Craig Webb
Date: 95-6-16
Mega Lucid Adventure - Lots of Tests & St. Joseph's Fingers

I'm futzing around with trying to focus on some signs and numbers that are popping in and out and moving around on a wall, so that I can WILD into a lucid dream and pay my keep here at the dream lab. Eventually, I find this newspaper and fix on it for a while playing with consciousness focus until I'm in a scene. Then I signal a left-right (or maybe a pair). Now it gets quite involved with all kinds of simultaneous scenes and such, but here's the best I can remember:

I'm coming out of this doorway, in an old western barn scene, and I'm pretending as if I just did some crime, because there's some barn hand coming and I feel like I want a chase. Anyway, my ploy works and he grabs onto this ladder that I throw in the way, then I climb the ladder, trying to shake him loose of it, but he's holding on pretty well with a rubbery arm, I might add. Eventually, as he's about to grab me, I do a double-take and swing over on the direction that he came from, and by this point he's already on the other side of the ladder, and I know I'll be able to shake him. I do, and I'm up high, either swinging on the ladder or falling, and not sure what to do, but I remember it's a dream, so I figure, "Who cares? I can't get hurt anyway." Then things get tougher to put into words, and I don't remember it all necessarily in sequence.

I can feel myself in bed (so I think, and this thought occurs that I'm just faking the eye movements, and I'm about to fall for it and feel silly, but then I figure that the lab attendant will come and wake me if she sees I'm awake, so that I'll just trust. I think I signal again here, but not sure. Now another scene (or simultaneous one) starts where I go running across some room, making some joking comment as though my sleeping body will say it, so that I can narrate for the lab attendant while I do the dream. Anyway, right after I do that, this female character in front of me laughs, and I think that that's probably the attendant laughing, and me making up a character to cover the sound so that I stay asleep. I think that's pretty creative of me, and I smile at her as I pass. Then things begin to speed up, and it seems that the dream wants to take me (a familiar tugging-like feeling) and show me something, so I oblige and begin flying quickly, so that the scenery swishes by too fast to see.

I think that I could become afraid because of the high speed, but I learned that fear lesson a long time ago. After I dismiss that thought, everything goes dark, and I begin to move diagonally downward (instead of horizontally) and speed up even more. It feels like a test of my lucidity, and I know it, so I think I signal again, make and brace myself for the ride. I let out a loud "YeeHaw!" cheer at the thrill of the speed, hoping the lab attendant might hear, and I even hear faint laughter in the background, so I assume that she does. After my cheer, as though the challenge is on to scare me, my path goes straight downward into even "darker" darkness, and I seem to be going even faster, and it feels like I'm "falling into the center of the earth," like I've done before, so I decide to let out another cheer of excitement.

I suddenly realize that I have the lab attendant's quarter in my left hand (which would fall onto a plate as I fell asleep), and I remember wanting to drop it here (falling asleep here?) and so I do, and it falls ahead of me into the center of the earth into the void. Next thing I know, I'm turned around so that I can't even see where I'm falling, 'not that it makes a big difference,' I think, but then I'm flipped around quickly to see that after "falling" at this speed for such a long time now, there's suddenly a floor of earth there, like pavement even, and I have only a split second to see it before I'm going to hit, but in that moment I again choose to not to buy the fear of impact thought that's dangling (figuratively) nearby.

And so, I'm suddenly safe on the floor, talking with this little boy or girl (not sure which - I think a boy- this is vague and goes on for a few minutes) who has these really sore hands and fingers, and I feel a lot of compassion for him. Then I begin to "float" awake, and I arrive in the bed in the actual lab hospital room. My very first thought is my habitual "check-for-false-awakening," but it seems pretty unlikely, and I'm very quickly distracted from pain coming from my hands and fingers. An odd feeling of pain though, not hurt so much as intensity of feeling, and it's very strong so that I'm holding up my hands and trying to put them down near the floor where they'll hurt less (?) and the attendant comes running in, and asks what's wrong. She sees my hands and I tell her about the little boy from the dream, and how much my hands hurt, and she says, "St. Joseph's fingers! Yes, apparently they're very painful." I give her a bit of a thanks-for-telling-me sarcastic look, and I hold my hands up close and see that my fingers are all warped and that my palms are even melted in some places (nudge, nudge, wink, wink on a freebie look-at-your-hands missed opportunity).

Anyway, I begin telling her all about the dream, and asking if she heard narration, and much to my surprise she says she did and smiles brightly. I think, 'Cool, that never worked before!' but I never really tried it either. Anyway, I get so involved talking about the dream, that I forget about my hands. I "know" that the little boy or girl is someone that "I" am in another existence somewhere, and I'm not sure the best way to try to explain this to her. She suddenly shifts and has strawberry blonde short hair, and lots of freckles. This surprises me a bit, but she shrugs it off as though she just pulled off a sweater or something, so I let it go.

She lies down on the floor beside the bed, listening still, and I begin to think that something's just a little too odd here, and I begin to get the slightest little dream tug to awaken and it suddenly hits me that I'm still dreaming. I'm quickly swooshed "backwards" and "shrunken down" back into the bed (from a far place it seems) here before I have time to really get lucid and shift my focus or signal. I awaken (for real) in the bed again, and say in a good-natured way, knowing I'd been fooled, "Damn, scammed again!" I think the Real attendant actually hears this, because I call her in, but do a quick reality check as she enters, so as not to be tricked anew. I feel very energized upon awakening too, and chuckle to myself at some of the scenes.

Waking connections: Sleeping in dream laboratory. St. Joseph's Oratory is a huge cathedral in Montreal where the crippled would come to be healed simply by belief (and perhaps the healing powers of famous Saint Brother Andre). Insights: Great example of believing creates your reality.

Craig Webb is the executive director of the D.R.E.A.M.S. Foundation. Further information about the foundation can be found at www.dreams.ca

The Lucid Dream Exchange is a quarterly issue featuring lucid dreams and lucid dream related articles, poetry, and book reviews submitted by individual readers. For further information contact Lucy Gillis at
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