2017-04-09
[(Health-related details omitted)... I went to bed sullenly about 7:45 pm last night, and due to Continuously Paying Attention, I had two lucid Awakenings where I became lucid and woke up in bed at the same time, from unremarkable dreams that I didn't even remember at the time. Except one seemed to be inspired by my recent reading (umpteenth re-reading) of Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda since I seemed to be in a remote place with barren hills and tall, dry grass. The color BLUE is recalled and nothing else from that dream except that I woke up and became lucid at the same time. The other lucid Awakening is not remembered at all, except I know it happened.]
[At 1:50 a.m. this morning I meditated outside on the terrace. I have been meditating four times a day, which is one of the few techniques (Blaffinveigle) I've been bothering with as I don't put much stock in techniques right now; I think mindset is all that matters. I have not completely abandoned dream journaling but have decided that to keep a full-blown, highly detailed dream journal after the beginner phase is over is sort of like taking Algebra 101 over and over because it's easy, instead of moving on into College Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus. I think this has made me pay better attention in my dreams as the specter of having to type pages and pages every day had stunted my dream recall, having the opposite of the intended effect. I didn't truly want to dream if it meant I was gonna spend my day typing. Then I saw a passage in Ixtlan in which Castaneda is told, forcefully, that a dream journal is a waste of his time. He is already finding his hands in his dreams, and he is told that nothing else matters but to build on this skill. So I have adopted this attitude. And not feeling like the dream is to be disposed of by writing it down, I now actually pay better attention at night as I am more reliant on my memory of it, not knowing whether I will be writing it down or not.]
[So, since the pressure's off to keep a detailed record of all dreams, my dreams have gotten interesting again and I find I really want to write down the highlights of the most interesting ones. This doesn't take long. (Added note: This is something I was going through. I disagree with it now. Dream journalling is still one of the few prerequisites for most people. Typing it all up is not that important but re-reading it is. --ed.)]
[Since my last lucid dream proved that my Intent Agenda (kissing the ground upon becoming lucid) was a loser since the smacking sound occurred physically and woke me up twice, I had taken on the new Intent Agenda of finding my hands, while retaining the old agenda item of crawling out of the room to find and experience the Urumara from all directions. My daytime method for practicing the hand thing has been to suddenly command myself to look at my hands, either with or without words, silently or out loud, but the main point is to jerk my hands up in front of me with great urgency, as if I was a new recruit on the first day of boot camp and the drill sergeant had just screamed at me to look at my hands. Possibly this worked, along with the massive frequent chunks of Blaffinveigle, and I find it ironic and interesting that I had a lucid dream when I was in such a Crappy Mood. The only method I used all night was the REM breath--one second in, one second out--because it puts me to sleep quickly. I was literally too discouraged about my health to give a Shit about anything.]
[At five a.m. I woke up and managed to convince myself that I was going to have a cramp in my right leg, and in the process noticed that I was creating this out of fear, since leg and foot cramps are more fearsome to me than just about anything. They come on so suddenly and make me feel so helpless and the pain is almost uncontrollable. But realizing I'd been warned about cramps by the fasting guru I now follow, I decided I was tensing and freezing my right leg in fear of going into a cramp so tried to reverse this hypochondriacal induction of a real cramp by getting out of bed immediately and walking it off. Then upon subsequent awakenings I moved my leg instead of freezing it in fear, and had no more problems with it. ]
[After walking off the slightly-formed cramp, I quickly got back in bed and used the REM breath to put myself back to sleep in spite of feeling guilty for spending so much time in bed. It was getting light out, so I wore my dark mask. I was not optimistic about being able to get back to sleep until I Noticed a series of short excursions in which I non-lucidly saw inaccurate visions of my dream bed. Actually I wasn't in my dream bed, but in the big family bed, and my wife and child had already vacated the premises to attend a holy week event in the local basketball court.]
6:15 am
I'm floating in our WHITE basement apartment [false interpretation since our upstairs where we sleep is all concrete like the rest of the house; concrete walls means "basement" to my mind from childhood memories of houses with basements] and am pleased, but in a subdued way, to find that I'm having a lucid dream. I am pleased that the mood is subdued for a change, and I say, "I am totally calm and I am totally lucid." I am able to maintain the lucidity pretty well as I float in a WHITE void [the Nowhere] which seems to correspond to the other end of the large, oddly-shaped room. [Our upstairs has no walls to float through, just one big area.]
In this end of the room I float in a variety of positions, ending up totally upside-down with my head pointing at where I imagine the floor would be if I could see anything besides the white void. I am trying hard to remember what I am supposed to do. Realizing that I will soon lose lucidity if I don't undertake to perform some specific task, I manage to focus my mind and remember that I must look at my hands. This is not easy since I am in the Nowhere and all I see is a variegated whiteness everywhere. Still floating upside down, since my position had stabilized when I focused my intentions, I am able to see my hands, but they are shadowed and variegated in color, and dark. This satisfies me and I ask myself what the next item on the agenda was supposed to be.
I correctly remember that my next planned task was to crawl out of the room [since flying is not the be-all and end-all for me anymore], but the reason for leaving the room and what I am to do when I get out of it don't occur to me. I do manage to float to the ground and this helps to generate a dream scene as I can now see the room, three beds representing the three of us sleeping there [though we actually all sleep in the same bed] and a green plastic floormat [GREEN for the Nowhere, though it's a different green and a different pattern than the floormat we have. Consistent with the notion that I'm in a basement apartment, instead of the upstairs wood floor] I can hear the loose floormat slapping the cold concrete basement floor as I crawl and my hands slap the floor.
At this point I can see furniture and stuff so I lose lucidity and say to myself, "This is totally real," [mistaking the obvious reality of the experience for waking reality], but decide to crawl out of the room anyway just for the hell of it. I crawl toward a brightly lit open DOORWAY [the Urumara]--the light in the apartment is very subdued, since it was a basement and there are no windows--and the light [the Nowhere] shifts me into a totally non-lucid dream scene.
I approach our big round RED chair which stands next to a gold-colored pole lamp and go to sit down in it, in order to mull over and record the lucid dream I just had. [We don't own a pole lamp and the red chair is actually downstairs, but going to this red chair had been the first item on my Intent Agenda a year-and-a-half ago, so I finally got that done, though not lucidly.] I change my mind and decide the right thing to do is get back in bed, so I go to the end of the room where I had done my floating, aware of a RED sleeping bag in a bed that I pass, and [wake up, then gradually realize I'd had a sort of false awakening into a non-lucid dream, so I do a reality check. I decide to lie there and memorize the details of the dream instead of forcing myself back to sleep.]
[Even though I did it non-lucidly, I did experience the Urumara as per the Intent Agenda, and this keeps happening, so it might mean something. After all, to enter the Urumara from the dream state is to head back toward the waking reality. And that's what I did, more or less, but non-lucidly.]
[Still, I will retain the Intent Agenda of experiencing the Urumara lucidly and from both ends. As might be expected, once I saw the white light--the Nowhere--in the DOORWAY [the Urumara] that I was headed for, I lapsed into unconsciousness for a few seconds, and when I came out of it I was headed back the other way into the apartment. So maybe I went through the Urumara from the dream state into the Tunnel, then turned around in the Tunnel and headed back through the Urumara back into the Unworld (the dream state). That's what my Intent Agenda had stated I should do, I just did it without awareness as usual.]
[This was my longest lucid episode in a over a year. Notice that the excessive euphoria was avoided. That in itself was a source of enjoyment for me while it was happening. The daylong euphoria now can begin as I prepare to remove the lucidity hat which I only wear while recording lucid dreams in the journal.]