Lucid Dreaming Part 2

I began my last post by saying that I’d only had limited success in lucid dreaming. I say that because I was never able to become ‘lucid’ enough in my dreams to control them. Or maybe I did control them, but   just couldn’t remember doing it the next morning. I’m not quite sure how to measure my level of success.

An interesting byproduct of my obsession to become lucid was that I developed a rich dreaming landscape. I can connect many disparate dreams together in this Dreamscape. And if I focus on one dream setting while I’m awake, I can easily remember all of the other dreams that somehow connect to it. Sometimes dreams that I hardly remember come rushing in to connect with another as if adding a piece to a never-ending puzzle.

I’m pretty sure that when I’m dreaming (just about to dream or coming out a dream???), I can tell if the dream that I’m having fits into any of the dream neighborhoods that have evolved already.  And sometimes a new dream can connect two dream settings that were never connected before.

It’s hard to know how much I’m aware of while dreaming, and how much of it gels into consciousness in the few seconds after I wake, before opening my eyes.

Another interesting byproduct of my obsession is a recurring dreaming object / portal. In the year that was recording my dreams every morning, oddly constructed toilets and bathrooms started to appear in my dreams with increasing frequency. I saw these outlandish commodes so often that I stopped using the Nova Dreamer and I silently stated my intention to recognize them as a dream signal every night before falling asleep.

And again, I have trouble gauging my level of success in recognizing them while actually dreaming since, when I wake up, I only remember that the toilets connect different dreams together, not how or if I consciously chose to…I never actually went into one of these malformed toilets, it was more that their presence ushered in a new dream, and I could remember that fact.

My dreamscape is not nearly as vivid as it was in the 1990’s.  I believe that it takes active tending, like a garden, to keep it thriving. It also requires that you sleep more than six hours per day.  I used to do my best dreaming after the 8 hour mark.  Now, it’s rare when I sleep that long. But writing this has made me curious – I’m going to buy a notebook and try recording a few dreams. Stay tuned…