Latest / bit of a Rambler / 065 Lucid Dreaming

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065 Lucid Dreaming · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And I rediscovered lucid dreaming years after the first time
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: it ever happened to me, when I was ten or
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: twelve roughly, and then later on in high school when
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I was interested but didn't really get into it. I
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: had one dream where it was raining very hard in
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the elementary school I had gone to as a primary
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: school sent a couple years before, and as like I said,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a twelve year old or something, and I went in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: real life to that elementary school at night to hang
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: out with friends. There was a skate park nearby and
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a big other park nearby, so it was a pretty
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: normal place to hang out. But for some reason that
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I don't understand this time, when I visited the school
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: at night, I realized I was in a dream. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: even though everything felt normal, you know, like dreams do.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I walked down what felt like a real concrete path
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: past what looked like the real concrete pavilion from the school,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and then it started to rain. But the rain got
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: so heavy that I couldn't even see to the other
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: side of the tennis court that I was standing on.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: And there was just a shadow on the other side,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: like a negative version silhouette of a person on the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: other side of the court, and I intuitively knew they
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: were going to attack me, but something tipped me off
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: that I was in a dream, and I knew that
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I was in a dream somehow, so I thought to myself, well,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'm in a dream, so I can probably just shoot
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: laser beams out of my finger, right, And I shot
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: laser beams out of my finger at the shadow, and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: it immediately started shooting laser beams at me. And we
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: had this crazy Made Tricks style fight where I was
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: running around the chain link fences and shooting lasers at
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the silhouette shadow person that I couldn't see clearly in
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the rain, and I just did that the whole time.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I was dreaming fighting with this silhouette or rather obscured
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: by rain silhouette, and it was a really cool fight.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And I was doing flips and like I said, running
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: up chainling fences and backflipping off them and shooting lasers.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And then I woke up and I was like, what
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the heck was that I was awake but in a dream.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: That's crazy And I never had another lucid dream again,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: or at least I never remembered another one for a
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: decade where I realized I was in the dream and
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: could control aspects of it. So later on I was
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: watching this movie called Slacker by Richard Link later very
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: famous movie worth watching, slow, weird, phophical, and there's one
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: conversation between a couple of people and one guy is
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: explaining to another one how he lucid dreams, and when
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: he said lucid dream I was like, that's me that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I did that, And I paid very close attention to
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that conversation, even though it's not a great explanation and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the guy who's explaining it is kind of sketchy as
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: far as I remember, I haven't watched that movie in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a long time, but here it is in a movie,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: a phenomenon that I experienced that I never knew quite
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: how to explain, because every time I brought it up,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: someone would be like, yeah, that's dreaming, and I was
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: like no, but I was aware of it, and they're like, no,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: that's not dreaming. That you were what we call awake.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I was like no. So now that I knew it
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: was a real thing, I looked it up on the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: burgeoning Internet and discovered lucid dreaming and read a bunch
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of stuff on how to do it, and then I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything with that knowledge or practice that at all.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So then I was in high school and we had
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a teacher who encouraged us to start dream journals, and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I think they were actually assignments, so encourages a gracious description,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's a dream journal. It wasn't the
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: most difficult assignment I've ever had. And her advice that
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: has always stuck with me and I still use when
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I want to dream or remember my dreams is when
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you're lying in bed before you go to sleep, just
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: say in your head, remember your dream, remember your dream,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: remember your dream a few times, and tell yourself to
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: remember your dream. That works that I didn't remember many
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of my dreams when she told us to start the journals,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: but I did tell myself to remember my dream before
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I went to sleep every night, even just a few times,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and I remember my dreams better. And I had a
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: pretty robust dream journal. And the dream journal really helped
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: me remember my dreams better during waking hours, especially the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: more I did it, which brought back the memory of
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the original lucid dream I had in the tennis court
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and laser beams from my fingers, so I thought it
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: was really interesting. I was remembering my dreams more. But
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't continue to practice lucid dreaming because I was
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: way too stressed out in the States, which I didn't
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: notice while I was there until I left the States,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and I just didn't have enough free time to learn
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a new skill, or I didn't feel like I had
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: enough time to learn a new skill. And all of
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: this is just the foundation for when I was twenty five,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: probably more like twenty seven, because I had to party
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: for a couple of years first teaching English, I had
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: so much time, so much free time, as I've mentioned,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: because you only work in maybe twenty hours a week,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: that I was trying out different diets and different lifestyles
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and differ diferent exercises and different hobbies, just all sorts
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: of different things. And I randomly remembered lucid dreaming one
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: day and thought, oh, I should try that again too,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: because it was so cool when I did it that
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: first time. And so here I was a decade later,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: using the same couple of techniques, and I laid down
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and told myself to remember my dream, and I started
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: remembering my dreams more. By that time, when I was
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: twenty seven or whatever it was, I was forgetting my
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: dreams every morning when I woke up, even it was
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: just normal life. Most people forget their dreams. I did too,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: But when I started telling myself to remember my dreams,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I started remembering them again. And so I started writing
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: them down in a journal. And just by telling myself
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: to remember my dreams and then keeping a dream journal
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: during waking hours, I had my first lucid dream that
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I was able to remember in over a decade. I
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: was sitting in this expansive field of grass that I
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: had never really seen before, and it was a blue
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: sky and there was nothing at all around. I was
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: on a high cliff next to the ocean, and somehow
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: I had just become so aware of remembering what dreams
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: were like. I think by remembering my dream during waking hours,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and especially writing down and recording dreams during waking hours,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that I realized, Oh, I'm in a dream, and I
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: remember You're supposed to stay very calm and acknowledge or
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: in a dream, but don't freak out or get too
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: excited about it, so I did that. I just said, okay,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I'm in a dream, and everything stayed stable. And I
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: was still sitting on this rolling meadow of grass on
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: a hill on the cliff that went for miles all
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: around me during some afternoon, and I was like, this
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I'm just hanging out in a really
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: enough world that my brain has made up up and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: living in dreamland. And I looked around and examined everything.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: The tree is to my left, and the ocean and
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the cliff I was on. And then since I acknowledged, yeah, okay,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I know I'm in a dream. I'm existing in the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: stream stably. What else can I do here? And I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: did try to fly first, I think, just try to levitate,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't do it, and I could feel that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I couldn't create that experience properly. I wasn't able to
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: comprehend how it would feel to actually fly. And then
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I tried it too hard and everything started. It didn't
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: feel as stable as it did, so I just let
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that go and just sat in the grass for a
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: while again. And for me, I thought, well, maybe it'll
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: be easier if I try to make something, And to
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: make something while you're lucid dreaming. The idea technique, I
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: should say, is to look away so you're not looking
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: at whatever you're creating, and just sort of remember that
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the thing you are creating is there, and then when
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: you look back, the thing should be there. So I
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: decided to try that, and I wanted to keep it simple,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: so I thought briefly about what I was going to make,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: and then just decided a cat. And I closed my
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: eyes and looked away from my right hand on the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: right side of my body where the right hand is,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and thought, cat. Imagine a cat, and I imagined a white,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: just normal looking cat, and I held up my hand
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: as if I was petting the cat from its head,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: down its neck, onto its back, and by the time
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I got to its back, I was feeling the cat,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my gosh. And I opened
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: my eyes in the dream and looked over and there
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: was the white cat. And I had a cat now
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: in my dream, and me and the cat played in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: this meadow, mostly just sad, and I petted the cat
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and it was very interesting. So that happened just by
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: writing down journaling my dreams again and telling myself to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: remember my dreams I became so aware of my dream
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: state after I don't know a month or two that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I had a lucid dream or else. I was able
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: to remember that lucid dream when I woke up in
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: very clear detail. And I was remembering a lot of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: my dreams in very clear detail because of that journaling
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and telling myself to remember my dream before I went
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to bed. So that was really interesting to me, and
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I wanted to expand those abilities, so I read more
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: about lucid dreaming and I learned about reality checks. In
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: reality checks, you literally check if you are awake, are
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: you in reality are you in what we think of
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: as the real world, like everyday waking life. There are
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of checks that you can do. You can
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: pinch your nostrils shut and inhale through your nose, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: if you're able to inhale through your closed nostrils, then
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you are probably dreaming. You can read a book if
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the words are totally wrong, you're probably dreaming. You can
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: read a clock if the numbers look weird. There's a
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of different stuff that you can do, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: I tried a few of them, but they like if
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: I want to reality check multiple times a day what
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to do, let's say five times a day,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: just make sure you're in the real world. It's kind
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: of difficult to do that holding your nose into inhaling.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: If you're in a public place, there's a lot of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: reality checks that you have to do something for. And
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: so I tried to think of something I could do
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that wasn't obvious, but would still very clearly let me
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: know if I was in reality or not. And I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: settled on telekinesis. So I tried moving things with my
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: mind because as a kid, I had tried to use
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the force like Luke does, and that just came to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: me and I was like, well, I can probably do
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: that in dreams, even though I can't do that in
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: waking life. So I started trying to move things telekinetically.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: And I can do that in public. I can do
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that anywhere. People can be watching and they won't know
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I'm doing it. But I'm trying to test real I
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: am testing reality. I'm testing my waking consciousness by moving
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a book off the shelf and bringing it over to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: me or something like that. And I did that for
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. I can't remember how long, honestly,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: but I regularly did reality checks with telekinesis. And then
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: one day I was making a sandwich and I put
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the ham back in the fridge, and then I was
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: going to close the fridge door, but I stopped myself
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: and I tried to use telekinesis to close the fridge door,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and the fridge door closed via telekinesis, and I realized
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: that I was dreaming. And that was much more surprising
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: than the other times, because this felt like, oh, I
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: broke into this dream because of a technique I established
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: in waking life. I really was expanding my understanding of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: dreaming and lucid dreaming. So that was a revelatory moment.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: But again I remembered, stay calm, Stay calm, Stay calm,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: you were in a dream. That's okay, you're in a dream,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Stay calm. What do you want to do? And I
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: just tried to figure out what I would do next.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And I can't actually remember the last of that. I'm
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: sure there's a journal where I wrote down the rest
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: of the dream somewhere, but I remember I did stay
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: in the dream, and that was the first time that
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: a trigger check or reality check let me know that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I was dreaming, and that was fascinating to me. I
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, okay, so this is definitely a skill
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: that you can improve on. And I heard you tales
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: of Tibetan monks practicing lucid dreaming, and just certain cultures
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that value dreaming more highly than others. Really got into
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: developing the skill of lucid dreaming. And now with this
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: reality check that worked in my dream, I had proof
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: positive that it was a skill, and lucid dreaming is
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a skill that I can develop if I just devote
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: time and practice to it. So I did. I used
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: telepathy sometimes, like ten times a day a lot during
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the day. I tried reality checks all the time, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: it worked more. I started having lucid dreams in a row,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and I got to the point where there was a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: cool zombie warehouse scenario that I entered twice, and I
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: was like fighting off the zombies with my telekinetic powers
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and zoomed up into the air like Neo at the
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: end of the matrix and hung out in the clouds,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: flying around and it was so cool. So I was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: aware during a lot of these and I tried creating
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: things more and just kept pushing the limits of lucid dreaming,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of being aware and controlling my dream, and trying to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: read between the lines of Western research versus rumors of
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. And while there are many books on lucid
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: dreaming and conversations about it without any supporting evidence, there
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: are also real sleep studies concerning lucid dreaming. There are
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: experiments where people are given instructions, if you can hear
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: me inside of your dream, move your eye in a
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: certain way so that the scientists can see that you're
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: conscious while dreaming, and a lot of the dreamers were
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: reliably able to move their eye to the left or
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: right as instructed by the sleep scientists. There are a
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: few scientific sleep studies that you can check out about
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. I had another cool lucid dream where I
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was fighting like resident evil zombie dogs in a mall,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: and I was jumping hundreds of feet from escalator railing
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: to escalator railing avoiding these dogs, and I was fighting
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: them with something came. But it was so fun to
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: create these scenarios and control my dream, be aware that
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I was in a dream, and I kind of let
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the control go. Sometimes just let the dream go wherever
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: and kind of watched it like a movie or a
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: video game that I was living, and to make tweaks
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: here or there as I wanted to and was able to.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Now there was one skill, or rather a couple skills
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to improve on and move forward. According
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to a bunch of random people on the internet, if
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you get good at lucid dreaming, then you can use
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: other senses you aren't observing without feeling and tasting and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: smelling things. You can actually smell, taste, touched everything. Now,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: touching is usually easier. Picking things up sort of comes
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: naturally in dreaming as far as I understand for a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: lot of people. So you can feel the weight of
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: a book or something, but if you try flipping through
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the pages, you might not get the minor details of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: reality that you would expect. But I had started my
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: lucid dreaming with petting that cat that I made, and
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: could regularly touch things, and they felt real in dreams.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to move on and use my other
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: senses in a dream the same that I used them
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: in waking life. And I kept trying to taste things
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: or smell things, and when I woke up, then after
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I attempted these. I feel like I could remember feeling
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: something or I could remember smelling something clearly, but I
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't sure that I had done it until I finally
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: did and I was in a dream. I did a
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: reality check and realized that I was in a dream
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: going to a New Year's party. And we walked inside.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: The house was completely full of people. There was music playing.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Music was another one that I had achieved before, and
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I could listen to music or listen to yeah music happening,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and there was music playing at the party, and I
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: talked to the hostess, and then once she went away,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: there was a big buffet table and I went over
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to that and there were cupcakes and cookies and all
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: these kinds of foods. But I picked up a cupcake
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and it just looked like a normal cupcake with frosting
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: on it. And I bid into it like I would
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: any cupcake, and it tasted like any cupcake would. It
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: just tasted like a cupcake with frosting on it. And
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I chewed it and then swallowed it, and then I
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: realized that I had just very very clear tasted something
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in my dream, and it tasted just as good as
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: any cupcake I had ever had in the waking world,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, be cool, be cool, be cool.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: You did it? Be cool? And I ate the cupcake
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: more and it just tasted better with every single bite
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I took. And I was chewing it and swallowing this
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: dream cupcake and it tasted like I was eating a
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: real cupcake. It was crazy. I think I tried one
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of the cookies also, and I was trying not to
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: freak out, like be calm, but I was so excited
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: by this new development in sensory dreaming that I think
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: it did the New Year's party did eventually fall apart
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: because I just couldn't hold the scene in my mind
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and be this excited about eating cupcakes and cookies in
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: my dream with full sensory simulation. I mean, it's hard
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to call it simulation, but it because it tasted and
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: felt exactly like I was eating a cupcake and a cookie,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: crunching the cookie, and the soft spongy nature of the cupcake,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the sugary taste. It was so that's such a visceral
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: sense even compared to touch, that I was blown away that
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I could actually smell and taste things in dreams. Which
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know if it was possible or not.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Like people talk about things, but it's the Internet. I've
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: never met a person in real life who lucid dreams,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: and I've talked to so many people about it because
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about it. And you know, one out of
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: every two people on the Internet claimed that they do
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: it regularly. It's just totally normal for them. Oh yeah,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: they can definitely make a kayak riding down a river
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of magma. But I'm already a pretty skeptical person, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I really need validating evidence to believe something. And here
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I was personally experiencing basically the last major sense. I guess,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you know, because I could already feel stuff in dreams.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I could pet that cat or pick things up and
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I knew they were in my hand. I could create
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: things that I could see very pretty easily. I heard
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: things often in dreams, but I could never clearly, distinctly
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: smell or taste something. And all of a sudden, in
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: this New Year's party dream, I was tasting. I was
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: normally eating a cupcake and cookies in my dream, and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: it tasted just as good and just as real as
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: any waking life confection I had ever had, and that
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: was kind of like my crowning achievement after I achieved that.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It only took a few months to get to that point.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: It definitely wasn't even a year long. That was over
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the span of maybe six months, I believe less four
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: or five months I would be comfortable with saying from
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: moving from saying remember my dream and writing a journal
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to doing daily reality checks and then ten daily reality
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: checks a day, and then moving on to now I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: can fly and fight these zombies with telekinesis, slamming a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: locker into them and jumping across the mall and now
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: tasting things and smelling things and listening to songs and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: music comfortably in my dream while holding it together. That
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: was a very rapid expansion of my dreaming abilities. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I was able to do that because for the first
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: time in my life, I had so much free time
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: that I was just considering everything in my life I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: had ever thought was cool. And I remembered that very
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: first lucidream when I was ten or twelve or whatever
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: shooting laser means. On my hand, I was like, that
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: was a cool, real thing. I'm pretty sure that was real.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And then I remember the movie and my high school
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: teacher and all these things. And because I pursued that,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I was able to achieve lucid dreaming multiple times in
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: many different scenarios. And I actually haven't done it in
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: a while, but I've been dream journaling again recently and
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: it reminded me of that, and I certainly now, you know,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: after I taught English for so long, have even more
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: time than I did then to experiment and try out
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: new things again. And I want to get back into
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: lucid dreaming because I'm not sure why I stopped. I
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: feel like it's kind of like yoga, Like if I
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: ever do yoga, it's literally the best. I can't imagine
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: a better exercise. I feel exhausted afterwards. I feel like
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: I got a real workout. I feel like I'm exercising
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: many types of muscles. Every time I do it, I'm like, Oh,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: that's the best exercise there is. If I think about yoga,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I'm like nah, every single time. And I think that's
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: what happened with lucid dreaming. I got really good at it,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I can do it. I'll
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: just put that in my back pocket. If I ever
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: want to get better at that, and then I stopped
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: practicing it because I had achieved what I was looking for.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: But why not do better at it, or not even better?
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Why did you just start doing it again? It's super
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: fun to control things. So I've been doing reality checks again,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: telekinetic reality checks again. Or I'm trying to throw colors
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: onto this recording microphone I do all the time because
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in front of my computer a lot gaming
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: these days, and I'll try and turn my microphone purple
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: or orange rather than the standard black it is. And
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: when I can't do that, I understand that I am
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: in reality. So I'm trying again. I'm writing down my
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: dreams when I can remember them. I'm not trying as
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: hard as I can again. It's like yoga. I think
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: about it, I'm like, yeah, I could do it, Yeah
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I could, and then I don't. But I've definitely been
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: trying a lot harder with lucid dreaming than I have
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: been with yoga lately, and it's cool. Reality checking for
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: telekinesis like holding out my hand or like subtly and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: trying to brush up a leaf off the sidewalk because
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I know it is going to work. Eventually, one day,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to gesture at a book to fly over
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to me, and that book is going to fly across
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the room, and then I'll know I'm in a dream.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: So I highly encourage you to travel for so many reasons,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: but the amount of free time you have and the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: resources so that you can practice that hobby the way
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: you want to practice it. Like yeah, if it's home brewing,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: you can buy some airlocks and tubing and you have
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: time to work on brewing homemade mead. You'll have plenty
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of time to practice any hobbies or skills you want
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to while traveling, like lucid dreamings, which I recommend is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a real skill. Like I stopped practicing lucid dreaming when
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I was living in the States because I was waking
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: up at three thirty am to open the bakery. I
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: worked at sandwich shop, and then I was working all day,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: and sometimes I would work double shifts because someone was
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: sick or ill or whatever. You know, I'd stay after
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: work and I'd come in early and work without being paid.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Because that's how American jobs work. You just work more
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: than you're supposed to to show you're a good worker.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Get out of here. And I was still barely making
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: enough money to survive, let alone thrive. And I had
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: no free time because I had to make schedules for
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: that job and just think about coworker relations. It was
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: taking up my life even when I wasn't there. I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: was forgetting that the job was something that I was
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: doing so that I could live my life. Because so
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: many jobs in the United States don't let you think that.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: They're like, oh, your job is your life. You just
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: do this until you have no more energy or physical
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: capability or free thought anymore. You just do this to survive.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: And that's not what a job should be. That's not
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: what your life should be. You should be living to live.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: You should be working so that you can live better.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean waiting fifty years to live better.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I mean you should be living the best you can
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: while you're still young and your body still works, and
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you're still curious about the world and you want to
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: learn more and try new things. That's when you should
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: be living your life. When you have the greatest capacity
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to appreciate life, and traveling is the shortcut to do that.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: If you speak English, native English, that is the shortcut
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: to do that, you can work up to twenty hours
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a week. We'll say twenty hours a week probably make
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: more than you're making now, learn a whole bunch of
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: new things, and have all the free time and resources
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you need to practice the things and develop the skills
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you're interested in. If you don't want to teach any
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: job that pays you more than five hundred dollars to
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: work remotely, we'll sustain you indefinitely in long term travel.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: So I very much recommend traveling so that you can
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: pursue these interesting hobbies like homebrewing or gardening, or construction
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: or I don't know what do people like to do? Murals, collages, painting, art, building, dollhouses,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. If you try travel, you're going to have
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the time and the resources to dive into any hobby
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: or skill. You can talk to me at a bit
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: of a rambler at gmail dot com or any of
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the social media dream on