lucid dreaming

Last night Donald, Ken (our couchsurfer), Emmanual (an ex-stabbie), and I all watched the Science of Sleep.  If you haven't seen it, it's this French film with funny one liners, a great storyline, and superb cinematography which portrays the life of a man who gets all too often confused mixing his dreams with reality.  It's a movie I've probably seen 5 times now, but this time the effect on the viewers was different than usual and got us all thinking deeply about the power of dreams.

After the movie the group began to discuss dreams, dream control, and lucid dreaming - all topics I know very little about.  My background knowledge is weak:  About a year ago I had this awesome late nite conversation with a man on the train from Salem to SLO about lucid dreaming.  Lucid dreaming is

''a dream state in which one is conscious enoughto recognize that one is in the dream state andwhich stays in one's memory''  - Dictionary.com

 and can be achieved simply through practice.

 ''You simply think about it a lot while you're awake,'' said my late night train friend,
''and after a while it just clicks and you can suddenly play with your dreams because you know they are not real!''

It sounded awesome then, but how was I to practice something so foreign to me?  After the Science of Sleep movie, the group discussion quickly proved that I was seated in a room full of experts.  Emmanual had intensely practiced lucid dreaming for 8 months and Donald has been keeping a dream journal since school started.

''The first task is to faithfully log your dreams,'' expert Emmanual informed us,
''Getting started doing this is the hardest part since it's so difficult to remember detail - and most people don't even dream in color, so detail will be harder to remember for some than others.''

And so continued the instructions and stories about lucid dreams late into the night.  When we finally parted ways to head to bed, I felt like I couldn't wait to get to sleep to see what I'd dream about.  I rushed to bed...

...

In the morning I had TWO entries on my notepad, and I am so stoked to get going on this process!