Lucid Dreaming

Last night I had my first ever truly lucid dream experience. I've had two others that I can remember but each one lasted for no more than thirty seconds, one being only about five seconds, but this one lasted about twenty minutes until I was awakened by my computer overheating. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you realize that you are dreaming and as a result can navigate through the dream freely. Some exceptional lucid dreamers that call themselves "psychonauts" can have up to four to five lucid dreams a week, or even multiple lucid dreams in one night. But for the most part people only experience them once in a blue moon, I don't know the actual number but it's pretty infrequent for me.

The catch for me becoming lucid was that I had just woken up from another dream within my dream, so I knew that I was supposed to be awake. The room was unfamiliar but I knew it was supposed to be my room, in the dark I noticed several remote control cars moving on the coffee table. I knew I didn't own any remote control cars then it gradually dawned on me that I could be dreaming. Moments later some robot aliens crawled in through the window, probably to kill me but I wasn't scared. I ran out of instinct but I wasn't scared. I think I might have only been half lucid at this point because why would you run from anything if you knew it was a dream. But then I stopped because I remembered I was supposed to be able to control lucid dreams and focused on the scene in front of me, everything behind me including the robots just seized to exist. I was then in a small Italian town, everything looked so real. I had read before that everything becomes really vivid once you become lucid and it's true. I looked at the tile. I could see all the textures and colors vividly. I was like this for about twenty minutes, where lucidity seemed to brighten and dim like the swell of waves. When I finally woke it was like slipping into another reality, there was no adjustment period and I remembered everything clearly. It may have been that all my r.e.m. cycles were messed up because of all the travelling. I went lucid in the first five to ten minutes of falling asleep, usually this is a time of deep sleep and it's not until later in the night where r.e.m. dominates that one has the most dreams.

One note about control, I tried flying only to notice that I couldn't zip around like superman. I could fly but it was much more like a balloon or feather floating and when I would stop concentrating I would drift back to the ground. When I would stop concentrating things would start to settle back towards reality and resemble the development of a normal dream.