If you’ve never heard of lucid dreaming before, it’s a real ability that one is able to practice at and, with diligence, potentially obtain. I’ve heard that certain people are inherently better at it than others, but that it’s generally learnable. It’s a process, in fact, that begins with developing the ability to recall your dreams more effectively in a sort of ‘dream journal,’ which is exactly what I’ll begin using this blog for. To begin this process, I’ll have to mentally program myself each night to wake up right after I’ve had a dream and then write it down here before going back to sleep. This is actually easier to do than it sounds (you can try it sometime, it works marvelously for me), just tell yourself, preferably out-loud, to wake up right after your dreams. This works nearly one hundred percent of the time for me (the brain is such an amazing thing, even when it’s resting)!

So, this blog will hopefully act as both a tool for me to use in my acquisition of lucid dreaming, but also as an interesting study for you as well; you can look at it as a sort of ‘dream archive’ even. When I wake up at night, I’ll write down key details from my dream and anything that distinguishes the dream-world from the waking one. This way, I’ll still be able to recall the important parts of the dream without losing too much sleep writing about it! Also, I’m hoping to do this every night I can but, being a college student, there will inevitably be some nights when any form of sleep deprivation would be completely undesirable, so if you end up reading on a regular basis for some reason or the other, there may be gaps. Well, this is it! I’m starting tonight and will be keeping this journal of both my dreams and record of my progress over the next several months. Sweet dreams!

If you’re interested in attempting to learn lucid dreaming, there’s a fantastic website that has some scientific information, instructional material, and a user discussion forum for free here: http://www.dreamviews.com/index.php

Sincerely,

Alec

1. I was on inner-city bike path, probably in a big city. Also, it went WAY up high. I was a the top of the path (it was made of pavement), and realized that they had intentionally converted part of the bike path to a skate park with extra places to ramp and grind. I was with my brother (again) and someone else, maybe two others, I think one of them might have been my younger brother. I was on a skateboard (I can’t skateboard that well in real life, but I was decent in the dream) on a really high part of the trail where one edge overlooked the entire city. My brother Eric had turned in a job application to work somewhere related to the trail earlier. One of the trail employees (yeeeahh, makes a lot of sense, I know) was with us doing some maintenance on one of the objects used for grinding (there were three metal poles four feet long or so. Each length had two other poles coming vertically out of either end about five feet high. Each segment was capped by either a plastic or glass piece). Anyway, the trail employee told my brother that his application wouldn’t be accepted due to some bizarre, nonsensical technicality. I remember being angry that they were treating him unfairly. This was the end of the dream. Also, I think something else happened before this part of the dream, it was evening maybe, we were skating on the trail I think.

While I was typing up that dream, I remembered another!

2. I lived in an apartment that was connected to someone else’s apartment by a single door (like in many hotels). I didn’t know the guy in the apartment over very well. One night, me and my brother (man he shows up a lot in my dreams!) went over to this guys apartment and ended up watching a movie with some of his friends and drinking something that made us hallucinate (I think). I don’t remember too much about the guy other than he had a big body frame, had a goatee, and reddish-brown hair. The following night, we were having people over at my apartment to see a movie. My girlfriend was there, my brother, and two other people I can’t recall. Towards the end of the movie, my brother tells me that we should smoke this stuff we had to get high (it wasn’t marijuana or anything, it was actually this bizarre combination of plants that really didn’t look very organic. I remember what looked like sawdust, some plastic-looking orange pieces, and some purple and orange flecks). So, I went to find the guy in the next apartment, but I couldn’t find him. So, Eric and I smoked this stuff and I can only vaguely remember if it had any “effect” on my dream-self. I think it did, but something scary happened, like, I “hallucinated” a scary guy in the room or something. There was something else to this dream, but I just can’t grasp it. It was nighttime when it ended, and I was all alone I think. Oh! There was some point in the dream when my brother and I ended up making my neighbor’s bed!

Well, I’m writing these dreams down just having woken up from them (it’s about 9:30am) and I can definitely sense an improvement in my ability to recall both the moods and events of my dreams.

Last night I had two dreams:

1.) I was driving in my gray 1985 Chevy Nova with my brother Eric. We had gone to some sort of late night event (it seemed like a carnival or a barn-dance maybe) out in the countryside and we were just starting to leave. I couldn’t see any other attendees around us (it was the dead of night), but sensed one or two others might have been leaving at the same time as us. There were several vacant looking barns around the square country area we were at along with trees bordering the area (pine trees I think they were). As we were heading out the dirt/gravel driveway to the highway (a one lane each way, with a forest on the far side of it), I noticed to my left one of the buildings. There was a man (his face was obscured but I believe he was wearing a gray suit) doing something in front of one of the barns. Soon after I noticed him, he put on his head a giant mask so as to make his head appear inflated, although I can’t remember what the mask/costume looked like. It scared me though, it was a very surreal sort of man. I turned my attention to the driveway again and, looking out my review mirror, saw that the masked man had his hand on the trunk of my car like he was pushing it. For some reason, I my car couldn’t go fast enough to shake him off the back and I instantly was terrified. My brother was also screaming in terror with me. As I hit the highway, my car gained a burst of speed and I made a sharp right turn. The man had latched onto the trunk of my car and when I turned, the car spun clockwise and swerved. My tail-end went over into the edge of the forest on the other side of the highway and the man was thrown back into the woods. My tires were stuck and I couldn’t accelerate and I was still scared as hell of the masked man. At this point, I exited the car, fearing the worst, and my brother seemed to stay in the car (not sure, but I don’t remember seeing him after this part). In an instant, I remembered that I had programmed my brain to wake up after a dream and this gave me the essential clue that I was in fact having a nightmare. Normally, when beginners start to learn lucid dreams, they wake up at this point, but I was able to hold on to the dream. I tried to control some element of the dream, but paradoxically, I was still too scared to do anything about my situation. After several seconds of attempting to change my surroundings (I realize now I couldn’t change anything because I wasn’t focusing on any particular element to change, I just wanted to get out of the area!), I made myself wake up. Interestingly, I remember being disappointed that I was unable to get a grip on my near-lucid experience. This just goes to show that it will take much practice and effort to learn to manipulate my dreams. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be. For now, I will still focus on simply remembering and recording my dreams!

2.) I was at “my” house; it wasn’t really mine in real life, but it was in the dream. Seemingly out of nowhere, the stars of the Harry Potter movies along with who I assumed were the crew and production teams of the movies appeared in my house in ever increasing numbers. It was a party, I think, and my house continued to expand (unnoticed) as more people joined in. I was particularly enamored with Emma Watson (yes, I know it’s embarrassing, but I said I wouldn’t censor any of these despite damage to my reputation!), but hardly got a chance to speak to her. I know there were more details, but for the life of me it’s a blur at this point.

Well, this is a start! Tune in tomorrow for my latest dreams!

-Alec