Reading my way into a lucid dream

I woke early this morning as I often do. I think it's the bright light coming in to the room through the blinds that brings me around.

A few factors lead me to believe that I could have a lucid dream if I went back to sleep.
1) I didn't start thinking about work or the day ahead when I woke. That is always sure to make my mind too alert and wakeful.
2) I still had a good hour or more before I needed to get up.
3) A few seconds after closing my eyes, random images entered my mind. This is always a really good sign. My mind was still in the state where it randomly churns out inspirational images, or scenarios to fuel my dreams.

I put on my sleep mask to block out the light that had woken me and let myself drift off. I had various short dreams and daydreams but nothing lucid at first.

Then, laying on my right side, I imagined I could see through my sleep mask. In front of me was a piece of paper with a 6 digit code. I slowly examined the code one number at a time. As expected in a dream, the code didn't remain consistent. I didn't try hard to remember the numbers but just noticed that it was slightly different each time I read through it.

After a couple of minutes I noticed that I couldn't just see the code any more, I could see the whole bedroom around me. My imagined scenario had become my dream reality - I was in a lucid dream :) It was fortunate that I noticed the clarity of my surroundings and realised I was lucid, otherwise I may have wasted the experience by just staring at the code.

Conclusions
1) It was useful to recognise that my mind was in an ideal state for lucid dreaming.
2) My sleep mask helped by stopping the bright morning light from keeping me awake.
3) Reading the short code held my concentration as I drifted in to a dream state, and it reminded me I was dreaming by it's inconsistent behaviour.
4) My sleep mask also helped me confirm that I was dreaming because I knew I hadn't removed it and yet could still see.

I will definitely try this approach again.

Unpredictable Dream Characters

Dream characters are really interesting creatures. Although they are created from your own thoughts you never know what they will do next. You may see old friends who you haven't thought of for years or meet people that you can't ever recall seeing before.

Until this morning I thought that all dream characters had one thing in common. If you ask them if you are dreaming they will dismiss the idea or try to tell you that you can't be dreaming. This can be an obsticle to becoming lucid if they talk you out of questioning your dream reality.

In my lucid dream this morning I was in an unfamiliar location and my mum was showing me her new TV that allowed you to change channel via hand or body gestures (an upcoming feaure on the Xbox 360). Suddenly both the TV and us were in a different room. This kind of thing happens all the time in dreams but we just go with the flow, but when you are on the verge of becoming lucid its a strange experience. I was totally baffled but still didn't know I was dreaming. My mum didn't notice the change of location but when I talked to her about it she seemed to believe me and joined in trying to figure it out.

Finally, it struck me and I said, "This must be a dream.", "Maybe your right" my mum said.

Now I was lucid and ready to go and enjoy myself :)

So, the one behaviour of dream characters that I thought was consistent (their insistence that you are not dreaming) can also be upredictable. Now if only I could get them to go out of their way to point out when I'm dreaming I could be having lucid dreams every night :)