inSPADES

[AspirationRealized]

(Formerly "RealizedAspiration")

Whenever I wake up
Try and take the shape of
Turn into the whole wide world I made up...

Off!

The lights... are... golden... off...
"Hello Tomorrow", Karen O


I'm posting this in hopes that it will aid my dream recall, and in good faith that someday I'll have a dream worth reading, or a Lucid dream at all.

More edits eminent.


Aspirations
Waking life...
-Better dream recall. Consistency, remembering at least one dream every morning and remembering more than one dream a night. Clarity, in what is sensed, felt, and the general plot of a dream.
-A more regular sleeping pattern. A less intrusive way of being woken up.
-Learning how to truly clear the mind, and adapting principles of Dream Yoga as I see fit.

Lucid...
-To have my first.
-To attain and retain lucidity in accord to what I desire.
-To test the fabrics of my dream reality. Flying, passing through walls, going to places I've been before in a blink of the eye or creating a place from my own head. If any difficulties arise, then tearing down that set of expectations will be in order.
-To summon her, to hold her and talk to her. I'll ask her what she is dreaming about that night, then ask her real self and compare the two descriptions. EDIT: "she" will need to be replaced.
-To summon Clairity, since she wants to be in someone's dream.
-To summon BillyBob and Mr Ears for an in depth discussion of how to improve lucidity... while in a lucid dream.



Legend

Lucid
Non Lucid


Notes

-The dream title will be the reply title
-If there was a significance to that day, it will be shown in bold before the date
-All dates will be night of, not the morning the dream was recalled
-If a technique was used to induce a dream, it will be shown in parentheses after the date
-All dates will be color coded to represent whether the dream was Lucid or not
-Actual dream descriptions will be emphasized by italics

My DJ at Dreamviews - The first page shows entries before I came to Mortal Mist. If you see Man of Steel's reply, you've gone too far.

Old Signatures...

[Josh]

Nice start, now make sure to keep 'er up!

[AspirationRealized]

I'll start this off by describing my Dream travels, both before and after I started seriously pursuing Lucid Dreaming.

Dreaming has always been a mystery to me. Before I knew better, I was one of those people who would respond to the topic of dreaming (rare in day to day conversation) by saying "I don't dream." This was before I learned that my recall was just terrible, and that everyone dreams like it or not. Almost every night back then, I would fall asleep, black out, then wake up. The times I remembered dreams were few and far between, they were always very strange, and always fragmented.

I first came across the term lucid dreaming when I was pilfering through one of several dreaming books that my dad happened to have in his library of everything (from football to bonzai trees, do it yourself medicine to martial arts, the crafting of Kentucky rifles to all manner of instruments... everything, ok?). Dreams had always fascinated me, since when people talked about them they seemed so excited, and their dreams were always so interesting in how odd they were. It was part envy that made me want to learn more about dreams, since I had no cool stories to offer anyone about my subconscious (still don't :/).

Alright, I'll admit it... my first contact with Lucid dreaming was in a sexual context. This particular book started its lucid discussion with someone describing a lucid dream in which they had sex with a female coed they knew in real life, on a tennis court in a public park, people and all. Being about thirteen, fourteen at the time, needless to say this caught my attention. I later found out what Lucid dreaming was, the infinite possibilities of it, and I sort of lost hope in the beginning when the book proceeded to explain how difficult Lucid dreaming was, and required a familliarity with dreams in the first place.

From then on, I left it alone a while. The next time it ever came up in my mind was when I happened to catch a glimpse of Waking Life on HBO. The movie seemed to catch my interest, but when it mentioned lucid dreaming I suddenly remembered what it was. Again, I sort of left it alone this time...

Now we come to this year. In my Introduction to Psychology course (I'm a freshman in college, and as fate would have it I'm taking my final exam for this very class tomorrow), lucid dreaming was brought up again. I got excited, telling everyone that you could do anything in dreams provided you're aware you are dreaming (as I had learned in the books), and I could tell by the confused looks on their faces that lucid dreaming wasn't exactly a mainstream topic. My professor seemed to know a bit, and continued explaining it, while I helped with a few things I had read.

That night I decided to look up Lucid dreaming, to see what it was all about. Dreamviews captured my attention, and this is funny, by the cool pictures in its introduction. How one thing in each picture would be significantly blue... I'm a sucker for monochromatics, or when significance is given to only certain colors (kinda like in Sin City). I read the introduction and was pleased, so I decided to read tutorials. I found all of them helpful, but BillyBob's connected the most for some reason.

When I joined the community, I was warmly welcomed. More importantly, my non lucid dreams were getting recalled better, as my mind focused on dreaming. I would use autosuggestion before bed, and it seemed to work, so I continued it.

Going from blacking out every night to remembering fragments of your dreams several mornings in a week is a nice enough leap, but I am by no means satisfied. I've yet to have a lucid dream, and I feel there are several reasons for this, and all of them are relating to me.

My daily life is not a very healthy setting for organized dreaming... I go to sleep and wake up at different times, and wake up by voice instead of an alarm. This means my first thought is whatever someone is saying to me, and not the dreams that are fleeting from my memory. This lack of organization or a regular sleep schedule has placed a limit I know now to be self-inflicted. Because I feel this is a detriment and an obstacle to my lucidity, it now is. Even with this knowledge it remains a limit, first because I don't believe I can change it yet and second because I am sort of allowing it as motivation to put my life back in order.

I have lots of stress coming from several different areas of my life, both internal and external. These are personal issues of mine, and although I wouldn't lament people knowing them, I realize they are things I need to fix myself and that talking to others (and burdening them with my little problems) will do very little to resolve them.

There are a lot of things going on at once, but I am trying to keep my mind from being pulled in all these different directions so that I can be centered. Once I am focused, I feel I can tackle these issues one at a time, and more relevant to this discussion, I can dedicate more attention and dedication to lucid dreaming. I am hoping now that I am in a community that is deadset on moving forward as a whole, that it will motivate me to do the same.

I have linked above my DJ at Dreamviews. The first page (I'm just blindly assuming that one page is 20 replies) are all dreams recorded before I joined Mortal Mist. From this day on I will be adding entries to both, but perhaps keeping this one a bit more tidy. I'm already starting to like it better here... in any event, if you're curious about my first steps into the dreaming realm, those are it.

[AspirationRealized]

First dream since joining Mortal Mist. May 9th, 2008. Friday (None)

Not all that impressive really... but at least I recalled something. It probably has something to do with the fact that I was left undisturbed to sleep in (which NEVER happens at my house) and so I did... I slept for twelve hours.

My earliest memory in this dream was going outside in the backyard with my brother. It was foggy like all of my dreams have been, but it looked just like the pavement we had for our patio, except the door I had entered from was coming in the wrong angle... simply put, I had opened my backdoor, but when I stepped outside I had come from the side door of our garage, which is on an adjacent wall to the backdoor way... anyway, this didn't really catch my attention as much as the huge snake body that spanned the patio and dropped off the edge of the concrete.

It was limp, so we just assumed it was dead. It didn't scare my brother or myself, it was more of "this is random..." feeling. (NOTE: My recollection of this dream image wise didn't involve many people. I don't even remember seeing my brother's face or looking at him, but I had a "knowing" feeling he was there. The plotline I remember clear enough but the images are foggy and fragmented at best)

I decided to pick up its head with a stick, or some other rod like object. I lfited it up in such a way that the head would face the backdoor, that way my brother could get the rest of my family and i could show it to them. As I neared the head of the snake (which was so big it could only be an anaconda), I saw that there was blood leaking from its mouth and some sort of bugs were eating at it. They were like spiders, but they had the shiny bodies of beetles, that gleamed green or red in the light. When I lifted the head of the anaconda, some web was attached, and I asked my brother to pull it off of the head of the snake, which he did.

As I lifted it up, I held it higher than my head, and with the snake's head facing forward the body became its "neck". I think that this image, a vertical element as a "neck" with the head faced forward at the top is what made it change it change to an almost equine body. Like horses or antelopes, a neck with a head on top, the snout reaching outward. And so, the snake grew four legs and a large body. I actually remember briefly watching the front legs come together at the chest, which is something we have to do with larger forms (mannerquins) in taxidermy.



By the time the image of a four legged mammal became apparent, it was no longer a snake. It had fur, and had even grown horns. The horns were that of a bushbuck (above), but the body was way too big for that animal. I remember looking at the horns curiously and reaching up to touch them (again, like non lucids are, I don't see any of this as impossible). I must've startled it, as it ran away from me, but left its horns behind... they were still in my hand.

It must've gone through the backdoor, because my next set of memory had me in the living room (if you remember the door problem before, this is the room I had exited from the garage side door, but the animal went through the backdoor and ended up where he was supposed to be). The animal had gotten smaller now, but kept the same skin (not exactly like a bushbuck, I just recall a general brown pattern), and the same head shape. I could see a break in the skin where it used to have horns, but I didn't have the horns with me anymore. My parents were sitting on the leather couch that is actually in my living room, only it was against the wall that the backdoor is on, and thats not where our couch goes. The dog-antelope ran around playfully, jumping up and along the couch and around my parents just like a dog.

I remember watching it and saying out loud to my family "but it started out as a snake...". I didn't voice my thoughts, which were, if it had a snake brain, how was it acting like a dog? (don't ask me why I think that the brain would remain a snake... at this point I'm looking at a taxidermy form come to life, with its horns removed, that is acting like a dog... this question really isn't that weird)

The dog immediately flopped over as I said it started as a snake, and began to curl up, much like a cat does... however, it was obvious looking at it that the poor dog-antelope was trying to coil up like a snake now that I had pointed out an obvious flaw in its reality.

Not gaining lucidity here is what bothers me most. Sounds pretty weird huh, a snake becoming an antelope not bothering me as much of this? I'll explain. My world had changed because of my thought, and this cause and effect chain was VERY clear to me.

Still, I didn't get lucid, and this is the last of the dream that I remember. I can't even recall if it ended there and I woke up, or if I blacked out and then woke up a bit later.

The good thing about this dream is I can point out its origins. That day (yesterday) I was helping my dad with career day at my little sister's school. He was sick from the day before and only made it halfway through the classes before he had to go home and leave me to present. I taught the kids about Taxidermy, with the mount of an Axis deer, a few mannequins, a few skins, glass eyes, etc. This would explain why the anaconda became a taxidermy mount. One of the questions I'd always ask the kids was what some of their favorite animals were, and they could raise their hands to see if I had worked on them. I distinctly remember one kid asking if there was ever an anaconda mounted, but why this stuck with me in my unconscious baffles me. An anaconda isn't so odd when animals like hippos, koala bears, and platypuses were also questioned.

[AspirationRealized]

Dunno if anyone else does something like this in their journal, but in this reply here I will be detailing the progress of being serious about Lucid dreaming and my sleep habits for one week. EDIT: Extended to two weeks because of a lack of results.

As a general guideline, I'll be following a schedule I lifted from one of BillyBob's tutorials. As the days of the week go by, I'll write down my experiences that night, good or bad.

Week 1...

-Sunday, May 11th (WBTB)
All conditions were perfect.

I had just finished posting my "For Lucid Virgins" thread in Seekers Corner, and even commented that things like these threads would usually trigger lucidity simply because of the confidence they gave to people. One person would become lucid after responding there, and then another and another until responding there became instant lucid success (as I had seen in other threads elsewhere). The idea was that I'd have my first lucid too and start the tradition here.

My physical dream journal was disorganized and used for other purposes, so I fixed it up and removed anything that wasn't related to dreaming. I even wrote "dream is destiny" in the subject line (its a red comp book), like I had always meant to.

Most importantly, I was ready to sleep on time. It was around 11:30 when I was actually in my bed, which would make my WBTB time 4:30 (five hours later) and my wake up time 7:30 (eight hours later). I had both times set in my alarm clock.

Best of all, I was feeling very positive about the whole thing, since all of the conditions were right. I dream rehearsed for a few minutes, thinking of what I was going to do in my lucid dream tonight (not "in the event of", or "if I had one." I was going to do this, because it was inevitable I would be lucid). I then cleared my head, and let myself fall to sleep.

But it didn't happen. I tried clearing my head, and even letting it race about on its own... and I remained aware. Awake. I became uncomfortable, which only happens when I'm restless, and tossed and turned. When I checked the clock, another hour had gone by. Another half hour. Another hour. I adjusted my alarms to offset the time I lost.

I was becoming extremely frustrated. Soon, my WBTB alarm would swallow up the usual time I wake up in the morning, rendering the technique useless. And when it was around 2:45 (more than three hours now of not being able to sleep), I was furious. I smacked my alarm clock against the wall and threw my comp book as well, getting out of bed and into the hallway.

I took a shower, which I sometimes do to calm down. I let the water run hot enough so I could feel a slight burn, and waited for me to center again. At some point in the three hours, I had resolved to take a break from practicing lucid dreaming, so as not to become frustrated again... but as I calmed, I decided that I wouldn't be restless every night, and that this was probably just because past 2 AM is when I had been going to sleep lately and 11:30 was too drastic a change too soon.

In the morning, I woke up several times. Before I had knocked my alarm clock off of the table by my bed, I had turned its alarms off, so I woke up naturally to the stir of my family in the morning. I had a very foggy recollection of a dream, but I ended up killing it by going back to sleep, as I didn't feel it was important enough to go find my dream journal (wherever it was now) and document it.

So there's the first night on schedule. Tomorrow night is another WBTB night, we'll see how it goes.

-Monday, May 12th (WBTB)
Better luck sleeping this time.

I went to bed around 12:45, picking up my alarm clock and my dream journal comp book from the ground. I set my first alarm five hours later and my second alarm eight hours later, like last time. Dream rehearsed as I did last time, but fell asleep easier (I was tired from missing a few hours the previous night).

When the alarm went off, I woke up, almost immediately remembering why I was waking up so soon. However, I had no recollection of any dreams. I sat up, looking around at my room critically, coming up with as many things to reality check on as possible. I treated it as a false awakening, and actually checked as if I was convinced I was dreaming.

I left my room for a bit, continuing to keep my mind on lucid dreaming. When I returned, I sat up another five minutes, making my time awake fifteen minutes total. I reminded myself what I was going to do when I hit lucidity a few minutes from now, laid down, and fell asleep quickly.

I woke up with nothing. No dreams, not even non lucids. I feel that I'm going to have to vary my timing and find out by trial and error what my best target time for a WBTB is, but I will try the standard five hours a few more times before setting out to do it. Tomorrow is one more WBTB, maybe I'll do better this time.

My question is, is it possible to think of lucid dreaming too much? In these WBTB, even before waking up I am dead set on lucid dreaming. Tonight I will try a more relaxed approach, focusing intently only after I wake up.

-Tuesday, May 13th (WBTB...?)
Due to my waking up time being shifted, it made it near impossible to do a WBTB successfully.

I turned off my alarm, but surprisingly woke up just fifteen minutes short of what my target time would've been. Somehow I remembered to do a FILD (part of Billybob's schedule is that you attempt a FILD ANYTIME you wake up in the middle of the night without stimulus). It was maybe the second time I've tried it, I sent the impulse to my fingers to wiggle, without actually wiggling them. Nothing happened after a while and I gave up, going back to sleep.

Good news is this approach (fuh-get-about-it) was more relaxed. I would call this night actually a DILD... but a failed one. No lucidity, and no recollection of any dreams at all.

A resounding failure -echoes-

Tomorrow is a scheduled DILD. Maybe the simplest of techs will work, and I will try not to focus so intently that it stresses me out.

-Wednesday, May 14th (DILD)
Die, pj?

I have a vague fragment of being inside of a video game, where people could make vehicles like motorcycles appear and vanish under them, and we all had weapons. Thats not the weird thing... one of my opponents was pj >.> and I shot a rocket launcher at him.

This of course, was a non lucid, and was too fragmented to be considered a complete dream in my upcoming Workbook entry. So no lucidity. I woke up by my alarm, got nothing, and went back to sleep a bit more. Then I woke up again with this fragment.

This marks the most progress thus far, but its still not very satisfying. I wonder if anyone else has shot a rocket launcher at pj while chasing him in a motorcycle, in their dreams?

-Thursday, May 15th (WILD)
If only REM cycles were constant...

I went to sleep WAY too late for this, and I knew it. Between talking to a few people about dreaming subjects and inviting a few people over this way, I lost track of time. It was 1 AM or past it when I finally got to bed, meaning my target time for the WILD would be 6 AM. I took a few minutes to practice focus on my breathing and nothing else before going to sleep, and I achieved some pretty good results. I became lost in my breathing, and I could feel my body growing heavier... or not as much heavier as having less feeling. Like not having skin... whenever I realized this and the thought came to mind, I'd grow more sensitive. But I could still revert back to that point pretty easily. I decided that was good enough practice and hoped for the best conditions when I awoke.

I woke up naturally, before my alarm clock. Bad habits are coming back to haunt me it seems... I'm waking up after four or five hours of sleep, which is what I used to get regularly because of my bad sleeping schedule. It was creeping close to my target time anyway, so I turned that alarm off and sat up. My sleep hadn't been very sound, so I wasn't as drowsy as I'd have liked... I laid almost immediately and began to focus on my breathing.

Pretty much every distraction that was possible began to bother me. Morning light was coming through the blinds, my dad had left the TV on in the living room way too loud, bird were chirping outside my window, I was feeling pains in my back from sleeping wrong, and I felt hunger pangs... which I almost never feel. I attempted to keep focus, but between all of this it was near impossible and I've yet to gather the proper equipment (ear plugs, blindfold) to render these distractions useless. After just a few minutes of trying I went back to sleep, waking up with recollection so vague the only thing I could remember was that I had dreamt of something, but I had no clue at all what it was.

This is disappointing because I've always felt closest to WILDs after my first attempt brought some surprising results (for me, anyway). I also realize that doing this at 6 AM isn't the best time unless you have something to block out all the distractions, so this is largely my fault.

Two more days, and one of them's another WILD. Better luck next time?

-Friday, May 16th (DILD)
Another day, another failure.

Went to bed relatively early, woke up exactly eight hours later with no recollection. Dream rehearsal before bed? Check. Reality checking appropriately all day(and all week?)? Check. Keeping my mind on Lucid Dreaming constantly? Check.

One more chance.

-Saturday, May 17th (WILD...?)
Because of some family stuff late at night, I was up too late to attempt a WILD. I counted this as a DILD night, so I'll do an extra WILD next week.

I'm extending this to three weeks, since results have been humiliatingly bad. It'll also give me a chance to experiment with different WBTB times.

Week 2...

-Sunday, May 18th (WBTB)
Alarm hijinks...

I thought I had set the alarm for four and a half hours after sleeping (instead of the typical five of past attempts) but apparently in my sleepiness I had set the morning time to wake me up instead. So this is a failure. I'll try four and a half hours again... but I did get a fragmented dream out of it...

Guess its better than more 0's in my workbook...

-Monday, May 19th (WBTB)
Ah, the consequences for mistakes...

I can see now that my sleeping habits before this switch are behind a lot of the chaos. My body hasn't gotten used to the new pace, and I end up waking up four or five hours after sleeping regardless of alarm - because this is how much sleep I'd usually get. Afterwards, I am very restless, and irritated at it. I end up losing too much sleep for my target times, or my target times become so late because of my lack of sleep, that its becomes impossible to do the technique.

No results whatsoever. None.

-Tuesday, May 20th (WBTB)
Nothing.

-Wednesday, May 21st (WILD)
First dream of any sort since I started Determination.

I woke up five hours after sleeping for my WILD, only sitting up for a few moments, enough to RC a few times and make sure it wasn't a false awakening. This is because when I wake up I gain alertness much more quickly than most do, apparently, and the trick to WILDing is to fall asleep afterall. I needed to be as groggy as possible, but even now, sleep wasn't swallowing me up at all.

I had no conclusive results, but I did make more progress. There are several external distractions no matter what the conditions at my house. I like to keep my fan running but it creates an awkward and unsequential noise. Usually there will be birds chirping right outside my window, and every other manner of distraction. Tonight, however, I was more successful than ever at blocking these out. Internal distractions abound as well... hunger pangs, and just the sensation of my body. I had success losing this as well. The trick right now is to use my breathing as an anchor, without gripping it for dear life. I can best describe it as the ideal being on a chain hooked to the anchor, floating far enough away from it to be a separate entity but a distance comfortable enough for me to observe it, and most importantly, still keeped tied to it.

After about an hour of several attempts, I turned in and decided to try to have a dream... which I did, and its my newest addition to this thread.

By the way, if anyone else is reading this, could you let me know? I always wonder if my babbling is ever read.

-Thursday, May 22nd (WILD)
Now for the WILD that was originally intended in the schedule...

I ate two slices of pizza before bed on a full stomach and was STILL hungry when I woke up. What the hell? I've noticed that now that I'm getting more sleep (and drinking more water) that I am hungry more than before. Back when I got five hours of sleep a night, I wouldn't be hungry at all in the morning and could barely finish lunch. Now I'm hungry all morning and order seconds >.> I guess the best explanation is that my body is actually resting and repairing, and that requires more energy. Which is a good thing.

I woke up, only staying up a bit before laying back down. This time I had woke up after four hours of sleeping, in hopes of identifying my best REM period. This is worse than the five hour one, but I did get good practice on my breathing.

No results. I woke up earlier than my alarm in the morning, to my mother's voice, which destroyed any recall.

-Friday, May 23rd (DILD)
No results...

Slept later but woke up later. Recall was gangraped by my little sister and her best friend waking me up in the morning and bribing me with chocolate donuts to walk them up to the park.

For clarity, and in the spirit of my mentor, Mr Ears, its time for a list of things that would contribute most to my lucid journey:

-Living somewhere out on my own and a reasonable distance away from my family.

-That is all.

-Saturday, May 24th (WILD...?)
Interruptions made this switch to a DILD. So another replacement next week is in order.

Blame my family, a very late dinner, and Hideo Kojima.

EDIT: There are three fragments contained here, so I shifted them over on the dream counter to the date of my most notable fragment, where I attempt to kill pj.

[pj]

Dunno if anyone else does something like this in their journal, but in this reply here I will be detailing the progress of being serious about Lucid dreaming and my sleep habits for one week.

I think this is a GREAT idea.  Hopefully you will have your first lucid in this week, and then you'll have a real nice record of everything surrounding it.

Hang in there!  You're doing it right.

[AspirationRealized]

Thanks very much.

[Burned up]

I like your "lucid virgin" description.  For me, I don't look for lucidity.  It just sometimes happens to me at night.  Don't know what the sexual equivalent language for that would be (and would perhaps rather not go there).

And I'm thinking ... are you proud of your virginity or frustrated you can't lose it? 

[AspirationRealized]

It just sometimes happens to me at night.  Don't know what the sexual equivalent language for that would be (and would perhaps rather not go there).

If you're a virgin, thats called rape. If you have a girlfriend and you're not a virgin, thats being lucky to have such an adventurous woman sleeping next to you xP (waking up to it, y'know)

And I'm thinking ... are you proud of your virginity or frustrated you can't lose it? 

Well, I'm an actual virgin as well, in that fact I'm proud. But when it comes to lucidity, I'm frustrated I haven't had one yet.

I suppose thats one spot where the term "lucid virgin" doesn't stick. And I'm sure its not my term XD I prolly borrowed it somewhere, but I've used it all the time... I dunno. Thanks though

[AspirationRealized]

May 21st, 2008. Wednesday (Failed WILD)

After my failed WILD attempts, I actually had a dream... which has been scarce so far.

Its all very foggy as always, but I recall being in a school of some sort and our class had to present the concept of lucid dreaming to the community. This involved going outside in groups and presenting to the public. For some reason I ditched my partner, even though our project wasn't even finished and she was trying to write it up quickly before we went on. I, instead, went out and helped two others present the idea of lucid dreaming to a crowd of people.

I don't recall my helping of the first kid, or even who they were, but I do remember that I talked a lot of the time and that they didn't know what they were doing, hence I pretty much saved their ass. The second person I remember faintly resembling an old classmate of mine, but its been so long I don't even recall his name, just his face. For some reason he had a little robot miniature of himself dancing around in the street around the crowd in his presentation, and again, I was talking a lot of the time and helped him to succeed.

I don't know how it switched, but I was now in a large room with many rows of tables. There was a group of girls, one of which I somehow got into an argument about incomes. Often times when I argue in a dream, its just nonsenseical sentences, but at the time they seem like the end all be all of debate, conclusive and awe inspiring.

A guy a table or two behind them seemed to be irritated or embarassed about something or other I had said, when I had come to talk to him. He then transformed into a dragon, knocking over the table and flying across the room in a chase after me. At this point, I assumed the role of one of my Roleplay characters, named Ravage. His design is almost completely stolen from the Ravage character of the Unreal championship games, except I expanded on the design and customized it for my story long ago. My Ravage was a creature born from nightmares, an amalgamation of sharp rough metal, strong flesh, coagulated blood from fallen enemies, and shadows. He could stand on two legs or go on all fours like a wolf, crawling across different surfaces with the dexterity of a spider, as his hands and feet had razor sharp claws (and the rest of his body was a general assortment of spikes). He was probably my most vicious character in my RPing days, extremely powerful and just nasty in general.

This part of the dream is probably most important. When the concept of Ravage came to me, I had the thought process of what I would do to assume his role. My normal body leapt forward, and as I landed on all fours I felt myself transform into this character. I bounded between the tables with reckless abandon, looking over my shoulder as I quickly galloped for the dragon that was flying towards me, knocking over the tables I had just passed from. Its important to note here that the roomw as once filled with people sitting at the tables, but I noticed none of them now. The iamges weren't so clear as the plot was, but I could hear my roars and his roars. When I did a sharp turn and approached the dragon, jumping towards it as it descended upon me, my alarm clock woke me up.

As for real life causes for these dreams, I find this dream to be a mix of several things that've happened recently. I visited my high school when my sister won a scholastic award and was given a reception there with all the other bright children, and I had old memories of school and even saw a few juniors that I had recognized. Take this in with the fact that I am constantly looking up lucid dreaming, and my dream was about lucid dreaming instruction (don't you hate it when you talk about lucid dreaming in a dream and don't become lucid?). As for Ravage coming in, its probably because I was looking up Metal Gear stuff, and the Metal Gear Solid 4 game coming out has a character that moves simillar to Ravage, named Crying Wolf, a woman who is in a quadraped cybernetic suit.



It might be important to note that I recalled another dream briefly as I woke up for my WILD. However, I can't recall much except to know that it was another very odd story which I was a part of, and took place in an odd mansion-esque setting. I have a feeling that the story was rather deep, but don't we always?

[Burned up]

Yes AspiR, I believe that there is a deeper level to dreams than simple PDP (previous day's processing).

I know many people who do online games etc report dreaming of online experiences like you have.  I guess I would start by asking what it is I identify with the characters that appear in the dream - Ravage and Crying Wolf in your case.  What are they to you IRL as well as the dream.  What do you want them to do that you can't do yourself?  But then again I'm interested in dream analysis more than many.

Like you I haven't yet WILDed or DILDed or anything like that so the race to be first out of of us two is still open
(but I do occasionally LD seemingly in a random fashion)

[AspirationRealized]

Yes AspiR, I believe that there is a deeper level to dreams than simple PDP (previous day's processing).

I know many people who do online games etc report dreaming of online experiences like you have.  I guess I would start by asking what it is I identify with the characters that appear in the dream - Ravage and Crying Wolf in your case.  What are they to you IRL as well as the dream.  What do you want them to do that you can't do yourself?  But then again I'm interested in dream analysis more than many.

Like you I haven't yet WILDed or DILDed or anything like that so the race to be first out of of us two is still open
(but I do occasionally LD seemingly in a random fashion)

Ravage was my character concept of raw brutal power. It makes sense, somewhat, that when threatened with a transforming DC I would transform into him myself. However, I haven't paid Ravage any mind in months as I created him right before I retired from RPing.

Crying Wolf is nothing to me but a cool looking boss in an upcoming game. However, I can't deny the simillarity in its movements to Ravage's four legged gallop.

As for doing things I can't do myself... I don't think Ravage very well applies. My characters often embody some attribute, and he embodies something very dark and menacing... which aren't my qualities at all. And I don't want them to be.

I'm glad someone is reading >.> DJ's are more for personal use than anything, but then again, I could post all of this in a wordpad just as well.

[Burned up]

Ravage was my character concept of raw brutal power. It makes sense, somewhat, that when threatened with a transforming DC I would transform into him myself. However, I haven't paid Ravage any mind in months as I created him right before I retired from RPing.

Crying Wolf is nothing to me but a cool looking boss in an upcoming game. However, I can't deny the simillarity in its movements to Ravage's four legged gallop.

As for doing things I can't do myself... I don't think Ravage very well applies. My characters often embody some attribute, and he embodies something very dark and menacing... which aren't my qualities at all. And I don't want them to be.

A-ha.  That'll be your dark (shadow) side
Kind of - we have the capacity to be anything we can imagine and hence we can imagine "someone" who is everything we're not.  RPGs bring this out in us.  Dreams even more so - hence DCs with extreme characteristics.

I'm glad someone is reading >.> DJ's are more for personal use than anything, but then again, I could post all of this in a wordpad just as well.

You have 101 views and 11 replies - for every contributor, expect 10 viewers.

[AspirationRealized]

You have 101 views and 11 replies - for every contributor, expect 10 viewers.

Thats true, although I would have to bring up the fact that a vast majority of the viewers are the type to look at something for ten seconds and decide if its worth reading. My stuff is usually tldr'd, or missed because of a lack of lucids... or dreams at all for that matter.

[Burned up]

You have 101 views and 11 replies - for every contributor, expect 10 viewers.

Thats true, although I would have to bring up the fact that a vast majority of the viewers are the type to look at something for ten seconds and decide if its worth reading. My stuff is usually tldr'd, or missed because of a lack of lucids... or dreams at all for that matter.

Yes that can be a problem.  But don't let that put you off the discipline of keeping a DJ.  From experience, it does help.