Dream

Intention (2215 the night before)

Keep on drilling the writing in journal habit. It's really starting to come along. Hoping to write in journal at various wake-ups throughout the night.

Still incubating a strawberry donut dream. Seems I accidentally incubated a dream of an aunt. So, incubation is possible! Maybe I should reflect on how that happened.

DILDs and WILDs are also possible, I know. Just gotta keep trying.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0430 this morning)

There's a vague dream in my mind, I think. But I can't access it. When I lay back down, maybe it'll come back to me.

Nope.

Anyways, I want to:

• wake up at 0700
• WILD
• incubate strawberry donut dream

Back to sleep.

Dream Powers Activate

I am on a bus. It's my stop, so I get off. I run into friends from college Vineet and Greg. Vineet is throwing golf balls. Bouncing them off of Greg. I stop one from going into the street. This is how I run into them.

"Golf ball doesn't bounce off people so good, but if you miss, it might bounce off right into the street," I say. I keep the golf ball and Vineet and Greg walk away and Vineet pulls out more to throw at Greg. I put the golf ball in my mouth only to realize I shouldn't be doing that.

I get lost while walking around. It's night time and I can't see very well. At one point, I get to a precarious cliff with stairs that lead down to a road far below. The stairs look solid, and there are hand rails on each side to not fall. But I don't trust it and go a different way. I think about how weird the cliff is, in the middle of the city, as it doesn't seem hilly otherwise.

I am in a store. I go to buy something at the front desk. At the front desk, no one is there. I am still suspcious from earlier events. There is a monitor behind the front desk. Looking at it, I see it blinking. There's white text on a black background. I can't read the text, but I can tell it keeps changing.

"I'm dreaming." Everything shutters. It's kinda like the dream will collapse, but I'm confident it will not. I go to the door to leave the store. "Take me where I need to go," I tell it.

I go thru it and... I'm on the other side of the store front desk. At first, I think I've been trolled, but the building isn't a store anymore. It's a dream home, and I go to dream bed to tell the wife I'm lucid dreaming.

The conversation is incoherent, but makes sense to me at the time. I think in the moment how this must be what talking to me is like when I'm sleep talking. There's a phone I'm talking on as well, with my friend. Eventually my friend is just there. Sometimes he's my friend, and sometimes he's my cousin.

At some point, fed up with friend's presence, I tell him to leave. He goes to leave in a robotic manner, but stops at the door. I tell him more forcefully to leave, but I don't expect him to. I expect him to come face me in a slightly creepy way and he does. I punch him and he catches my fist. I convince him to leave by leaving with him. It's still night outside.

No one around anymore. I go up to a metal barrier and press my hand against it. I push and my hand slides through the metal. My hand feels cold, and also stings a bit.

I raise my hand like Superman. "Fly," I say. Nothing happens at first while I stand there motionless. Then, slowly, I start to float upwards. I get to a height that makes me nervous and I will myself down. To avoid falling too fast, I fall like a feather.

It's morning, and I'm with friend/cousin again. There's a person here to take him away. I decide to go with him. "I was going to take you, too, anyway," the driver says when I tell him.

The car I get in is cluttered with junk. I push it all out and sit comfortably in the back with friend/cousin.

I look at the GPS map showing the path we're taking. We turn left on a road, as instructed, but the map says we'll turn around and come back to this road. We might as well have gone straight. Taking a detour for no reason.. Seems inefficient.

Friend/cousin gestures his hand to tell me I should fast-forward this bit. I don't know how long the dream will last, so I heartily agree. I make the same gesture, and everything fast-forwards. We arrive at a mansion and I return the flow of time to normal.

There's two sets of steps leading up to two entrances, a main one and a side one. Up the side one is a butler who basically looks like Alfred (from Batman). Up the main one is the master of the estate. He's a black man with smooth skin, but solid grey, long, and curly hair. I look back at the butler and now he's also black. I try to fly up the stairs but I fail. One of them tell me I can't fly here. I'm not sure if they're preventing me or telling me I lack the skill.

I'm in the mansion now, and I find myself thinking about the feeling of being in a dream. It's hard, when awake, to really know if dreaming is mostly indistinguishable from the waking experience. I often have memories in third-person, regardless of dream. When napping I'm mostly visualizing, not experiencing sight from my eyes. But here and now it occurs to me to think about it.

It is, in fact, like waking life. I am seeing through my eyes and moving my body. I knew this to be true intellectually, but still had doubts until this check. I am very pleased with having done this check.

We are at the mansion to practice music. There's a violin, but I don't remember if I play it. The music I never hear, I don't think. Next thing I know the dream is now nothing but an abstract digital document that is the history of our music practice.

One section is a collapsed folder of data. The title is "lucid dream." I can feel the dream ending. I wake up. I reality check and write the dream down.

Super cool dream. Took me 40 minutes to write it down.

Wake (logged at 0810 this morning)

I have a couple more dreams, but need to get the day started. Will write two anchor sentences and see if I can remember more of the dream later.

Superheroes out for a swim.

Abandoned by "Special Agent" con artist.

Really happy with habits and results of last night!

Pre-nap (1330)

Liking habits. Only thing is want tow wake up sooner in the morning (at least as early as 0700). Not sure how much night writing is decreasing quantity or quality of sleep, though.

In any case, drilling journal habits with nap, but focusing on nap being nap otherwise (aka restful is main priority).

Post-nap (1350)

Naps feel very healing. Mind already still feeling powerful from meditation, but this is like a quick recharge from 95% to 100% for mind, and then also various little aches in the body go away.

Mind went to a lot of places, but nothing much worth saving in writing.

Meditation (Day 126)

Intentions for the day:

• Stay in posture part of prep until you're prepared to set the intention to stay still
• Body-scan during the "focus on the breath throughout the body" beginning part of meditation
• Stage 4 intention (vigilance on keeping introspective awareness continuous)
• Fall back to stage 3 if necessary
• Note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Try to catch a distraction as it enters awareness and/or attention
• Body-scan when few distractions and when focus not as vivid as could be

Post-Meditation (1050)

Once again, I believe today is a new best day. Really have the "brain is focused to the point of fire" feeling right now. Feels great.

Only "gross" distraction was body scan. Though, I may have not been as strict as my current rule. The fuzziness makes distractions hard to place. Was the distraction processing in background and I caught it as it entered attention, or did the breath go to awareness. It's hard. I use the vividness of breath to guide me, but that may not be a silver bullet.

No pain today. I think I'll work on my lotus flexibility when sitting in front of TV (been working on that habit) and do the setup I did today everyday. Special meditations I can practice posture that requires greater flexibility.

I may "check off" stage 4 as mastered this weekend, but really that means I work more in stage 5, but that stage 4 has some stuff to perfect that could be another few weeks or so. I believe that stage 5 work will help refine stage 4, however.

Today was the closest I got to staying completely still. Further, there was almost no aggravation anywhere the entire sit.

Experimental

Special meditation today was more spotting distractions and really seeing my mind work. Less focus on vividness of breath, though it did end up quite vidid.

General Thinking

I had something I wanted to write here today, but I have since forgotten.... In any case, want to wake up a little bit before 0700 to get a super solid start to the day in.