On Lucid Dreaming

Rene Magritte

Recent Dream:
     I dreamt I was walking in my neighborhood.  I had the sense that it was the neighborhood of my childhood and I was in my youth.  Everything was vibrant and technicolored.  Trees had fruits like strawberries, limes, and oranges.  It was Summer.  I was walking from the corner store that I frequented when I was a kid (This store is no longer there in reality) when I realized  had control of this dream.  I can probably count on my fingers the number of dreams that I had control of that didn't turn into some torrid despicable sexual depravity but I guess I took some high road on this one.  I imagined that the sloping terrain in Stiles street was filled with water.  I dove in, swimming on my back.  I can't swim in real life.  I looked up at the trees and the fruits thereon were pulsating and giving off light.  I'd reached that serene feeling that can only be acquired in dreams.
     left the newly formed pond and made the left turn onto my street.  The block begins with my grandparents house on the corner, my house on the opposite corner separated by two other houses.  We'd lost our grandmother about 17 years ago and my grandfather just this Summer.  I wanted to see them.  Together.  I, from the opposite side of the road,  stared up at an upstairs window and tried to conjur them. They wouldn't appear.  I began to panic because I knew I was losing my grip on the dream and consciousness was soon to follow.  I dream of my grandmother often and usually wake in tears. This time it was because I had the chance to see her and couldn't.  She'd slipped away from me.

     Lucid dreams usually have very strong visceral impact on me that lasts well into the day.  Much past the point when normal dreams have faded.  I'd been very intrigued by them, moreso in my early 20s and spent a great deal of my time trying to manipulate the dream-state.  I'd read books and a friend of mine had actually let me borrow his pair of NovaDreamers (pictured right) which are a set of sleep goggles that are supposed to recognize when you reach REM (dream sleep) and signal you with LED lights into your eyes as a queue to recognize that you're dreaming.  My problem is that I'm a very light sleeper (I refer to it as Ninja Sleep) and couldn't fall asleep with it them on.

     This recent dream has inspired me to try again to purse manipulation of the dream-state.  I just have a hard time remaining asleep once I've concluded that I'm dreaming.  As if my psyche won't accept any reality that it knows is not actual.  Like a built in alarm system.  I wake up almost immediately.  Also in less than ideal dream situations when I panic and try to wake myself up I never think to try to turn it around now that I know that it's in my own head.
     What I found most successful in achieving lucidity is self training and repetition.  When you're in bed and you feel that you could be passing between states; in those thoughts it proved beneficial to routinely ask myself, 'Am I dreaming this?'.  Even when I knew I hadn't reached sleep yet it allowed me, if even only as a trigger phrase, to wrap a rope around my waist that I could tug on from the inner reaches of the dream-state.
      I'm going to go at this proactively now.  Especially since waking life leaves a bitter taste in my mouth more often than not these days.  I flew last night.  If only for a little while.  My goal before the end of December is to lift a house from its foundation telekinetically.  Or some other large object depending on where the dream takes place.  It's exciting to think of all the possibilities.  If mastered I could imagine it being more detrimental than the most ravaging of drugs.