I’m not sure if I am going to be able to express my disbelief properly in this article. I was quite skeptical about this even being possible when I was researching it yesterday, but after a bizarre turn of events leading up to me waking this morning, unlike any experience of awaking I have had before, I definitely know it is possible.
I’ll start by laying out the time scale. I went to sleep late last night, around 4 am. I had set my alarm for 11 am, but before it had a chance to go off I had been woken up by someone leaving the house. I later found out that this happened at about 10:45 am. I remember switching my alarm off before it went off, I reset the alarm for 12:30 pm. I lay in bed going over the dream I had just had over and over again, trying to gather together all the events and cement it in my memory, just as the training advice I read yesterday had told me to do. I remember several instances of bringing myself back whilst in that stage between awake and asleep. After a while I fell asleep again without really noticing.
I Was in my breakfast room, I just made some bacon and sausages in the frying pan, I sat down and ate them (I can’t remember actually eating them, all I know is that I ate them). Then I can remember that my mum made me some cereal in a bowl and I was eating that, I didn’t have enough milk in the cereal so for some reason I was pouring milk directly into the cereal packet, and now I am eating out of the cereal packet instead of the bowl. My mum is sitting on the other side of the table, and she hands me a letter in an orange or red envelope, there are two identical looking letters but I assume that one of them must be addressed to one of my brothers.
I have this sudden realisation that I seem to have been eating a lot of breakfast, in fact I remember saying to my mum in a jovial fashion “why have you made me this cereal? Now I have had all three types of breakfast in one morning” I can remember thinking that this cereal was the third separate meal I had eaten that morning (I can’t remember what I ate between the sausages and bacon and the cereal but I know there was something). I remember thinking that it is odd that I have eaten three different types of breakfast in one morning. That’s when it happened.
I remember Tom telling me just yesterday when we were talking about lucid dreaming techniques that he had read an account of a person who looks at one of his festival wristbands whilst in his dream, to check to see if the writing that is on it is how he would expect it to be. I usually keep my festival wristbands on for quite a while, currently I have 4, 2 on each wrist. I decided to check my wristband. It was the Glastonbury wrist band that I was looking at, trying to read the words on it. All I could read was the word “farm” but struggled to read the rest (I now realise that was probably because I didn’t really know what was written on it, but I knew it had something to do with the farm).
At this point I was fully aware of the fact that I was checking to see if I was in a dream, but I still didn’t realise it was a dream even though I couldn’t read the writing properly (which is apparently a common occurrence when trying to read something in a dream). I thought that I must be awake because I didn’t really beleive I was going to be able to do this. Anyway, I looked away from the wristband and then looked back to check it again (something that I had read was a technique for convincing yourself you are in a dream, called a reality check as I wrote about yesterday).
This time I couldn’t read any of the words on the wristband, it was a blur. At this point I felt very strange and I was almost in a state of shock because I had actually become aware that I could be in a dream, it only lasted the briefest of seconds before I quickly awoke.
When I was in the process of waking up a very odd feeling came over me, almost like the world spinning then me getting sucked out of it, passing though some kind of barrier (it sounds crazy I know, I probably wouldn’t believe me either) As I was passing through this barrier (this lasted for what seemed like less than a second) I had enough time to realise that what happened was actually a dream and as soon as I was awake for some reason, I involuntarily said the words “oh my god” (which is not a phrase I normally use). I don’t know if I actually said it out loud or if it was in my head. It was quite overwhelming at the time, because as I said earlier, I was quite skeptical about this lucid dreaming even being possible.
I couldn’t quite beleive that I had managed to do it, even though I had woken up almost instantly the moment I suspected that it was probably a dream. I wasn’t even 100% sure it was a dream when I was trying to read the wrist band a second time, I just very much suspected it.
A few moments after waking up, the way the whole thing felt was still quite fresh in my mind, I felt almost the same as when I was actually in my dream, so I had to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming (for my own sanity, haha). I checked my wristband and I could read it fine, looked away and then checked it again, I could read it fine, then did it a third time just to make sure. Then I grabbed my lap top and started writing this.
When I realised It was likely I was in a dream I don’t think I wanted to be there anymore, which is probably why I woke up. I was a bit freaked out by it. However, now that I have got that first breakthrough under my belt, hopefully I will be able to have a bit more control over the situation the next time something triggers me to do a reality check. I’m quite apprehensive about it happening again really, I think that’s just because it seems so out of the ordinary to me. But I keep telling myself I have to progress with it.
I think it happened so quickly because I had spent quite a while reading, talking and writing about it yesterday. I have got to try to keep it at the forefront of my mind during the day today and I’ll try to spark a discussion about it with Tom later tonight, to keep me thinking about it. I’ll try to continue with the wristband reality check technique as it seems to have worked once already.
This has been a very enlightening experiment so far, and it’s only one night old.
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