Dave has a few six packs of beer for me that he left outside the house.
***
After I wrote that down, I tried to use the MILD technique with it. Now it was a race against the snooze button though. I started to have some dream about Gilly's dad in some political hearing or meeting, and he was being forced to resign because his higher-up had to resign. The alarm rang again and I was left wondering whether it was a real dream or just those weird thoughts you have as you fall asleep sometimes, I think they're called hypnagogic images, which aren't the same as dreams.

I should be done with my lucid dream book in a day or two, and it'll be closing on a week of this experiment tomorrow. Although I wish I had become lucid by now, 7 days isn't that much time really. Most of the books and guides I have been reading say it often takes weeks or months to have your first lucid dream, but for some reason I feel like I should/will have one before then.

Dream Blog: Day 5

I knew last night was going to be rough. I had to go straight from work to the chiropractor then straight to help Gilly move into her new apartment. After that, I had to go home to pick up Dave to get to the video game store at 10pm to wait for Madden 07 to release at midnight. Really we just paid the remaining balance, took some pizza, brownies, and Hi-C and went home, coming back at 11:30 pm and had the pleasure of annoying high school 'Laguna Beachites' blabbering in front of us. We finally got home around 12:30 and fooled around with the game for a while. I got in bed around 1:15 am and had to get up for a 7 am meeting the next day, so I estimated I'd get about 5 hours sleep. Turns out I couldn't fall asleep at all, and neither could Gilly. I woke up and didn't remember any dreams, very disappointing.

I've learned from my research that as the night goes on, your dreams become longer and easier to remember. So after 5 1/2 to 6 hours you get into the really good stuff. Me going on 3-4 hours sleep isn't conducive to this experiment. There was an incident though: At one point in the night Gilly was getting out of bed to go downstairs to see if she could fall asleep down there. She was leaning forward to exit the foot of the bed and I grabbed her foot and said "Where are you going?? Your back is red." I sort of remember seeing this too.

Gilly: What?
Me: It's red, red spots on your back. It's like a character from Madden, that I'm controlling with my controller.
G: Are you sleeping or awake?
Me: I'm awake now.
G: Does that make any sense?
Me: No.
G: Do a reality check {i've versed her in the lingo}. Check the clock.
Me: {looked at clock}
G: Ok now look again.
Me: {stayed still}

I didn't tell her, but I didn't feel the need to look at the clock because I had another reality check in place. Yesterday when I was at the mall I was thinking about all this reality check stuff, and everything seemed big and I thought to myself how I'd like to see some sort of sign that there was a behind the scenes type force or whatever. I was also thinking about sensations and how I felt a little distant from my feelings and how I'd like some clarity there. As I was getting into my car from the mall, somehow as I was slipping into the driver's seat the door slammed on my ear. It didn't squish between the door and the car, it either slammed against it or closed as I was sitting and I just plopped all my weight on the seat while my ear was on the other side of the door, or something. I have no idea exactly how that happened but it KILLED, I'm takling serious pain and still hurts right now. I do not usually make such clumsy errors, and I thought maybe this was some sort of sign, or maybe just a good reality check. I decided that if I got conscious in a dream, I would squeeze my ear to check. That's what I did in bed instead of checking the time.

I got my book from Amazon yesterday also. I was a little surprised to see it is only 84 pages and very small. I guess I'll be checking the number of pages from now on when shopping on Amazon. The good thing is I'll be able to go through it quick. Maybe I'll buy Stephen LaBerge's original book too.

Dream Blog: Day 4

So I was kind of bummed this morning because I only remembered one short dream. I had trouble getting to sleep last night because I slept in the morning before, and I tried to have that laptop program running but the random reality checks scared me and jolted me awake sometimes. While I was in the shower this morning though I started to remember another dream, a long one. I was glad that I actually had some stuff to work with now.

I sent Erin Pavlina an email this morning asking her if she always lucid dreams or if she has regular dreams too, to which she responded: Most of my dreams are non-lucid. When I go lucid I sometimes feel like I've been "up all night" and sometimes I just want to rest. Plus I like for my subconscious to get a shot at me. If I fight crime all night flying around and killing the bad guys then I don't always get messages from my subconscious. :)

I didn't see anything in the dreams that were blatant violations of reality checks, although there were unusual things like Shannon's son's age and being on a roller coaster subway. I need to get some reality checky type stuff in my dreams so that I hopefully notice and realize what's going on. Here's my daily summary:

I’m getting on the subway in Philly and I see this 30-ish homeless guy getting on each train, which looks more like a roller coaster that comes out of the ground and you can see the city skyline in the background. He sits next to me and tries to touch me and joke around but I give him a scowl and pull away. The guy gets offended and claims he owns all sorts of cars and stuff.

I’m at some party in a college type setting. I live in the house I think and it’s very open with hardwood floors. There aren’t that many people there, it seems like a bust. I ride a bicycle around and then I leave the house to go talk to someone or get someone. While I’m riding on the sidewalk there’s a group of big guys sitting around talking to each other and blocking the sidewalk. I quickly ride through and say ‘excuse me’ and one guy reluctantly moves and they seem pissed. After I do whatever it is I wanted to do, I come back to the house and as I get back a few girls that I recognized came in to say that some guys were mad at me. I explained the situation and the girls calmed down. The party now had more people in it and I went upstairs. This guy John from my work was there, apparently he lived there and he was changing the diaper of his baby son. We talked a little and I went back downstairs. My cousin Shannon came in with her son, who looked about 5 years old and looked just like her but with short blond hair.

Dream Blog: Day 3

I'm starting to remember more dreams and also remembering the dreams for longer periods of time. I was worried last night that I might not remember any because I had been drinking and I was very congested so I thought I might not get a good night sleep. Turns out I had the best night so far. I downloaded a program where a wizard 'guides' you into sleep by giving you instructions, and then periodically during the night asks you to do some reality checks. He'll say things like 'Are you dreaming?' and 'Look at your hands, do you see anything strange?' I ended up closing up my laptop though cause it was too bright and Gilly was sleeping over so I didn't want to wake her up with a creepy robot voice in the middle of the night. I'll try it again tonight.

Although there were many opportunity for reality checks in my dreams last night, I didn't recognize them while I was dreaming. It's almost like my subconscious was throwing out these reality checks and trying to get me to bite. Here are some examples: In one dream I saw some text on a chalkboard. When I looked again, the words were different. Another dream I jumped down to another floor and floated down without any harm. In that same dream, a man I know that is black was a tall white man. In my dream with Mike Drew, I had a "false awakening" where I "woke up" in the dream and throught that it was real life. If I were more diligent with performing reality checks every time I wake up, I might be able to catch the dream during these false awakenings. I feel as though I'm making progress though be recognizing these opportunities and should be able to move onto the next step soon, which is to become conscious during the dream. Once I achieve that, then I'll move on to describing "stabilizing" the dream. Here's my journal entry from last night:

I’m at a boardwalk with Gillian. I see some girl with really short shorts on, and her frilly pink underwear is sticking out the bottom. I follow to see where she’s going, she works at a place on the boardwalk. Gilly comes back from somewhere ad I tell her about it.

I “wake up” in Mike Drew’s bed with him and another girl (false awakening). She leaves the room to do something. We’re in Pittsburg, and I ask him if he had sex with her and he sheepishly said yes. Turns out we out drinking last night and I got really wasted and didn’t remember anything. He knew her beforehand and she’s from the University of Rhode Island. His real girlfriend slept in the other room with her daughter. She still had her dreadlocks in the dream. The new girl may have been the same one from my earlier dream, but she looked different and not as pretty although I’m not sure I got a look at her face in the previous dream.

I’m at a play/concert with Gilly, Caitlin and her boyfriend. There’s a mean ticket lady at the counter and Cait says “oh that’s the nice one”. I get a call on my cell from "Pres Pick" (name changed to avoid search engine problems) and I meet up with him in the basement. He’s tall and white and obviously doesn’t look like the real life Pres. Although I notice that he looks different, I don’t realize it’s a dream. He gives me the number of this guy who’s got some hot leads. I go back up and it’s a fancy dinner. I sit down at a table and I recognize some people. Cait’s trying to call my phone but I ignore it. Strange things start to happen. I think I see Pres Pick face-down on the floor somewhere. There are knives at the table that are shaped sort of like spade or cheese-cutting knives and some angry looking guy starts to put them in a violin case, but people’s expressions turn to hateful and I can tell they are planning something bad. This one bald guy at the table pretends or tries to slit his own throat but there’s no blood. I run through the many fancy tables and it seems like people at each table are being grabbed and attacked. The maitre d' is running after me, a tall guy in a tux with longish dark sort of slicked back hair. He has the book ‘Ask and it is Given’ and he tries to throw it at me as he chases me. I jump through a large opening in the middle of the floor where you can look down onto the first floor. I land without hurting myself (float) and I run through an elevator that’s closing and make it through while someone else chasing me can’t get through in time. The maitre d' is running towards me from the other direction and I think he has the book again. I run outside the restaurant and escape. I start to figure out that maybe everyone there was trying to set up someone they knew to be killed and everyone was in on it. Then I woke up.

I’m in a ‘catch me if you can’ type scenario. Me and two other guys are on the run and in hiding, but we were in a movie. We realized we were caught when we looked at a chalkboard at the place we were staying saying something about all movies needing to do something and then only our movie was listed, so it was obvious they were trying to trick us and catch us. When I looked at it again, the text changed. That reality check didn’t sink in though. We jumped into some sewer/pool to escape. We had some contact with the detective trying to find us to mess with him.

Dream Blog: Day 2

Look I'm posting a blog on a Saturday, how consistent I am. Remember, I'm looking to do this for 30 days so if anyone is reading this (big IF) then stay on me if I miss any time.

So last night I had many different dreams, and I actually remembered to sit up and type them out after most of them. Two of them I forgot to type out after they happened but later when I woke up for good I was able to remember most of them so I added them on. I'll paste my typings in a minute but first I want to talk more about how to become lucid in a dream. This is an excerpt on "reality checks" from that wikibook I linked to yesterday:

"Reality checks are a method of discerning between dreams and reality. It is extremely important to perform these. One could say they are the “keys” to lucid dreaming. It is also extremely important to make sure that you expect these to produce dream results — you accept your reality, even when it is a dream. It would be counterproductive to expect real-life results in a dream, as the outcome of a reality check can be modified by the placebo effect. It won't affect outcomes in real-life (unless you are mentally ill!), but you will probably have a higher success rate in dreams."

Here are some reality checks it lists: Breathing while holding your nose, floating after you jump, words on books/signs changing when you look at them again, your hands having different amounts of fingers or strange colors, clocks displaying nonsensical numbers or symbols, and light switches not working properly (for some reason, light switches rarely work correctly in dreams).

"Choose a few reality checks which you will do regularly. Keep doing reality checks until you are convinced that you aren't dreaming. You should always carry out more than one reality check. If you find that it is not a dream, look around you and think of what would be different if it was a dream. If you do this it will make it more likely that you will do a reality check in a dream.

Apart from doing reality checks throughout the day, you also need to do a reality check immediately after you wake up. This helps you become lucid in false awakenings, when you begin to act out the following day in a dream."

So there you go, you need to get into the habit of testing reality so that this habit will follow you into dreams. This is easier said than done because it's easy to to forget to test reality throughout the day and when you first wake up. I'm going to try it out though. Here's a summary of the dreams I wrote down from last night (notice another fantasy football reference, I clearly spend too much time on FF sites):

I’m in a library or video game store. I’m looking for a guide for Zelda and one other game. The old worker takes a long time to get it for me (not Zelda, Mario world actually) and so I just take what I got and sit down and read. There are a lot of old people. The guide is actually about fantasy football. It has a few nuggets of info on each page and them some candy. There is a dishwasher near the old Nintendo manuals that is wet and possibly broken.

On the enterprise at ten forward, this scene is like the one where data is unsure about yar’s sister. Data and riker are talking about.

New dream: girl/woman just got an ‘amazing fact’, I can’t remember what it is though. Sort of one sentence advice.

I am somewhere exploring hallways, seems like people are getting crazy. I go down into a dark basement. I think I might be in a Home Depot type store but there is some crisis.

I’m with a group sort of like my Spain group. We’re waiting in a field for our plane to arrive. For some reason I’m naked as I’m laying down but some big tall girl is covering me up. Mary Kate Salerno comes off a plane and some of her DG friends in our group greet her and I go over to greet her.

Dream Blog: Day 1

Since the work nazis took away myspace and Howard Stern radio streaming yesterday, I've been forced to look for other forms of internet entertainment. I went back to Erin Pavlina's blog and started looking at her articles. Man, there was some good stuff there! I generally go to her husband Steve's blog which is about personal productivity and development, and that is where I heard his wife Erin on a podcast talking about lucid dreaming.

This is something that has fascinated me for some while and I remember taking out some library books on it maybe 7 years ago but nothing ever came of it. In case you don't know, a lucid dream is one in which you know it's a dream and you can control yourself and everything else in the dream if you want. Erin's blog has some really interesting stuff - she's a psychic and gives accounts of stuff she does and also her lucid dreaming. Her most recent blog about the dreaming describes the place she goes in her dreams called 'Naptown'. It's interesting because she didn't create it on purpose, she just kept waking up there. Also cool is that time passes in Naptown in real time, so she lives a sort of double life.

About a month ago I started a dream journal on my laptop to help me remember my dreams. That's the first step to having lucid dreams, remembering them in the first place. I stopped after a week or so though, I think I just forgot to keep up with it. But since falling in love with Erin's blog again, I made a renewed commitment. I downloaded a wikibook on lucid dreaming and ordered another book from amazon. Before I go to bed I keep my laptop at the foot of the bed and I lay down and repeat in my head that I am going to remember my dream. Eventually I fall asleep and I usually remember my dream in the morning.

I am going to report my progress and my dreams in this blog in order to have some accountability for this project. I really want to be able to lucid dream and I need some discipline so hopefully this will provide it to me. For one thing, I think it would be fun to be able to control your dreams, but also probably insightful since you get a one-on-one interaction with your subconscious. And as has been said before, it's not like you have something better to do while you're sleeping anyway.

So I'll talk about my dreams last night. I woke up this morning two or three times and sprung up, typed on my laptop what I remembered, closed it and fell back asleep. Sometimes my alarm woke me up (I abuse that snooze button), sometimes I woke up on my own.

The first dream I remember was at a fantasy football draft, and Reggie Bush got taken first overall. I'm the first pick in my draft FYI and I don't plan on taking him as my first pick. In a separate dream, I was pushing a guy around in a wheelchair for a while, he may have been John Locke from Lost. I remember thinking that he's not really paralyzed. At some point I took him to a restaurant where we saw a middle-aged woman in business attire sitting alone at a table. She winked and gestured for us to come over, but we went to a different table in the middle of the aisle. It was also empty but I believe we were waiting for other people. In a later dream I saw Jessica K in a parking lot, possibly outside of some sort of sporting event or party. We were going to the same party later so we went together, although she seemed sort of disinterested in general. The last thing I remember about it was us walking up to a house and some tall guys inside yelling out for us to come in. It too may have been some sort of fantasy draft.

I think these were separate dreams but all in the same cycle. I'll go over some other methods for remembering dreams and inciting lucid dreams in future blogs.