Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

I genuinely feel that lucid dreams are important – for me and for everyone – because I think that having pleasant, empowering dreams will lead one to feel more confident in waking life. While this is just speculation (not to say anyone about the correlation/causation issue…), it is my own experience that I am happier after having had lucid dreams, especially those where I accomplished a monumental, useful task. Prepare to hear about just that kind of dream:

When the dream began, I was standing in the middle of a suburban cul-de-sac near the end of the afternoon. There was a row of white houses with white picket fences – it was simple americana at its finest. I spent what felt like hours wandering around the neighborhood, feeling like an obsolete machine, unwanted by all. Feeling alone even though I was surrounded by kids at play and adults spending a quiet evening on their porch, enjoying ice tea while talking about their day (honestly, I remember those details, I’m not embellishing here).

Just when the sun started to set, I saw a blinding flash emanating from behind me. I whipped around just in time to watch a mushroom cloud grow on the horizon! Shock waves rolled outward, galloping forward towards the quiet neighborhood I had landed in hours before. Just before the shock waves reached me, I held out my arm and squinted my eyes shut, wishing for time to freeze so I could react – so I could do anything! Being a dream, it worked perfectly!

After freezing time, I walked around the neighborhood and took in my surroundings at length. But now something was different; this time, I knew that I had a purpose. I was here to save these innocent people. What else could I do?

I closed my eyes and willed myself back in time, back to when I landed in the cul-de-sac in the first place. I opened my eyes, and there I was! Back in the afternoon, back when the neighborhood was intact! I contemplated leaving the area all together and forsaking the citizens, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did that.

To make a long story short, I failed again at stopping the explosion. I made it to the detonation site, but I was unable to pinpoint the bomb’s location/origin. So I did it all over again. Then I failed again. And tried again. Over. And. Over.

All in all, I believe I went through the dream three or four times. Maybe more, I’m not sure. I could describe each attempt at length, but that might be a little too boring for readers. Suffice it to say that I did eventually find the bomb and the terrorists who were trying to detonate it.

I realized at the end of the dream that I could only close the time loop with a Donnie Darko gambit – I needed to sacrifice myself to save everyone else. So I barged into the room with the bomb and froze time just as the terrorists were putting my head squarely in their sights. I started screaming, and my eyes began to pour forth yellow light like tiny lighthouses. I held out my arms and slowly brought my hands together into a ball – I was using telekinetic powers to pull the bomb, the terrorists, and myself into the rip in space/time I had caused by jumping back in time. The dream ended with my vision being clouded with a sea of shimmering white and yellow. I had died. But I was dying happily, knowing that I had saved countless others.

This was a bizarre dream – it was a dream about an apocalypse here on Earth, but it didn’t end when the apocalypse transpired. Not only that, but I didn’t use my lucid dream powers to turn back time, reverse the effects, etc. No, I just watched as events unfolded. Now you can too!

The beginning of the dream was innocuous enough. I was back in my dad’s old house – a house that I lived in for about three years after my parents first got divorced. (Since I was inside a dream, of course I didn’t question the impossibility of me living there again) Night had just fallen, and I had the house to myself. I went upstairs and looked through the fridge for something to snack on. Nothing promising. I slammed the fridge door in dejection and flopped down on the couch, looking out onto the street out of hunger and boredom.

Suddenly, off in the distance, I saw a huge wall of fire, thousands of feet tall, rushing towards the house! It was vaporizing everything in its path: trees, houses, clouds, people. I was horrified! I ran into the bathroom and jumped into the tub, hoping that I could survive by some freak fluke of nature. I did not. The flames seared through the house, and I screamed as I was blinded by swirling gray, crimson, and gold. For me, everything was quiet for a moment.

Soon, I appeared to re-materialize as a disembodied consciousness, a silent sentinel wordlessly watching survivors suffer and struggle to rebuild. With time moving at a blistering pace, I watched as three generations of survivors slowly began to rebuild civilization in small, localized communities. But huge stretches of land were left uncolonized, left to the devices of marauders and scavengers. This is where I was reincarnated.

I regained consciousness suddenly. I was in the body of a four-year-old boy, walking alongside another four-year-old. (I was struck by the sensation – it was unsettlingly close to my very first memories in real life. In real life, at around age four, I remember suddenly having consciousness, having an identity, having memory. I remember it being confusing and unpleasant. I felt like I had been in a pleasant daze until that moment, and then I was jolted into really BEING.) I was carrying a toy around and explaining to the other boy that we knew little about the gods that had lived here before us, about those who had made colossal structures and crafted fine arts. All that we had left of them were scattered trinkets, mere echoes of greatness long since passed. I showed him that the gods were still able to talk to us, to teach us lessons about how to live our life. In fact, the lessons they had for us were essential for survival in the post-apocalyptic society we were born into.

I held up the toy and pressed one of the buttons. A dopey-sounding masculine voice started to say something to the effect of,”Friends are important! Make sure you stick together!” I told the other boy that it was of the utmost importance that we heed this man’s advice – lone wolves die in the wild.

There were other lessons, but I’m sure you already get the picture. I was living proof that humans no longer had any idea who had come before them; in fact, they worshiped the ghosts of the past, misinterpreting them to be gods.

This was one of the most satisfying lucid dreams I can remember having.

The dream began with me lounging around at my mom’s house at sunset. (I now realize that a lot of my dreams take place at sunset…I wonder if there’s any significance to that. Fear of death? Research will ensue…) A lot of my family and friends were there with me, and we were just having a wonderful time – talking, laughing, eating. Anyway, I went upstairs to the master bedroom to use the bathroom because the downstairs bathroom was occupied. While I was up there, I heard a noise coming from above the house that began as a low whir and slowly grew in intensity until it became a thunderous rumble. At this point, I noticed that the entire house was being bathed in a sea of sunflower-yellow artificial lights. I heard crackling noises coupled with screams from below, and I knew (somehow) that everyone that had been at the party was being abducted!

I looked out the window and craned my neck just in time to see a UFO above the house as it began to pull away from the ground and towards the cul-de-sac, away from the house. Suddenly, I realized I was in a dream and started to feel overcome with rage! I couldn’t believe that some punk aliens barged into my dream and ruined the wonderful time I had been having!

I broke open the window I was standing next to and jumped out of the top-story window, all fear of death long gone from my psyche. These aliens were going to pay. I ran up to the cul-de-sac and watched as the UFO began to fly far into the distance. “No way in hell am I letting these bastards get away with this!” I thought as I raised up my right arm and began to concentrate on giving myself telekinesis. As I did so, the UFO froze in place. Then, I pulled my arm back to my chest; similarly, as if being manipulated by a puppeteer, the UFO flew back towards me and the cul-de-sac impossibly fast. Just as it was 50ft from the ground and about 100ft from me, I held out my left hand with an open palm and stopped the UFO cold – as I had done before. I wished for everyone inside to be back down on the ground, and poof! There they appeared. I proceeded to grab the UFO with my mind and thrash it wildly into the ground nearby, watching with satisfaction as each resounding crash crumpled it further and further. Finally, I sent out a hadouken-like fireball with both my hands pressed together flying straight for the levitating remnants of the UFO. A slow smile spread across my face as I watched the UFO explode gloriously in the dim evening sky, the billowing blacks and reds contrasting starkly with the soft pink and purple sunset in the background.

Last night, I had a dream that seemed strangely profound – at least parts of it. Some of it seems to be fueled by anime I’ve been watching recently, but the rest of it…well, you’ll see.

I was an eight-year-old boy, wearing a prison outfit, being filed into a German concentration camp during WWII. I was crying because I was scared and confused – why was I here? What could they possibly want with me? When I came to the front of the line, they asked me for my name and my nationality. I told them my name, and before I could continue, they interrupted – in French, they asked me: “Your last name is Schneberger? That sounds like a German name. Are you German?” Between sobs, I tried to tell them (in French) that I was German (in part), but they wouldn’t listen. They laughed off my plea, saying (again, in French) that with such a weak constitution, I must be Icelandic (????). Anyway, they picked me up and carried me, kicking and screaming, into a nearby bunker. They threw me on the top bunk, closest to the door, and on the way out, the guard told me with a wide sneer on his face, “This is where you will die.”

I started crying even harder, knowing that I would never escape this horrible place. Just then, a woman walked up to me and asked me (still in French): “I heard you speaking French to the guard outside. We French need to stick together. Don’t worry, we have a way out of here. You’ll be fine.”

(Here’s where it all starts to get a bit magical)

The lady disappears, and suddenly my perspective becomes third-person and I am watching her speak in front of a large council, begging them to summon the seven “old ones” to set all those in captivity free. The council was presided over by an old man with a long, gray beard and a tattered, arcane, red robe. After thinking for a moment, he quietly responded,”If it must be so, then it shall be done.” He clapped his hands together, and suddenly my perspective changed again.

Now I was looking at a dimly lit temple with large marble columns surrounding a massive statue of a goddess. The temple seemed to be in excellent condition, but the statue was strangely dilapidated – covered in cracks, stains, and creeping green moss. The priests in the temple calmly walked over the statue and stood around it in a tight ring, heads bowed in prayer, whispering an unknown incantation. The blemishes in the statue began to glow yellow, and I watched as the statue started repairing itself. It was then that I noticed a small roguish man cowering in the shadows of one of the columns farthest from the statue. He seemed to be salivating with greed, enticed by some unknown desire. Out of the shadows behind him came another man, let’s call him Reaper, who looked extremely similar to this character:

Reaper told the other man that now was his chance to steal the goddess’ power, to do as he himself had done years before. The rogue slowly nodded his head as he said, “Do what you need to do.” Reaper unsheathed a red katana he had been storing at his side and slashed horizontally, decapitating the man in one fell blow. Instead of falling to the ground, the man’s entire body disappeared. Just as it did, the goddess statue began shaking violently and a bloodcurdling scream rang out from an unknown source. The statue shattered all at once, leaving behind only a pile of white dust. A red cloud of energy congealed in its place, and it seemed to pulse with a seething, burning hatred. The startled priests bolted from the room, having no idea what they could do to stop the monstrosity that had been created. Reaper closed his eyes and lifted his arms above his head, almost beckoning the cloud to approach him. It enveloped him, and the two became one. They suddenly changed shape and grew into a monstrous black dragon, crashing through the ceiling of the temple and towering several stories above it. It swung one of its heavy claws as it leveled another corner of the temple, reveling in the destruction it was causing. But something was wrong.

The dragon put its hands up to its head and let forth an ear-splitting roar. It couldn’t control its own power. It started wildly changing shape (into monsters so grotesque and bizarre that it would take me paragraphs to describe them. Maybe I will at some point). It finally took the form of a hideous cross between a giant and a rotting schooner riding on top of a tidal wave hundreds of feet tall. The ship/giant creature howled in pain just as the wave began to billow outwards, destroying all in its raw primeval sovereignty. After my vision was flooded with water, it slowly morphed into a very different scene.

I was aboard the ship creature now, but it was no longer deformed. It had become a regular schooner, but it seemed to be broken into two equal sections, from port to starboard. There was a single narrow plank bridging the gap between the two halves. Additionally, the ship seemed suspended in some sort of purgatory. The ship was floating in a massive expanse of whiteness, white as far as one could see in every direction. Large snowflakes were slowly drifting down from the zenith, further compounding the surreality of the scene. I felt as though I had been hurled straight into the conflicted psyche of the monster, that I was there to soothe it and quell its torrential rage.

As I arrived on the scene, a young blond boy sobbing heavily ran across the planks and up a staircase that lead to the deck of the ship. I felt as though the boy was the embodiment of the ship’s regret, of his last lingering humanity. I don’t know who I was at this point, but I felt compelled to chase after the boy, to nourish the men’s final hope at becoming human again. After I began to race forward, a large two-headed dog jumped out in front of me, blocking my path across the plank. His two heads snapped and chomped relentlessly, as though they hungered voraciously for that which dared to retain hope for the little boy.

Sadly, that it where the dream ended. I’m not sure what would have happened next. Eventually, I might write how I think it might have gone.