Lucid Dreaming Ep. 7

“Highlight Reel”

I woke up in the middle of the night and as I was falling back asleep I tried to see the trippy visuals that appear behind your eyelids. This helped me slide into a dream world, but I’m guessing I wasn’t in the best phase of sleep (REM) for dreaming because it was really hard to maintain lucidity. Not that it’s ever easy, really.

The trippy visuals faded into a 2D black background whereupon I could only see a movie screen. It was more like a preview or a highlight reel because each clip lasted only 1 or 2 seconds. I can’t for the life of me remember what the film was about but I remember that it didn’t feel especially happy or sad; it was extremely neutral, almost like it was describing something factual. I felt on the cusp of losing control as the highlight reel played so I tried to visualize myself kneeling in the center of the blackness. It worked at first and the screen disappeared and was replaced with a tiny version of myself kneeling but it was really hard to see. I made the mistake of trying to open my eyes to see more clearly, and realized that I was actually opening my physical eyes but it was already too late. I woke up and lost the dream.

Edit (07/08/20): I have since learned that “seeing the trippy visuals” is a widely practiced induction technique known as WILD (wake-induced lucid dreaming). Take this as a reminder to check your biases because I actively ignored all lucid dreaming techniques with “wake” in the title, but I think this technique might actually be one of my favorites now.