For a year or so now, I’ve been making an half-assed attempt at lucid dreaming.  Done right, once you start dreaming, you know that you’re in a dream, and start controlling how the dream goes.  Once accomplished, you can fly in your dreams, avoid nightmares, and have a grand old time.  Once accomplished.  It’s harder than it sounds.

Two of the best ways of ‘practicing’ for lucid dreaming are keeping a dream journal to help you remember your dreams, and constantly doing ‘reality checks’ (e.g. pinching yourself) so you can sense when you start dreaming.

Unfortunately, my dreaming is… unpredictable.  I’ll go for months without dreaming, then have a week where I dream every night.  So I haven’t been able to get this lucid dreaming thing down yet.  But I’ve got a dream journal!  Usually, when I wake up from a dream, I will scramble to my phone, write down some notes on my dream, and proceed to go back to sleep.  An hour later, I have no recollection of my dream, but the dream journal remains.

Excerpts from my dream journal:

– At college party, get tired, go out and (lie down on a hill) to watch the stars, see shooting stars (for the first time in my life.  Shooting stars are amazing.  Friend with me.  Also, see a couple having sex outdoors.
– Went to jail, let out in a day, then put back in by Israel when crossing border (bitches)
– Terminal at Jakarta city, pan taken away
– At swimming pool, then sucked into an arcade game, shooting inside for points, competing against AI, hard to break out, lost phone and toy figurine
– Drop out of grad school, teary, ignored by counselors –> shooting rampage, made into a movie
– Virtual reality game in green fan in Philippines, everyone assigned a fake and “real” name, I’m Magdalene / Jesus Christ, unknown rules, people starting to form cults, somehow connected or disconnected from real world.

My dreams (or at least my dream notes) make no sense.

Resources:
– The Lucid Dreaming subreddit is amazing.
– The beginner’s guide to lucid dreaming