I was on a dream epic. I was lucid through most part of the dream, hours of lucidity which made it just absolutely fantastic.
The
start of the dream I was with some friends at a coffee shop. When I
became aware of the dream, I put my hand on the table and anchored my
waking awareness. It was so vividly real that I had my doubts but as I
prepared for this before I fell asleep, I was able to recall all of my
pre-sleep affirmations but not my intent (ie what I wanted to do with
the dream). The table was solid, I tried to push my hand through it to
prove it was a dream but it didn’t pass through so reality check failed.
However, I knew that I wouldn’t be in a coffee shop as the last thing I
remembered was preparing myself for being in a dream before falling
asleep.
I sat at a table with a
few friends. I had a cup of coffee and had a sip. It was black, no sugar
(and I prefer my coffee with at least two cream and one sugar). But
there was no denying it had a rich bitter coffee flavour and was hot. I
couldn’t stop over-hearing what my friends were talking about. They were
talking about old role-playing games and reminiscing about the
nostalgia it had, and I thought it would be fun to actually put them in a
game-world and GM it so to speak. A small price for not pulling in my
intent so the dream characters in a way influenced my choice to change
the dream to what I wanted, but instead of what I wanted from my intent
it became relative to something different but at least having full
control of the dream was mine for this particular exercise.
Unlike
pen-and-paper D&D as an example, the entire dream world changed to a
tavern and my friends now became genre specific player characters. One
of the women became an elf with blond hair and classic green leather
armour, bow. Another person became a wizard. It was like being in one of
the Lord of the Ring movies with how crisp the detail was.
The
tavern looked great, hand crafted wooden beams. A wench with some
medieval dress serving pints of ale in steel ornate sterns. When my
friends suddenly realized that the dream had changed and they had
literally become participants in an actual simulated virtual reality
version of one of their favourite RPG genres they were totally stoked.
The one friend who became the wizard was just blown away, emotionally
floored at this change and loved it. I didn’t have any form, rather I
was able to construct the dream world for the characters based on this
role-playing genre and create encounters etc.
I
could come through as a voice that they could hear. I told them, “Why
reminisce about how fun it could be, when you can live such adventure in
your dreams.” And they were simply over-joyed and got into the game
immediately, ordering drinks, laughing and having fun. I had to start
the story so made this ranger dramatically enter the tavern, blowing the
door open with his blade drawn seeking adventurers to help him fight
against a menacing evil that had awakened deep within a dungeon.
Of
course they spring into heroic action and take up the charge against
evil with this ranger, who took them too, but did not enter the dungeon.
Ironically it was literally a block away from the tavern, how
convenient.
It was really fun, and
I loved how effortlessly my thoughts could shape and construct this
dream world. The realism is what really impressed me. And to do it was
as effortless as breathing. The dungeon crawl started and they had lit
torches. The dungeon looked really great too, with torches lit it
created this really nice ambience and I could see large rock walls and
various spider webs, slimes and bones on the floor. The wizard had
wandered into a room to investigate, and I created the first encounter.
The floor had black ooze which he ended up stepping in. But it was
actually a monster and for comical effect kind the ooze became like Bob
from Monsters Vs. Aliens and role-played with the characters. Instead of
blue it was black, but had the cartoon googly eyes and when it talked
the mouth had tar streaks but was also very small, probably about 4
inches tall.
It was telling the
Wizard that he shouldn’t be there, that the dungeon was dangerous and
that he’ll wake up the master who would be very angry that they were in
his home. They bantered with the ooze for information but then the
wizard character clicked out of the dream and I couldn’t find him which
caused my focus to shift and the dream reverted back to the coffee shop.
It took a lot of my attention to pull that off so I lost some lucidity
in that process.
But the good
news, once back at the table and before I became too engaged in the
dream drama, I put my hand on the table and focused so that another
reality-check was made and I was able to stabilize and re-affirm that I
was dreaming. The lady that was with us was so amazed, “How did you do
that?” she asked me.
“It wasn’t too hard, once inspired to create that type of dream it just happened immediately.” I told her.
“How do you even know that it’s a dream?” she asked.
“Years of practice. I’ve been at this game for a long, long time.” I replied.
“Well, that was amazing. You really had Jeremy overwhelmed with awe. It was a dream come true for him.” she explained.
“I hope you liked it too, sorry I lost control when he left but it’s hard maintaining that focus.”
The
coffee-shop became even more vividly real. I tried to change the dream a
second time but it didn’t respond. I put my hand on the table again to
push it through and nothing. I could just feel my fingers and hand
stress against the hard surface. Pushing my hand through a surface is
usually a key reality-check for me in dreams. Seeing as the dream
wouldn’t change I decided to walk outside, I was on a city street and
there were various shops and restaurants.
I
walked into this one restaurant and there was an East Indian owner
working behind a counter. He had all these different sandwiches and one
of them had butter chicken as part of it. It smelled really good in the
restaurant. I decided to order the sandwich, but the owner was very rude
to me. He seemed kind of racist and not very friendly. Which was good,
because it made me think about the dream and as I was loosing lucidity,
caused me to pull another reality check where I put my hand on the
counter by the till and tried to push it through.
The
hand failed to pass, and again the vivid realism made it seem
impossible to achieve this simple test. On the bright side, I still knew
it was a dream and didn’t mind that it was now unwavering. I was kind
of stuck in it, unable to change it. Another friend of mine walked up to
me asking me what I ordered and instead of engaging in the dream drama I
told him that I was dreaming, and that the dream was not being very
responsive.
Like any good dream
character he tried to convince me that it wasn’t a dream. “If I could
just put my damn hand through this counter, I’d prove it.” I told him.
“You
know what, it doesn’t matter. I’m just happy to be here, haven’t seen
you in a while. Who knows, maybe you are really here.” I told him.
I
decided since I knew it was a dream, time for my friend to realize it
also. So I started trying to convince him that we were actually in a
dream reality, and regardless of how super-realistic it was the fact
remained it was entirely composed of thought. I asked him a few
questions, quite often when I’ve asked dream characters questions I can
get some strange replies or even weird responses. But he answered nearly
all of them, short of the where we went to school which I had to
answer.
The last question I told
him was the big one, “Do you know that this is a dream?” I asked. He
said “Yes” and then disappeared. Now that was done, I didn’t know what
to do next. The dream still wasn’t changing to what I wanted yet the
world was rich with detail. I went for a walk and just enjoyed being in
the dream. I took the time to appreciate it and enjoyed the just being
there.
After walking down a street
for a while, this homeless person came running down the sidewalk
talking about how he was Jesus. I thought it was kind of fun so I
followed him into this building. The building was a type of roller skate
park but instead of roller-skates people had these shoes that could
levitate them a few inches off the ground. I was stopped at the door by
security who told me I had to pay to enter. I asked him what about the
guy who just ran in here. He told me to never mind that he was already
taken care of.
The people hover
skating caught my attention and I thought it was very cool to see. “I
just want to have a look around before I make up my mind to try it.” I
told him. The security guard nodded and I walked over to a railing and
leaned over to watch people hover-skate. The skates were like ski-boots,
large plastic and it seemed like it was using air jets to create the
lift. The skates hummed and people seemed to be having fun doing it.
After
I had my fill of people watching, I decided to leave and walked back
outside. Back to walking. There was an ocean off in the distance,
thought that might be nice to go see. As I neared a construction site, I
stopped to look at the details. It was a good time to do another
reality check to maintain lucidity. This time I just tried to jump up to
one of the sections of the building under construction. As I lifted up,
I managed to hover. Finally, a check that worked. I flew right up until
I had a nice birds eye view of the city. I could hear this construction
worker reacting to seeing my suddenly fly and he was yelling holy shit
the dude’s flying amongst other expletives.
I
flew for a bit before landing again. It was awesome, flying is always
fun. And like always, the dream creates some distracting drama to try to
suck me back in. This time another person and his two friends ran over
to talk to me about how I was flying. I told them it was a dream, so
it’s not as surprising and amazing as one might think. I kind of
recognized them, but not from my real-life. There was more a dream
character familiarity and friendship there. Like we knew each other from
past dream adventures.
They
wanted to hang out and party. For fun, I decided to load them up with
cash and gave about $1000 to each of them. Told them we can do what ever
we want. I tried to flag down a taxi but there was no one to take us
out to a club. This red car pulled up and I asked the owner if he could
give us a lift and I would pay him $100. He agreed after he was done
shopping. He walked into this store and we waited on the sidewalk. I
told my friends that I secured a ride.
We
waited and he came back, told them that he can only take one at a time.
I ask him to take us somewhere interesting, and he ends up driving me
to this Asian themed spa, said it was very nice, you can get massages
and sit in a sauna. I asked him jokingly if the massages had happy
endings and he told me no. The entrance to the building was a
combination of bamboo and other laminated wood. It had nice 3D letters, I
did make out spa and orient but the rest I don’t remember.
When
I walked inside, the first thing that caught my attention was the smell
of the saunas and the warm humidity. I walked up to the front desk to
register, and they gave me a form to fill out. Also told me that I had
to see the doctor and take the form. The form had all sorts of medical
questions. In the contact info section, I started to write my name then
figured, it’s a dream so why get so caught up in the drama. I write my
website name down instead and handed it over to the doctor.
I
thought a massage and spending time in a spa would be very nice indeed.
There were a few beautiful women there, the environment was very nice.
The doctor was an older woman and she asked me what this word was. She
points at the form and shes asking about the website name. It says you
are dreaming, thought it was fitting seeing as this is a dream and all.
She looks at me tilting her head to look over her glasses. “A dream?” she says.
I
kind of laugh, gotta love the dream skeptic. “Yes. This is a dream. So I
wrote my website name on the form because it’s an affirmation to lucid
dreaming. Thought you might like that.”
“This is most certainly not a dream.” she argues.
“Well, maybe not to you. But to me, it is and I love it.”
This younger teenager leans over and asks me. “Is it really a dream?”
“Yes. It’s always a dream, just we tend not to realize it.”
The
doctor is not at all impressed. So much so that she goes to two larger
men, like orderlies. She wants them to detain me. They walk over but
when they go to grab me, I put up kind of like a force-field. It just
pops up and surrounds me and they bump into it. They try to grab but of
course the force field deflects their attempts.
I just smile but then the dream starts to waver, a force far more powerful than I was at work. I woke up dammit.