It happened the night before last.  First, some background: I’m reading “Lucid Dreaming” by Robert Waggoner, and it’s seriously fantastic.  It’s a different world.  I’m not sure how far down the rabbit hole I go, but at least far enough to want to know more.  I’ve picked up some tips, and this dream provided a smorgasbord of opportunities to try them out.  Some notes:

- I was most certainly lucid.  I said to a friend,“this is a dream!”  It didn’t happen from reality testing; it just seemed rather spontaneous.  I caught a coin in mid-air, then I realized I was dreaming.
- I had enough presence of mind to remember things from the waking world.  That’s good, because:
- the first thing I did was to start spinning, as that’s supposed to prolong lucid dreams.  Sure did.  However, I also closed my eyes, which put me into a black zone kind of like floating through space.  I wondered if the dream was going to end, but luckily, it didn’t, and I ended up in:
- vivid vivid land by the sea.  If I had to compare it to somewhere, it’d be Dinosaur Land from Mario World, if it had been rendered by the artists who did Riven.
- I remembered that profound things had happened to Waggoner after he stopped trying to do stuff and said “hey dream, show me something important!” so I tried the same a few times.  No luck.
- However, I saw a FedEx office building, and I didn’t know what to do.  I said “Hey dream, should I go in?” and a light flashed above the door.  This may be the coolest event of the dream. I feel like I directly communicated with my subconscious. Like there’s another guy in my head creating a movie for me to watch.
- I met a couple people from real life, but they were silent and didn’t do much, like cardboard cutouts.  I didn’t particularly try to engage them.
- I feel like I slipped out of lucidity at one point.  It started to feel like a regular dream.
- However, then I had the control to say “I want to see my family” and I did.  They were kind of floating in space.  I couldn’t even see them clearly, but I felt very deeply grateful to them.  This has happened before.
- I had a false awakening.  I “woke up” in my childhood home, in my bunkbeds, trying to write down the dream, but a friend kept talking to me.  Then I woke up for serious.
- I felt wonderful for the entire next day.

All just as this book (and everything else I’ve ever read about lucid dreaming) has said. Wow. I can’t wait for it to happen again.