Searching for Lucidity

J.C. LaCroix Uncategorized 1 Comment

A quick post, but I wanted to share a personal quest.

I have had lucid dreams exactly twice in my life. The first time, I became aware and did the traditional “flying” thing. On the second go around, I wasted it and had sex with Eliza Dushku.

Not that sex with Eliza was a waste by any means, and to be more specific — I actually knocked the back out of “Faith” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

She took it like a champ. We were 5 X 5.

The point of that personal over-share was this: Ever since then, I have been on a fruitless quest to become lucid a third time. Obviously, my quest is one of abject greed — aside from being able to indulge in desire with no actual consequence, the thought of the ability to become aware and access my subconscious fully and on tap — is tantalizing to say the least. In my current modality, I am forced to use the somewhat (comparatively) cro-magnon tool of deep introspection.

Honestly, for me, this should not be as elusive as it has been. I am well versed in meditative techniques and have a heightened sense of both rationality and personal awareness. One would think I would take to this like Phil Rudd to the video game Hitman. However, my difficulty lies not in becoming aware that I am dreaming, but in staying in the dream once I become aware.

What happens to me is, each time, as I start to become lucid, my consciousness turns on me like an LRAD on a Ferguson protestor. It seems to, in detecting that I am dreaming, simultaneously react to the incongruence — that I’m not supposed to be “conscious” while “dreaming”. I am immediately expelled back into waking life. Hard. It all feels very, “do-not-pass-go”. This mechanism has become more exacerbated the more I have tried to lucid dream.

Off and on with attempts, this has been the pattern for years. I’m not kidding. Years. My psychological blue-balls are approaching the size of Babar’s nuts.

Well, while at the LHP Conference — Jeremy Crow was giving a talk on lucid dreaming. During Q&A, I shared this issue with him and he gave me an excellent tip — he said to start spinning rapidly, like the Tasmanian devil. The underlying theory (as I understand it) is that the “processing power” this command takes from your brain stalls out the ejection process, allowing you to remain in dream-land. Kind of like a reset button on the ejection. I’ve been dying to try the tactic, except that I haven’t become lucid since then.

Of course, the exception being, just the other night.

I shared this video because that is how I got there — to lucidity. Other attendees of the conference encouraged me to do the binural beats. Honestly, while this program does include that, I have tried so many, I can’t speak to their effectiveness one way or the other. What I do know is — the man’s voice interjects at approximately 1:11:33, and that seemed to do the trick.

For some reason, I was dreaming that I had been comitted to an insane asylum. You’d think this was a nightmare, but the dream honestly didn’t have that “feel” to it. It felt like playtime. Which, in retrospect, was a reality-check in a certain sense that I missed. Of course, the reason for the sandbox feeling became readily apparent when, finally left alone in my padded room, a man’s voice comes over the speaker (which should not have been in the room, logically), telling me it is “murder time, fun time.” Yes, possibly for the sake of boredom, to work out frustration, or both — my brain decides that we’re going to start my own personal rendition of Manhunt, the video game.

Which, I can’t recommend keeping a dream journal enough. There were a ton of incongruencies that I missed in this dream, including the fact that my straight-jacket had buckles along the sides where I could easily get at them with my teeth. The “helper” on the speaker had particular fun with that part of my murderous exodus, telling me, “Oh yeah, work it, with the tongue, just like that you sexy fuck.” But, overall, keeping the journal has increased those moments where I notice something is “wrong” in a dream, ten times over. Though, to be honest, my ability to “tip the scale” and start to become aware that “this is not reality” is not what I would like for it to be.

That raises an interesting question: Could my developed, strong belief in a highly-malleable reality be playing into the problem itself?

No. If anything, that should hinder me from becoming lucid, but once lucid, help me remain in the dream.

Anyway, I had excited my cell and dropped a guard, putting on his uniform and equipment. Part of that equipment was a walkie-talkie, and I was listening to the guards through an ear-piece as I stalked the halls. Well, I had broken into a main-control room, and was all about to flip the switch and set the other residents loose, when the man’s voice from the video starts cutting in over the earpiece — “Is this a dream?” and “Do a reality check.”

I belive this was the key. His voice in the video, happening to line up precisely with the opportune moment my sleep cycle.

So, I go over to the unfortunate nurse whom I had just killed with, I shit you not, a swiffer wet-jet — and look at her watch.

The hands on the clock are spinning to infinity. I start to feel it, becoming awake and aware.

I stride over and flip the light-switch over and over. Despite all power being on and functioning in the building, the light level doesn’t change. That’s my cue.

And then, as soon as I start getting excited, I feel it. You know it when you do, it’s that tug, that pull — the returning to wakefullness.

Thankfully for the spinning hand’s, I immediately remember Jeremy’s suggestion and start spinning. Surprisingly, I didn’t even super-natural spin, I literally just twirled around a few times, and the feeling went away.

I was Asmoday’s decades-building mind-gasm.

I start jumping up and down screaming, “Holy shit it worked!”

Then, not to drop a single second, I decide to do what I’ve been waiting to do. I turn towards the wall and “summon” my Self (my subconscious), to me. To do this, for some reason, I strike a pose like Baphomet, “As Above, So Below”. All the shadows in the room start to whisper and move. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I’m inspired by the beauty of the animatronics in my mind as they crawl their way over to the wall, forming an inky-black, liquid, moving sort of portal. I can sense it. The Self. It is coming.

My anticipation is volcanic. The moment, finally here, it is about to happen…

Then, in the real world…

In the middle of the night…

For no apparent rhyme or reason…

My motherfucking cat jumps on my motherfucking chest.

Comments 1

  1. I also have the problem to wake up very fast once I start getting lucid. It’s like my mind sharpens and pulls me out. Sometimes I can hold on to some last piece of the dream but it is always shallow and I can’t immerge myself anymore. Hopefully this method will give me a shot at exploring this part of myself some more. It is an interesting pathway to some magic work I never really made progress in, in spite of my efforts.

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