Lingering between two worlds

This is not a dream entry, but a short post about something I experienced last night.

I awoke from a disturbing dream, where my family was in trouble, my friends had neglected me and my body had been covered with stress-related hives. I charted down the dream in my orange notebook next to my pillow so I wouldn't forget it the next morning.

After writing down the dream I tried going back to sleep again, using the counting technique I described in the previous post. After a while I start having a battle with myself. I am counting, but behind the counting lies other thoughts - or at first I think they're just thoughts, but eventually a part of me starts viewing it as a reality or a dream - as if I'm physically experiencing the thoughts. Kind of like I am hallucinating.

On one side I have an "awake" part of myself struggling to keep counting to get myself to fall asleep, and on the other side I have a "dreaming" part of myself walking around in a mall doing some christmas shopping, but my awake part is still keeping me informed that I am just lying in my own bed trying to fall asleep.

I'm being pulled back and forth between these two state of minds and after a while I start to get tired and a little sea-sickish, so I stop counting, open my eyes and just stare at my bedroom wall. I try resuming the counting but the tug of war returns. Frustrated I open my eyes again, take a short break and try to stop the room from spinning. I decide to stop the counting and just try to go to sleep the normal way.

Eventually I do.

Count your way to sleep

When sitting down to read a book or an article my mind has a tendency to wander off into other thoughts while still reading the words, but not "taking it in" at all - lately, when this attention span breakdown happens, I've been doing a 10 second countdown where I stop reading and try not to think about, or visualizing, anything else but the number 10 counting down in my head, and I've been amazed at the effect that this has had on my concentration when my mind gets distracted. So what has this to do with dream(b)log?

Lately I've been impatient about falling asleep, because I have so many dream adventures I want to try out. I thought about different ways one can do to help yourself fall asleep faster - listen to calm music, binaural sounds, breathing exercises... then I thought about "counting sheeps". I remember trying to do that when I was younger and it didn't help, so these last couple of nights I've been doing a different version.

Closing my eyes in bed, I visualize the number 1. It's colored in bright white on a black background. I notice other thoughts in a transparent manner behind the number 1, but I try to focus hard on the "1". Then I start counting: "One... two... three... four..." always visualizing the number I am counting out loud in my head. I have no goal. No number "destination". I just count. At different times - sometimes at 150, sometimes around 300 - my mind starts to "flicker". I fall off the wagon and start thinking about something else, but I try to recuperate as fast as I can and resume the counting. (I've noticed this flickering occurs when I'm getting close to falling asleep, since I feel it is a product of my will giving up its control and surrendering to the sleep session ahead.)

Eventually I fall asleep, and when I wake up the next morning I can't remember which number I stopped at.

Healing hands?

Category: Spiritual / Experimental
Hours of sleep: 9
Lucid: Yes

I was running down a road to catch a bus. Something struck me as odd and I became lucid.
"This is a dream."

Just to make sure, I started running faster and tried to do a jump - and sure enough - I leaped several feet in the air, lingered for a bit in mid-air, before floating down again. Wondering what to do with this lucid moment - I remembered reading, in Waggoner's book, about people who had used their lucid dream to provoke self-healing.

I have been struggling with pneumonia for a couple of weeks and still coughing like an old man on his death bed. Remembering what I had read, I tried to put "healing thoughts" into my hands. Waggoner reported that many people experience white light in their hands when they go into "healing-mode".
Greatly expecting my hands to burst into white light, I was pretty disappointed when nothing happened, but as I looked closer at my hands I noticed that they were sparkling - like small patches of glitter here and there on my fingers and my palms.

With my new-founded "sparkling healing hands" I started to rub my chest, my throat and my head always thinking about how I am healing myself... then I got interrupted by a woman asking what I was doing.
"Trying to get rid of my pneumonia!"
"Oh... I see... well... good luck with that..."
Then she lit a cigarette, took a deep breath and blew smoke in my face.

Then I woke up.
I guess time will show if I managed to speed up my healing process.

I suppose the scientific way to look at this "healing process" is that you trigger your mind to send more "healing process" to the area of your body that is damaged. Kind of like when you cut your finger, and it starts to throb immediately and blood starts rushing to the area for protection and to start the regeneration process.

Assassin?

Category: Nightmare
Hours of sleep: 9
Lucid: No

I went to the movies and watched Tron:Legacy. There is a scene where duelists have to fight to the death.

The following night I had a dream about dueling against an asian girl. She had a knife in her hand and was trying to strike me down. It was a fight to the death - who would win? Me or her?

The next thing that happened was pretty psychotic.
I managed to disarm the girl and get the knife in my own hands. Then I went mad crazy on her and stabbed her over 20 times all over her body until she lay flat on the floor.

In shock of what I had done I dropped the knife and started walking away. I heard her scream behind me and when I turned around - the knife was being thrown after me, but I managed to dodge it.

Then I woke up.

Suiciding my way out of a nightmare

Category: Nightmare
Hours of sleep: 6
Lucid: Yes

I am a crime scene investigator... CSI baby! Me and my crew are investigating a murder at a fancy mansion on top of a cliff. Suddenly all the doors slams shut and one of my colleagues starts laughing manically.

"I am the killer! And now I'm going to kill you too!"

In fear I take off running up a couple of stairs that leads to the roof of the mansion. When I'm on the roof and realize I have nowhere to go, I wait for the assailant to come up...

We stare at each other, and all of a sudden my fears disappear. I realize I am dreaming.
Normally I would try to befriend my nightmare by confronting him in a cool matter and ask what was wrong and why he wanted to kill me, a technique I learned and wrote about here.

But not this time... I decided to take a fast and easy way out. I would suicide myself out of it.
Knowing I was on top of a mansion sitting on the edge of a cliff, I smiled to the assailant and took off dashing across the roof and jumped off, threw my arms out and let myself fall down the side of the cliff into the pitch black void at the bottom...

But instead of waking up like I thought I would - I materialized outside some bakery in Greece. Scratched my head in wonder of what had just happened. And then I woke up.

Supernatural river rafting on Pandora (Avatar)

Category: Superpowers
Hours of sleep: 6
Lucid: Yes

I am clinging on to two handles in the middle of a giant rubber raft floating down a calm river.
A mountain is coming up ahead and at the base there's a hole that creates a giant waterfall leading down to somewhere unknown. Somehow I just know that I am dreaming, so I'm not feeling any fear for the fall that is about to come.

I'm drawing closer to the drop point, and just before I get to the edge I grab the raft and perform a giant leap straight up in the air with the raft, angle it diagonally downwards and take off flying in diving mode into the hole where the waterfall starts.

I feel the wind around my head and my adrenaline is pumping. When I get to the other side (underneath the mountain) I am struck with awe over the amazing view. I have reached another world. All the colors. A warm evening sun in my face. Weirdly shaped trees. "Avatar" I tell myself in the dream.

Another "rafter" shows up next to me. I challenge her to a race down the, now wild, river. The speed is supernatural and I keep performing the jump and dive move from earlier to gain more speed and momentum and we are swooshing back and forth and underneath each other. My adrenaline level is spiking at this point and I end up waking myself up from all the excitement.

Date with Superman (me)

Category: Superpowers
Hours of sleep: 7.5
Lucid: Yes

I was on a date that was going quite well. We were just walking around my home town, and we decided to head down to the harbor. When we went around the corner we were suddenly in a forest with a river right in front of us. Luckily I was aware enough to note this rapid scenery change as quite unrealistic. "This is a dream!"

I looked at my date and with a great grin on my face I asked: "You want to fly?"
The reply was: "No."
But I didn't care - I grabbed my date's hand and took off flying around the forest.

If someone did that to me on our first date I would be quite impressed.
So I felt pretty awesome doing this for my date.

When we landed we ran into two hippie guys crouched in front of a formation of gray rocks and one distinct blue one. One of the hippie guys asked me:
"Hey dude. We know you know you are dreaming. Do you think you can remember this stone sequence and show us when you wake up?

Here it is: (roughly sketched on Photoshop)

Fail to impress

Category: Superpowers
Hours of sleep: 8
Lucid: Yes

I was standing outside a mall waiting for some friends. When the third one arrives, she's on a motorcycle and almost ends up wrecking the whole thing by almost crashing into some parked cars. Then she jumps off and acts like nothing is wrong. This makes me kind of suspicious, and I start to question the whole setting. "Where am I? Why are they here?" And I become lucid.

Excited I run over to my three friends: "Hey guys! Guess what? This is a dream! And I can prove it to you! I'm gonna run vertically up that wall all the way to the roof."
My friends don't say anything, they just smile back at me.

I run towards the mall determined to run up its wall, but realize there is a small wall, like a fence, in front of the main wall, and I start to question if I'll be able to run upwards on the small wall, shift gravity, then jump "downwards" to the other wall behind/underneath it, and then run up to the top.
I have shifted gravity in the dream world before, but it was not my intent when I did it then, it just happened.


So since I filled myself with doubt, that I should have learned not to do in this previous dream, I only ended up running halfway up the small wall, then doing a back flip off of it, and landing in a hunched position on the ground again. My friends start laughing at my attempt then they walk in to the mall.

FAIL!

Water park adrenaline rush

Category: Adrenaline
Hours of sleep: 8
Lucid:Yes

The setting was a water theme park. I was standing in line on top of a giant water slide, with a tiny rubber raft in my hands. The raft had room for 6 people, so me and a bunch of strangers jumped in when it was our turn. I was in front.

The raft started sliding down, first a tiny drop in the slide... then I saw it: a giant, almost vertical, long drop was coming up ahead. I braced myself on the slide, getting ready for the drop. I wasn't scared, I was more pumped with adrenaline and getting ready for the gut-clenching emotional rush you get when taking different theme park rides.

(On a side note: this dream was based on a personal memory from a family vacation to Cyprus, where we visited a water theme park, WaterWorld Waterpark, and took the exact ride, Drop To Atlantis, that is described and illustrated above.)

The raft went down the big drop, and my belly started to tingle and of course I had to let out a little scream - but midway in the drop I realized that I was strangely lacking the hard-core emotions I usually feel when taking rides like this. BAM - lucidity hits me. "This is a dream."

The raft comes down to a giant lake, and we are forced to paddle with our hands to get to the dock where we could get off the raft. I started paddling with my hands only to realize we weren't moving at all. Luckily I was a quick thinker, and I thought: "I have to work in rhythm with the dream figures behind me." So I listened for their strokes, and eventually I could hear an even paddling rhythm. I joined in - and the raft took off across the water, and we ended up crashing into the dock.

Who knew that much speed could come out of just paddling your hands.
The dream world can be a fun place!

Using objects to fly: The pillow

Category: Superpowers
Hours of sleep: 7
Lucid: No

I was standing on a platform in space with a big pillow in my arms.
Some army-looking guy walks up to me and says: "Okey. We're good to go."
I jump off the platform and start free-falling downwards.  I put the pillow in-between my legs and it takes off flying towards a giant building that looks a lot like the Colosseum in Rome. The pillow climbs over the top of the outer wall and immediately I am hit with loud roars from a cheering crowd.

Apparently I am some flying superstar acrobat guy and all the people are my screaming fans.
I twist, turn and do loops over the stadium and the crowd loves it.
I notice a giant pool at the bottom, so I stand up straight on the flying pillow and do a back flip off of it, before angling my body into a dive down into the water. The crowd cheers even more.

But right before I hit the water, I am struck with a hint of hesitation, and all my confidence evaporates and I hit the water with a big belly splash and I wake up.

Lesson learned: There is no room for hesitation or doubt in the dream world. If you go at things totally fearless and confident - your wish is your command.