Lucid Dreaming

It's strange how I can have a dream one night that's stressful and follows me through the day in a bad way, and the next night have a dream that's actually really good.

The first was a dream that I labeled an unsettling dream immediately after waking up from it. It was unpleasant, but I definitely wouldn't have called it a bad dream, let alone a nightmare. Yet it managed to set off my anxieties, leaving me afraid of the dark (sorry, of what might be in the dark) again, and then I spent yesterday exhausted. It was so strange.

Then, there was last night's dream.

Sometimes in my dreams I decide to go walking, and last night I found myself in a part of town that I've visited before but which doesn't exist in the waking world. I was sad to see that it was run down, apparently having been neglected for many years, but I still enjoyed exploring this new side of that place. Exploration brought me to an old building that was bustling with life and people creating new things. It was a place I'd never been before, and I enjoyed looking around.

Soon enough my exploring brought me to a room where I think some women were sewing, but my attention was caught by a tank in the middle of the room full of tadpoles. They were fascinating. I spent a couple minutes watching them, thinking about how it would be nice to raise some tadpoles myself, before I realized that there was already a large frog in the tank. No, there were two. And after waking, I cannot remember if there were in fact three frogs.

It was while looking at this tank, marveling, that I became aware I was dreaming.

This isn't the first time I've lucid dreamed, but when consciously trying to take advantage of this fact I've had a tendency to wake myself up. I have lucid dreamed a tad bit recently, during which I typically just made minor changes to my dream space, but this time I decided to go exploring the building further.

I didn't try to create a place or dictate what the dream would do. I just went looking around.

Soon I found stairs that I went down, and that somehow turned into someone's private residence. I thought that was weird, but decided not to question it. Dream logic...you can't expect it to make sense. I found a woman who was very hospitable and who made me feel at home, and I remember she played a recording of The Lion Sleeps Tonight that I wanted to recreate while awake. Unfortunately, I don't remember what made that recording so unique.

Also unfortunately, I "woke up" while I was with this woman who seemed to know me. I wasn't actually awake, and was still in that woman's home, but I thought someone had woken me up and didn't question why I was still in a place I'd been dreaming about. It was strange.

Thus are my latest forays into the realm of lucid dreaming. This time, with more success than I've had before.

frogs