Lucid Dreaming

‘In dreams, we enter a world that’s entirely our own.’ -Steven Kloves

I am a master when it comes to lucid dreaming. I dream lucidly almost every night. For people who don’t know what lucid dreaming is, it’s basically when you become consciously aware that you’re dreaming. It’s when you know that everything that’s happening in your dream is all just in your mind and you’ll eventually wake up from it.

Mind awake, body asleep.

Dreaming lucidly can be a beautiful thing; but it can also be your worst nightmare. For me, it’s really a place where I can escape to freedom and be whatever or whoever I want to be or have whatever I want to happen, happen. I personally LOVE lucid dreaming. I love being aware that I’m dreaming when I’m dreaming. It’s really the coolest feeling. It’s almost like starring in my own little mind movie that only I can see.

People often think lucid dreaming and dream control are the same thing. These people are mistaken. They’re completely different. However, the more you lucid dream, you can start to feel like you have somewhat of a control over certain things in your dreams. But it’s also possible to lucid dream, be completely aware that you’re dreaming, and not have any control over what’s happening. It all depends on your mind and body. In my case, I can’t always choose whether I want to control what happens in my dreams. It just depends. I never plan to go to sleep every night and dream lucidly, it just happens for me. It’s like before the dream even starts I already know that it’s just a dream and none of it is real and weird things are gonna happen, but it’s all in my mind. It’s been that way for me ever since I was little. Lucid dreaming was always something I was just able to do.

When I lucid dream, and I’m in my dream doing whatever it is that I’m doing, sometimes I can see myself sleeping. That sounds really weird, but it’s almost like a second sight or an out of body experience. Like, I’ll be completely aware that I’m dreaming when I’m asleep, and I can see myself lying in bed, asleep. I don’t know if I’m even explaining this properly, but it’s like I’m not even there and I’m like standing in the corner of my room or over my body, and I’m just watching myself sleep when I’m… asleep …? That just sounds creepy now, I don’t even know how to explain this x) It’s like my soul is getting away from my body and it’s the weirdest experiece to be able to watch yourself sleep. But it’s also not a good thing and definitelu not something you want to do or would want to happen. Because when this happens and you are watching youself sleep, your soul basically is completely detached and separate from your body, and each body can only have one spirit. Meaning that if your spirit is out of your body, that leaves a window of opportunity for other things and other ‘spirits’ to enter your body and take it over. Think, possession. And yeah that shits not good.

But aside from LD’s, another skill I’ve been lucky enough to develop is dream recall, the ability to remember dreams. Dream recall is a big factor when it comes to lucid dreaming. They definitely work together and can really give you a full lucid experience. I almost always remember my dreams when I wake up. And while it’s still fresh in my mind, I’ll write everything down in detail in my dream notebook, where I keep records and stories of all my dreams; or if I don’t feel like doing that at the moment, I’ll type it down, including all major details the best I can, in the notepad app on my phone. If you record your dreams, it can sometimes help you to lucid dream the following night and have a continuation of the previous nights dream or even have the same dream again because you have all the details written down. The more you do this, you will start to see patterns or recognize things in your dream that will trigger your mind and make you realize that you’re in a dream.

Then, you can enter the world of lucidity.

‘Valley of the Shadow’…?

I just woke up from yet another strange dream. It featured some random handsome guy who I don’t remember ever seeing before in life. But anyways, it began with me and this handsome guy (let’s name him Jeremy) hiking deep in the mountains of… somewhere. It didn’t look familiar to me so I can’t say exactly where we were. But it was basically in the middle of nowhere and the mountains went on for miles. We were just on a random hike, exploration quest and just went wherever the mountain would let us. We literally had to climb down massive mountains to get down to where we wanted to be. We found lots of little caves and hidden areas to stop and rest and just hang out. While we were sitting in one of the caves, I looked out to the right and could see a little girl standing in the next open ground through the small water carved canyon. She was just staring at me. I stopped for a second and just stared back at her then glanced over to Jeremy and then back at the girl but she was gone. It was weird, but I didn’t say anything.

We continued to hike down the mountain. Once we got to the bottom, we had to walk through another tight water carved canyon and when we reached the end, it opened up to a hidden town in the middle of freaking nowhere. It was so odd. Like, no one would ever be able to find this place because it was so deep in the mountains, and without proper equipment it would be too dangerous of  a climb to even get down to ground level.

We decided to walk around and see the town. It was strange because we thought that it would be deserted, but it wasn’t. There were about fifty people in this town, walking around, living life. It looked like an old western town. The kind in an old Clint Eastwood film. It had a saloon, a bank, a court house, city hall, and little stores all made from rotted looking wood. The town was actually kinda cute though. It reminded me of when I went to Virginia City years ago. Jeremy and I hung out for a few hours and met some really nice people. We actually started to forget that we were deep in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, talking to random people who somehow live out here. But for some reason we didn’t seem to think any of this was weird. Because people go hiking in random places and discover hidden towns all the time right? This was not normal.

After awhile, we wanted to start heading back home but the town’s people convinced us to stay the night since it would be getting dark in a couple hours. They were very accommodating and gave us a room to stay in. We woke up the next morning around 6am to leave and go back up the mountain and be home by the afternoon. The sun was just starting to show and light up the sky, so we quickly packed up our backpacks and headed out. As soon as we walked out of the building, the entire town was there to greet us. We thanked them for letting us stay for a night and that we had to leave now. Then the town’s people told us that we’re not allowed to leave. Jeremy and I looked at each other like WTF, and we told them again that we have to leave and go home but they just kept repeating that we could not leave. That they wouldn’t let us.

And then I randomly woke up and that was the end of the dream.

This dream was actually really interesting because after I woke up and thought about it for a second, I realized it had similar events as an episode I once saw of The Twilight Zone. The episode was titled, ‘Valley of the Shadow’, and it was about a man who was driving through the mountains and stops for directions and ends up discovering this odd little town called ‘Peaceful Valley’. The town and the town’s people held a dark secret and when the man tried to leave, they wouldn’t let him. It’s a really good episode and I remember seeing it on television in late December. My dream differed a bit, but regardless, had a close synopsis.

Hope you enjoyed reading another one of my dreams!(:

Dream State

I’ve been waking up and remembering a lot more of my dreams lately and I wanted to share one. It’s pretty random. I had this dream the morning of February 15th.

The dream started off with me walking around outside in a giant courtyard. From what I could tell, it had a big fountain right in the middle and lots of trees and plants decorating the surrounding area; but then again it was already pitch dark outside and every thing was looking faint. I don’t remember what I was doing really, but then I came up to a massive building that I was apparently looking for. I had never seen it before, but somehow in the dream I knew it’s what I was looking for. I stepped inside the building and all that was there was a big empty white room with elevators in the corner. No front desk, and no furniture at all, just plain white walls and elevators. I went straight for the elevators and took it all the way to the top floor. There was like some weird reunion going on with all the people I ever went to school with. I saw people I remember from 3rd grade and people from junior high and everyone that went to my last high school. It was mandatory to attend but I didn’t want to. I didn’t care about any of these losers then and I don’t care now. Of course, I found the one friend I had in high school and we stuck together. We ditched the reunion and left to go to a nearby casino that had a cinema. We actually didn’t end up seeing any movie, instead we got lost and couldn’t even find the casino.

Then somehow we ended up at a random venue and everybody was running towards it and rushing in. We didn’t know what was going on but we decided to join in on the runnings. Lol. We ran up to the doors of the building, which were open, and just ran right in. When we got inside, we realized we were at an N*Sync concert with Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees. Lol. At first we were like WTF, but hey, we like them(: So we stayed. We were seated right in the front middle of the venue and had to be locked in to our seats. When the show started, our seats began to move slowly from side to side. We were sitting in what seemed like a big pendulum. It swayed us from side to side and it was actually really fun. In the dream I didn’t find any of this unusual at all, like it was all normal or something.

All of a sudden the dream jumped scenes and I was walking outside again. But not in the courtyard this time. I was in the woods, almost lost.

I really didn’t know what I was doing…. I was just walking. And I was alone. I remember looking up for a minute to see the sky and all I saw was black. Pure black, not a single star was in the sky. Again, I didn’t find this unusual, even though in the woods I would normally be able to see twice as many stars than in the city. I walked further into the woods and saw a green tree far in the distance. Like the entire tree was an obvious green that stood out among the dark normal colored trees.

As I got closer I realized just how massive the tree really was and recognized it by name. It was a giant sequoia. I walked up to it and then ended up walking right through it. Like it wasn’t even there. I came out on the other side to a completely different scene. Now I was in my bedroom, and a guy I’ve never seen before, or at least don’t recall seeing before, was sitting in my room. He obviously knew me and who I was, and apparently, in the dream, I knew him too. Let’s name him Jack. So Jack and I talked for awhile about a lot of things. We had a lot in common and shared the same interests. This guy was like the PERFECT dream best friend. At one point he asked me about my family but I don’t remember what about exactly. Then, he was gone. Just vanished. I left my room and walked into my living room and kitchen completely unfurnished. Everything was gone. All that was there were the walls and tiles, both the darkest shade of black. I looked around for my family but they were no where to be found. They had vanished as well. But how long were they gone? Did they vanish as soon as I stepped out of my room or had they been gone long before then? Or were they just never there to begin with? I rushed to the front door and slipped down into a tunnel slide. Lol, a long, winding, park slide. I got to the bottom but it was blocked off completely to where I was trapped and stuck inside. I freaked.

And that was the end of the dream. I woke up kinda freaked because I’ve had multiple dreams where I’ve gotten trapped inside of a slide with a closed bottom and I couldn’t climb back up or kick the bottom open so I could get out, and I always ended up just trapped. And the rest of the dream was just random and weird.

Going back to the quote in the beginning, it got me thinking. Do we escape to an alternative reality when we dream? How do we know which world really is dream and reality? What if our dreams are actually our reality and our so called ‘everyday life’ is just the dream state we go to every night and everything we know is just a big everyday dream? What if everything we think we know is backwards and we’re really awake and living when we’re dreaming? Or what if they’re both reality?