it's all in your mind

Today I discovered that thinking about lucid dreaming hard enough before going to sleep will eventually give you a lucid dream. Or lucid dreams, as in my case. Wait, that's not news isn't it - that's essentially MILD. So yeah, MILD works! I did some WILD attempts during my morning nap/WBTB attempt because I wanted to see whether I could attain lucidity at will instead of solely relying on reality checks. They failed, naturally, because I had a very hard time trying to keep my body still for 30+ minutes. This made me feel utterly annoyed, since I've been trying so hard to get back my lucid dreams after a two-week dry spell. I then went to sleep thinking of nothing but lucid dreaming, sort of like telling my Subconscious "you better give me one this time or else".

Within minutes, I found myself in an altered version of my room, and I immediately realized I was dreaming. Reality check confirmed this - I had a total of 12 fingers. After stabilising the dream, I decided to take some dream acid. Found a random tablet on my table, imagined it was LSD, and swallowed it. The surroundings immediately became wobbly and distorted, and colours seemed to be intensified. Now, I never took acid IRL (sad but true) but I guess tripping in my lucid dream was not that bad, although the effects of the dream LSD was not as intense as the real thing. Yay for successful dream drug experimentation! I took Delysid once in my dream before, but it didn't yield any noticeable effects. The closest thing I had to a psychedelic experience was with pot, but then again I was not lucid. This one is the best indeed.

Afterwards, I headed straight to the window and noticed that I was on the fifth floor. My first thought was to jump out of the window, since it's been long since I last had a proper free-falling attempt. I did reality check again (just to make sure I wouldn't end up killing myself), saw a normal pair of hands which morphed into a 12-fingered one within minutes. I jumped without hesitation. Levitated for a while, then dream gravity took over and before I knew it I was lunging towards the ground. The feelings were so intense that I accidentally lost my lucidity and slipped out of the dream. Realizing I was no longer lucid, I attempted DEILD and went back into the dream.

I couldn't think of anything better to do, so I decided to summon two of my favourite persons, Raphael and Adrien. I called out Adrien's name first, but no one responded. I tried to call him using his real name, still no response. The same thing happened when I tried to summon Raphael. I thought that I could have a better success rate if I look for them in one of the many rooms in my house (the number of rooms doubled in my dream. There were now ten rooms along the hallway). Opened the door of a room, found a random person amidst random stuffs but no Raphael/Adrien. I was preoccupied with my mission to find them that I forgot to stabilise the dream further, causing it to fade rapidly. What happened afterwards was not vivid enough for me to recall, but I believe I drifted in and out of a very long semi-lucid dream.

I'm going to try MILD again tonight, just to see if it works every single time. It's Stephen LaBerge's favourite, so why not.

A list of crazy ass lucid dreaming acronyms used in this entry, just in case

Can I have more creepy dreams?

Most people hate nightmares. There are even cases where people refused to sleep after having recurrent nightmares. I guess I am one of the lucky few who rarely have nightmares, despite having rather freaky dreams. But as a lucid dreamer whose primary method is DILD, I can't help but to think that it'll be good if I could have more dreams of creepy nature so that I could attain lucidity more often. Pretty wtf eh? Most of my longer dream induced lucid dreams started as some sort of nightmare, so I guess I could say that hahahahaha.

Anyway, last night I listened to isochronic tones, took B6 and Valerian root tea. Today I attempted WBTB + WILD to see if I, too, can do WILD. I tried to keep my body very still for a few minutes and visualized myself meeting Adrien in my lucid dream (lol I still can't get over him). Felt that distinctive vibrations soon after, but unfortunately I had an overwhelming urge to change my sleeping position so I did just that, undoing my effort for the past 10 minutes. This is why I can't do WILD - I have short attention span lol. I ended up falling asleep without going through sleep paralysis.

I found myself in a strange and unfamiliar place, but someone told me I was still in Dunedin. Two of my housemates were with me, and we went to visit a spa nearby. I didn't know what prompted us to go there, but as soon as we reached the spa, I felt compelled to have a treatment despite my financial constraint and all. After filling a form, I told the staff that I wanted to go for a walk first before the treatment. We walked along the unknown street, going past the seemingly posh boutiques and cafes. After several minutes of aimless walking, we reached a rather shabbier part of the area, with mediocre-looking rows of shops. I noticed that there was a shop selling fabrics and sewing stuffs along the street, which resembled one of those textile stores back in Malaysia. I then realized that the shop was actually Kamdar, a popular fabric store back home. I thought "hell I didn't know they have Kamdar in New Zealand!" and immediately abandoned my friends to explore the shop. The price was very cheap, and I was just about to buy some nice cotton to be made into baju kurung for Eid when my friends called me and asked me to follow them. At this point Top somehow emerged out of nowhere and followed us to an abandoned playground, where he met our ex-schoolmate Nape.

I realized that I had to get back to the spa for my treatment, but I somehow felt reluctant to do so when thinking about the cost of the treatment. Still, I had no choice but to keep on with it, since I have signed up and everything. Upon returning, one of the staffs asked me to change my clothes in the changing room. The changing room was very small, kinda resembling the bathroom in one of my seniors' house. A staff gave me bathrobe for me to change into. She also had with her several syringes, which she filled up with liquid from strange looking ampoules as I was changing my clothes. I asked her what was that for, and she told me that they were part of the treatment - which of course made me feel a bit worried. I looked around me; the changing room was in a very poor state, and I somehow saw two big cages at one corner. When I looked closely, I noticed that the cages were occupied - one cage contained a very big rabbit, and another one contained a strange looking creature. The creature resembled a miniature version of an adult human being, but with infant head. It was placed along with a male cat in the cage, and it seemed like in great terror. The staff later explained that the creature was a genetically engineered human being, and the infant head was caused by an error during the GE process. At this point I was totally freaked out, which made me woke up briefly. I told myself upon waking, "damn I sure wish I could become lucid", but since I didn't open my eyes and move I had a chance to do DEILD. Before I knew it I was back in the same bathroom. Unlike my last lucid dream, this time I managed to remind myself to stabilize the dream first before doing anything else. I touched the walls and shower curtain, and immediately my surroundings became extra vivid. Oddly, I somehow felt as if the dream world was spinning. Thinking that the dream was not stable enough, I tried to stabilize it further through dream spinning, which made everything become normal. Just for the hell of it, I looked at my hands, and saw a total of 12 fingers.

I stepped out of the changing room, and my surroundings immediately became darkened, with very little elements. My friends were back with me, so I told them that I was having my lucid dream. Being my mischievous DCs, they didn't say anything and walked away. I thought that it would be cool to have Adrien with me while I explore the dream world, so I called out his name and tried to summon him. My attempts were not successful. Bored with the bland environment, I decided to get away from the place. There seemed to be no exit, so I made myself a door. When I opened it, however, I found another door. Then another, and another. After the fifth door, I realized my mistake - I didn't visualize the place where I wanted to go. I tried again, but this time instead of opening the door, I decided to walk through it. That very action however made me wake up immediately.

See what I told you about nightmares/creepy dreams? It did manage to make me attain lucidity hahaha. Although I didn't get to do much stuffs this time, it was a long enough lucid dream and I'm still happy. And it was damn vivid! Dream spinning is awesome; I should do it more often.

Post-holiday update

It's not that I don't dream at all during my hiatus, you see. That would be impossible, because I am quite a vivid dreamer and I can easily recall my dreams most of the time. It's just that when you have too much free time (i.e. during winter break), you tend to become very idle and abandon many 'trivial' things to focus on stuffs like, uh, Memebase. I know, I know, you would think that a 3-week long holiday would give me more time to write down my dreams and update my blogs more often. Apparently that's not the case for me. I even left my physical dream journal empty for almost two weeks.

Lucid dreaming-wise, I only have two uneventful ones during my winter break, both of them lasting for no more than a minute. The most that I could do was walking through doors, but that was it. But that's still a good news because I managed to end my month long dry spell (at one point I even thought that my ability to lucid dream had been taken away from me, I've never had dry spells as long as that one. But then I read about a senior DV member who've had an eight months long dry spell).

Now that second sem has started, I expect that I will get back on track and have 1-2 lucid dreams per week like I used to have. I guess there's a connection between getting your mind to be alert and concentrate during lectures with dream awareness. Besides, I tend to do more reality checks/ All Day Awareness during lecture, and have more chances to do WBTB. We'll see how things progress over the week.

3 freakin weeks already!!!

I are sad.

I are really really sad.

It's dry spell again. Freakin 3 weeks dry spell. This time it's even longer than my pseudoephedrine-induced dry spell, which is bad because if I couldn't find the culprit behind the dry spell how the hell am I supposed to end it? Gahhh!

My last lucid dream was on June 3rd, a mash-up between Supernatural and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (it occurred to me that I didn't even write that one in here. Damn exam). Afterwards I sort of forgot about lucid dreaming for a while and focused on my final exam. But really, I did not abandon my thoughts on lucid dreaming completely; I still do reality checks and MILD attempts. Sometimes. Like, twice a week? Lol. Don't get me started on All Day Awareness.

During exam week, my sleep pattern was completely screwed up, thanks to my tendency to do things at the last minute. Slept at 3.30 am, woke up at 7 am, no time for afternoon naps - you think I can have a decent REM sleep like that? I didn't even have time to write down my dreams in my physical dream journal anymore. It's been empty since 7/6. Poor guy.

Now that I started my holiday already, I thought I could get my lucid dreams back. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Been trying for a week with no significant result. My dream recall had also deteriorated, but maybe that's because I couldn't be bothered writing them down the moment I woke up from my sleep. I did WBTB everyday, combined with MILD, but the closest thing I got to lucid dreaming is finding myself in an altered version of my flat, with every doors taped with rage comic faces, did reality check but did not find anything weird about my hands. Ten fingers, not crooked or anything, except maybe a bit skinnier. I even took 'lucid aids', listened to isochronic tones, watched subliminal videos, what-have-you. Nothing remarkable so far. Well, except for some very nice and refreshing deep sleep I guess. Valerian root is awesome, though not really oneirogenic for me.

Valerian root in the tea, 100 mg of B6 in the supplement. And I still can't have my lucid dreams back. Maybe I should take melatonin as well. And Salvia XDDDD

I really don't have any clue. I miss my lucid dreams, miss the trolling DCs, altered versions of Adrien, and my Raphael. My beloved Raphael. It's been long.

Time for me to start ADA?

quick post: I blame final exam

Click to expand. Bored during studying.

I *told* you you'll be in my dream

Dream sharing may seem to be impossible, something far-fetched which can only be seen in movies like Inception. But with enough practice, you can actually do that in real life. I haven't tried it, because I'm yet to find a fellow dreamer who are willing to share his or her dream journal contents with me, and subsequently give me permission to enter his or her dream world ( u wanna try Leana? XD). I can always find people on DreamViews, but idk. I'm too shy to even start HAHAHAHA.

Anyhoo, I still can summon people in my lucid dreams, although it's not as awesome as dream sharing because they're merely projections of my Subconscious. Summoned Raphael and Adrien before, although I must say they emerged in a slightly altered version in my dreams. Somehow I can also 'summon' people in my non-lucid dreams by making them the subject of my MILD/VILD visualisation attempts (such dreams were usually my failed attempts to attain lucidity). Thinking about/interacting with someone prior to sleeping can also result in them appearing in my dreams, as in the case of Leana, my dad and his kittens, and, uh, Adrien. Haha, didn't mean to appear too stalker-ish though, guess I'm just good in visualising.

So last night I had a chat with my bff Top, and we talked about random stuffs, including things like Amanita muscaria and THC (lol isn't he the awesomest). I think I did mention about meeting him in dreamland. Went to sleep quite late (4.00 am) and did some VILD. Did not have a lucid dream, but had several vivid weird dreams. My first dream was about me in a dorm room with a friend of mine, along with several other DCs. We were about to sleep when a stoner came and approached us. I somehow knew he took marijuana from his looks alone - not that he had dreads or anything, he just looked very stoned. He offered me a glass of green-coloured drink, but I refused his offer because I somehow had the realization that the drink was a cocktail of alcohol and other drugs (not psychedelic). My friend, however, took a sip before I even had the chance to warn her off it. She told me it has a chemical taste, kinda sweet but tasted like ethylene. When I told her about the alcohol contained in the drink, she was horrified.

I was then transported to another place, which resembled Yaks and Yetis, my favourite Goa-tinged shop. The dream version, however, was more spacious and had more colours. I browsed the shop and was about to buy something when I woke up and realized it was time for my Subuh prayer. Attempted WBTB afterwards because I couldn't be bothered to wake up for good. Again, my attempt was not successful, but at least I managed to get a very epic dream.

I found myself in a heavily altered version of my flat, with a very big kitchen and spacious corridor. Went to the kitchen and saw Top. Had a long chat with him but I didn't remember the essence of our conversation. One thing I noticed, he looked rather gloomy. A DC later gave me a note, telling me that he was heartbroken after finding out that his crush was falling for someone else. To cheer him up, I offered to accompany him for a walk around Dunedin. When I want to get dressed, however, I discovered that my decorated room door was totally maimed.

the said door

The psychedelic crepe papers were torn off, and words were scribbled on the door. I was totally infuriated; I put so much effort in decorating my door, and someone simply ruined it for me?? I was so angry I ended up crying, although no tears seemed to come out. My housemates all went out of their room to find out what happened. There was a very long letter taped on the door. That particular someone explained why she did that to me, telling me she was jealous and I didn't deserve the things I got in my life. Upon reading the letter, I immediately knew who was the culprit - I recognize her handwriting anywhere. I told my housemates I knew who did that to me, but didn't exactly tell them who. I still didn't believe someone could actually do that to me, and I think I did some kind of reality check but failed to realize I was in a dream. That incident ruined my mood for the whole day, and I ended up telling people I didn't want to go anywhere that day. I even cancelled my plan to go out with Top.

I don't know if Subconscious is trying to tell me something from the dream. But hey, a dream is a dream, so it may not mean anything, just my Subconscious projecting things that are buried deep within my heart. But anyways. Who's up for some mind-blowing shared dreaming with me? Just let me read your dream journal and give me permission (it's a Nagual thing, so yeah), and before you know it we can fly together in dreamland.

I grant you permission to dream with me :D

partial out-of-body experience?

I had a rather major breakdown before going to sleep (don't ask me why), so to ease my sadness I browsed through DreamViews and discovered something about how isochronic tones in its entirety is the best lucid aid. I decided to get back to my long abandoned Lucid Dreaming isochronic tone because it's been a long time since I last had a proper lucid dream and I was really determined to meet Raphael. Listened to the tone for 26 minutes, went to bed, read several pages of Go Ask Alice (which was disappointing after I found out it was nothing more than a fabricated 'true journal' preaching the dangers of acid) and fell asleep.

This was when the freakiest thing in my dreaming experience happened. I woke up at 5am (rough estimation) but I could only see a portion of my surroundings, like in my previous entry; it was as if my eyes were covered with something. I realized that it was my sleep mask (I wear one since I sleep with the lights on lol), but I couldn't take it off no matter how I tried. Then slowly, I felt my body - or is it my astral body? - levitate higher and higher. I thought it was nothing more than a hypnagogic hallucination or something, but then again I really felt my whole body levitate, I swear it was not merely in my mind. Partial OBE, perhaps? I felt that distinctive vibration all over my body, and sensed the presence of another being in my room. After several minutes of levitating, my body was lowered to my bed. And the cycle continued for about three more times. I was aware of everything from start to finish, and was confident it was not a dream. I mean, I had all of my senses with me, the surroundings were very stable, and I never had that vibrations thingy in my dream, they only occur during hypnagogia. FGS I didn't even know what really happened to me last night, it was a combination of sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucination and OBE I presume. But one thing for sure, isochronic tones are awesome like that and I'm so going to try it again later. I love the feeling of withdrawing from my body. Probably not tonight, though, because one thing I noticed, isochronic tones only work for me at longer time intervals (once a month, etc).

Oh, by the way, despite my effort to forget every single thing related to Adrien, I had another dream involving him last night. The same plot - I was walking back from my lecture when I bumped into him. Actually, I didn't bump into him - he was following me from behind. I let him overtake me, only to find him walking behind me again. Subconscious is classy like that. I just hope this will not be a recurring dream theme - it would be too painful for me.