AWAKEN AND EAT GREASY SNAX

I’m feeling very hopeful about my lucid dreaming project. First of all, I’m finding it reasonably easy to make a few dream notes during the night using my new LED pen, and, second, to remember to practice LaBerge’s technique, as well, which always eluded me before; I just wouldn’t be able to remember what I was supposed to do when the time came. I also couldn’t get myself to make dream notes before morning, and would spend each period of wakefulness during the night mentally going over my dreams so I’d be able to remember them in the morning, which also interfered with doing LaBerge’s technique.

Besides those good signs, three very encouraging things happened last night. First, I had a dream about a young lady instructing DREAM RESEARCHERS as to where to put certain pieces of modular furniture. Dream researchers!

Then, as if that weren’t enough, I dreamed about looking at a checklist pertaining to lucid dreaming—without it crossing my mind that I could be dreaming.

For the grand finale, I actually did realize I was dreaming, and I woke up at almost the exact same moment, but that’s totally OK. Things are trending in the right direction.

When I started this project this time around, at the end of July, I was able to remember one dream snippet in the morning. This morning it took me half an hour to write down six or seven vividly detailed dreams. In one, I had stored up a whole bunch of pubic hair in a gold casserole my mother once gave me. (Now, THAT should have told me I was dreaming.)

Toward morning, I dreamed about a cat getting hit by a car. Unfortunately, I now and then have this sort of dream. These are among the worst kinds of dreams I have—they cast a lingering unpleasant spell—and last night’s dream was of course terrible and upsetting.

In my dream, I thought, “This cat is going to die. This is awful! I wish this weren’t happening. Oh: this DOESN’T have to be happening—this is a dream,” and then I woke up, which was a relief in and of itself, and it was also a moment of realizing I was dreaming, a first step to build upon.

I feel so good about it, I’m going to retract my hyperbole about Stephen LaBerge’s books. Wikipedia says this, which should clear the matter up. I think the earliest book may be out of print.
—1985 Lucid Dreaming: The power of being aware and awake in your dreams
—1987 Controlling Your Dreams (audio cassette)
—1990 Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, with Howard Rheingold
—2002 KISS Guide to Dreams, with Lisa Lenard
—2004 Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life (a short book bundled with a CD)
—2009 Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life (paperback release with CD)

The “KISS” book appears mainly to be by Lisa Lenard, and is apparently part of a series whose names all start with “KISS,” which undoubtedly stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” I’m not going to get this.

Another reason it’s good that I received a positive sign or two is that I had pretty much decided yesterday to tattoo some text onto my left hand, but now maybe I won’t. As part of my project, I’ve been asking myself many times per day, “Am I dreaming?” and counting the fingers of my left hand as the palm faces me, one, two, three, four, five, from thumb to pinky.

Apparently if you do this in a dream, you will never come up with the right total number of fingers, which will be a sign you are dreaming. But then I happened upon something about looking at one’s hand as a lucidity cue, and I didn’t read much about it, but became concerned (slightly) that maybe it’s an accepted lucidity cue to say, “Ah, there are my five fingers,” meaning that you CAN expect to see five fingers in your dream. (Though maybe that’s not even true. Maybe they just meant that one’s hand is a lucidity cue because it won’t have five fingers.)

By all accounts, if you look at a digital (not analog) clock in a dream, look away, and then look back, the numbers will have changed; ditto if you look twice at any text, so that should be a reliable sign that one is dreaming.

So it occurred to me that it could be handy to have some text permanently etched on my hand that I could use during the day (and night) for my “Am I dreaming?” test.

I figured “AWAKEN” would be good for this purpose, or should it be “AWAKE,” as in “I am … ”? I liked that that would cover two of my major interests in one short word, dreams and meditation. Though if I wanted to cover all the bases, I might want the tattoo to read AWAKEN AND EAT GREASY SNAX. The X would save me three letters’ worth of pain.