Mid day nap, after sleeping 5 hours last night and 5 the night before. I had some coffee a few hours prior. I was grumpy from lack of sleep and getting easily irritated by people, but the coffee helped ease that.

Dream

It started with a dream I don’t remember much of, but at some point a skunk was trying to attack me. It took the form of a large dot, maybe colored or black, that pulsated, coming closer or pulsating larger, then pulling back or shrinking, making it really hard to tell how close it was. I was lying on my back with my feet up trying to kick it as I came closer.

Projection

I feel something in my face. I feel like it’s maybe my own arm, and I’m all mixed up and can’t tell what my body position is. I bite whatever is there so I can maybe feel it on my arm or something and figure out what’s what. But I don’t feel anything. I feel like maybe my arm fell asleep because of my sleep position.

Finally I just pull myself free and I’m standing up.

Yay! I’m in a lucid dream! I’m so happy. Now let’s draw that sigil. First I need to get established better. My vision is of something else entirely, and I try to ignore it, closing my dream eyes and waiting for my dream vision to come in. I think what I’m seeing is my physical eyes’ view, like I opened my eyes, and I don’t want to get pulled out by paying attention to it.

I concentrate on my feet against the wood floor, grounding myself there. I wait for a moment for my vision to come in.

Suddenly I see, and I spot a nice smooth area of carpet on the floor. Or maybe dirt, but it’s a perfect little flat, clean spot to draw in. I’m so happy for the perfect spot. I kneel down and start drawing the sigil.

I remember the center and outside but forget details in the middle, specifically to draw the rectangles after I do the triangles, and I get stuck. The sigil seems to kind of stay in the carpet but a little messier than I really drew it. I rub out and fix some of the lines but still forget the next step, the rectangles.

I start to phase out. I feel myself lying down, and I stand up again, pulling myself away from my body, noting how I feel the pull and have to get away from my body. As I do so I wonder whether the feeling is inherent or if it’s in my mind. I have a theory about feeling sluggish and hard to separate only in the beginning when you haven’t done it much wasn’t quite right. I have never had insurmountable sleep paralysis. I have always found it to just be an extreme sluggishness where it’s hard to get moving and pull myself away from my body.

Anyway, I walk around again, same place, feeling my feel on the floor as I wait for my vision to come in the same way. I keep having to turn around the room. I figure there’s no reason it can’t be an infinite floor like I had in a prior dream, so I establish that and just run straight for a moment. The floor keeps going as it should.

Suddenly I spot a table and a binder on it.

I walk to the table, and the surrounding room fades to black as only the table is illuminated now, kind of like when you’re looking at a computer screen and can’t see anything else in a dark room because of it. I think that’s odd but I’m ok with it as long as I can still see this area.

I pick up the binder and start thumbing through it to find a piece of paper. As I do so, I’m thinking, yep, I know how this goes. This is one of those situations where I want to find something and it just ends up being frustrating and I can’t find it, even though I should be in control of what happens. So I try to force my belief into it, reaching into a pocket and pull out a piece of construction paper that is going to be blank, god damn it. I pull it out.

I start to phase out again. I hold on, determined to get it back. I get angry and yell, “Rachael!!”, figuring it probably won’t help without drawing the sigil well, and for all I know I’m half awake and yelling it physically too. I ground myself with my feet again, pulling away from my perceived physical body.

I’m kind of surprised that I was able to get so much mileage out of this one. I try drawing it again, but I had the same issue, and I couldn’t stay long enough.

All in all it was three times I pulled myself away from my perceived body. I may have tried drawing the sigil twice on the floor, once on the paper on the table, I’m not sure.

Post-Projection

I wake up breathing really deeply and fully.

My Thoughts

That pull of the body could still be from not having separated in a while, compared to the period when I was hopping up lucid every couple weeks. It also could very well not be my physical body at all. The vision also I feel like is not from my physical eyes. I think I was wrong about that. But it’s another scene, and whatever it is, I seem to be able to keep resisting it anyway out of serendipity. I wonder if I would be pulled into a lucid dream if I went with it, and I wonder why such a thing is happening. I always feel so split, two places at once, while I try to stabilize with my feet on the floor.

I had trouble remembering the sigil after I awake, so that hazy memory of it was consistent with my physical reality memory and not really a matter of not being all there. After a while I remembered the part of the sigil I forgot. I had practiced drawing it several times before, but it struck me that that wasn’t the same as drawing it in a dream, which is more like drawing it mentally. So I need a better mental picture of it or at least be able to quickly draw it in my mind and not rely on the kinesthetic assistance for my memory. It’s like some of my memory of it is in my body, accessed by the physical motion of drawing it, and I didn’t have that there.

I think drawing the sigil is actually stupid, looking around for a paper and all that garbage. I should just think of it and burn the image of it onto the wall, or just go over it mentally until it’s good. I guess I felt like I couldn’t visualize it well and had to draw it.