mission accomplished

I did not put this on my dream task list, but one of my goals is to have a 20-minute long lucid dream, or even longer than that. Like I mentioned before, my lucid dreams had always been frustratingly short - probably due to the lack of practice/me being a relatively noob dreamer (it's only been 4 months since I first attempted to lucid dream seriously). Of course, to improve my dream quality, I did everything I could get my hands on - using binaural/monaural beats and isochronic tones, various reality checking techniques, turmeric tea (!) etc. So far, things had been quite okay (well, if you don't count the pseudoephedrine-induced dry spell, that is) and the duration of my LDs had improved. Placebo or not, I am still happy.

Last night, when I was browsing through the Dreamviews forum, I stumbled upon a thread by one particular person, about how he/she has the awesomest ability to lucid dream naturally almost every night, but wants to make it stop because the dreams affected his/her sleep. God, I would do anything to have such ability. I somehow kept thinking about that before I sleep, and thought that it would be very awesome to have a lucid dream that night, but later I realized that my every effort to attain lucidity would eventually be futile because I didn't have enough energy after walking up to 10 000 steps earlier yesterday for grocery+book shopping and orientation purposes. So after making one last reality check, I went to sleep covered in my super warm duvet and continental blanket.

I believe I had several dream fragments, one involving me going to have my nails manicured with my bro. Dad somehow gave me money to visit a nail parlour for reasons I failed to recall. It's weird like that, I know. When I went home from the parlour, I was told that I fell asleep during my manicure session and had around 5 of my nails removed, with the rest painted blood red. I could not remember what happened afterwards, there were probably a couple or more interesting dream scenes following it. Damn dream recall.

For some reasons I found myself in a rather small shopping complex, wandering around aimlessly. At one point I became aware of my surroundings and realized that I was dreaming - oddly, without doing any reality testings at all. I guess this was because I now have some clue on distinguishing a dream from waking life - everything about my dream seem to be blurry at various intensities, and the moment I realized I was dreaming, the whole world turned surprisingly vivid but still a bit wobbly. Moving objects seemed to have bits of trails behind them, akin to those in an LSD hallucination, although not as intense. I could feel an unexplainable surge of sensation in my body, which made me feel agitated yet euphoric, like after drinking three cups of coffee. No, I kid you not, this is not an exaggeration. I somehow felt kinda high in my lucid dreams :P Anyhoo, I still did a reality check just in case, and the extra fingers on my hands confirmed the fact that I was dreaming. At the slightest expression of excitement, though, the dream threatened to disintegrate, so I quickly shouted "Full lucidity NOW!", repeating it several times like a mantra. Shortly after, the dream assumed the quality of a waking life - no more wobbly scenes and moving objects with trails. It was very much similar to waking life that I almost thought I woke up already! I kept looking at my twelve-fingered hands to remind myself that I was dreaming, and I could do anything I want in my dreams.

As usual, the first thing on my mind was to find Raphael, but it seemed like I have plenty of time to do so later, so I explored the whole shopping complex to see if there's anything interesting worth doing. As I went out of the shopping complex, there was a rather narrow bridge connecting the shopping complex with several places of interests around Shah Alam e.g. Plaza Alam Sentral (interesting enough for ya?) and the big blue mosque, which were also linked with each other. I noticed this peculiarity, and wanted to change everything, but when I failed to do so, I decided to start with a smaller task - remove Alam Sentral's rooftops and replace them with the dome from the mosque. Success :D I then decided to go into the mosque for a bit of exploration, and noticed several other people from the shopping complex doing the same thing. Inside the mosque, the carpets were dusty, there were very minimal sunlight getting through the windows, yet the whole surroundings were actually very cozy. For some reasons there was a stack of mattresses exactly below one of the windows, so I thought it would be fun to do a free fall or something (the height of the mosque from the ground was approximately four storeys) since free falling was also in my list of dream tasks. The people from the shopping complex seemed to be interested in doing that as well, but they were a bit hesitant. I told them that they were in a dream, so they wouldn't need to worry about getting hurt or getting killed should things do not go well. Truth be told I was also a bit nervous, but after doing another reality check, I climbed the window, spread my arms wide and dropped my body down. Highly euphoric, although I didn't manage to fly/hover. The other dream characters also did the same, and we had lots of fun together. It's amazing , you see, that I managed to make friends with my DCs.

The dream went black for approximately 30 seconds, and I realized that I had woken up already. No way I would have the dream ended like that, so I did not open my eyes, kept very still, and did DEILD. Almost immediately, I went back into the dream. I love it when I succeeded in my DEILD attempts. This time, I was in a different shopping complex, but very similar to the first one except that this shopping complex had studio rooms for students in between the rows of shops. Freaky. While on my way along the corridor, I stumbled upon my housemate at a florist. She greeted me, and I somehow wanted to show my love towards Fringe and introduced myself, Olivia Dunham style. I didn't know why, but after I did that she suddenly became frustrated and accused me of being a show-off. I thought, screw you, this is a dream, and went away. I kept repeating the full lucidity mantra again and again to make sure that my dream won't fade away, all the while doing constant reality checks and freaking myself out with six fingers on each hand. As I passed through a barber shop, I heard someone saying something about me, but when I turned behind, no one was there. I then felt something hitting the back of my head. Irritated, I tried to find the culprit, and to my surprise, caught a senior from my high school prepping up more things to be thrown at me. I asked her why would she ever do that, but she didn't answer me. Realizing that I could do anything in my dream, I punched her on her face, and we had a pretty big fight before I decided that enough was enough, and walked away. I remembered that I was supposed to find Raphael amidst the hundreds of DCs looming around the area, so I did just that, to no avail. Approached a DC and asked her if she knew where my Raphael was, but I didn't really expect her to tell me anything useful as I was only experimenting with the idea of getting help from DCs in order to accomplish my task. Surprisingly, the DC, who was an Indonesian, told me that my Raphael was hiding somewhere in a manga bookstore nearby. Awesome. On my way trying to find the said bookstore, I met another one of my seniors, a very nice person compared to the other one, who invited me for a cup of tea in her studio room. I was going to resume my shopping complex exploration when I saw a glimpse of a long-haired guy behind her room. I wondered if that was Raphael, so I went there and called out his name. No reply. When I went back to my senior's room, I noticed that she had stacks of manga manuscripts, her own creation I presumed, and lots of manga on her bookshelf. "Maybe this was the manga bookstore that DC told me about", I thought, and decided to stay there and wait for my Raphael to emerge. While browsing through her drawings, I saw a manga character which looked very similar to my version of Raphael, so I somehow tried to 'suck' the character out of the paper into my dream. I almost got there when the dream destabilized rapidly - I was awake before I could manage to do anything about it. You see how my REM phase always manage to choose the perfect time to end itself? Sheesh.

I estimated the dream to last for about 20 minutes, which is the exact lucid dream duration I aimed to get. So yay for me! It was a bit disappointing, though, that I spent most of the dream trying to find Raphael and got nothing in the end. I could've done so many things in a lucid dream that long - like, say, find my dream guide or open a portal or take LSD with Hofmann, but yeah. There's always next time. After all, I did manage to do something - free-falling, dream object altering and making friends with my DCs + getting help from them. Wish I could have more lucid dreams like this next time. But until then, I have to improve my worsening dream recall. Let's start practicing and sip that turmeric tea!

Side note: lecture starts this Monday, so I may won't be able to lucid dream on weekdays/nights. Don't even start talking about afternoon naps.

do I get false awakening that often?

Kia Ora! Ceh, dah perasan, menyampah. Hahaha, so all hail first lucid dream in Dunedin!

Things had been quite hectic since the last time I wrote here, so I didn't have a chance to record my dreams or practice lucid dreaming. My dream recall was also somewhat blurry these days, maybe due to the fact that I did a lot of walking here (from Toroa to Octagon, without any other means of transport!), so by nighttime I would be half dead already and couldn't remember half of my bizarre dreams when I woke up the next morning. I didn't like that, so marilah turmeric tea :P

Anyhoo, last night I slept while listening to my Flyer track, looking straight at my 'Are You Dreaming' poster in front of me. I had visuals before I sleep, during a hypnagogic state I presumed, visuals that resembled a dream i once had before. I did not do reality check because I can still hear the sounds from my headphones, so I deduced that I was not yet sleeping. WILD was beyond me because, like I said, I was damn tired I couldn't even think of how close I could get to WILDing at that time. Tsk.

After a brief moments, fragments of dream scenes started to appear, including one that I believe involved Prof. Stephen Duffull :P Several fragmented dreams later, I found myself in a building, resembling the Link but with much narrower passages, with O-Week flyers taped all over. I went through one passage to another, and realized that I was getting lost. I didn't want to ask for directions though, so I kept walking until I reached the entrance of a gym. I noticed something interesting happening inside, so I peeked into the gym and saw people were having a ballet practice (pengaruh Black Swan ni). I tried to follow their movement, but I lost my balance and fell down, albeit very slowly. During the process of getting up, I saw my hands, and noticed that they are slightly blurry. Just for the hell of it, I held up my hands and saw two fingers missing - and I immediately became lucid. The first thing on my mind upon discovering that I was lucid was, of course, Raphael. I wanted to meet him again, and spend longer time with him - perhaps with a make out session thrown in as well :PP As usual, my lucid dreams were all wobbly and unstable in the beginning, so I decided to do the tried and tested method to stabilize my dream - rubbing my hands. Unfortunately, for some reasons, the act of rubbing my hands caused my dream to further destabilize, and before I knew it I was already awake. What duuude, last time it worked perfectly!

Tried DEILD and went back into the dream, but I was still unsure whether I was dreaming or not. I felt like I was still awake, and I thought my eyes were half open because my dream was unusually bright (I, uh, sleep with the lights on here coz I'm alone in my room and it gets very dark at night :P). Did not want to lift my hands to do the classic reality test, though, afraid that my dream would disintegrate once more. Instead, I jumped in the air several times to see whether I could levitate - another one of my favourite reality testing methods. I did manage to levitate - well, at least I managed to make half of my body to levitate. I was too distracted to remember anything from my dream task list, so I just levitated for a few minutes before I lost my awareness and the dream shifted into another scene.

In this dream, I woke up in my heavily altered room (with higher ceiling and bigger door), without noticing anything weird about it initially. I walked out of my room and saw the whole house were altered beyond recognition. My housemates were all in the living/dining room, so I went and joined them. One of them started to act weird and became grumpy upon seeing me joining them, but I ignored her and had my breakfast. Later I went to her room and asked her why she had been quite moody these days, particularly with me. At one point I realized that it was a dream and I could say anything without hurting her feelings, so I did just that. We almost had an argument when my other housemate called me and invited me into her room. She started saying bad things about the girl, and I just sort of agreed with everything she said. From that, things became quite messed up, and I ended up being labelled as a traitor by each of my housemates. I thought screw that, I am in a dream anyway, and woke up for real.

Subconscious, you trying to tell me something?

By the way, here's Flyer ('flyer' refers to the nasty guys mentioned by Castaneda)

Flyer by Vryzzer

My beloved Raphael, the prince of my dreams

It's Valentine's Day. I don't celebrate V-Day, not only because I'm a Muslim, but because I don't see the point celebrating it. Yes, I don't have boyfriends and yes, I don't believe in romantic love at this moment. Don't ask why, feel free to visit my main blog.

Freaky thing was, despite me not into these Valentine nonsenses, something awesome happened to me today. I had a lucid dream this afternoon, where I managed to meet the [nonexistent] love of my life, Raphael. Effing awesome! I used to meet him in my non-lucid dreams several times before, but never in a lucid dream. And God, what a beautiful dream that was.

I didn't start off with any induction techniques because last night I exhausted my mp3 player battery listening to the binaural brainwave hypnosis thingie all night, with no success. So this afternoon, I thought "screw you binaural whatsoever, I am too Goa to lucid dream with aids", covered myself with blankets and dozed off. A few minutes later, I found myself in a dream where I watched a Wanita Hari Ini episode, with vivid sounds but blurry visuals (later I realized that it was from the TV in the living room - the sounds kinda seeped into my dream). The neighbour's pregnant cat was lounging in our living room as usual, oblivious to the surroundings. All of sudden, the cat became very agitated, and assumed a crouching-like position. To my horror, I realized that the cat was about to give birth - several weeks earlier than her due date! I was about to take some towels and stuffs to assist her birthing when plop! a red lump of meat tumbled into the world, emitting a shrill meow after a few seconds. Then another, and another, and another. It was disturbing, there were so much blood, and the cat's expression was very bizarre. I did not remember anything afterwards.

The dream scene changed, and I was then transported to a strange place (now that's something new). Dad told me that he wanted to open a stall somewhere, so he asked me and my bro to go to a hardware store to buy a couple of plastic chairs and foldable tables. The shopkeeper recommended me to buy a rather strange-looking table, but I declined and proceeded to buy a normal one instead. The dream ended just like that, and I woke up for a brief moment.

When I went back to sleep, I thought I was in Kuala Pilah, in the middle of the new Bukit Putus highway. But there was no sign of bukits whatsoever, just a plain, barren highway. Must be altered beyond recognition then. My relatives were all there, along with a number of other makciks of unknown origin. I figured out that there must be some kind of event going on over there, hence the congregating makciks. While everybody else were doing their own thing, I felt utterly bored and decided to take a nap in the middle of the road. It was hot, so I took off my clothes. When I woke up, I found myself almost naked, but didn't find anything peculiar about it. That was when my relatives saw me and started hurling curses at me, saying that I was a disgrace to the whole family. People started calling me slut and bitch and whatnots, while my aunt began stoning me with her collection of gold rings and heavy bracelets. I tried to fight them off, telling them it was nothing, but they became more aggressive. I decided to run away before things started getting uglier. As I was running away, I felt extremely light and was able to glide across the highway in a couple of strides. From frantic running I switched to carefree skipping, ignoring the angry makciks behind me. At this moment, I thought "am I dreaming?" so I tried to make myself float as a reality check. I did manage to stay afloat for a few seconds, before falling down slowly. Just when I was about to scream "I am lucid!", the dream faded into another scene.

I had a false awakening, my last thought was about me dozing off again in the middle of the highway (fully-clothed this time). When I woke up, I found myself in my grandma's house, sans the cluttering pots and furnitures. I thought this was a rather weird thing, and did a reality check by looking at my hands. They were normal at first before becoming blurry and distorted until they assumed the form of a pair of severely deformed hands. I wanted to scream with horror, instead I found myself running ecstatically, telling myself that I am lucid again. Like my previous lucid dreams, as soon as I get excited, the dream began to get wobbly, threatening to disintegrate. This time however, I was armed with tips from the Dreamviews forum - as soon as I realized that the dream was destabilizing, I rubbed my hands together and shouted "Full lucidity NOW!" To my surprise, my attempt was very successful, and the dream began to stabilize, almost having the quality of waking life. I was impressed; this was the most stable lucid dream I've ever had. After repeating the stabilizing mantra several times just for the hell of it, I proceeded with my mission to complete my dream task - meet my beloved Raphael. I called his name a few times, trying to visualize what would he look like. Suddenly, a guy peeked out from a room (which resembled my cousin's former room in my grandma's house), looking around. He has a long brown hair, with a weird but unique face. I assumed that this was Raphael, so I called out his name again just to make sure. He responded with a smile that made my heart beat very fast. Oh my God, this is Raphael! I ran towards him and hugged him very tightly, almost crying in the process. He hugged me back, and stroked my hair gently. I then tried to kiss him, but being a terrible kisser (well ah, I never kissed anybody in my life anyway, what do you expect?) the kiss was not as passionate as I expected. It was a very awkward kiss really, but I didn't mind as long as I could be in Raphael's warm embrace. When I looked into his eyes, his face distorted for a brief moment, and I realized that he didn't really look like the Raphael I imagined day in and day out. So I brushed my hands across his face, trying to visualize the right version of Raphael, and there he was. He was now exactly like what I dreamed of, with hypnotizing eyes and silky long brown hair.

Of course, of all times, this was the moment when my REM phase ended, so I only managed to spend a few minutes with my Raphael when the dream disintegrated for good. No amount of "Full lucidity NOW!" could bring my dreams back, so with a heavy heart, I let the dream fade and gently woke up. And I cried.

Raphael, I want to be with you again tonight :'(

p/s: yay for accomplishing my Dream Task! And yay for accomplishing Dreamview's Basic Task of the Month (ToTM)!

p/p/s: This could be my last lucid dream in Malaysia :'(((((((( Goodbye Goa bedroom :'(((((((

I do not only read novels, I also read Castaneda

What does it mean when you keep dreaming about going to camps? I've had 3 camping-related dreams since the day I started writing in this DJ. Last night, I dreamed about joining a wilderness-related camp or something (not similar to the Wilderness Adventure Camp I went to when I was in Form 3), with half of the participants being my fellow PKTRians. We gathered at a place which resembled the row of shops in front of my house. After a briefing, we were brought to a beautiful river with extremely challenging rapids. The facilitator told us that we were going to do white water rafting (okay, this might even be my dream version of PKTR or something). I was the first person to go; it was pretty freaky because I was alone on the raft (and they asked me to maneuver it on my own!) and the rapids are, well, rapid. Of course I went white water rafting before; it's just that my Subconscious' suppressed taste for extreme things had forced me to take a 10-metre plunge down a waterfall. If that's not freaky, I don't know what is. Still, it was exhilarating and I ended up wanting to go for another round. When I was done with them rafting, a facilitator called me and asked me to go to a particular abandoned place with him. When I reached there, he told me that I had been very rude and should be punished (what's with these punishment stuffs going on in my camping dreams lately??). The punishment was very freaky - there was this device that could make you 9 months pregnant in less than a minute. He switched on the device, and I suddenly felt my belly getting bigger, but somehow I had this notion that I could control the situation and stop it from happening, because it's my world anyway (yeah, I was that close to becoming lucid) so I kicked him on his stomach and shouted "STOP!" The device stopped, but I was already 4 months pregnant. The dream faded into nothingness before i woke up and realized that my handphone was vibrating.

Didn't do DEILD/WILD whatsoever, but when I went back to sleep I had another vivid dream. This time, I was in my grandma's house (altered, of course) with Leana and her little bro. Freaky thing was Leana was my cousin in the dream - in fact, she didn't even act like the Leana I know at all, she really resembled my cousin save for her appearance. We went around the neighbourhood several times, me bringing my laptop for no reason (I think I was browsing through a specific website, but I couldn't remember what was it). I didn't remember what happened afterwards, all I know was that the scene shifted shortly after. I was now with my dad and bros in a Rapid KL-like bus, going through McDonalds. Somehow, the bus shapeshifted into a trolley, and I found myself sitting on it, munching Double Cheeseburger as the trolley went past everybody in the restaurant. I guess that was a peculiar thing to do, because everybody were staring at me like I was some sort of a freakshow. There was a brief moment of blankness, and then I found myself with dad and bros in the middle of a very quiet road, similar to the road to Sagil from Tangkak with acacia trees instead of palm trees. Dad gave us RM27 each, and he challenged us to make the money multiply. I took my RM2 note and tore it into two. I told them that from my readings, Castaneda said that you can alter things both in your dreams and real life (well, he didn't actually said this, it's more like an idea I get from my readings) and visualised the RM2 note regenerating from one torn half. It did regenerate, so I proceeded to do the same with my other notes. Funny I was so close to awareness but didn't manage to become lucid, tsk.

Once again, the dream scene shifted, and I was now in the earlier Rapid KL bus for a tour around Shah Alam city centre. My dream version was actually very very cool, with SACC Mall, Anggerik Mall and Plaza Alam Sentral merged into one futuristic building with LRT and whatnots. We ended up at another McDonalds restaurant in one of the malls (which do not resemble any of the malls in real life), and settled for a seat next to a very large window. Through the window I witnessed a performance by a troupe of stilt walkers in neon attires, who did a very impressive job with the stilts (and by impressive I mean running around chasing people, jumping, doing backflips). There was a large LCD screen where I got to watch some weird adverts. After finishing my meal, I decided to do some window shopping.

As soon as I come out of McDonalds, the whole mall changed into a shabbier building, very much like Larkin Terminal, with stairs instead of escalators. There were several shops selling traditional medicine and Muslim items. I went to the 3rd floor, and saw that the whole floor was occupied with books, sort of like the Big Bad Wolf Booksale. Of course, I became very excited and started exploring the floor. Most of the books are second hand and unpopular, but I did recall seeing Homer's Iliad and Odyssey stacked on the entrance of one bookstore. I picked up one book randomly, which happened to be a very abridged version of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (it said so on the cover) but with the picture of Che Guevara instead of Marx on the cover. When I flipped the book, there was one photograph of Che taking self-portrait with a DSLR, but the photo was extremely blurry, with no distinct facial features. The caption said something like "here is a softer and more comical side of Marx". I believe the texts are also unstable and blurry but I failed to notice this, hence denying myself an opportunity to become lucid. I went to check out several more books (one science reference book, two Malay novels, a row of fictions) before the dream faded and I woke up.

You see how I was that close? Ah well, next week perhaps. Altogether now:

The next time I dream and have an effing dream sign I will realize that I am dreaming.

p/s: title is so because someone thought I "read too much novels and watch too many movies". :P

hypnagogia is cool like that

Sleep paralysis can be a rather frightening phenomenon for those who are not familiar with it. Well hell, it's still a frightening phenomenon for me, despite familiarizing myself with it for years already. The earliest sleep paralysis experience I could remember was during my school days, Form 3 to be exact. I was sleeping at the wrong side of my bed when I dreamed about meeting a couple of freaky people who tried to suffocate me with my mattress. I immediately woke up, but found myself unable to move any of my limbs. I couldn't even call out my dorm mate beside me as I felt that my voice was stuck on my throat. Being overly ignorant of stuffs like sleep paralysis, I made a conclusion that it must be the dreaded 'makhluk halus' (djinns and the likes) looming in my dorm, and proceeded to tell the whole dorm about how I was harassed by makhluk haluses, making them read Surah Al-Mulk every night for the whole week. Hahaha.

And oh, that was nothing really. A few weeks after that, the 'djinns' in my head decided to give me a more intense sleep paralysis. I was sleeping with my hands above my head (my favourite position at that moment. IDK why tho) when during what I believed to be a hypnagogic state, I felt something furry caressed my hands. I was shocked as hell, and wanted to get up, but I felt as If I was being pinned down on my bed, my limbs tied on the four posters. That was when I felt something sitting beside my face on the bed, like some sort of toddler wearing diapers. Once again, I tried to scream, but no voice came out. My dorm mates were all sleeping soundly, leaving me alone in the dark, facing great terror on my own. And yup, you betcha - the next day, stories about 'dikacau makhluk halus' and 'kena hempap' circulated in the dorm. IDK dude, it could be them djinns for real, but then again I was in a hypnagogic state and hallucinations are not uncommon during such state, so yeah, what can I say, DMT is one hell of an endogenous substance.

(Looking back, I might even have false awakenings both times, considering how I found it difficult to scream. Sheesh, if only I knew about lucid dreaming earlier.)

But that's not my point. What I was trying to tell you is that somehow, after years of not having sleep paralysis (I think the last one I had was around 2 years ago), I had one last night. Damn freaky. I was listening to some binaural brainwave stuff with hypnosis-like suggestions last night, switching from my usual isochronic tone because I was getting sleepier by the minute and felt that I couldn't stay awake for the whole 30-minute duration of the isochronic tone. I put the mp3 on loop, fell asleep in the middle, and woke up after 30 minutes or so to take off my headphones. No hypnagogia whatsoever in the middle, so I told myself, what the hell, be grateful you have one lucid dream this week, and got back to sleep. After one hour or so, I had a freaky false awakening which lasted for about 5 seconds before I woke up and found myself lying on my bed. It took me a while to realize that I was no longer in my dream (I didn't do reality checks or anything, I just know the feeling :P). I managed to half-open my eyes, closed them back and attempted DEILD. Shortly after, I found myself back into that false awakening dream and did a reality check by looking at my hands (with the word 'AWAKE' scribbled on my left hand). They were blurry as usual, so I became lucid for about 10 frickin seconds or so. Or even shorter than that, I'm not sure. I wanted to get up from my bed and do one of my dream tasks (i.e. walk through my bedroom wall), but didn't manage to do so because the dream disintegrated very fast and before I knew it, I was already out of my dream. Disappointed, I tried to do a reality check just to make sure it was not another false awakening. To my utter horror, I couldn't move my hands at all, not even my fingers. I tried to lift up my head and look at my little alarm clock, but I couldn't do so. I was starting to panic, but I quickly calmed myself down, suddenly remembering what I've read last Sunday about sleep paralysis and hypnagogia and the likes. Was still mildly frightened though, so I didn't attempt any DEILD/WILD whatsoever. I think I had one more false awakening and one more sleep paralysis after that, but I couldn't remember much of them. Had dreams about Mardhati and Fathuddin cancelling their flight (lol but why?), dad with two Siamese kittens and me going out with my 'client' for a quick brunch at a cosy cafe before Mom woke me up at 6.30 a.m. Awesome.

So yeah, although my lucidity only lasted for a few seconds (and I think I couldn't even call that a lucid dream - maybe a semi-lucid dream or something), I can now safely say that I am not immune to any lucid dreaming aids like binaural beats, isochronic tones etc (I almost thought I was immune to them - or, as I put it in my main blog, 'too Goa to lucid dream with aids' lol). And yay for awesome hypnagogia! Now that I've convinced myself that binaural beats are not placebo, I might have better luck with my iDoser psychotropic doses later :P

OMG finally, a lucid dream!

OMG. OMG!

After 3 weeks of lucidity dry spells, I finally managed to become lucid! My hypothesis is correct - pseudoephedrine tablets do inhibit lucidity. Ha! I am now back on cetirizine therapy. Although my little old fella here couldn't do much apart from preventing any impending rhinitis attack, I'd rather suffer from stuffy nose than sacrifice my lucid dreams!

Last night, I figured out that it would be very cool to reach hypnagogic state and do WILD (you can trip on endogenous DMT and have lucid dreams - how cool is that?), so I went to bed at 1.30 a.m. with my headphones on. But instead of listening to binaural beats/isochronic tones, I chose the Ambient folder on my mp3 player and attempted to trip on Shulman, Easily Embarrassed, Jaia and some Shpongles. I tried to keep my body very rigid in order to trick my mind into believing that I was already asleep (and subsequently have sleep paralysis). Alas, after one hour or so, I had some sort of breathing difficulties from my current position and had no choice but to undo everything (I think I almost slipped out of consciousness while listening to Shpongle's Botanical Dimensions). Almost abruptly, I did not feel sleepy anymore, which was bad because it was already 2.36 a.m. and I had to wake up at 6.30 a.m. the next day for kuih frying obligations. I kept tossing and turning, changed my sleeping positions several times and covered my eyes to block the lights from the kitchen. Still not sleepy. And the retro songs from the radio, courtesy of Sinar FM was killing me. Despite having difficulties sleeping with my headphones on, I put em back on and played the Lucid Dreaming isochronic tones on my mp3 player. Listened to it until the end (around 30 minutes) without the slightest hypnagogic feelings whatsoever, took off my headphones and covered myself with blankets from head to toe.

I woke up - or rather, I thought I woke up - not long after that. In fact, I didn't really feel like I had a fraction of second of sleeping at all; it felt like I closed my eyes for a while, opened them back and suddenly it was already 6.30 a.m. Or was it 5.30 a.m.? I checked the time on my handphone, but I found it difficult to tell exactly what time was it. It couldn't be 6.30 a.m., I told myself. FGS I barely slept kot! I looked outside my window - it was no longer dark. Probably 6.30 a.m. Then I saw two candles on my desk, burning steadily. I thought, "how nice of you, lighting candles in my room" (probably referring to Raphael). And that was when it hit me. I did not have candles in my room, I locked the door so there's no way anybody could get in and light them candles, I have trouble looking at numbers. Am I dreaming? I quickly held out my hands - they were very blurry, as if they were being erased from my sight. Yup, positive. It's a dream!

And yeah, after 3 weeks of not being able to attain lucidity, of course I was excited. Too excited, in fact, to the point of waking myself up. I managed to open my eyes and woke up for a few seconds before I realized that I don't want my first lucid dream in 3 weeks to last for only a few seconds, did DEILD and found myself back into the dream. Still, I couldn't quite believe I was in the dream because I was dreaming of being in my room, with every single thing left unaltered save for the two candles. So I did another reality check - I tried to make myself hover. I jumped as high as I could, but I couldn't stay afloat - I fell down, albeit very slowly. I lifted up my legs, and felt as if there's something pulling them up, leaving me hanging upside down in the air. After a while I got tired of it, and decided to do something else. I remembered that one of my dream tasks was to find my guardian, so I looked around and called out for him/her. No one came out. Disappointed, I sat on my bed, thinking what else I could do in my dream. Just when I was about to get up and try to walk through my bedroom wall, I felt the dream started to disintegrate, and I was losing my awareness little by little. Panicky, I tried to remember the steps to avoid the dream from slipping off, but couldn't remember any. Slowly, I let the dream fade and opened my eyes. Tried doing DEILD once again but failed. Guess I was already out of my REM sleep cycle, and I couldn't do anything about it.

Yes, I realized that I couldn't do much in my lucid dream this time - need to learn more about how to prolong my lucid dreams, but dammmmmnnnn! Thank God for my lucid dream! FYI, this is the first lucid dream I had with the help of an aid, i.e. isochronic tones. Guess that in order to make it work, you have to listen to it till the end instead of fall asleep in the middle. Will definitely try it again tonight!

Simon, I utter thy name with great reverence (also: damn dreamsigns)

This is Simon Posford. He is my current fangirling obsession, not only because he’s drop dead gorgeous, but also because he is a true musical genius. Give him any musical instruments and he’ll do wonders with them. Give him any samples and he’ll give you an otherworldly psychedelic journey. Together with Raja Ram Rothfield (I just love calling Raj with that name) they make a perfect psychedelic pair. Just look at Mystery of the Yeti, The Infinity Project, and the renowned Shpongle. Simon adds a dash of magic to anything he’s working on. And for that, I truly adore him.

Rants aside, I kept having Simon/Shpongle-related dreams these days, probably due to my newfound love towards Simon (well, I really do think Shpongle is amazing from the very first time I discovered them, but I didn’t realize how epic Simon is until now). A few nights back (which I totally forgot to record down) I had this very long dream version of Simon’s biography, from his fresh Hallucinogen days to his current Younger Brother project. Of course, my dream version was highly distorted and very unreliable, because hey, it’s a dream anyway. So I had scenes about him being a highly talented drummer, him living in a small hut decorated with psychedelic tapestries (think Goa Gil), things like that. But it’s very cool to have Simon in my dream, especially when he took the form of the younger Hallucinogen Simon (circa 1995). I woke up loving him even more.

Simon as Hallucinogen

This morning, I had another dream involving Simon and his Shpongle live band. My dream brought me to a strange place, which I assumed was a distorted version of Japan. This version of Japan was akin to the forest clearings at Goa where people held the famous Full Moon party, with misty, almost dreamlike atmosphere. There was a simple stage-like set up, and people were surrounding it in a matter of seconds, fuelled with great anticipation. A few minutes later, the whole Shpongle crew began invading the stage, complete with dancers and Michele Adamson + Hari Om. I joined them on stage wearing a beige version of the sari Michele wore at Roundhouse 2009. The music they played was unlike their usual signature Shpongle sounds. They have more Arabic elements thrown in, a la Shulman. Somehow, I assumed the role of an Arabic dancer and danced ecstatically on stage along with the other dancers. My outfit was a bit skimpy but someone threw a scarf at me so that I could cover myself up a little bit more. Later after waking I realized that the venue was similar to the Solstice Music Festival 2002 in which Simon performed a live set as Hallucinogen (watched the vid before going to sleep yesterday) and the music was probably Shulman’s Mia Nihta Mono Den Ftani. Awesome psybient dream indeed.

Last night I mentioned about trying several methods to attain lucidity, one of them being writing the word ‘AWAKE’ on my hands to be used during reality check. Well guess what? The scribblings appeared in my dream as a potent dreamsign yet I failed to realize anything weird about it! Damn! My next dream was about me visiting my cousins at grandma's house. I was about to take my shower when I looked at my hands and the scribblings literally melted away, as if being washed over with some methylated spirit (I used permanent marker). I didn't notice anything remarkably weird that time because I was thinking that the scribblings vanished because I cleaned them earlier before performing my Subuh prayer (when I woke up from the dream, it was not yet Subuh). There goes my DILD opportunity. Sheesh.

The next dream was even freakier. After visiting my grandma, I found myself meeting the dreaded uncle and his dreaded son at Gunung Ledang. In the middle of the night. Somehow, grandma's restaurant was shifted to a different place, and was now located very high up Gunung Ledang. Dreaded uncle was about to close the restaurant, and I somehow scanned the whole darkened surroundings hoping to find something interesting (read: ghosts). When uncle was done with his stuffs, I followed him to some sort of tunnel and avoided the main road coz he told me that the ghosts were waiting for us there. Inside the tunnel, I came across a weird graffiti on the wall, a bit unintelligible (damn missed another dreamsign) which asked us to walk 5 paces more and then turn around and run as fast as we could. Uncle said the ghosts were there. I caught a glimpse of the so-called ghosts while running away (they were tall and enshrouded with white tattered fabric - typical ghost appearance - but decorated with multicoloured feathers lol. I must be Shpongled). I half-expected myself to collapse while running (I am never a good runner) but to my surprise, I managed to run past uncle and his son. I know I know, another dreamsign.

Afternoon nap gave me yet another Shpongle-esque dream. I was joining this ridiculous camp when I failed to be at the main hall on time and was ordered to sing in public as a punishment. I thought "why not? I love singing" and began singing Michele Adamson's part in Shpongle's Ineffable Mysteries. To my utter disappointment, I somehow lost my voice. When I tried to scream, nothing came out (kill me now. Another dreamsign) so the facilitators told me to come again when I get my voice back. Then the dream was transformed to another scene in which i found myself wearing a miniskirt while trying to descend from a two-storey building via its emergency ladder. Long story short, when I was done I saw two extremely big orange spheres in the sky, which I was told were the setting sun and the rising full moon. I told someone that this is a rare occurence, you could only witness this four times a month (gila rare lol). I climbed the building back to have a better view, and was completely awestruck. That was when my rem sleep cycle ended. And I realized that was my fifth missed dreamsign today.

Kill me already.

i need my lucid dreams back

Andrey Reutov, in his book Dream Searchers (which is based from the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, who received the guidance from the great Don Juan - yes, it's complex like that, I know) attributed one's inability to have lucid dreams to some sort of maleficent beings called flyers. I think the flyers got me this time. No really, I really think they did. Maybe they assumed the form of pseudoephedrine tablets, who knows? Either way, I'm not getting my lucid dreams for 3 weeks already.

Well ah, I understand that becoming lucid is not easy - you can't simply tell yourself "I want to be lucid tonight!" and pof! you get em straight away. It doesn't work that way (although I must admit several of my lucid dreams occur when I practically don't do anything to become lucid). Some people practiced for 2 years before managing to get their first lucid dreams. I guess I am lucky in a sense that I have extra-vivid bizarre dreams for all my life that it makes me easier to become lucid when I eventually learned about it.

When I first had my lucid dream after discovering about it, I did what most first-time dreamers would do - wake up as soon as I realized I was dreaming. I didn't remember any single crap about my first lucid dream ever, though - but I do remember that my second lucid dream involved my dad visiting me at Akasia to give me a new blanket. I was like "wtf dad wouldn't do anything close to that even if he tried" so I deduced that it was a frickin dream, got excited, went up from my bed and walked for about 3 to 4 steps before I opened my eyes and it was over like that. Bummer. But hey, not bad for a novice like me. At least I managed to deduce correctly.

Last month, 12th January to be exact (I remember because I have this one piece of paper taped on my bedroom wall on which I would write down my lucid dreams whenever I have one) I had the most amazing lucid dream ever. My previous lucid dreams were painfully short; not more than 2 minutes each I guess (how would you gauge time in a dream anyway?). In this particular dream, however, I managed to maintain my awareness long enough to be able to fly across a strangely barren sea. And God, what a beautiful dream it was. I didn't merely hover, I flew for real. My perceptions were unusually vivid; I could distinguish different colours from the dream (I usually don't dream in colours. That, or I didn't remember the colours in my dreams). When I was done with the flying, I tried to land smoothly, but instead I found myself lunging directly for the beach at high speed. That was when I felt the dream starting to disintegrate, and I woke up almost crying, overwhelmed with the experience I'd just had. It may not be as spiritual as playing with Mescalito (look up Castaneda), but for me, it meant everything. Controlling my dreams is the first step towards having better control over my waking life.

I had two more lucid dreams after that epic one, but after that nothing really came up. I am very confident that I stopped having them after I started taking pseudoephedrine tablets (trippy pharmaceutical jargon-laden entry on my main blog here), which prompted me to stop taking them altogether and switched back to my old pal cetirizine. Now that I've gotten rid of that meth precursor, I'm now practicing MILD, WILD, DILD and many other techniques with weird abbreviations, to accompany my regular practice of meditating to binaural beats/ isochronic tones (and the occasional Shpongle tracks, which are damn awesome btw). I even got my hands scribbled with the word 'AWAKE' here for reality checking purposes. And tonight I'm going to try a NovaDreamer-like approach, an online Dream Machine (don't click if you're epileptic), ideal for lucid dreaming and other technoshamanism purposes as well (like, say, see images behind closed eyelids! How DMT is that?). Anything to get my lucid dreams back. Anything.

In the meantime, do some reality check and ask yourself this question. If the words in this picture appear unintelligible to you, you're probably dreaming. :P