dreaming of fun

My brother and I are fascinated by dreams. I often have dreams because I don't sleep in regular cycles. This morning was something of a break through for me. I used to be a lucid dreamer. And am still to some extent. The definition of lucid dreamer pretty much means the concious mind of the dreamer controls the dream. This allows complete control. The first step is recognizing you are dreaming. This can often be the most difficult part. Usually you train yourself to recognize dream signs. These can be many things. Things that could not or likely would not occur in real life. Or it can be more personal to you. Something that you know that would "wake" you up inside the dream.

I am often aware of myself in my dreams. For instance, one of the things I first learned to do was wake myself up at will. Now, this came to be necessary for me, because I feel pain in my sleep. So I often wake myself up to move, to moderate my pain.

But over the years I lost most of my control in the dream even though I was aware I was dreaming. All I could do most of the time was wake myself up at will. But today...

Today was the day. I was dreaming a very extended drama that I won't go into, suffice it to say, at this point a precious lady in my church had asked everyone in the church to watch dogs that had been abandoned in the hurricane. And that meant like twenty dogs each. I was house-sitting for someone, and had dogs in the backyard and some inside.

In the morning, some of the dogs outside had been killed. Enter Micah C.S.I.
I was trying to discover evidence of the killer, when I stepped barefoot on a dangerous looking plant acidentally.

[Sidenote: this is one of the most often recurring themes I have in my dreams. I wind up barefoot outside and step on nails, glass, needles, spiky plants, or spines. You can imagine it isn't fun. And usually I pull them out in the dream, or wake myself up.]

Well, I was about to pull my spiny needles out when I decided, WAKE UP. Now, that is exactly what the conscious part of my mind says to wake myself up. Call it uninspired if you will, but it usually works on the first try.

This time it did not. So I tried, WAKE UP, I TELL YOU. Then I realized I didn't really need to wake up. Because even though I felt pain, I was still in a dream and I could do anything. Yes, folks I was truly becoming lucid.

And I took off into the air. There is nothing like flying in a dream. I dodged some helicopters and admired the beautiful vibrant fall colors. It was so beautiful up there over the city and countryside. By the time I got to the ocean, I had decided to do something else. I went underwater. I figured I didn't need to breathe under there. I saw some fish, some whales. And then woke myself up. I really was in pain. I needed to move.

It was a great adventure. Plus, I woke myself up only a few minutes before my alarm went off anyway.