My Quest into the Unknown: Lucid Dreaming

This mysterious creature appeared in my dreams, and now he wants revenge.

Children, be gone! For this adventure is not for you. And for the rest of you who get uneasy in the face of reality, and who get uneasy knowing they're uneasy, and thus will perpetuate themselves into a state of permanent and infinite unease, be gone as well! For this adventure requires bravery, valor, courage, and other such clichés.




"What adventure?" you may foolishly ask, since you failed to read the title of the entry. My friends, I have begun my quest into my own mind through the magic of dreams. It has interested me for a long time now, and I have finally resolved to get down and dirty in my own mind while I sleep.

First, let me explain what this all this is. Actually, more like third, since this is in fact the third p-graph. Lucid dreaming is reaching consciousness in your sleep, your unconscious state. It sounds paradoxical, I know, but it has been proven long ago in the 70s. I've been doing my research. Many of you may have experienced this, as it's not entirely uncommon (50%-80% of all college students experience it). You are dreaming, and suddenly, by some crazy miracle, you become aware that you are in a dream. From this point, you do whatever the J you want. You can create anything your imagination can fathom and then destroy it. You can sense whatever it is you want, be it sweet food, refreshing breezes, the scent of factory foam, your own symphonies, or straight up naked people! I'm kidding, but it's all possible. Your mind is, after all, the final say in what you experience. Not your fingers or your olfactory receptors or your cochlear implants. For this reason, your dream world can be just believable as your physical world. This indistinguishability could become problematic if you just want to know what is "real." Is the dream not real? That gets us in to a whole nother discussion, which I won't discuss right now. And why do people say "nother" instead of other? I think I do it too.

So, I began last night, and I'm very excited about this whole snordeal. I've been reading, and apparently, to become aware you are dreaming in your dream, it helps to look at your hands. Your hands are always with you, and they can also help stabilize your dream if things start getting shaky. So, last night I stared at my hands. There they were in front of me, beautiful, as I've always known them (I'll let you see them some time). I looked at them and told myself, "Tonight, I will see my hands while I'm dreaming. When I see them I will realize that I am dreaming. When I wake up, I will remember everything." After thinking these thoughts in repetitions, I began getting sleepier and distracted by other thoughts. If I noticed I was distracted I started thinking about my hands again, and how I would see them. Eventually I fell asleep.
I remembered little to nothing of my dream when I awoke initially, but I fell back asleep again and had another dream, this one I remembered.

Everyone enjoys a good boulder problem

The dream involved going to a very cool gymnasium with one of the coolest climbing walls and boulder problems I had ever seen. My brothers were there and I was dating a fat girl who was clearly heavier than me. I was not ok with that, but felt terrible for even being with her because I felt like I would have to break up on very shallow grounds. She wasn't all that interesting either. I didn't get to climb, but I was very excited to. I woke up, never achieving lucidity.
But I am not discouraged. I will try again tonight, and the next night, and so on until I reach my first goal of having a lucid dream.

As I continue on this odd odyssey, I will try to convey what I experience and what I find useful for achieving lucidity. I do have one thing to say before I finish this, entry, and that's if getting too excited wakes you up, how about some strong sedatives? I'll get back to that later.

The Effects of Sleep on Health

"I'm tie-owed," yawned the sleepy Joseph Ducreux.

Alright, faithful readers. I've a small assignment for you. Now we're really stretching far away from the whole senses ordeal with a beautiful survey I helped write and formulate. It's about the effects of sleep on one's health, and though this study has probably been done many times in many different forms, here's one more for the books.
There are some limiting factors for who should be taking this survey. It's focusing more on the college demographic, so don't take this survey unless your are currently a full-time student at a college.
Here's that link you've been waiting for so anxiously:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZV5MNC6

Take it and be done!
Also, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up about potentially winning some sort of compensation (like $20 cash...!), so I won't by explaining right here, right now, that there is a very small chance of you winning anything, including all of that dirty, filthy $20. Some would like to call it a zero percent chance of winning anything. I'm included in that "some" who would like to call it that, and I would know. So there's that. Good luck!


When the results are in, I'll post them on this here blog and we can all revel in the glorious information that we all already knew: regular nightly sleeping is beneficial to your health. Now get to bed!