My road to lucidity

[Digitaluniverse]

With this topic I will try to cover my experiences and dreams that I have on my way to my first lucid dream.
It can be anything from pretty normal to very weird.

To start off with:

Since last saturday I started working with auto-suggestion. I listened to some helpful mp3's of Stephen LaBerge in which he talked about lucid dreams and reality checks. After that while I was doing different things I had an auto-suggestion mp3 with things like 'you are aware that you are dreaming' and 'you will remember to check your reality' in intervals.

During the night I had 3 dreams, in one of them Stephen LaBerge played a significant role. I have never dreamt about this guy. That, plus that I had such a remarkably good recall, made me feel quite good about these auto-suggestion things. Even though before I was quite skeptical about it.

Stephen LaBerge had made some kind of videogame. The only thing I saw of this was a scene in his own home. In the living room there were 2 doors on the same wall. One door gave entrance to Stephen's bedroom. In the game I looked inside and saw him standing in front of the mirror. Even though it wasn't really him, it was only an animation in the game. A 2D animation, because it was placed right in front of the door opening. So it wasn't really completely 3D what I saw there. It was a flat surface. Right at the end of when I continued to walk through his living room, as I turned, I saw his eyes, and only his eyes, change to look at me instead of his own figure.
After this there was a scene in some kind of spring in the middle of nature. There were rapids all around me and Stephen was sitting in one of the small ponds of water. He was talking about different kinds of dishes that are really good. I don't really remember what these were.

[Digitaluniverse]

Before I went to bed yesterday I did a lot of auto-suggestion again. Also thought a lot about that it also might be very good to wake up after every dream- or REM-sleep cycle during the night. I hanged some stickies around with texts like 'I am aware that I am dreaming' and 'I will remember all my dreams'.

The night was pretty hectic. I remember me waking up several times, thinking that I really had to mark in some way that I had been awake. I thought about just making a cross on paper, or writing down the time. The strange thing is that right now I am not sure anymore wether I really was awake or if it was all happening inside a dream.

Apart from all this fuss, of which I think occupied most of my mind during the night (but even this can be incorrect), I did had a dream that I could recall pretty well.
I saw a bus with a lot of classmates in it. It was about to depart on some kind of schooltrip. I had no clue there was a schooltrip going on and I was quite upset that I wasn't informed about this.

Another dream was even more vague. I was with a classmate and we were marveled about some kind of artwork that transcended the definition of 'painting' or 'sculpture'.

I don't really know how to mark these things about me waking up and thinking about how to write down stuff. Could I call this 'fragments' or should I just not count it as one?

[Digitaluniverse]

This morning I thought about how to keep me thinking about dreams and lucid dreams even while I'm not at home and I came up with this cool idea:



It says 'I am aware that I am dreaming'. And I will be reminded of this every time I'm checking the time, recieving a call, going to call someone, or anything else.

[feist]

Nice phone background! I used to use stuff like that as wallpapers on my pc!

I even carried stuff with me, like rings, bracelets and even poker chips, wich were supposed to help me with constant awareness. I switched it up so I wouldn't get used to any of those objects.

Something tells me you'll have your first LD soon enough!

[Sunshine]

(content removed by user request)

[Digitaluniverse]

Last night and this morning I think I recall at least 3 dreams, and 1 fragment. This night I stayed at my parents' place.

During the night I woke up a few minutes before 4 AM. First I only wrote down the time, but when I closed my eyes again I realized that there's a good chance I might forget what I was dreaming about. So I also wrote down some keywords.

Apparently this was a dream about school. In my dreams school is one of the most common subjects or locations. I have been to about 5 schools in my life, and they all have played some part in my dreams. Either in a dream-like way mixed into each other or just one of them. Several of my classmates were painting, most of them outside, which is very unusual.

Another dream was about a party where I went to with some classmates. I was talking about relationships and some time later the DJ made some time to thank the volunteers that made this party possible, whom were all dressed in light blue t-shirts.

Next to that one other dream about a strange kind of software which looked a lot like the MSN Plus chatlog viewer. It could, just like this real software, encode and decode textfiles.

The fragment was about a guy whom I don't know. He was making jokes about some kind of situation that happened.

[Digitaluniverse]

Geez, it has been a while. Gone through some hectic times. I went to Kassel to the Documenta art festival there. Had some trouble with recalling, and also was too distracted from it.

In the mean time I did had some recalls, just not too much.

From the 14th I had some good recall. I remember waking up at 4 AM and recalling fragments of a dream about my wooden music instrument, I was trying to improve it.

The next dream was about part of the house below my room was completely changed and had a garage added to it. My housemate was doing some kind of job there, but he changed into one of my classmates buying and selling amateur artwork. A guy visited him and showed him his artwork. It looked like some old renaissance painting, but instead it were several of these paintings cut out and put in front and behind each other, to create some strange perspective.

In another dream another classmate gave me some kind of card on which I could collect stamps for some kind of prize.
In yet another one I was in a club and I wanted to dance, I noticed people around me but didn't know anyone of them.

The last dream I recalled was me playing a mix of different strategy games I know, mainly Starcraft and Warcraft.

On the 15th of June I didn't get any recalls.

On the 16th I went to see a band live, afterwards I remember dreaming about it as well, but that's about it. Quite vague.

On the 17th I dreamt about some kind of mythic game that I was playing. It was an RPG and the main thing that I remember is that it looked a bit like Diablo 2, but it was mainly about giant birds and undead. I remember a skill tree in which I could distribute points over different skills that I wanted to 'learn'. There was a skill called 'small ghost', with a follow-up called 'ghost'.
I remember peeking up from a hole in the ground, from some kind of tunnel. I saw some creatures, but they were all quite far away, so I was safe.

On the 18th I overslept, I had to catch a bus for a schooltrip but I was way too late. I'm very lucky that I did manage to get there before it left, it had to wait for some other people.
But I did remember one dream of that night, even after all the hurry and stress!

[Digitaluniverse]

22th of June, I stayed at a friend's place for the night in an improvised bed. I remember waking up and realizing I had the strangest dreams. Unfortunately I didn't write down anything, shame on me!
When I got home I did write something, but it was almost nothing of what I remembered just after waking. The whole dream had quite a surrealistic feel to it. I realize that most dreams have this, but this one was exceptional.

23th: There was a small tree, a sapling, that I wanted to plant on a good spot. I was looking around for the best spot but I couldn't find one. In part of the dream I remember putting the sapling in a glass bottle so it could grow a bit further that way without having to plant it in the ground and I could always break the bottle. But I was afraid I might damage the roots when doing this.

On the 24th of June I remember four dreams.
One was about presentations at an unknown school for a teacher I've had in the past year.
In the second one I was smoking cigarettes with my parents next to me, but they didn't seem to care. My sister did.
The third one was about me living with some classmates in one place. One of them was leaving for quite some time, and me and my classmate were trying to figure out a good way to say goodbye.
In the fourth one I was trying to clean and fix things in quite a big toiletroom. There was water on the ground and I had to stand in the toilet itself to reach some things.

For the 25th I wrote down that I remembered something about different locations, but that's about it. I made a note that I really should wake up more and try to recall my dreams and to actually writing them down before even considering going back to sleep a bit more. I woke up a bit after 8 AM, but I dozed off again and woke up again at 11 AM. I don't like that at all.

[Digitaluniverse]

This morning I woke up remembering quite a lot. And I also thought it was quite impressive.

In the first part I was at a school building, and I was going to some toilet room there. I was thinking about World of Warcraft and my brother asking me to borrow it from me, but I said he couldn't, because it was already registered on my name.
Then something happened that I don't know, I fainted or something, and I was taken to a bed. A teacher that I don't know that well 'rescued' me.
I was lying on a bed with a nice clean white sheet covering me. The bed was standing on a small sandy island, probably only a few meters across. The island was connected with the actual beach by a wooden pier that was about 20 meters long. The pier was attached to a wooden beach house on the other side.
Two classmates and friends were swimming around and suddenly I had joined them. There was some kind of fish that chewed on our feet, I tried to make it go away or to attack it with a knife, but it was way too fast. It wasn't really scary, but it was annoying. One of my friends raised one of her feet out of the water, and one of her toes was clearly chewed on. A next moment she did this again and one of the toe-nails was almost falling off.

Another dream was about Starcraft and me winning a game with the Zerg race.

[dryalantha]

Glad to see you've got your dream recall back. 
Sounds like a big adventure indeed!

[Digitaluniverse]

Dreams of this night have been vivid again, I like it. But there is still loads of room for improvement!

I was with my class somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in some kind of forest. We had to stay over there but there wasn't really a way we could sleep there without some covers or a roof over our heads.
So people started to build some kind of thing that we could all sleep in. It had two floors. On the bottom (just the ground of the forest) people put down a big layer of leaves, this was where we would sleep. Above that there came a layer of dirt and twigs and wood, supported by big trunks. But the distance between the ground and this second floor was not even 1,5 meter.
There was no way I was going to lie in there. There were probably all kinds of insects and other creatures crawling around through the leaves, plus this layer of dirt above our heads could never be stable. It would probably collapse.
So I left the group and put up my own small tent some distance away. I tried to put the tent well and straight, but I was having trouble with it. Me struggling with the ropes of the tent is where the dream ended.

In the other dream I remember clearly I was with some old friends in a grassy area. One of them brought microphones, an amplifier and speakers, but we weren't using them. One of my friends went off to some place in the distance. Then some girls from another study at my school joined us, I don't know them that well at all IRL, and I also don't like them that much. One of them asked if they could use the microphones. But because I thought they might be of the guy who just walked away I said no.

I remember some vague parts about this place where one of my friends walked off to, it was mountainious. The weather was nice.

[Digitaluniverse]

28th of June.

Quite crappy recall. Although later on I remembered something about one of my housemates all of a sudden studying art and painting.
Another vague memory of me and my brother walking down a mountainroad, forests surrounding us. Quite a nice view!

29th of June

No recall at all. I really really really should not but off my alarm -all the time- and fall back asleep. Really ruining my dream recall in this way. :/

[dryalantha]

I really really really should not but off my alarm -all the time-

Maybe you can program yourself to wake up spontaneously? Both alarm clocks and falling asleep again is bad for DR.
Or maybe you can fall asleep again, after you wrote down some keywords. 

[Digitaluniverse]

[Digitaluniverse]

Quite a weak recall for this morning. Almost next to nothing.

I did WBTB around 4 AM, I remember some vague aspects about some friends and a place. A mountain ridge.

After waking up this morning around 10, nothing.
Later on I remembered something about a music instrument and screws. I was putting it back together.