45 + 15 points
Lucid Dreaming by Earl Barry Ian John the Third
June 9th, 2007 3:59 AM
First of all thank you for this task. I felt really selfish working on this task as it only serves the task doer to further delve into themselves, but having said that I am so grateful for being given the impetus to do it, as it is something I have always been interested in.
I have always wanted to lucid dream and the only thing I could do as a kid was realise I was in a dream and then pull myself out of it.
When I read this task I got really inspired and set about training myself to lucid dream. The first thing I did was go to a dream matrix, which is essentially a forum for discussing dreams, but you only talk about dreams that are triggered from someone else telling you theirs. It's a kind of dream story-telling through association. After an hour and a half of this, there was an hour session to discuss the nature of the dreams further and it was more about questioning dreams, in order to understand them and gain a bigger picture of them. The whole process has been designed as an exploration of how dreams can create material for any medium. And then at this particular event I went to, we went on to create something theatrical with the material, which in a sense was like a lucid dream for the performers.
So whilst there, the subject of lucid dreaming inevitably came up and lots of ideas were thrown around regarding how to achieve this. I had further conversations with friends about it and somehow found myself discussing it with my tutors during tutorials aswell. One method that came up was the use of checking the time, I was told that if you look at your watch when in a dream and then check it again imediatly afterwards, the time will be different and this will alert you that you are in a dream and then allow you to control it. This was the method I chose to follow.
Every night, before I would go to sleep, I would check my watch and tell myself as I was nodding off: "check your watch... check your watch... check your watch... zzz zzz zzz" Then without fail every morning I would wake up dissappointed.
BUT then one night, i nodded off without saying it to myself and found myself at the top of a hill with three children and all four of us skateboarding and I immediatly realised that I was in a childhood nightmare that I used to have a lot as a kid. I skateboarded to the bottom of the hill and then with the momentum, my skateboard began to float and glide up the otherside of the hill. (JUST THE SAME AS IT WAS WHEN I WAS A KID).
Just before the top of the hill I glided back down onto the road and the front door of a house opened, casting out a green hazy light ouot into the street. I went in and all of my friends parents from when I was about six were there and there was a kids party going on, so we were all eating cake and there was a lot of laughing going on. But as I had been in the dream before I was uneasy (but it's important to add that at this point I was still in the dream and although it was surreal it was still real to me).
I was really parranoid and thought the cake had been poisened so I pretended to eat it and then just spat in on the floor. One of the parents saw me doing this and then the dream turned ugly. All of the parent ripped off their faces and revealed they were witches and all armed with knives from cutting party cake, advanced on us all.
It was then then that I looked at my watch, at first I thought nothing of it, feeling so distressed by the witches I just checked the time, which to my memory read 2:50 or 4:15. Then I realised what I had done, I quickly raised my watch again at which point, it was like I became Neo from the matrix, suddenly realising he could fly.
I first tested my new found control and floated to the ceiling at which point the ceiling morphed around my back and began to look like the fabric of space and then I knew I could do anything. I oblitterated them, one by one I destroyed them from the inside and they imploded on themselves.
Sadly at this point, so excited by my achievement, instead of having some real fun with my new found powers, I rushed to tell Mouse (an sf0 player/ my housemate) and in doing so believed I had discovered myself awake and the 'real' world. The truth was I was still dreaming, but being oblivious to that fact meant I lost the lucidity of my lucid dream and stopped lucid dreaming.
I am working on creating somthing from this dream aswell, but all is in the pipeline...
I have always wanted to lucid dream and the only thing I could do as a kid was realise I was in a dream and then pull myself out of it.
When I read this task I got really inspired and set about training myself to lucid dream. The first thing I did was go to a dream matrix, which is essentially a forum for discussing dreams, but you only talk about dreams that are triggered from someone else telling you theirs. It's a kind of dream story-telling through association. After an hour and a half of this, there was an hour session to discuss the nature of the dreams further and it was more about questioning dreams, in order to understand them and gain a bigger picture of them. The whole process has been designed as an exploration of how dreams can create material for any medium. And then at this particular event I went to, we went on to create something theatrical with the material, which in a sense was like a lucid dream for the performers.
So whilst there, the subject of lucid dreaming inevitably came up and lots of ideas were thrown around regarding how to achieve this. I had further conversations with friends about it and somehow found myself discussing it with my tutors during tutorials aswell. One method that came up was the use of checking the time, I was told that if you look at your watch when in a dream and then check it again imediatly afterwards, the time will be different and this will alert you that you are in a dream and then allow you to control it. This was the method I chose to follow.
Every night, before I would go to sleep, I would check my watch and tell myself as I was nodding off: "check your watch... check your watch... check your watch... zzz zzz zzz" Then without fail every morning I would wake up dissappointed.
BUT then one night, i nodded off without saying it to myself and found myself at the top of a hill with three children and all four of us skateboarding and I immediatly realised that I was in a childhood nightmare that I used to have a lot as a kid. I skateboarded to the bottom of the hill and then with the momentum, my skateboard began to float and glide up the otherside of the hill. (JUST THE SAME AS IT WAS WHEN I WAS A KID).
Just before the top of the hill I glided back down onto the road and the front door of a house opened, casting out a green hazy light ouot into the street. I went in and all of my friends parents from when I was about six were there and there was a kids party going on, so we were all eating cake and there was a lot of laughing going on. But as I had been in the dream before I was uneasy (but it's important to add that at this point I was still in the dream and although it was surreal it was still real to me).
I was really parranoid and thought the cake had been poisened so I pretended to eat it and then just spat in on the floor. One of the parents saw me doing this and then the dream turned ugly. All of the parent ripped off their faces and revealed they were witches and all armed with knives from cutting party cake, advanced on us all.
It was then then that I looked at my watch, at first I thought nothing of it, feeling so distressed by the witches I just checked the time, which to my memory read 2:50 or 4:15. Then I realised what I had done, I quickly raised my watch again at which point, it was like I became Neo from the matrix, suddenly realising he could fly.
I first tested my new found control and floated to the ceiling at which point the ceiling morphed around my back and began to look like the fabric of space and then I knew I could do anything. I oblitterated them, one by one I destroyed them from the inside and they imploded on themselves.
Sadly at this point, so excited by my achievement, instead of having some real fun with my new found powers, I rushed to tell Mouse (an sf0 player/ my housemate) and in doing so believed I had discovered myself awake and the 'real' world. The truth was I was still dreaming, but being oblivious to that fact meant I lost the lucidity of my lucid dream and stopped lucid dreaming.
I am working on creating somthing from this dream aswell, but all is in the pipeline...
