Shawn Selders
Time-Travel Puppy
My family had a wonderful toy poodle named Chapin, who was born in 1981and died in 1992. Recently (in 2016), I had 3 short lucid dreams on the same morning, which featured Chapin. In each dream she was a cute, small puppy.
In the first, I had accidentally left a butter knife on top of her food dish. She looked up at me and would not eat until I removed it. I’m not sure why I became lucid, but when I did I was instantly extra happy to see her, and told her so as I patted her gently on her head.
In the second, I was already lucid when Chapin walked to her food dish. Instead of eating she laid down by her dish and playfully rolled over on to her back, so I could pet her stomach, which I did.
In the third, we were no longer in the kitchen. We were in the living room. In excitement I suggested we go outside, because I knew she would like that. So we walked through the house and to the backdoor and went out. It was not raining hard, but big wet drops were coming down. I walked about 20 feet away on our back cement walk.
I stopped and looked up at the early morning sky, enjoying the extremely realistic feel of the rain. I saw a crescent moon, which may have been obscured by clouds, because it looked sort of like a broken smile with soft edges. Just to its right was a planet, or big star. I may have pointed, or held my hands up toward the star and moon, the only two things in the sky.
Many hours after waking, when I thought about it, I wondered if Chapin was perhaps trying to show me something. After so many years, it was extremely sweet and magical to be in her presence through these 3 lucid dreams. It felt like the closest thing to time-travel.
Anna Racicot
Flying With Steve, Meeting H., And The Witchy Bitch
My husband, Steve, and I once attended a talk by a Tibetan lama in which he stated that in lucid dreams one could really meet the great teachers and yogis of the past. The following lucid dream was doubtless connected to this teaching, though I ended up with a somewhat different conclusion.
… Steve and I hurry into a mall where we see a clock display. Steve notices the clocks are in pairs while I am looking at the time on them, perhaps to see if they will read the same (a lucidity test we had been practicing). Steve says, “They are all in pairs so maybe this is a dream.” I am sure it is not a dream, as is he, but I try to fly anyway. Much to my surprise I start floating so I shout out that it is a dream and then I start flying around.
I say to Steve, “Look, here we are in a mutual lucid dream. Let‘s fly together.” I swoop down toward Steve, noticing his handsome bare chest, and we fly some together, swooping around and having a good time. Then I say that since it‘s a lucid dream we shouldn‘t just waste it flying, we should chant. We sit down opposite each other and start looking into each other‘s eyes, intending to chant that way, when I see H., our deceased meditation teacher, sitting at a table with some women. He looks just like an ordinary old man, sitting there with nothing remarkable about him, but it is H. and Steve and I approach him.
I say, “Since this is a dream, H., and I am lucid in it, does that really mean that it is really you before us?”
He does not answer, but I become very moved in his presence and lean forward, finally leaning my face against his chest, saying I have missed him so much. Tears stream down my face. Then I sit back down and tell him something about what his life expresses for us. He says to me that the women seated here at this glass table have never had that idea before. It‘s as if by saying this, how much his life means to us, that they have learned something about him.
Then Steve and I do something else and when we turn our backs H. changes into a mean, sophisticated lady with slightly dark or olive skin. I insist that she turn back into H., but she won‘t turn back. She has a slightly witchy feel. I go off somewhere else and when I come back Steve has her on the ground and looks like he is fighting with her, but I can‘t help wondering if something sexual had been going on.
Then Steve and I start walking through various strangely shaped rooms, but I am getting tired of the way this dream is going and I suggest to Steve that we use one of the techniques from the dream conference to wake ourselves up. I try closing my eyes and opening them again, but when I open them, I am still in the dream. So I try closing them and moving them rapidly as in REM and when I awaken this time, I am really awake.
(This dream disturbed me because even though I was lucid I was unable to turn the witch back into H. I concluded from this dream that if a teacher from the past appears in a lucid dream, it may really be the spirit of that teacher or it may not be. After all, H. didn‘t answer me when I asked if it were really him before us. On another note, this was not really a mutual lucid dream; I just thought so in my dream. Upon awakening, Steve did not recall a dream with any of these elements