My subconscious must not want me to have lucid dreams. I was using the watch method. That is, I got myself in the habit of looking at my watch multiple times a day… frequently. The idea is that while you are dreaming, you will continue that behavior. Supposedly you cannot tell time in dreams… Or at least the numbers are meaningless or something because that is from the logical side. Anyway, that is supposed to be a trigger for you, inside your dream, to alert you that you are currently dreaming.
The first time this happened, when I looked at the watch, it was nothing but red and yellow gears. I was barely aware that was wrong. But it was enough and I became semi lucid. The next time this happened, I did have something on my arm that looked like a digital watch. However it was upside down and the display was blank. This time, I became the most lucid to date, but I’m not detailing it here. The third night that I noticed my watch, it was too dark to see it. I almost gave up there but somehow found a better lighted part of the room. I cannot remember what the watch looked like that time, but it was enough to get me lucid.
After I woke on that third morning, I began musing that my subconscious was trying to keep me out and was doing a better job each time. First the watch was gears, a total fail. The next time it did have a digital watch. After that, it took a new tact and tried to keep me from looking at the watch by making it dark. For some reason, after that realization, I stopped looking at my watch obsessively during the day and the lucid dreams stopped.
Recently however, I had a dream that I had had a dream where I looked at my phone and saw a valid time 3:04. In the dream I was surprised to realize that I had seen a valid time (during the dream in a dream). Later I woke up from that dream and realized what had happened. It kind of felt like when you are trying to wake up in the morning but instead only dream that you got up and did your morning routine.
I had not been trying to have lucid dreams, but I had noticed a few days earlier that I was currently dreaming. I mean that I normally don’t remember my dreams, but every now and then I’ll remember them several nights in a row. So I said to myself, “hey, I’ve been dreaming lately. I wonder if I can have a lucid.” That was about one day before the dream about a dream.
Let’s take a short detour. Once my watch tells me that I am dreaming, I usually try to change something around me as confirmation that I really am in a dream and not just confused. This usually manifests in an attempt to levitate a nearby object. I don’t know where that came from, but it is usually pretty easy. I find this humorous because of the times where I have been in a dream that seemed extremely vivid and real. I remember an iron railing of a staircase that was absolutely solid. It had a sense of strength and rigidity. In another dream I remember looking at the situation and wishing that it was just a dream and coming to the realization that ‘this is not a dream; it is really happening’. So wanting a secondary proof that I’m really in a dream seems kind of odd.
Getting back on track, a few nights agoI had a lucid dream. Back then I think I remembered what the watch showed, but I can no longer recall. Whatever it was I became lucid. However, instead of trying to levitate something near me (what I seem to do to confirm to myself that I really am dreaming), I started trying to do math.
I knew one plus one was two but discarded that because it was more of a memory than a math operation. Eventually I wound up trying to add nineteen and seventeen. It took a lot of effort that spanned several dream scenes. During those scenes, I was either talking to myself or there was a narration going on about whether or not you can do math in a dream. I knew I had to do a carry and that one plus one plus one was three. And I think I got a six for the ones place. After that the dream continued on its own, with semi lucid input at several places.
I figure I better write this down before I forget more.
Oh yeah, I just remembered more about that particular dream. I was lying in my bed and I was not looking at my watch. It was an alarm clock near the bed. It was freaky too; the top part was digital (but blank) and the bottom was analog. It had no hands, but I kept focusing on the dots that represented the hours. Something in the ‘narration’ caused me to look closer at them and realize it was a dream. At some point the face on the clock turned into a person’s face (like an image in a computer screen, not a real face) which kept distorting back and forth (like someone was playing with silly putty). Later, while I was still thinking about the time, two people behind/inside the clock put their hands up on the glass. Each hand had more fingers than it should have.
So I’m lying in my bed and there are several figures around me (people, furniture, ???). I was thinking about trying to change them but decided that it would be too frightening (conducive to later nightmares) if I were to start interacting with figures standing around my bed. But I wanted to change stuff in the dream. So I closed my eyes and saw like a psychedelic tunnel of reds and blues in the outline of an arch between buildings. They firmed up and we were someplace else. It looked like a gothic college campus. But then I noticed the people were wearing normal clothes and I was disappointed. In immediate response to that, I saw a man in brown monks robes. He came over and told me something that gave me the impression it was more like a ren fair or performance than a real gothic college.
We were looking for a seat in the stands (as if for the parade?) and had to go to the end. At that part, the stands were actually on a boat, but it was docked well and you could not even feel it move. It was around then that I finally decided there should be a 6 in the one’s place (above math). Note that I never said ‘36’; just that there was a 3 in the left-most place and a 6 in the right.
Wow, that post really rambled all over the place. Sorry.
Getting back to the point, does it make sense that my subconscious is actively trying to keep me from lucid dreaming?
Thanks!