Dream Journal
September 19, 1997 @ 10:13 AM
Context: We had two kittens at the time.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I did it! Lucid Dream!! YES!!! Oh it was so amazing!
I went to bed at 2:30 AM, got up around 9 AM to drive Rebecca to work, and then went back to sleep around 9:15 AM. I tried holding my inner eyes open from 9:15-9:30 AM but to no avail. So I just went to sleep, lights out. The window was open with lots of singing birds. Temperature very comfy.
It began with me getting food in a cafeteria. Joe (Rebecca’s dad) was lying on the table with the food, and I was cutting up his arm with a big steak knife to put on my plate. Then I realized what I was doing and looked up because I knew the body I was cutting didn’t mind. I saw another copy of Joe standing there. He was looking at me strangely, casting his gaze back and forth from the version of him on the table to me. The Joe on the table began to get lighter and lighter and float up into the air. I turned to the standing Joe and said “You’re Joe H.” and he said “Yes, I am”. Then I indicated the floating body and said “Then this isn’t your body,” and he said it wasn’t. At that moment I REALIZED I WAS DREAMING and began running about, leaping from table to desk to chair!
I came upon the kittens and went right up to them. They were very startled, then cautiously curious. They ran and then one of them threw something at me! And then I was flying. Of course, it’s always the first thing I try. My memory is a little flighty. Then I was in this house. The colors were so vibrant and my sense of touch was as real as real! I couldn’t believe it! I grabbed this fuzzy cleaning thing and it was so very soft. I made a note of remembering it.
I was standing on a table in a brightly colored green-floored TV room in Blaine House. I went outside and the house was this brightly lit, strangely proportioned building with bright colors. I was on a hill and tried flying. Here are some secrets: you tend to drift downward unless you turn belly up. It seems your belly pulls you forward. So I’m flying again. I look down at the street and it’s shimmering, like grass in the wind, moving in swirling sheets of points of light. I don’t think I’ve seen anything shimmer quite like that. There was traffic and school buses. I picked up a big bus, and was floating along with it. I scared some kids in other buses by pretending I was going to throw the bus at them. I heard all the kids scream but of course I wasn’t going to — just kidding around. Then I walked up another hill, forgetting about the bus.
I met this kid and we started talking. While we did, the bus I had picked up had shrunk to the size of a large plank of wood. It was just one color of gold/yellow now, and each indentation was much less defined, as if melting, shrinking. Somebody had grabbed it and was running over the hill with it under his arm. I said I heard a bus from the waking side, a rumbling engine-y feeling. I asked the kid if he could hear it and he thought it was the vehicles on the road in the dream. I said “No, it’s coming from the other side, from my body side.” I then had dual awareness for a few moments; half there, half here, but in the same space. That’s when I felt my head and jaw vibrating. I refocused into the dream. The kid saw the shrunken bus and was surprised. Then with a huge smile, I put my hands on his shoulders and said “We’re dreaming. This is a dream!” and he had this look like he didn’t believe me and I said “Yeah, everything feels like usual, but we are!” He started walking back to his little house. I followed and inside there was this girl. I said “Look, I’m going to fly.” I lifted up and drifted immediately down into the corner. He wasn’t very impressed and threw himself in the corner and sarcastically said “Ooh, I’m flying, too.” So I got up with a greater will and did the back flip thing and it worked — I was floating there and flying about. Then he was flying, too, but he was unconscious, drifting in the air but mostly motionless. He had this plastery semi-sweet look on his face.
Then a crowd of people about my age came in. One of them had a stack of magazines, copies of an artistic/fun one like Creative Loafing. I was made a little uncomfortable by all the people and decided to keep my dream realization to myself for a little longer. I was wary of getting into a magazine because I knew it would distract me out of lucidity, but I thought it a good experiment to see what happens. I tried to read and kept going over words, wondering what they meant. Then I thought of how letters are supposed to change in dreams and wondered why I could see them alright. In an attempt to get the meaning, I concentrated really hard on one entry in the classifieds. As I focused on the second half of the word, the first became more blurry and when I returned to it, it said something different. Ah, I thought. Almost getting the meaning changed the words when my expectations blended with the other letters.
Then I turned to another page. This girl next to me asked if I wanted to see the new movie coming out, named “Peace,” which seemed to have two parts. I recognized it and said “Yes, yes, I sure do!” though what I recognized wasn’t something familiar to me now. Then I saw a picture in the magazine of them building the set. “Like Labyrinth 3!” someone said. It had a red, circular structure edged by glowing lines. It had pillars, and two huge guys in Star Wars masks were assembling it. I was getting too into the picture and thought I should wake up so as not to forget. And I did! I woke up with a slight sweat at around 10:13.
I awoke a few times during the lucid dream to discover a vibration shaking my head and jaw and had then forced myself back into the dream. I was sleeping on my right side.
I’m so charged with energy that it’s hard to sit here and write. I’m so refreshed! I want new things to conquer! I don’t want to go back to sleep.
Everything changes! My inner eyes stay so easily open right now.
This morning, the kittens seemed a little hesitant to approach, then both sniffed me profusely before relaxing.
While lucid, it seemed like there were glowing diamonds in my head. The lightheadedness was more of a deeper power of heat spots, like healing Prana light.
So they were right about early morning, waking, then returning. I saw thought-forms! Flew! Was awake and aware! Felt and saw things! Heard the vibrations! Told someone we were in a dream! Yes! Up till now it’s all been study but now I’ve been there, I’ve experienced it myself! Now I don’t theorize, I KNOW! Oh happy happy happy happy day!
References: Creative Loafing is an Atlanta magazine.
Lucid at Last: This dream was so perfect! I tried to convince someone I was dreaming, tried to read, flew, lucidly experienced rationalizations and thought-forms, went back and forth consciously between the waking and dream worlds, and things felt as physically real as they do when awake! There are many aspects of OBE here, too (more on that in a later section).
I think of lucidity as being the full-context waking self. But consider that I recognized the movie “Peace” that only exists in the astral. So my dream self focus was also engaged. Is my focus shifting back and forth? Or broad enough to encompass both?
Thought Form Rationalization: I started flying outside and saw the shimmering in the street. There was no traffic at this time. Then suddenly there was all kinds of traffic, not moving, just sitting there with their engines on like they were in a traffic jam. It was either a rationalization of a bus or truck outside in waking life or a rationalization of the head and jaw vibrations. As I turned my attention to the conversation, the bus thought form began melting.
Why It Worked: It’s been said that a reliable way to have a lucid dream is to awaken in the morning, get out of bed for a short time, and then return to sleep. I have driven Rebecca to work, come back, and tried to dream lucidly many times, but haven’t succeeded. What was the difference this time? I think that holding my inner eyes open was the key factor, something I haven’t been doing lately. This is a technique in which I focus intently on the darkness in front of my closed eyes, watching it intently as I fall asleep.
Reading: I could read fine, and the words wouldn’t change as long as they were just making sounds in my head and not conveying meaning.
Once I began to interface with the meaning, the position of the letters and words stopped mattering. Having read and understood the first and second half of the word, when my eyes went back to the first half of the word, the next word came through there. Without our waking habit of scanning across the page, the entire intended meaning will come to us as we stare at one position.
Lucidity via the Bizarre: The scene is far too strange for my rational mind to miss. I’m sawing into Joe’s arm with a steak knife and an identical copy of him is watching me do so. What the hell was I doing? I don’t even eat steak.
The Joe standing up seemed like the real Joe. He sure responded like himself.
The Other Dreamer: The kid I talked to was a great example of a dreamer who isn’t aware that he is dreaming. At times I am able to reach him and at others he is seemingly absent from his body, possibly focused internally. It’s possible seeing me fly sent him into a subjective dream.
Shimmering and Vivid Colors: The shimmering I’ve read about in the mid-to-upper astral frequencies; stronger focuses of attention. Directly before that, I left Blaine House (my body metaphor) and went outside. I could be OB at this point.
The Kittens: We had two kittens at the time. It’s been said that animals can see astral forms — dreamers, ghosts, etc. Here we have an experience where I visit the kittens in a semi-conscious OBE and they react to me as if I were a ghost — familiar but unfamiliar. The next morning they are uncertain of me. They seemed to have some kind of astral defense as well — their ability to “throw something at me”.
The Shrinking Bus: This a great example of how a thought form melts away when attention is removed from it by its creator.
Waking Up: The full-context waking self has the ability to wake itself up from the dream, similar to the MetaDreamer focus.
Lucid Dreams and OBE: I begin in the dream state and become lucid. Shortly after, I am in the physical world, in my own house in my astral body. I see the bright colors, feel the sensations of touching physical objects, and encounter the kittens. Then it goes back into a lucid dream for a while. At one point I’m in a position of dual awareness of the dream and my physical body, where I feel my head and jaw vibrating. This is the vibrational state of the astral body separating. After a bit more lucid dreaming, I wake myself up.
Lucid Flying: The back flip is another way to get belly-up. As you begin the flip, your belly goes up and pulls you up into the air. At the end, you’re standing in the air.
Let Me Borrow That: The bus appeared in the dream because I heard one from the waking world. This shows that thought forms (including rationalizations) are objectively real to others in the astral.
The MetaDreamer: I’m lucid in this dream, and I’m aware of the sound of a bus coming from the physical world. Earlier I had integrated the bus into the dream. But as I continue to hear it, I discuss it openly with another dreamer, knowing it’s coming from the physical world.
Kitten Attack!: An energetic attack from one of the kittens!
Movies: Here I recognize the name of a dream movie that doesn’t exist in the waking world.
Astral Movies: Only in the mid-upper astral would people be excited by a movie called “Peace”.
Aware of the Danger: I’m not only lucid, but aware that getting too into something might cause me to lose lucidity.