I had a dream that I was a //grandfather//.

It felt very different from being a father. I saw the cycle complete with my own eyes. It was moving.

If you take the idea seriously that the end of your life is the end of the universe, then you can only have faith that other people survive after you pass away.

There is an afterlife. It's lived by your children. And their children.

-

I asked myself: what if you couldn't vote until you had children? or grandchildren? Then I asked myself: would I want my grand/parents to have more representation than I do? Parents might be a little bit more concerned about their children's future - but they're also far more politically conservative, two features that don't make sense together.

Lucid moments are trickling in here and there in my dreams. I am still a bit surprised about how many dream moments I've recorded when I dump them from my phone's voice recorder. I'm surprised because of the combination of that fact that I remember most of them when prompted, and that I only remember them because I was prompted. Still and all, the memories are quite faint.

Running is a confirmed lucidity trigger. Sexual thoughts may be as well. Even a drug did it, once (but was it the red pill, or the blue one?). Still, realizing the dream state always causes it to fade in a matter of a minute or two. As I become awake, there is still a fascinating state of mind just lying still in the dark and thinking, but there is not much out-of-the-ordinary connection between imagination and sensation.

Having gotten this far on merely dream journaling and finding lucidity triggers, I have not been focusing on how to stay under, conscious, but not awake. I must remember to generate sensation, such as rubbing hands together. Running certainly creates sensation, though, in the form of air across skin, force in the muscles and bones, and flow in the blood - it's that sensation that leads to the awareness that triggers lucidity and waking, though, so I'm not sure that's going to help.

Continued practice will prove it out.

I took some time to dump my voice recordings, and came across dream reports I don't even remember forgetting.

I'm not sure I should leave all this on my phone.

The dream logs are appearing. I have not been listening to the binaural beats before sleeping, but I've had quite a few dream report recordings the last two nights.

Swindles was last night's theme.

The last few nights, I haven't been able to record any dreams. I have a few WAKING revelations that I felt the need to record - and ended up just leaning over my bedside laptop and looking up. But no dreams have been recalled. I now hesitate to say I did not dream.

What, now, would you say makes a lucid dream better than a daydream?

One might argue that dreams are more vivid. I'm not so sure. I've experienced being lucid a few times, and I seem to recall being unable to tell the difference between purposefully imagined circumstances and the remnants of dream elements. The inability to remember so many dreams (more than I expected) also tends to put the lie to this theory.

There could also be something more subtle to it: dreamed realities tend to be conjured up entirely effortlessly, as if there was a daydreamer furiously at work in an unknown part of the mind, whose efforts go entirely unnoticed, except by the experienced fruits of his labor, which are taken exactly at face value. We are commanded to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and we dutifully respond: "What curtain?" The works of this invisible puppeteer may have some unique value only accessible in dreams, instead of in purposeful, conscious fantasy. This theory has the disadvantage of demanding that we prove a negative.

That being what it is, the value of lucid dreaming is already beginning to fade. My conscious imagination, supplemented by experiential tools already available (digital video, audio, haptics) is quite capable and interesting as it is. So what's the value of probing the subconscious so much?

Three more dream logs:
* Armed criminals in cars at night, running each other off the road.
* A charming, heart-warming romantic comedy film about a girl learning to live and love in SCUBA gear. Also, being crushed by a thick layer of slowly sinking surface ice.
* A high-tech urban archery range.

At one point, I was aware of an aura of theatre - something that would have been terrifying was not because I knew it was a movie trailer I was deliberately imagining. But I was not lucid per se, because I was not aware that I was dreaming - only imagining. There appear to be multiple levels and layers to this.

Apparently, I have more dreams than I thought. Three more recordings appeared on my phone last night.

Unfortunately, I am unable to understand even half of what I mumbled into the device last night. There was enough to trigger associations with some of the memories of the dreams themselves, but not for the first one.

I believe Kephra was telling me that strengthening memory was the first priority in oneironautics training, over habitualizing lucidity. I seem to understand why, now.

Never mind the outer world; One's own brain is an undiscovered country.

I was surprised to have four distinct recordings of dream snippets on my phone. I'd have never remembered most of them otherwise.

* New California trains outfitted with synchronized VR projection systems. Holodecks on rails.

* All the old WWF wrestlers and producers mostly hail from Vancouver. A gaggle of them are attempting to recreate the glory days by pulling the same old folks out of retirement to put on some events just for laughs.

* With burners on the street, attempting to invite Jhaye & Tony to the address of the Noodle Box in Victoria's Chinatown.

* Among others...

I was frustrated from last night's lack of results, but realized I'd only been at this for two days, and the training habits I've decided to cultivate are not that difficult to maintain. So I persevered.

Last night produced a new positive result.

I journaled three dreams using the voice recorder during the night, after waking from each of them. It was only the last one where I became lucid.

Despite having produced a habit of pushing my thumb into my palm as a reality check several times a day already, the thought of doing that has not yet spontaneously occurred to me in a dream. I was hopping a short wire fence to retrieve my keys in the last dream, when I decided to float instead of landing, and I did. I've flown in dreams before, so this was an obvious dream indicator. I remembered, and instantly pressed my thumb to my other palm, as I'd conditioned myself to do. Sure enough, it went through. By that point, though, I didn't need verification because of the floating, but it's good to have verification that the motion does operate as an effective dream detector.

I managed to hang onto the dream for a few more moments as I slowly faded back into wakefulness. I even became confused when, aware of the fragility of the dream, I thought a breeze I had felt on my shoulders was a sensation from waking reality. It didn't occur to me until later that there was no way it could have been, since there were no windows open, and I was in bed under a blanket anyway.

I am claiming the low-hanging fruit. Practice and discipline will likely produce more.

A couple of days ago, after exposure to some online discussion of lucid dreaming, combined with a commitment to (and enjoyment of) sleeping more (my leading theoretical cause of my recovery from my recent bout with depression), I decided to take up some habits to explore that.

These habits consist of:

• Reality checks: specifically, attempting to push my thumb through my opposite palm. Supposedly, you can do this in a dream, but not in waking, physical life. I am developing this as a habit, repeated whenever it crosses my mind, so that it comes up routinely. Eventually, it will come up in a dream, at which point the associations with dream detection will come up, and bingo: lucidity.
• Stimulus: This is also associated with rubbing my palms together, to produce a sensation, which is supposedly an aid to prevent from waking from a lucid dream. If you do it with your dream hands, your brain producs a dream sensation, and the stimulus keeps you from waking, supposedly.
• Affirmations: "I am going to have a lucid dream to remember!" at bedtime.
• I have a selection of binaural beats, one of which is supposedly for inducing lucid dreams. I listen to it as I fall asleep.
• Dream Logging: I keep my phone handy, and use the voice recorder to take down what I remember of my dreams after I wake.

-

I had an interesting, but not successful experience last night. I was dreaming (though I could only remember, perhaps, a hallway), and was hit by the reality check instinct. Before I could even move my hands together, I was instantly aware of it, and felt my body lying in bed. But I could not move, probably due to sleep paralysis. It wore off after a minute, as I felt the blood awaken my brain.

This should be good. I suspect I'm a strongly consciously-oriented person, which might make this difficult. Work continues.