From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   We return now to an amazing and rather illuminating aspect of lucid   
   dreaming the WILD way, something which appears to be totally lacking in   
   DILDs but ever-present almost from the beginning with WILDs; the ability   
   to be in several places at once. This is an automatic aspect of lucid   
   dreaming from the point of view of having entered into them being already   
   fully awake. I am at a loss to explain this fully, apart from the   
   observation that it is a seemingly consistent feature of WILDing that is   
   almost totally absent from DILDs; the very strange awareness of being in   
   several places at once, either singularly or even all at the same time.   
   This is an experience I find difficult to describe directly or accurately   
   except, perhaps, in terms of what I have experienced personally and from   
   which you may be able to draw your own conclusions.   
      
   For example, the first time I lucid dreamed in WILDs in any kind of   
   prolonged manner I just so happened to be lying on my left side and didn’t   
   realise yet what a difference left-sided dreams would make as far as their   
   content was concerned. While playing around with hypnagogia the dream   
   began and, very abruptly, I found myself in an old orange painted room in   
   some apparently abandoned building, an apartment that appeared to have   
   been inhabited at some point in the past, yet the occupants had moved away   
   leaving behind just bare floorboards and dust, cracked paint and the odd   
   piece of wastepaper strewn around. The overall impression was that the   
   place was deserted and that no one had been there for quite some time.   
   (Symbolic or what?)   
      
   I was perfectly aware that I was dreaming and, not wanting the dream to   
   end prematurely, I deliberately ignored the sudden jolt of the realisation   
   that I was actually dreaming and walked about examining the room instead.   
   However, my fears about accidentally dispelling the dream prematurely were   
   unfounded because everything in the dream remained steady and clear no   
   matter what I thought or did. My normal waking memory was also completely   
   unimpaired; I could think perfectly clearly and, although I didn’t really   
   know what to do next, I was able to take the time to consider my next move   
   carefully. In the meantime, I walked around the apartment from room to   
   room examining things. The decor was just about the same in every room I   
   visited, a kind of deep, dusty, faded orange colour on plain painted   
   walls. Everything about it said old and deserted, yet even the dust in   
   that place twinkled dimly with a kind of inner-light of its own. The most   
   remarkable thing about it was the complete steadiness and seeming realness   
   of everything I was seeing and touching. I examined myself and appeared to   
   be just as real and solid as I usually knew myself to be and found myself   
   casually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.   
      
   After a while, I remembered reading somewhere of a dreaming technique   
   whereby touching the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth while   
   lucid dreaming was supposed to enhance your lucidity, and to that end I   
   attempted to do so. Only what happened next was totally unexpected. I   
   suddenly found myself firmly pressing my thumbs against the curled   
   forefingers of my hands which had made a fist. The immediate effect of   
   which was almost electrifying in terms of the increased clarity I then   
   suddenly experienced! However, what I had thought was marvellously clear   
   and sharp before paled to insignificance compared to what was happening   
   now. The best way to describe it is that everything, myself included,   
   literally lit up and sparkled with its own vibrant inner energy and   
   colours. What had been rather drab and dull only moments before now   
   suddenly glowed in almost scintillating rainbow colours that shocked me   
   and made me step back a bit.   
      
   I marvelled at how I had intended to do one thing only to find myself   
   doing something completely different, namely, pressing my thumbs instead   
   of touching the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. At which point,   
   and with no warning whatsoever, I abruptly found myself lying back in bed,   
   on my left side, in my darkened bedroom where I immediately noticed I was   
   also pressing my thumbs against the curled fingers of my hands there too.   
   I really didn’t know what to think about this sudden, strange turn of   
   affairs, but I remembered that what I was originally trying to do was to   
   enhance lucidity by holding my tongue against the roof of my mouth and,   
   quite logically, assumed that if I did so while I was still awake in bed,   
   then maybe this would also transfer itself back into the dream. So,   
   without changing my position at all, I did just that; I deliberately   
   un-pressed my thumbs and instead held my tongue against the roof of my   
   mouth. Without knowing how, the next thing I knew I was back in the same   
   orange room as before, except now I was indeed touching the tip of my   
   tongue against the roof of my mouth. Only it didn’t seem to do anything at   
   all; the sparkling colours had simply reverted back to drab and dull   
   again, the tongue-trick disappointingly not appearing to have any effects   
   at all upon lucidity. What I couldn’t figure out, however, was how I had   
   managed to be pressing my thumbs when I had originally intended to do   
   something else altogether. I had sought a greater lucidity in the dream   
   and achieved it, although not quite by using the method I’d set out to   
   employ. I pondered on this for quite a while in the dream only to find   
   myself suddenly back in bed still lying on my left side.   
      
   Dammit! I thought, realising quite clearly that my rather ponderous   
   behaviour had just got me booted out of my very first prolonged lucid   
   dream, only I could somehow tell that I wasn’t yet fully awake in the   
   usual sense. I was clearly lying in bed with my eyes closed and still   
   hadn’t moved or changed position at all, yet I could also still see the   
   orange dream room floating like a bubble in the pitch dark just a few   
   metres away. In fact, I seemed to be in a very strange place where I could   
   clearly see both the lucid dream and myself lying in bed at one and the   
   same time. At this point it only required a simple shift of focus to   
   switch from one to the other. I wanted to know more about this strange   
   place between waking and dreaming, but my original intention to have a   
   lucid dream convinced me to go that way instead. I stared at the dream   
   bubble to the left of me in which I could clearly see now what looked like   
   buildings of some sort and stepped/leaned towards it. Instantly I was back   
   in a lucid dream again only this time everything appeared to be at arm’s   
   length compared to the utter convincing reality of that initial orange   
   room dream. I appeared to be in a modern and spacious garage of some sort.   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)