"Journey Into Sound"
02/15/2022
(Lucid)
(I had a pretty incredible, long, exploratory lucid dream, this morning, after waking up early to take out the trash. There was another hour and a half left before my phone alarm was set to go off, so I decided to go back to sleep and try for a WBTB lucid. My fiancé was getting set for work and I didn't want the sound keeping me awake, so I decided to put on some meditative binaural music and put my earphones in and sleep mask on - two things I hadn't done together, for years. After a few minutes, I'd drifted back off to sleep...)
The first thing I remember of the dream was being in the bathroom, with my fiancé trying to talk to me through the curtain, as she was taking a shower. (This was obviously inspired by the night before, when she was actually talking to me through the shower curtain, before bed.) In the dream, I had my headphones on, listening to what I would later come to find out was the same audio that I was listening to as I slept. The music was drowning out her voice, so I kept trying to take off my headphones, however, even when I would pull the earpieces out of my ears, I would still hear the audio coming from them. Then, I would reach up and try to pull them out of my ears again, and I would pull duplicate earbuds out, so that I was holding multiple copies of them upon every attempt. Finally, I saw that even the earphone jack was disconnected from my phone, but I was still hearing the audio in my ears.
Knowing that something was off, here, I attempted to move something on the bathroom counter with telekinesis: my go-to reality check, when I suspect I might be dreaming. The dream, though, was already very vivid, and I wasn't able to get the object (which I think was a sponge) to move. Still unsure whether this was a dream, I tried to pull back the shower curtain so that I could better understand what she was saying to me, but the curtain simply remained closed, despite my efforts, and it would not budge. Again, I knew that this wasn't right.
I looked around the bathroom, for some sort of confirmation as to whether this was a dream (still aware of the music playing in my ears). When I glanced at the mirror, I noticed that, instead of staring back at myself, my reflection was still standing where I had been, when I was trying to open the shower curtain, and facing away from me. Immediately, I knew this was a dream! Now, without a doubt, I reached one hand up and touched the mirror, in the space where my reflection should have been, and I pushed forward. My hand sank into the mirrored glass like water, and I stopped when it was about elbow deep, pulling it back out. I thought I might try crawling into the mirror, but when I tried and felt resistance - because of the dream being so vivid - I thought better of the idea, due to the risk of getting stuck and pulling myself out of the dream, completely.
Leaving the bathroom - still hearing the music in my head and recalling that it was the music I'd begun playing in my headset, when I went back to sleep - I made my way to the front door. For a moment, I thought about phasing through the door, but, again, like with the mirror, I anticipated getting stuck and jeopardizing the entire dream. Instead, I wanted to use an exit where I could already see outside, so I walked over to the nearest window. Reaching out and touching the windowsill, I ran my fingers along it, taking in the sensation of the wood frame, and grounding myself into the dream, trying to keep myself from thinking about my waking world body, so as not to get pulled back into wakefulness. Just outside of the window, I noticed something sticking out of the trash bin. It took me a few moments to realize that it was a human head. There was a dead, bald guy stuffed partially into the garbage, but, since he was close enough to touch, I merely reached out and shoved him off to one side, not wanting to fill my head with any thoughts of the dead (or the undead, since I'd been playing 'Dying Light 2', the past few nights).
I crawled out of the open window and into the back yard, walking, then, around to the front of the house. It was a pleasant, sunny, but slightly cloudy morning (just a bit less overcast as it had been, when I'd been awake and taking the trash out, before going back to bed), and the rising sun and clouds had a very saturated, painterly look to them (much like the picturesque sunrises in the Dying Light games). Suddenly, a red Nissan RX-7 (similar to one that a friend used to have) came skidding to a stop, across my lawn and driveway. An unfamiliar man immediately jumped out of the driver's side, with a shotgun, and took aim at me, from about four yards away. Still completely aware that I was dreaming, though, I was able to raise both my forearms across my torso and brace against the blast, once he pulled the trigger. I could feel a bit of a punch, but it was an otherwise painless impact.
Unfortunately, I don't quite recall how I moved on, from my attacker, but I feel like I just kinda 'force-pushed' him out of the way and walked off, to explore the dreamscape. I remember walking directly across the street from my house, and toward the neighbor's home, just to see what I might find, inside. The front room (I assume, since I've never actually seen the inside of this neighbor's house) was quaint and dimly lit, and the one thing that really stood out to me was that there were cats walking/climbing all around the place. (We have had plenty of experiences with the strays around our neighborhood.) One of the cats came up to me, bit me on the hand - which didn't really hurt - and decided that it wanted to latch on and not lot go. (There is a hilarious story about something similar happening in a previous lucid dream of mine.) Instead of giving it any of my attention - and possibly making the "attack" worse - I just decided to ignore the cat, which eventually disappeared, and I continued exploring the small house. The back rooms were semi-dark, as well, and fairly unspecific. Things were getting rather mundane, actually, and I started trying to think of something interesting to do.
First thing that came to mind was trying to find the Dream World Academy, and I was wondering how I might get to it, from here. I moved a couple of things around, in one of the rooms, trying to "will" a portal to appear behind random objects, but to no avail. I noticed a piano, in a corner, and thought I might try the old "secret passage" concept from movies. I played a couple of notes on the piano, trying to command a door to open, somewhere. Though I don't remember whether the trick actually worked or not, the next thing I remember is walking out of a stone hallway, and back onto the street in my neighborhood.
A little frustrated with going in circles, so to speak, my attention was then drawn upward. The cloud-cover was pretty amazing, with a canopy of white rows of clouds now blanketing most of the sky. It looked vast, and awesome, and inviting. For a moment, I thought about flying up, to see if I could find a "heaven," curious as to my mind's rendition of it, but I, again, became weary of the danger of losing the dream, altogether (as it is, sometimes, tough for me to fly "above" certain altitudes, in dreams). Even at the very thought of it, I rubbed my hands together and concentrated on grounding myself even further into the dream, improving the clarity of the scene around me, in the process.
Rather than taking to the sky, I decided to focus, again, on finding the Academy. This time, instead of attempting to create portals, I thought I might try spinning the scene. Setting my intention to manifest the Academy, upon looking behind me, I quickly did a half-spin, in place. Instead of a normal, neighborhood home, I found a small, non-descript office complex. Curious, I walked to one of the window-lined buildings and stepped into an office. Most of the people that I saw, inside, were old, while folks, who all seemed very warm to my arrival. I told one lady that I was looking for the Dream World Academy, and she told me that I'd come to the right place. She said that class was just started, and that I could follow her to it. We stepped through slender, white hallways and, along the way, I passed by a girl in a hoodie, who was leaning up against a wall and reminded me of an old friend, B. It seemed as if she had been waiting for this class to start, with the way she'd removed herself from the wall and began to follow us, once we passed.
Shortly afterward, in a small, rather bland classroom, the old woman began speaking. To be honest, I can only remember that she wasn't necessarily saying anything of interest, and the girl in the hoodie was looking just as detached from the dialogue as I was. Satisfied that I had found the Academy (albeit an unconventional "version" of it), I decided to go explore some more, removing myself from the classroom and wandering the halls again. Stepping out of one glass door, and into an outdoor corridor, I noticed a large hole in the concrete sidewalk. Looking into it, I saw that there was a stone staircase, heading down into the earth, and I made my way down into it. After a short while in this compact stairwell, I found myself coming out of another hallway, right back onto the street of my neighborhood. Again, I was at ground level, after having walked down a staircase, though I had never been higher than ground level, to begin with.
I noticed that I had a piece of paper in my hand, about the size of a business card. Unconcerned with whether anything was written on it, I decided to take the moment to use it to ground myself to the dream once more, taking the paper between my fingers and running them over the surface, feeling the tiniest details of the roughness of the material. As usual, that attention to detail caused the rest of the dream to feel more solid and immersive, when I took another glance at the neighborhood around me.
Once more, the sky above the houses caught my eyes. This time, it was because I could see three or four aircraft in the distance, doing what looked like air show stunts, over the city. Their aerobatics didn't seem to conform to physics, though, as they were just aimlessly tumbling and twisting through the air, completely devoid of any sense of logic. Interested, I began to hover, just a few feet from the ground, and toward the squad of aircraft. Just when I got within about 100 yards from them, the aircraft seem to all notice me, at once, and streaked in my direction. As they came closer, they all spiraled around each other and converged in a sort of cartwheeling transformation in the air (much like Starscream, from the 'Transformers' movies), twisting themselves into a single, Super Fighter Jet, about twice the size that a real one would be.
Now, hovering, just in front of me, like a VTOL-styled jet, the aircraft seemed to be blatantly taking aim at me. Anticipating incoming fire, and still feeling quite a bit of control, I simply stuck out one hand, palm facing the jet just as a stream of heavy machinegun fire sprayed in my direction. Effortlessly, my hand deflected the onslaught without the slightest tinge of pain. Then, I brought both my hands up, swiping my palms toward each other in a 'squeezing' motion, and crushing the entire plane, from a distance, with telekinesis, before flicking the mangled heap, dismissively, down an adjacent street.
Continuing on, in my current direction, I came to the roadway's dead end. The road didn't just stop, though. It disappeared into the rolling waves of the ocean, as if the entire street had been a beach ramp, all along, and half my neighborhood (which is nowhere near the beach) had fallen away into coastal waters. I was, now, on the ocean shore, looking down one side, to see that the water had come all the way up to the buildings - which had become more the mansions and/or hotel-type buildings, that you would normally catch on a touristy beach, rather than the small, suburban homes that were surrounding me, before. The entire rear face of one building had been sheared away by the water, exposing the hollowed, derelict, concrete skeleton within the structure. Still interested in exploring, I made my way over to the building, stopping for a moment to run my hand along a wooden fence, in order to ground myself to the dream, once more. I started to reflect on just how long this dream had been lasting, and remembered to think of key points to recall, upon waking, so I wouldn't lose too many of the earlier events to memory. (The four key points that I specifically recall instilling into my mind were the headphones dream sign; finding the 'Academy;' taking on the fighter jet; and this beach scene.) It was around here, that I noticed that I could still hear the meditative music that was playing through my headphones.
Once inside the hollowed-out building, there really wasn't much to look at. It was not much more than your standard - albeit enormous - abandoned home, with one whole side completely broken away and exposed to the ocean. While on the ground floor, just a few feet away from the lapping waves that intruded well into the structure, I saw a small, wooden platform - which looked motorized - "drive" in, from the open water, do a 90-degree turn, and sort of "park itself," just near me, practically screaming an invitation to get on it. So, I did. The plank steered itself away from the mansion and began to take me up the coastline, like a powered surfboard. In the distance, I could see two nearly-identical islands, with cone-like structures jetting up from the center of each one, as if they held twin volcanoes at their centers.
I was immediately intrigued by the thought of exploring these islands but, as the plank carried me, it began moving in a more lateral motion, as if it were trying to pull me further out to sea than to the islands that hugged the coast. As this was happening, the waves began to get more and more intense, and I could feel myself losing comfort. It wasn't long before these torrential tidal waves were crashing over even the tops of the buildings on the coast, and I was getting swept in and out with the current. This was getting out of hand. I jumped off of the plank and attempted to fly the rest of the way to the islands, but even the wind, it seemed, was creating this same rhythmic swelling and receding as the waves. It, too, was threatening to pull me out toward the horizon, even as I hovered a few dozen feet over the angry sea.
My anxiety was rising, and I was feeling less and less control of the situation. I even began sinking, out of the air, finding it hard to keep my levitation going. Knowing that I didn't want to find myself submerged in this writhing ocean, I waited until the moment my feet touched down on the surface of the water and gave myself one, desperate 'push', back into the air, executing a super-jump that, luckily, carried me over the rest of the water and allowed me to land upon the nearest island. The last thing I remember seeing was the broken barricade of an entrance to an underground mine, as well as the mouth of a separate, nearby cave, which continued straight into the volcanic mountainside, in front of me. As I stared at the two, rather ominous holes to the earth, thinking about which, if either, to explore, I heard the alarm on my phone ringing out - the sound seeping into the dream and replacing the soothing, ambient music that had been playing, throughout.
I awoke, immediately.
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(Side-Note:
As a bonus: the very next day, after having had such success with having my headphones on, I decided to try the same setup, waking up early and then putting on my headphones, to the same, meditative music, then attempting another Wake-Back-to-Method. The dream was much less eventful, so I won't write the whole thing out but, just as before, I had my headphones on, while in the dream. When I tried to take them out of my ears, just as before, they were simply multiplying as one earbud would be in my fingers, and its copy would still remain in my ear, and the music would continue playing. I instantly became lucid, in that dream, as well, making it two days in a row.
I did try, once again, this morning, to make it a third time, but I wasn't able to remember anything but a small dream fragment, upon waking. No lucidity, on the last attempt, but this will definitely be something I attempt again, in the future.)
