I had my first lucid dream! It was a really cool experience, but rather than rewrite it, I’m going to copy my dream journal for that day verbatim, then leave some observations afterward.

Lucid dream! I had been driving aimlessly and ended up in Thayer, Missouri. For some reason, after going through a stoplight where two of the lights were out, I was no longer in the car. I was walking down a hill to cross over into Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, but a river separated them. The “normal” bridge had been torn down and replaced with a rock bridge that only went 1/3 of the way into the river. Through the trees, I saw another, much larger bridge and went across that. Once I was across, I came down a cliff with an old cathedral-type church on it. I started to try to take a picture, and at that point, Brett Cox appeared and somehow triggered the lucid dream. He said I should test to see, so I did the only thing that I could think of: try to fly! I closed my eyes and willed myself up, and boom, I was flying. I pulled Brett up by the arm, though I don’t remember holding onto him long, so I assume he flew, too. We flew around the town, and he asked if I’d seen the cool fish in the river. I hadn’t, so we flew to it. I flew straight in and started swimming. He said, “Ha, well that’s one way to do it,” as he’d been intending on just flying over the water. I was able to open my eyes and, after thinking about it, breathe underwater. The water was brown and full of little particles just like a real Missouri river, and the bed was rocky. I  didn’t see any fish, so I flew out and went back over Thayer. I think I intended to fly home. I don’t remember how, but I ended up in a room of a really nice house and was reading the back of a political book. It was talking about some politician and a scandal concerning his wife. I decided to test the dream again by looking away and then looking back at the text to see if it changed. I couldn’t tell, because I couldn’t remember enough words at a time to test whether they’d changed. Shortly after, I woke up.

Observations:

  • From the point I became lucid all the way to the end of the dream, there were several times when I was concerned I was going to wake up. Until now, every time I’ve ever realized I was dreaming, I woke up immediately. In this dream, I was aware of that fact after I became lucid. I’m not sure why I didn’t wake up, because it did “feel” rather precarious, like I may wake any second. It was almost a sixth sense, where I knew I was close to waking up, but didn’t have any external indicators.
  • Though such a thing hasn’t been mentioned in the book I’m using (as far as I’ve read), the character of Brett acting as a “guide” played an essential part in exploiting the lucidity. I’m not sure if this is something that will recur, or if it was just a coincidence that it happened the first time.
  • I didn’t intentionally create or change anything in the dream except for my being able to fly.
  • The layout of the land and water stayed static, and honestly, the only thing that didn’t exactly correspond to reality was the fact that Mammoth Springs and Thayer looked different. Stoplights, roads, water, cameras, architecture, and physics behaved realistically.

The bridge in the dream was almost identical to this bridge in Toledo, Ohio that I photographed about a year ago.

Bridge

Hopefully the next lucid dream happens soon! I’ll keep on trying, and maybe something really cool will happen soon.