The blade of Venom’s Bone:
The first dream I can remember where I pulled a sword from myself was one where I was running away from a giant spider, through some caves trying to save my brother. I lost my brother but I got out of the caves where I met some strange guy who specialized in demon weaponry. He showed me a fang a demon spider and said it had great power. I held it and swished it around in the air a bit but I accidentally pricked my leg with it. I pulled up my pant leg to see the damage. It was a tiny purple spot; I knew I had been poisoned. I have magickal powers in my dreams so I attempted to solve the problem. I put my right hand above the wound and began to focus energy at it. A light started in my palm and blood began to come to the surface of the wound. But then the wound began to grow and something started to come out of it. Slowly and quite painfully a gray sword was coming from my leg. It started at the tip of the blade and slowly worked its way out. The hilt was particularly painful but after that the rest was easy. It was a long sword made of something very similar to bone. It was grey and shiny, like slate, I knew it was made out of my own bone growth. It was both light and strong. I made a few cast iron blades materialize, I just grabbed them off my back. In my dreams all I have to do to make something is to concentrate on what I want to get, reach into a place beyond my vision and grab that object. I could use shadows or just move other objects out of the way but I prefer reaching behind my back for small items. I gathered these weapons and decided to find my brother. I remember a ghost town and I remember fighting a huge demon with my sword but that’s it. This particular blade had the ability to cause rampant demonic bone growth around the area of whatever it cuts (assuming that it’s an animal its cutting). Essentially if you cut someone with it, their bones would grow spikes that would shoot out from an area. The area affected was proportional to the depth of the cut. Of course, I was immune to it as where the spider demons from which the original fang came from.

Void Rapier:
The second dream that I remember pulling a sword from myself was one where a creature from the void attacked my family. At one point it sent a void tendril through my heart… intending to kill me. However, it did no such thing. After the tendril was removed I placed my hand over the wound and immediately pulled out a thin dark rapier. It was no thicker than a blade of straw but it managed to be able to cut through walls, pillars and pretty much everything it touched by absorbing all matter that it came into contact with. I forget the rest of the dream.

Cyber blade:
This particular weapon I pulled from my heart without being attacked first. It had the power to transform anyone it cut into a giant fighting robot… Voltron style.

The Genesis Blade:
In this dream I learned of an entire mythology that surrounds me. I don’t remember the actual dream… but I remember the mythology just fine. Apparently, the first true swordsman also created his own swords. As it is considered by the samurai, the soul of the swordsman is his sword. The first sword ever created was the genesis blade, which was also this man’s soul. After the swordsman’s death, the blade disappeared never to be recovered. When I was born, my soul was actually a reincarnation of that sword. In my head, between the two halves of my brain, lies a dormant version of the genesis blade. It grants me the ability to transform any injury into a blade. Also, my body acts as sheath to countless blades as well as to the genesis blade. Essentially, I am master of all bladed weapons and can control them at will. My soul is a sword, my body the sheath. When I use the abilities of the genesis blade to their fullest, the blade will grow and protrude from my forehead like a giant unicorn horn… with the hilt of the sword protruding out from the base of my skull like a rigid pony tail.

Bloodleter:
During the same dream where I learned the mythology of the blade, I was commissioned by a vampire to craft a blade specifically for him. I required that he give me a single fang. I simply took that fang, pressed it into my own neck and as before I placed my palm over the wound, pulling from it a dagger which I named the Bloodleter. This small dagger had a very organic and boney appearance with little skulls and bones and things around the hilt and guard. From tiny holes in the guard and blade flowed a trickle of blood. Essentially every time the blade drew blood it would create a magical connection that caused the victim to bleed from the blade. The victim would essentially be wounded for life and no matter how far they where from the blade, the blade would drip with their blood until their death. I scooped up a handful of sand, blew some fire into it and molded the resulting glass into a flask that acted as sheath for the blade. This caused the blade to slowly collect blood to help curb the vampire’s thirst.

Generic Energy Blades:
Here recently, I’ve been able to draw generic energy blades from myself. That is, the blades are made of pure energy and their color represents the element they are made from. The most common elements that I work with are those of the void (black) which absorb all energy and matter that it touches, the well (white) which is pure and massive amounts of energy which pretty much burns and obliterates everything it touches, and venom (green) which makes whatever it touches rot and disrupts it’s energy. All the generic energy blades look like a combination of fire and lightening in the shape of a sword. They grow when I focus more energy into them and they disappear if I let them go.

Those where the major blades that I’ve created. There have been others but they’re not much worth mentioning. If I have any more dreams of my pulling blades from my own body… trust me, they’ll make it in here. This is a particularly odd ability of mine… quite frankly, I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this in their dreams. I’ve also never seen a TV show or movie that featured such an odd ability. I might end up writing something about this… or perhaps adapting it to a game idea. In any case, I think that accurately covers everything I’ve got to say on the subject.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

The only prerequisite to being able to control your dreams is that you realize a few things:
1) that you realize that you are dreaming
2) that you realize that everything that occurs in this world occurs because your mind invents it
3) that you realize that you have control over this world because this world was built by your mind.

Essentially once you realize that its all in your head, you realize that you can do whatever you want. Often the only limitation is your ability to suspend your own mind’s concept of reality. For instance, we all know that walls are solid. If you run straight at a wall you brain will expect you to hit it and it will react on instinct. In the dream world, you must override that instinct in order to run through that wall.

First I’m going to start off with an anecdote, then I’ll give some tips.

I have been controlling my dreams for a while now but my subconscious does not seem to like being controlled. It used to tear control back by randomly activating portions of my brain that I do not have conscious control over… such as my sense of balance. Once I was thrashed around for a while, I would eventually relinquish control of the dream back to my subconscious. However, because I kept at it my mind has come to realize that I will do whatever I want in my dreams and I will continue to fight with it if it opposes me. So instead of fighting, my subconscious eventually decided to allow me to use every ability that I would normally need to be lucid dreaming in order to use… while maintaining control of the dream. By that I mean that I never realize that I am dreaming, but I can still do some rather fantastic stuff. For a relatively comprehensive list of my dream abilities, see this page.

There are a ton of other abilities but that list can give you the basic idea of what can be accomplished through lucid dreaming. These abilities grow and change every day and quite often I acquire a completely new ability that is added to my repertoire. In the world of our minds, we can possess all the power of a god because we have completely control over that world. In other words, there is no limit to what you can do in your dreams once you learn to control them.

Tips for realizing you’re dreaming:
The first hurdle you’ll encounter in lucid dreaming is the ability to realize that you are dreaming.

Dream Recall: First, if you can’t remember a dream, you won’t be able to tell whether or not you where able to control it. Keeping a dream diary can be extremely useful for this. When you wake up, do not move a muscle. Find your last memory from the dream and ask yourself “how did I get to that point?” This will trigger you memory to sift through the dream backwards. Run through the story several times, seeing if you can remember anything more. Then get out out bed and write it down immediately! If, like many, you take a shower immediately after waking, this is also a good time to think over the dream before committing it to paper (or in my case, a blog). I certainly suggest using a blog as a dream diary, it’s just easier than writing it down… and you can share it with everyone, which is even cooler.

Common themes: Often there are common themes in dreams. For me, I am lost and confused in many of my dreams. When I become extremely lost or find myself overly confused I stop and think about it for a while. Often I can realize that I’m dreaming simply by this theme. Lately, death, fighting, and conflict have become common themes. Since these things do not occur very often, or to the extreme degree that they do in my dreams, I can often realize I’m dreaming when I begin to fight.

Recognizing oddities: In your dreams you may experience odd things such as meeting Jesus Christ, or being chased by zombie turtles. If you realize that you are trying to find a magic kumquat for your gorgon employer… you might be dreaming.

Reading: For most people it is extremely difficult to read in your dreams. A simple dream test is to attempt to read a book. If the words make no sense… or the sentences read something like “monster pink turgid monkey mass flared my inner most quantum pizza”… you might be dreaming. This particular trick doesn’t work on me however… because for some odd reason, I can read just fine in my dreams… or at least the dream does well enough to convince me that I can. This particular technique was actually used by Batman in eppisode 26 “Perchance to Dream” It works well for many people.

Associations: You can also make mental associations. For instance in Star Trek Voyager “Waking Moments” the character Chakotay uses lucid dreaming techniques to combat an alien that has invaded the dreams of the crew. He uses the image of Earth’s moon to allow him to realize he is dreaming. Essentially with this technique you simply choose a common object and produce an idiosyncrasy associated with it. Every time you see this object, you ask yourself “am I dreaming?” once it becomes habit, you will begin to do the same thing in your dreams. The only difference is that you will realize you are dreaming in those cases.

Another tip is to constantly remind yourself as you are falling asleep that you want to control your dream. Repeat in your mind “I am going to lucid dream tonight. I will control my dreams.” and just keep thinking this over and over again. You will fall asleep with it fresh in your mind and hopefully this will aid in your remembering to attempt controlling the dream.

A search on the net for “reality tests” will also reveal quite a few other techniques for realizing that you are dreaming.

Tips for controlling the dream:
It is important to note that it is very difficult to override your natural instincts. We are all hard wired to understand certain things about the world. Most surfaces are solid. You cannot walk through walls. Bugs are icky. Fire burns. etc… You must find ways around this in order to get what you want.

For example, I have found that I cannot make items appear from thin air. My mind cannot seem to convince itself that items can materialize from nothing. So in order to accomplish the same effect, I will reach beyond my field of vision (like behind me, behind an object, or into my pocket) and pull out the item that I’m looking for. In this instance it is important not to think “I want to get this object.” or even “I will get this object”. You must be certain that the item is already there and when you close your hand, that it will be grasping the specific object you’re looking for. Another good example is that I cannot walk through walls in my dreams. If I can see it, then I know I can run into it. So if I walk backwards towards the wall, while concentrating on passing through it, I can do just that. When I want to teleport from one location to another or one time to another, I simply close my eyes, concentrate on where I want to be, and fall backwards… through the ground. I usually land on the ground in the place I was thinking of.

The tip here is that your mind works on a few basic principles. The thing to remember is that ALL reality is filtered through your perception. When you dream, it is a world built by pure perception. You must find ways to alter your perception to achieve the desired results. For instance, If I look through a hole in a fence I can see to the other side. Once am can “perceive” the other side of the fence, I can shift my perception so that I am actually on the other side of the fence. This is why I must reach out of my “perception” to pull something into my line of sight. It’s all about shifting your perception.

It is often quite useful to use skills you’ve seen on television in order to accomplish your goals. When watching television/movies your mind temporarily suspends reality and you learn to accept the rules and laws of that universe. It is then easier to copy, for instance, the energy blast techniques from Dragon Ball Z than to invent your own moves. Some of my favorites are taken from wrestling and kong fu movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Less is more:
When controlling your dreams it is important to realize that the more conscious you are of your state, the more awake you will become. If your consciousness becomes too strong you will not only be aware that you are dreaming, but that you are laying on a bed asleep. As a rule, if you can feel the bed underneath you, you should stop controlling the dream because it’s about to turn into a daydream. Daydreams, of course, are not as interesting because they seem less real. Also, dreams are usually your brain simply trying to sort out random activation of various parts of itself. Because of this, dreams are often quite random and this uncertainty makes them more interesting. A dream that is completely under the control of the dreamer can become boring and stale. The subconscious mind is much better at creative thought than our conscious mind.

Why Control a dream?
1) To adjust the outcome (escape from the monster, date the hot chick, heal a wounded friend)
2) Explore your own mind. Your subconscious hides quite a bit in there, it’s fun to poke around.
3) Experience things you couldn’t in waking life (I personally have killed myself several different ways just to find out what death might be like… Groundhog’s Day Style).
4) Act out your fantasies. If you always wanted to go to some tropical island and have a romantic fling with a well tanned local… by all means, go for it.
5) Overcome phobias. Fight back against those giant spiders, torch some zombie clowns, etc…

That’s about all I’ve got for now. Hopefully, this is of at least some help to someone out there. I have spent quite a bit of time learning how to do this on my own only to find out that there are tons of resources online for lucid dreaming techniques and the like. If you like to dream, this is definitely something worth checking out. If you’ve got any comments or questions on this article or on lucid dreaming, feel free to comment on this post. If I don’t know the answer, I can find it out.

Thanks for reading,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I started to go back to my room when the door that led to my closet slammed shut. When I opened it, I realized that it led to a garden instead. I walked out into the garden, simply soaking in the beauty of it all. I eventually came to another door which I knew would lead me to the young man’s father. But I wanted to go home so I started back. However, when I turned around I was confronted by a stranger. He simply stood in my way and would not let me pass. I told the man to let me pass but he would not move. It was then that I decided that I would pass him by force. (cool new dream ability coming up) I flexed both arms and immediately darkness consumed my left hand and bright white light consumed my right. It was like balls of energy that radiated their color. Of course black represented the void, all that touched its darkness would be drained of energy. The white represented the well, all that touched it’s energy would be seared and vaporized by the sheer amount of energy being expelled.

The stranger flexed his arms and both his hands produced similar balls of energy, but they where green, which in this case represented venom, or poisonous energy. Anything touched by this energy would rot, spoil and disrupt its energy. I countered by flexing my back muscles. Six orbs of green light appeared behind my back (in two columns of three) which where attached to me by silver chains. They connected me to the venom element which not only made me venomous, but also immune to venom.

A cool martial arts battle ensued. He would shoot blasts of venom energy at me and I would absorb it with my left hand, my venom orbs would glow brighter, and then I would shoot a blast back at the man from my right arm. We where perfectly matched and I could not seem to overpower him. I reached out with my left hand and created a tendril of the void energy. Like a whip, it slashed out at the stranger and coiled around him. I began to drain him of his life energy. While he was weakened I lunged at him, aiming to punch him full force with my right hand and obliterate him with an energy blast.

However, he reached out and grabbed my right arm, and then my left. This created some sort of messed up metaphysical circuit. Essentially I was pumping him full of energy with my right arm and draining it with my left. The energy simply ran in a loop. This felt really strange, like I was being electrocuted and it felt as if the entire universe was going to shake to pieces. Arcs of black and white energy where shooting off in random directions, obliterating everything they touched. The garden was falling to pieces all around me. It was about then that the stranger threw me back and the connection was broken.

The green orbs disappeared from his hands, he stood up straight, dusted off his suit, and said, very plainly “Are you not going to help that young boy’s father?” I was rather shocked to discover that this man only wished for me to help this young child out. I said “NO! I’m not, I’m going back where I came from!” He replied with “I really must insist that you help this man.” and with that he motioned to the door behind me, which opened as if in response to these words.

Behind the door was a hotel room that overlooked a city. I walked into the room, the door closing behind me, to discover that it must be a very expensive room. It was high up and I could see for miles. The furniture looked very expensive and like it was created by some famous designer but didn’t really look that comfortable.

Out of the window, I noticed some train tracks. There was a passenger train coming down the line and I noticed that a man in one of the windows was the young boy’s father. I ran and jumped through the window, which shattered around me. I fell towards the train very quickly, I had obviously launched myself from the building with much force. I powered up my left arm (with the dark energy) and sent out another void tendril which I grabbed onto a billboard with to slow my descent. The tendril snapped and I moved like I was going to punch the top of the train. Instead the void energy transformed into giant claws which gripped into the roof of the train. I dented it slightly upon landing and my dark claws punctured the rooftop. I focused the void energy and the roof of the train froze as I drained it of all the heat energy I could manage. I powered up my right arm with white energy and punched the roof. This caused the roof to shatter into tiny pieces, raining down upon the people below.

I fell down next to the young boy’s father, grabbed him with my right arm, shot out a void tendril (spiderman style) which grabbed onto something in the distance and pulled us both from the train like batman with his grappling hook gun.

It was then that I woke up and had to go to work. It’s unfortunate, I really wanted to see how that one would end. I would imagine that more crazy fights where on their way… but I never got to experience them. The coolest thing about this dream was the fact that I got to travel through vast amounts of space by transforming doorways into dimensional portals. I also found it totally awesome that I was using those crazy abilities (orbs of energy, the void and the well). That was totally awesome! I don’t know where my mind gets this stuff but it sure is cool. I may have to do a piece of artwork… perhaps a photo manipulation to illustrate that scene. I figured you might get a kick out of that. I sure did.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

However, data that the plane collected showed that the power output was way down (it wasn’t a missile base, it was an unmanned power station that simply resembled one). By that time, though, we knew too much and they couldn’t let us leave. We had discovered that they where over mining the chemicals there and that the resources would be completely depleted within seven years. The company knew this but didn’t want to inform share holders, who might back out and revoke their funding. In any case, we wanted to leave but they wouldn’t let us. In fact they pulled guns on us.

That’s when I remembered that our plane was jacked into their database and security system. I simple said “Computer, defend us.” and suddenly a ton of guns and robotic arms sprung to life from out of hatches in the ceilings, walls, and floor. The automated powerplant had been repairing the plane all that time and as we got onboard to leave, I woke up.

Upon waking, the only thing that came to mind was “Top secret eye drop city? What the heck?”
Figured it was worth sharing anyway.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I had a very wild dream this morning. It could very well turn into an interesting book/movie/TV series/game. In the dream a group of people started trying to develop a new and unique operating system for computers. However, they began work with incorporating technology and the human consciousness. The first thing they realized was that if they got people to unify their thoughts that they could communicate telepathically. Eventually they discovered that getting enough minds to work in unison gave the group the ability to use certain psychic/metaphysical abilities. In order to facilitate the unison of minds, they developed a chip that could easily be installed in the back of the neck. This chip allowed the person to “connect” with everyone else who wore the chip. Essentially this produced one collective mind, or rather used everyone in the “network” as a node in a biological super computer… which resembled one mind. This made them all super smart and by directing their thoughts on one purpose, they could use abilities like pyrokinesis, telekinesis, etc… The name of the chip was the Sine (Not sure why… I think it had something to do with the signal it transmitted). There was also a biological agent that they had to infect a person with in order for the chip to work properly. Some where resistant or immune to the virus that made up this agent, these people formed the resistance against the Sine.

The Sine didn’t care about anything but making the connection stronger and increasing their power. They only ate to sustain themselves but skipped “civilized” steps such as slaughtering and cooking their meat. They did have certain nodes who worked solely improving current or creating new technology but for the most part, the rest of the Sine spent their time trying to expand “The wave” by “recruiting” more nodes. If you where resistant to the agent they could still enslave your mind but you couldn’t think for yourself and thusly couldn’t actually act as a decent node. These people where used for hard labor. Individuals who the Sine found to be completely immune to the agent where killed on the spot. Imagine a world where technology has gotten to the point to where people ignore all things civilized and essentially become beasts and machines. There is no love, only power. The entire world was rather post-apocalyptic in appearance except for the few automated Sine cities. They used robots and the enslaved to maintain them.

Alright, on to the dream:
I was part of the resistance. I was completely immune to the bio-agent and could not be enslaved or converted. I operated alone simply because traveling in large groups attracted the attention of the Sine and could prove dangerous. As one person, I could hide better, and maneuver through their society much better. I used a modified Sine chip to transmit a signal that made the other nodes believe that I was another node. However, I was completely autonomous. Essentially, my mission was to hunt down and kill certain key nodes in the network. I did this by hacking the Sine network itself with the modified chip. From there I would hunt these people down and try to kill them. It was difficult though because they had super powers and I did not. They also where able to instantly call for reinforcements and I was only one man. This meant that I often had to kill a node before they knew they where dead. This meant that I had to sever their heads in an instant and by surprise. In order to facilitate this I had several katanas and a razor whip (a whip with several razor sharp barbs that if used right could be wrapped around a human neck and pulled in a manner that decapitated them).

In the dream my wife was resistant to the bio-agent and had been exposed to it before. However, they didn’t capture her for a while. Part of my mission was to track her down and release her from the network. I finally found her doing housework in a run down place in the middle of nowhere. There where five Sine that she tended to and I somehow had to disable her chip and get her out of there before everyone else discovered our escape… which would be difficult because the Sine would notice if a node was dropped.

So, I infiltrated the house. Luckily I had managed to steal an experimental cloaking device but the sine where still able to detect me psychically. I snuck up on my wife and managed to disable her chip by using one of the katanas, it happened to be an electrified katana and worked well enough for knocking people out and disabling chips. I didn’t get to remove the chip, however, and one of the Sine was coming down stairs.

I quickly hid behind a bookcase and enable the cloaking device. The Sine came down and saw her laying on the floor. He picked her up with his mind and turned her unconscious body slowly in the air to examine her. I quickly came out from behind the bookcase and with a flick of my arm I managed to decapitate him with my whip. I grabbed up my wife and made a run for it. However there where still four more Sine in the area and they all detected the dropping of two of their nodes. They all came to investigate. I attached the cloaking device to my wife and hid her so that I could fight without distraction. I prepared that just in time to have four Sine approach me in this run down building. One of which was powerful enough that he was able to fly through the window.

I immediately threw a katana at one of them, who managed to stop it with his mind. I pressed a button on my belt and it exploded quite forcefully, killing him instantly. I knew that I had to end the battle soon and get out of there before a whole horde of Sine descended on me. A cool kung fu battle ensued which was quite interesting considering the three others could use telekinesis and spontaneously make things explode. My modified chip shielded me from direct attack but that still meant that they could chuck flaming furniture at me. After fighting for a few minuets I threw down a few pellets of some kind of poison. It produced a cloud of dust that knocked out two of the three Sine. I was somehow protected by something that I bit down on just after throwing the pellets. The last Sine was strong enough that he actually was able to project a field around him that repelled the toxic smoke. We fought for quite a while, with things flying everywhere. I started using both the electrified katana and the razor whip but it was fairly useless. This guy was way too powerful. Then all of a sudden he started twitching and convulsing and then he just stopped. I didn’t know what did it but I wasn’t going to take the time to investigate. I rushed him and cut off his head with the katana.

It was then that I saw that the cloaking device was disengaged, my wife had her eyes closed very tightly and had a look of extreme concentration on her face. I rushed to her and when she saw my confused look she said in an exhausted voice “I hacked his mind, there’s something wrong with my chip.” She then passed out. I quickly ran around and severed the heads of the unconscious Sine. Gathered up my wife and ran.

Apparently when I electrified the chip, I managed to somehow cause certain circuits to overload and burn out. The disabled circuits allowed my wife to use the Sine system but not be controlled by it. Essentially she could now hack the system, temporarily disable nearby nodes, and even use their special abilities. However, by doing so, she alerted all nearby nodes of her presence; a sort of double edged sword.

I was taking my wife to a resistance researcher. I hoped he could develop a way to modify more chips for the bio-agent resistant individuals to produce more people with the same abilities as my wife. However, it was on this journey that I woke… the first thing that came to my mind was “THAT WAS AWESOME!”

I think that dream could easily become a movie, TV series, or game. The premise is relatively unique although it seems to borrow from several other stories from the same genre. In any case, I thought it was cool enough to share.

Expect much more,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel