Lucid Dream Chronicles – VR Effects

I can’t brag about my dreams IRL, because my friends either a.) have PTSD nightmares and need prazosin to keep them at bay OR b.) have dreams that are strange but somehow extremely boring. You know, I had an interest in controlling my mind and my dreams from a young age, and so it is a skill that has grown with time. I still remember the first time I controlled my dream. I will never forget the feeling of moving my fist through molasses to punch the face of the dream person that was in front of me. It was my first move when I became conscious in my dreams back then. I remember that I thought it was funny, and the guy had a face like the Mad TV cover guy.

I don’t do anything special before I go to bed now. I just fall asleep and let my subconsious decide what to serve me. Because I don’t necessarily want to lucid dream. I want to get good sleep. I don’t want to end up taking an extra morning nap just to continue my dream. But I did, this morning.

So, I got an Oculus Rift headset, fucking best purchase since buying the PS2. There is still a lack of great games for this system. It has only existed for so long, and games take many years to create. There are games like Ocean Rift that are mindblowing yet simple (if you love sea animals). And of course VR chat which is….exciting. Anyway, spending time in virtual reality gave my subconscious something new to play with.

The majority of my dreams a video-game-like. The vast majority. I honestly don’t know if anyone else is like this, but I assume so. A lot of them would be awesome ideas if I had a team of people to create them for me. I’ve even dreamed about being in a bullet-hell type landscape from a first-person perspective, in the past. It was really fun. I’ve dreamed about falling through bizarre and psychadelic landscapes, which were visually lovely. I actually got to do something like that for real recently, in Vrchat. People make some awesome worlds in that game.

So, anyway, my dream….I dreamt that I was playing a game. I was able to pull up a menu, and for a dream game I spent a lot of time using the menu. I tend to do that in games when I feel nervous, and this game was nerve-wrecking. I was a giant, on a team of giants. We had to fight another team. We had a hotbar with limited capacity, and I was desperately choosing between skills and healing chocolate bars to use while running from the other team, which was more powerful than ours. Our ranking was at stake, so we had to try and win. I remember choosing a powerful skill, only to face off with a character who had a rapid-fire gun that was just eating me away. I spammed healing chocos, and resolved to find some way to help my team. I ended up sniping and dodging for the longest time, before the Rapid-Fire Girl got me in another stand-off.

After that match, we ended up in a forest where we could sort ourselves out. It felt like a weird mix of being real and also a game. Some of the “evil” characters of the game were also in the forest, and would approach us to interact. There was this one baddie that was going from person to person and holding their hand, and doing…something to them. I ate one of my holy chocolates (lol idk) and tried to stay away from him, even though he said he was making us more powerful. I thought that maybe he would forget about me and ignore me. He approached me anyway, and I could feel his presence and smell as if he were real. He reached out to touch me, and put a hand on my head. Just then, a little dude popped up and informed me that my heartrate was 1,000/beats per minute (yeah….lol). The baddie took me to his limo, and told me we were going to the hospital. There were other baddies inside, but it was a neutral zone. I told them it would be cool to play as a baddie, but they told me that many of them were just bots. Eventually, I told them that I was fine. My heart was probably fast from my anxiety disorder, and they should take me back.

“I think it was because I touched you,” the main baddie said.

“Probably. I mean, I am afraid of you,” I said. He reached out towards me again, and I started to feel my heart flutter.

“Stay back.” One of the female baddies said. She reached out and took my pulse, declaring that it was at 99/bpm. Good enough.

The next fight, you can imagine what happened…that baddie called me out for having a crush on him. He transformed into a Great Ape from Dragonball Z that was wearing only underwear, and then threatened to turn back to human form in only underwear. I kept sleeping to continue my dream with him, and he actually did approach me in just his underwear. And then he turned into Seito Kaiba. So, you know, all the usual dream stuff that you would expect. Happy dreaming!

 

How to walk like a normal human being

Sometimes I forget how to look like a normal, sane person, even though I desire that so much. Not only do I have crippling anxiety, but I desire good, confident posture. Or, you know, not looking as stiff as a piece of wood. That would be great. I have a tip for anyone else with that problem. So, without further ado, here’s the tip.

Pay attention to your legs, and nothing else. There is nothing worse than overly focusing on your hands or your butt while you walk, and then walking like a robot. Or your posture, or your face, or anything, really, that makes you walk like you are on drugs. I know that a lot of people have never been afraid of forgetting how to walk, but I can tell you that it really sucks. Some weird obsession makes me pay attention to my posture or the position of my hands…or my butt, sometimes. Focusing on my legs lets the rest of my body fall into a natural position.

I got the idea from observing a person I admire. She has a really cool way of walking, and I tried to do it myself. I paid so much attention to my legs, that suddenly my posture and arms fell into natural positions. Suddenly, I was swaying my hips and my hands without thinking about it. Now, it works every time. I just think about my legs while I’m walking, and I let the rest of my body do it’s natural thing. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I found that it helped me have a more natural stance, too. I hate looking stiff and uncomfortable. If I think about my legs, and feel good about my natural posture (which is just normal, not amazing) then I have one less thing to worry about in my life.

I hope these tips will be applicable to anyone besides myself. Not that I hope other people have anxiety problems.

And yes, I am embarrassed to admit to this stuff. Again, though, be positive. I’d love a society where we all embraced honesty about ourselves. Instead, I pretend I’m fit and happy as everyone else, even when I truly am struggling, I’m young, and people expect me to be full of pep, not crippling depression. Really, they should know better, but I think we all know that they don’t. I mean, we aren’t in the jungle anymore, people. I think you can cut me a little slack, when I feel like I am about to collapse into a jiggling pile of failure. But, I can’t expect people to understand, when they have never experienced anxiety for themselves. Though, when I find creative solutions to my problems, it feels pretty cool.

Lucid Dreams are Fun

One of the interesting parts of dreaming is the fact that your left brain is turned off. That is the part of your brain that tells you who you are and what you are, among other things. During dreaming, you likely experience a level of “ego death”. This is a term that is also used when describing a hallucinogen experience. You no longer are aware of who you are in the context of your waking life. You merely are a person living the experience in the moment. Sometimes, that even happens during lucid dreaming. Often, I’m not thinking about my daily problems. At least, I’m not thinking about them in concrete terms. I may be aware of some anxiety from my day, but in a more general way. It is something that I can’t really appreciate until I wake up. I had a dream not too long ago that I was in a house, and I was floating around, exploring. I felt like I was searching for someone, but I was aware that I was dreaming. Still, I was more concerned with the experience of the moment. What would be around the next corner? What did the pictures on the wall look like? I found that they changed, becoming new images in their frames, and it didn’t bother me. I was very relaxed, and interested in the scenery. None of my usual concerns were present. I floated towards the ceiling, and felt the texture that was there. I had the feeling that someone was going to emerge into the large room I was in, and the colors of room changed. Flames appeared on the walls, but I wasn’t worried about it. I just waited, but no one actually came out. It was an interesting experience, and hell if I know what it means.

Lucid Dream Chronicles

I lucid dream pretty frequently, and I’ve observed some interesting things. Sometimes things don’t work like they are supposed to, in my dream land. Maybe it relates to my subconscious problems in some way. When I realize I’m dreaming, I like to start floating immediately. Gravity pretty much disappears at that point, and I float around instead of walking, because I’m into that. But, sometimes it doesn’t do what I want it to. Sometimes, I get that feeling like I’m moving through molasses, and other times I flat out sink to the ground. Since I play video games, sometimes I sink through the floor, and I’m thinking, “shit, I’m off the map.”

So, this afternoon I was dreaming, and it was so real that I thought I was in reality. Until I noticed that Youtube was malfunctioning, and that never happens, so that was my trigger. Yes, I was internet browsing in my dream. I figured out I was dreaming, and took off towards the sky to explore. I was having a hard time controlling my flight. At one point, I even relived one of the bad experiences I’ve had lately: trying desperately to convince myself to be happy, while having a bad day at work. Its normal to relive experiences through dreams, and I guess that will happen even when you are lucid dreaming. In my dream, I was trying to convince myself that I was really flying, even though I knew I was dreaming, in order to feel happy in that moment. It smacked of dream logic.

So, this will sound corny, but hell, screw people who think emotions are corny. Anyway, I discovered that my mood affected my ability to control my dream. No joke, I was able to fly more freely when I filled my mind with good feelings, something I am capable of when I am awake, sometimes. Sometimes, just imagining a good song raises my mood, and it worked in the dream, too. I really want to remember this, because I will probably forget. I have had trouble with lucid dreaming in the past, from getting headaches in the dream to having to relinquish control at times. Maybe, its just my damn mood! I’m sure I will remember next time I’m in dream land. It kind of sucks that I can’t always control the content of my dream. Usually, the setting and the story are not mine, but what I end up doing is just fucking shit up. Like, going home to home and eating their food and making them angry, then floating away. I get a headache if I try to control it too hard. Meh, maybe I’ll figure out how to fix that later. I’ll practice flying for now.

Connected Society, pt 1

Following throwing practice for the match against Glenwood State, the team converged for the mid-play analysis sponsored by the Quave Corporation. They paid for the teams jerseys, energy drinks, and sometimes lifestyle enhancements, so respect must be paid back for the policies and methods of their R&D department.

“Jones, you’re up,” coach Barnam said. Clancy Jones, damp with sweat and breathing heavily, bowed his head towards the visualizer sitting on the fold out table that sunk into the soft, dewy turf.

“See, you’re still too much in control here. You need to stop focusing so much. You need to zone down for your aim,” Barnam said.

“Sorry,” Clancy said. It brought heat to his face, the kind of itchy nervous heat that was so different from the healthy sweat of physical exertion. He knew he was a control freak. Nerves and performance had always gone together for him, but these implanted brainwave monitors were forcing him to unlearn those things, as well as unravel himself to a certain extent. He couldn’t help but make connections between his in-game fears and those that had crippled those moments that made up the fabric of his happy experiences.

He knew what anyone who could throw a ball now knew, thanks to popular science sponsored by Quave Corp. Your body and your mind knew how to aim without your own personal input. It would learn more each time you threw a ball. In fact, the less you tried to speak to that secret part of yourself, the better it was able to do it’s job.

Absently, Clancy watched a blonde haired girl going for a walk across the street. His brainwave patterns on the screen changed slightly, not really reflecting how strangely he felt. It clicked that he’d seen her before, and had registered her as a Disruptor. She was one of the abnormals, who’s brain wave patterns were bizarre enough that connecting with them could disrupt another person’s personality. The occurrence was discovered shortly after the technology became widely available, although the phenomenon is still not well understood. It was understood that one could disregard any unusual psyche patterns when in the presence of an abnormal. The tone of the guys, as they conversed, sounded a bit more strained for a moment. They changed as the energy level rose and shifted. It would end as soon as she was out of their bubble, which was a clean 100 feet away.

It was safe to say that Clancy normally didn’t interact with any abnormals. They went to private schools, and the social grid was arranged to separate them. It was the new way to ensure public safety, and enhance birth rates of normal people. The abnormal ways of raising children was as much to blame for their faulty thinking patterns as their own genes. The misguided teachings they passed down from generations encouraged abuse and neglect, and were rarely able to be corrected. At least, that was the popular thinking. Clancy knew that debating such a topic wouldn’t be prudent in a public setting. He knew that some people held different views, but he never knew who he could talk to safely. He guessed that anyone else would feel the same. Still, it wasn’t hard to hate the abnormals, with the way they made others feel. Clancy was curious, though, and always had been. He thought about becoming a public servant someday, which would gain him access to their world. That job was not held in high esteem, as it was generally regarded as masochism. It was a social suicide mission. Still, Clancy thought of himself as strong and capable enough to overcome such an obstacle.

In the summer sun, he didn’t feel that he was in danger. He felt secure in his own self, and his understanding of reality. He felt that any new experience could only make the world all the more beautiful, or at least he told himself that. Surely, if there was more to his world than the track his parents set him upon, then he would need to take measures to see it for himself.

“I need to go make a phone call,” he said, to the group as a whole. They just looked at him.

“It’s my mom,” Clancy said. Two of the guys snorted, but the rest were quiet.

“Don’t laugh at him. You know we don’t allow that type of disruption. We treat each other with respect,” the coach said. The two, known for having a low social standing, were quiet. There wasn’t much lower they could sink, but causing disruption could lead to a downward spiral for any person. Negative connotations were not allowed, unless directed by someone superior.

“Go make your phone call,” the coach said, trying to sound kind, but it came off false and threatening. Clancy knew he wouldn’t have much time to break away from the group, and so he hurried over towards the road. When he knew he was out of the sphere of contact with the rest of the group, he started to relax. He saw the hair of the blonde girl, moving down the road. The flash of soft gold gave him a jolt, as he hurried to catch up to her.

She stopped in front of a store selling virtual companions. That was an acceptable activity for an abnormal. The street monitors, welded to the street signs and storefront windows, would register her activity as passive. He hoped to pass, as well. He thought about what her face would look like on those monitors. He wondered if they registered the sadness on her face, and counted it among the others. He thought briefly about her warm brown eyes, and round cheeks. The manufactured cuteness of the robotic pets was bittersweet for him. He always wanted one, more due to curiosity than loneliness. They didn’t really have consciousness, any more than a blender did when you hit the button and asked it to puree some fruit chunks. You looked at their faces, and they registered your eyes and expression. They had a wide range of responses, almost as much as a true animal, but that was all it was. Abnormals often had a hard time acquiring conscious pets, either natural or man-made, that had hearts and minds acting in tandem. Animal rights had progressed greatly in recent years, ending the barbaric times when conscious animals were sold as commodities and crammed by the dozens into the houses of abnormals. Still, sometimes kindness backfired, and prevented a good person from owning a living companion. At least, that was how Clancy felt. The blonde girl watched a little green bird, hopping around on a perch. You could buy them with or without design, depending on the level of realism you desired. Some people found the naked ones stylish, with their exposed workings and blue lights covered by clear silicone skin. The two options sat together on the perch, looking like advertisements for themselves. He felt sad for the birds, even though he knew they had no emotions. He wondered why he felt that way.

He had forgotten, as he approached, that he was entering her sphere of influence. Somehow, entering had caused him to adjust to her, and forget about the implant briefly. Maybe the girl didn’t spend much time thinking about hers. Clancy felt like it was always on his mind, even more prominent than his thoughts about the future. His desire to connect with others was addictive, and rewarding. But then, standing near that girl, it suddenly seemed confining. He pulled up the settings screen, which was telepathically linked to the visual region of his brain. He saw her thought state appear next to his own, and he noted the spikes of activity. Her brain had high activity in areas that shouldn’t have been activated. His own activity reflected the effects of empathy, immediately after he noticed this. Empathy, which caused just a little more activity in those areas of his own mind. His primitive mind was seeking to connect with her. Not only that, but it was registering her background thoughts. His own will, hidden at times from himself, was seeking to recreate her mind within his own. He never would have believed it, if he hadn’t seen it for himself. He noted that she was aware of his presence, and that she felt slightly disgusted. It offended him, until he realized that the disgust made a loop, and returned to being directed at herself. His interest in her only amplified her self-loathing.

“You like the birds?” he asked her. He decided it would be polite to make conversation. She looked at him for just a second, before lowering her eyes again. Through telepathy, she knew his true motives. Normally, it was polite to disregard this as background noise. After all, unsavory thoughts are just an accepted part of reality, and not necessarily important. As she was an abnormal, though, Clancy was not sure how she would respond.

“Yeah, they’re pretty,” she said, though she sounded sad. He felt her loneliness. Part of him shut it out, without being asked. He knew what her life was, and he didn’t want to think about it. As he watched his own monitor, he watched a strange wave of electrical activity cross his brain. It was the type that occurred during an epiphany. Actually, more accurately, during a moment of clarity. Those moment scared him, when they happened alone. He liked to disregard them.

That moment had coincided with an occurrence in the girls mind, though. It was a moment that cleared the loneliness from her mind. She felt warm, suddenly. His cheeks warmed then, as he started to think about her body. He wondered if she was attracted to him.

A blast of information from her confused him. The two of them stood there, silently, as Clancy pulled apart the ephemeral threads of her thoughts. Sure, she thought he was cute. That was a given. Clancy held onto that thought, and started to fidget. The girl, whose name began to appear as sort of an amorphous glom of letters, asked him to continue searching. She showed him the true source of her change of heart.

Some sort of large object appeared in his mind. It made no sense to him. It seemed to emanate with words and mantras that connected to emotions and experiences. The girl turned to him, and spoke.

“That’s my world. I made it for myself. It could probably heal, but everyone treats it like it’s dangerous. I could probably help you, too,” she said.

“Me?” Clancy asked.

“Yeah, but you seem like you’re all right. Just keep going. Maybe you’ll find your own,” she said. She turned to walk away. Clancy glanced back in the direction of his teammates, and found that one of his friends had come to look for him. He knew that he needed to return, to do laps around the field. He tried with all of his might to remember the monstrous thing that girl had shown him, but he found that his implant refused to save the information. He wondered where to even begin, or if he could find that within himself, again.