So I've been reading this book on Tibetan "dream yoga" and one of the practices recommended in order to achieve lucid dreaming is to continuously say to oneself throughout the day: THIS IS A DREAM. I did so yesterday every 30 minutes or so, and when I fell asleep last night I had a dream that I was in my paternal grandparents' house in Stewartstown, PA. Strangely, I said to myself THIS IS A DREAM in the dream, and then sat down and made a list of my sins on a yellow legal pad. I sat in that tattered old Laz-y-Boy Grandma used to lounge in whilst smoking her pipe and watching people drive by on Main Street. When I woke up I had no memory of dreaming at all, but remembered the dream later in the day when I sat down to make a list of things I had to do today.
It wasn't, however, a "lucid" dream, because that wasn't actually "me" taking control of my actions during the dream. Rather, it was me dreaming I was having a lucid dream. I mean, yeah, of course, all the stuff that happens in a dream is ME somehow, but not the conscious ME I am when I'm awake, whatever "awake" is.
Were I to actually have a "lucid" dream in my grandparent's house I'd explore it instead of sitting down and writing up a list of my sins. The first things I'd check are:
- Is that old push-botton lightplate from the teens still in the hallway?
- Are those paint spatters on the wood floor under the bookcase still there? Grandma G. used to freak me out by telling me they were "spider poop"
- Is that outlet under the telephone table still blackened from the time I jammed a skeleton key in it?
- Is the barn converted to a garage still out back, and is there still hay inside the tiny door where Soupy the dog used to live?
