Silent Lucidity

It happened!  I became lucid in my dream!  (for those of you who this is a regular occurring phenomenon for, bare with me or simply leave this post.  It's about to get 'yawn'.)

Backstory:

For the past few months, since reading a book about Astral Projection by Oliver Fox I've been getting more and more into studying my dream states.  First I was trying to astral project following some of the things Mr. Fox was doing to induce the necessary trance, but was getting a little scared by the insecurities I felt.  I figured I wasn't ready for that yet.
So I took a step away from trying to consciously leave my body and moved my focus to more comfortable, familiar ground; dreaming.

I've always kept a dream journal where I'd record what I could remember about the dreams I'd have, but sometimes I'd get lazy and fall back asleep or just not write them down because I'd feel they weren't interesting enough or whatever.  But more recently, since paying more attention to my unconscious I've found the rewards have been nearly exhilarating.

Recently I've been reading a book by Stephen LaBerge, who has written several books on Lucid Dreaming, wherein he recommends some exercises to do during the waking hours to familiarize yourself with yourself and your surrounding environments.  It's odd how little conscious thought we have to give ourselves in order to simply exist in our day to day lives.  A lot of the time is run on auto pilot during the day; think about it.
One of the exercises I've found to be most rewarding and fulfilling is to stop to take in what is going on in me and around me.  What I'm seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, really sensing these things and then moving to concentrating on breathe; holding it and letting go.  It really helps put one in contact with the present moment.  Try it as much as you can remember to.

Another exercise is to ask yourself whether or not you are dreaming during any part of the day.  If you are not then imagine if you were.  What would be different?  What would you like to do if you were?  Look at something with writing on it or your watch.  Look at the words or numbers and try to move them with your thought.  Look away from them and then look at them again.  If you're dreaming you'll be able to move them.

This is how I realized I was dreaming in my dream yesterday morning.  But before I tell you about that I want to emphasis the benefit of practicing these exercises daily.  Of course there has to be some kind of desire or enthusiasm to want to study yourself consciously in this way, so you can then better differentiate between yourself in the dream state and waking.

In the process of recording and thinking about the dreams it becomes apparent that there are certain 'signposts' or dream signs in the dream that simply couldn't happen in waking reality, like talking with someone you know is dead or eating dinner with someone who has no skin.  These are your dreams throwing you a bone.   Every dream has them.  Its been a hindsight game of catchup figuring out where they are and trying to remember to be on the lookout for them while in a dream.

ie. This morning Michael Stipe of R.E.M.!! walked into the house where I was and looked at the tv screen then as I was leaving turned into John Malkovich (I recently watched Being John Malkovich movie thinking how much like the lucid dream state it was), total dreamsign. 

About the lucid dream:

So in this electric moment of lucidity, which was short before I woke up, I was being followed.  I knew this so I started descending stairs that forked; one going left, the other right.  They reminded me of the steep stairwell at the Vatican at Rome that takes you to the top Chapel there. (If you haven't been there imagine tight, steep stairs of stone, or don't, no matter)  These were graffiti marked and had lots of stickers on them with a handrail.  I noticed the one of the directions of the stairs was really dark so I thought, 'well if I want to go exploring the unconscious part of myself let's go this way'.  Around that time I looked at my watch and the numbers didn't jive right with me.  I think the hands began to move backwards, which jolted me into realizing I was Dreaming!  At this point the person who was following me was now at the mezzanine looking down at me pointing a gun.  I thought I'd hover up to him and knock the gun out of his hand but I woke up.

Here I think either my emotions took over, losing my critical factor to stay in the dream waking me up, or my intention wasn't good enough and I would have died in my dream, my unconscious waking me up thinking it's not a good idea to die in a dream.
Despite this very brief moment of being 'there' awake in the dream, it was/is enough for me to feel even more enthused about keeping this practice to see where this goes.

Maybe more on this later?