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.