Also, I had a spark of lucidity in one dream a few nights ago. Realizing I was lucid, I told myself I was gonna remember what the dream was about by making a mnemonic. So, I devised the mnemonic TCP. I remember this, but have no idea what it meant.

As the dream set in, the scenery around me did not change at all, and in fact in the dream I was still laying in my bed. I particularly noticed the clarity of vision, lifting my hand up and examining it. I could see it, as per usual now, in every orientation, my palm facing both to and away from me, but simultaneously. The light coming from it and from the room around was of many deep saturated colors, all of which were constantly changing, as if induced by psychedelics. What I couldn’t help but realize this time, however, was that my eyes were still closed in the physical world, and that I seemed to truly be seeing through my own eyelids, seeing without the limitations of optical functionality. It was as if I indeed had a second sight, not involving my eyes at all.

As I lay then half on my side and half on my back, I tried my best to stay conscious as I fell asleep. I soon began to feel the familiar tingle of sleep paralyzing my physical body. I accepted this and waited to see what happened. All of a sudden I felt grasped by an external force and I flew up out of my body, just barely peeking out into some kind of dark open space. However, this sudden occurrence startled me back into consciousness and I awoke once again.

Convinced that I had nearly entered into a lucid dreaming state, I relaxed again and waited for the sleep demon to numb my body once again. It slowly crept over me, making my entire being quietly buzz. Then, with a sudden force it seized me, the pleasurable tingle engulfing me completely, and I felt as if I were thrown up and out of my body into the black obscurity once again. This time I did not wake up, however, and instead consciously took note of what was happening. I was floating dreamily in some kind of limbo. There was no light, just blackness there, and the tingle that had onced encompassed me melted into an immensely pleasurable feeling that diffused through my whole body, inside and out, gripping me so profoundly such that I could not help but try as hard as possible to maintain that state of being, baited like a blind fish by this so peculiar yet so gratifying sensation.

While floating in this dark limbo, my position and orientation in space also seemed to lose all meaning. While I was well aware that I had been lying on my side and back in the physical world, while floating in this endorphin-filled oblivion, I could not easily pick out in which direction I floated. Not only was there not any gravity, but I felt as though I were in every orientation at once, not just looking left, but right as well; not just laying face up, but face down as well, not just curled, but stretched out as well. The entire idea of singular, definable experience seemed to evaporate. Each moment was a combination of a thousand different ones all happening simultaneously, and somehow I had still managed not to waver in my awareness. I was still at least mostly conscious.

After some time existing in this blackness (probably not more than 30 seconds), I found myself within an actual dream. I’m positive I went through a few of these, but I only remember the following one. I was in a bedroom with its doors and windows fully open to the outside air and the breeze blowing through. I was standing up next to a bed facing a girl whom I had never in my life seen before, yet she was beautiful. Recognizing that I was in a dream, and therefore had the power to do whatever I wanted, I tried direly to kiss her, but somehow could not get my body to respond in exactly the way I desired. I was likely not focused enough to have complete control over myself. I instead began to look over the girl, at her face and body. Recognizing that I was dreaming, I decided to try and examine everything in the dream, and to see how closely it resembled reality. To my knowledge, despite the unfamiliar setting, everything was crystal clear, though it took some effort to see an entire scene completely, rather than just the main subject at the center. In other words, the periphery of my vision was hazier than in waking life, but with concentration, I could discern it.

One of the absolute most peculiar aspects of this part of the dream regards the multiperspectival experience I had. After examining my surroundings and comparing them to my knowledge of waking reality, I fully embraced the girl, pressed her up against me. In this moment, however, we were neither standing up nor lying down. We were instead standing upright, lying on our sides, lying with her atop me, lying with me atop her, as well as facing all directions simultaneously. In addition, not only were we together, but we were separated as well, and not only did I see through my own eyes, but I saw myself from a far from many angles. It was not the same as a movie in which one sees from several different perspectives in succession, but instead I experienced all of them at the exact same time, similar to my experience in the black limbo of being in every orientation.

As I continued to examine the dream world around me and take note of my scene, looking closely at everything and admiring how much everything seemed to match reality, the girl in front of me and the setting around us began to slowly crumble into blackness. I tried to hold on to it, but was unable, dragged away from something I so desperately wanted to keep within my grasp, like a child at the zoo being dragged unwillingly by his mother from one exhibit to the next. However, realizing my inability to this, I accepted the transition and patiently waited for where I would end up next.

As the dreamscape dissolved, I again suddenly found myself in the mysterious black limbo in which singular experience had no meaning, at a dream station waiting to board whichever train of thought passed by next. Apparently this is what happens in between discernible dreams. Dissolving into the next scene was not the same as it had been dissolving out of the previous; there was not much of a transition that I can recall (there may well have been a similar one, but I cannot remember it, perhaps due to a lapse in consciousness). Instead, all of a sudden I found myself standing on a window ledge three or four storeys up in an unfamiliar city, looking down at the relatively deserted streets below. It was dusk and by the color of the skies and the horizons, it appeared that the sun was setting all around me. An eerie, surreal, red and orange light penetrated the new dreamscape. Still conscious and aware of the fact that I was dreaming, I jumped down from the window ledge to the street below without worry. As I touched down I bounded back up, able to control gravity at my will. It was almost as though I were flying, but not quite. In fact, I was never able to completely dismiss gravity during the dream, as much as I could weaken it; some force was always pulling at my body. As such, I bounded around the city for a little while, completely careless, lucid, and having the time of my life.

After a bit of this playfulness, I remembered the girl who had evaporated in front of me in the previous scene and decided that because this was a dream, I should be able to summon her again. At the current moment that this idea hit me, I was several storeys up in the air and coming down to land near a telephone booth, the area around which was completely desolate. So, I concentrated as hard as I was able, and lo and behold, a girl walked out from behind the telephone booth just as I landed. I grabbed her and jumped up into the air with her, excited to show her all I had discovered about lucid dreaming. However, she was not the same girl as before, but slightly older, and with more freckles. Nonetheless, I took her and we flew around. The girl had a very familiar-looking face and when we were in the air I looked her deep in the eyes, so her entire face filled my field of vision.

At this point, I began to awake from my dream. My eyes half-opened, yet the girl’s face still persisted, an image burnt into my eyes it seemed, not just one constructed half-heartedly by my mind. I opened my eyes fully and for a few seconds more I could see clearly the image of her face in front of the wall of my dorm room, a real hallucination, it seemed. Her face then faded, all of the features slowly disappearing, the eyes and mouth vanishing last. To my amazement, though, in a way the eyes and mouth never completely evanesced. As I came back into reality, the eyes and mouth were replaced by three poster images in my dorm room wall, just so peculiarly arranged such that at my angle, they were in the same location as a pair of eyes and a mouth. The poster images, of course, had been there the entire time and somehow, as I awoke, lined up exactly with the features of the girl’s face that had a few seconds previously filled my entire view, almost as if they had somehow influenced the dream.

After the dream a feeling of astonishment and amazement embodied me for the rest of the day. It was almost as if I were coming down from a psychedelic trip, the endorphins still dancing about inside me, my mind filled with unbelievable memories. Perhaps there will be more to come next time!

As such, having fully realized that I was in a dream and power to do whatever I wanted, I found myself sitting and thinking of something outrageous to do. I ended up going right up to the window, smashing it, knowing I choose not to get hurt while doing so, and jumping out. From there, my instincts caught up a little bit, and while falling to the street below, I decided to fly back towards the building, where I held on to side and slid all the way down, as a crowd of onlookers gawked nearby.

First real lucid experience in a while. Kind of refreshing. Hopefully next time it will last longer.

Thus, I’ve embarked on a new type of attempt at performing wake-induced lucid dreams, one focused almost exclusively on gaining a second sight into the dream world. Last night, I meditated for 40 minutes in a quite dark room, varying whether my eyes were open or closed throughout the meditation. As I closed my eyes, I focused on them and focused on seeing past the barrier of my eyelids. It was clearly as if there were this black stretchy fabric covering my sight, one that bent and warped and folded as thoughts moved through my mind. However, as I focused my eyes not on the blackness of my eyelids, but on hidden images that I imagined to be beyond this obscure fabric, I felt that I could actually push against it, reaching farther and farther outside of my body. Last night I attempted this on and off for 40 minutes. Once about half-way through the sit, I had been pushing hard on the warping and distorted obscurity in front of me when all of a sudden I experienced an indescribable feeling and burst through the blackness, where I found myself in the middle of an incredibly bright white surrounding, despite still being physically in a dead dark room. The scene was too bright and vague for me to pick out particular shapes, but hazy images seemed to float around mystically. The experience lasted only a few seconds before I faded back into my own head, but it had occurred nonetheless, a wonderfully surreal feeling of escaping the physical world and breaking through into a new uncharted environment. I can also clearly see how it could have been perceived as reaching a light at the end of the tunnel, if you like.

Being highly encouraged by this happening last night, I attempted a sitting WILD again today. I was tired from not having slept well last night, and was unable to focus as clearly as I’d liked. While sitting I again became aware of the distorted black fabric in front of me. In this fabric, however, was a slight rip, a torn hole through which a bright light was emerging. This hole perhaps represented my conscious breaking of the vision barrier last night, the location through which my mind had poked itself through the darkness. Unfortunately, try as I might, I was unable to move myself closer to the hole from which the light emerged, and my mind faded back into waking consciousness.

Anyway, having for once gotten a good night’s sleep last night, I found that as I lay down I wasn’t very tired, so it took a long time for me to drift off. At times, I have been able to hold onto consciousness right through into the dream and actually pinpoint the very threshold between being awake and being asleep. Not so much today though, I think I may have been frustrated at my inability to doze off quickly and therefore when I finally fell asleep, I had completely forgotten about my intent.

About 20 minutes into my sleep, however, I did become somewhat conscious and was able to recognize that I had been asleep. It wasn’t as a usual lucid dream goes, though, as I didn’t seem to be dreaming, I just knew I was asleep. I recognized the familiar sleep paralysis that comes when the body is stll asleep, or essentially paralyzed, yet the mind has awoken. Thus, I found myself completely unable to spur my body back to life. Instead, I felt as if I were a strange fluid entity floating in some kind of dark and infinite ether, gravity playing no part among the forces acting upon my body. My physical body was entrapped but my mental body was utterly free. I’d never experienced anything like that before. Sadly, as I became more and more aware of what was happening, I woke myself up and brought both my mind and body to full and waking conscoiusness.

Fin.

By the way, if anyone is involved in a similar quest (something I would highly recommend), leave comments and tell me about your experiences!

Rich