This happened maybe 4 hours into my sleep last night. I had a margarita and Mexican food yesterday evening.
I’m supposed to get into a swordfight with a friend, using samurai swords. I feel like I used to use the sword a lot but have given it up for years. I pull it out, and it’s actually a dented, dull machete. We never do end up fighting.
Another person is there. I sense I’m in a dream.
“Are you a real person?” I ask him.
He looks down and says gloomily, “No.”
Later, I’m riding my bike downhill on a road.
Aren’t I supposed to be wearing some protection on my bike? Like kneepads? (a helmet didn’t occur to me) Oh well, I feel safe. It’s just a dream.
Why do I feel like I’m riding reclined? This is too comfortable. Shouldn’t I be leaning forward? It’s like I’m not even trying.
At several points in the dreams, I find that when it starts to fade I can keep it going by paying attention to my peripheral vision a little more.
Later on, I see a dirt path surrounded by bushes open up to me. I take a step to run and see what’s on the other side of the rise.
I stop myself and stand still on the path, staring forward, resisting the allure of the mystery beyond the rise, and taking a moment to think about the situation and how I’m handling it:
Why do I keep doing this in dreams? Running around, exploring, never satisfied with what I find. The detail is amazing, but still, there’s something else I wanted to do. I wanted to shatter the dream world.
I look for a good spot to sit. I hop onto the roof of a building, where I can see for miles. This place I’ve been exploring looks like a camp or resort or whatever. I sit down cross-legged on the sloped roof. A lake spreads out in front of me to the left, with some hills further to the left. The sunlight is glinting off the water, and sailboats are in the distance. To the right is the rest of the resort, a lot of trees and some buildings.
I get ready to shatter the world before me.
Hmm. So I could try shattering this, but I’d feel a little bad about it. Seems like a big task, too. I think I’ll meditate first for a bit and see what happens. Maybe I’ll be more prepared once I’m calm and focused.
However, if I close my eyes I might just wake up. Gotta keep them open.
I start breathing slowly, calming my mind, but eyes open. In a few breaths I wake up, breathing deeply.
My recall was pretty bad on waking. I feel like more things happened prior to the last scene.
At the end while meditating I had stopped paying attention to my vision, and I think that’s what caused me to wake. It could have been the breathing too, but the vision seems relevant. Prior to that I vaguely remember using my peripheral vision in a better way to keep the lucid dream going a few times, so figuring that out is progress.
It was kind of like the dream was looking at me with puppy dog eyes and saying, “You don’t want to hurt me, do you? Look how pretty I am!” And I decided to put it off by meditating a moment first. Was that a trick to get me to think twice? Who or what was doing the trick? Or was that just what I happened to see as I looked around with a clearer mind?
Two days ago I had a leg twitch from my astral body as I lied down to meditate for a bit after getting up and taking a shower. Yesterday morning my hand moved in the same way. Next time I feel a twitch like that I’ll try going with the movement, continuing it with my whole body. Sometimes I’m going to create a physical movement, waking myself up fully, but at other times it might be effective at getting out of body.