Hold on, wait a second. There's something wrong. What is it exactly? Wait a second. This is not real. This can't be real.

So, you're dreaming... Now what?

Here are humbly proposed fourty-nine experiments to be lived while dreaming. Some of them are to be appreciated on the moment, others are more oriented towards an existential perspective, that is, to alter the course of your waking life.

Here we go (by the way, a longer list has been done at Dreamviews).

Sweating


1. Run. Life is about running, isn't it? You should never get tired, since it is a dream. Keep on running. Look at the landscape, scrolling, scrolling. Run faster. Longer. Even faster. Even longer.
2. Swim. In a big swimming pool. In water, in chocolated milk, in vodka, in nectar, in wine, in champagne. In the ocean. Dive. Breathe underwater. Play with the dolphins. Explore Atlantis.
3. Fight. Use your punches and kicks. And your knees. And your elbows. And your fingers. And your head. Enjoy fighting.
4. Rehearse your performance. Athletes visualize every second of what they intend to do before their actual realization. What better visualization could you find than a "virtual simulation" through a dream? Rehearse your dance choregraphy, declaim your dialogues, practice your katas, it's your playground.
5. Go to a spa. Enjoy the jacuzzis. Get into a hammam. Get into a sauna. Sweat. Be massaged. What's the effect on your body?
6. Play a collective sport, like soccer, basket ball, football, handball, hockey, baseball...
7. Have sex. You are offered a considerable amount of choices here, and no one will tell you that you are a bad person or offending God or whatever. Because of the absence of consequences, you may see yourself acting selfishly, savagely, without limit. In a sense, it's Freud's victory.


Travelling


8. Fly. From a tower to another, in the rainbow sky. Enjoy flying.
9. Take a city tour. Visit the houses, the skyscrapers, the monuments, the hotels, the parks, the underground, the shops, the museums. Try again during the night.
10. Take a walk outside. Explore the forests, the caverns, the beaches, the deserts. Climb the mountains.
11. Explore outer space, make a small leap on the Moon, land on Mars, go see the Sun, leave the Milky Way.
12. Travel in time, using the infamous time machine. Visit the past. Visit the future. Win the lottery.
13. Warp. Disappear from one place and reappear in another one. Experience teleportation.
14. Leave your body. Have a so-called out of body experiment, or an astral projection. What's really happening?


Morphing


15. Distort time. Slow time. Stop time. Accelerate time. Reverse time. Kill time.
16. Transform space. Live in an enantiomorph world. In an upside-down world. In a kaleidoscope. In a hologram.
17. Transform your body. Expand your limbs. Mutate. Become gigantic. Become microscopic, explore the microcosmos.
18. Travel fast, really fast. What happens to time? To distances?
19. Augment your weight. A lot. What happens to time? To distances?
20. Tune colors. Change the world's palette. Live in a black and white world.
21. Tune sounds. What about adding echo, adding reverb? Focus on low tones. On high tones. Remove voices. Switch to mute mode. Be the DJ.


Playing


22. Eat whatever you want. Eat delicate meals. Enjoy the ephemere, subtle, and delightful pleasures of food without harming your body. Eat too much. Eat *way* too much.
23. Watch TV. Watching TV in a lucid dream can be quite surprising. What are the dreamworld's news? How are the ads? What about the shows? Can you retrieve creative concepts from the dreamtube? Listen to Dream FM. Read Dream News. Use a computer. Surf the Dream Internet.
24. Listen to some music. In lucid dreams, the grass is greener, the light is brighter, and music is more musical, too. Discover new frequencies. Play with binaural beats. As the Count of Montecristo said, "when I want to listen to some music no human ear ever heard, I sleep".
25. Sing.
26. Do drugs. Warning, if you're really under the effect of an entheogenic substance, you may fall into a vortex. It's not that funny!
27. Hit someone to death. Is (s)he really dead in some parallel world or is it just an hallucination?
28. Have fun. Do what you like / would like to do in your waking life.


Incarnating


29. Incarnate a video game character, a book character, a movie character. Play the best scenes.
30. Incarnate a superhero, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, The Invisible Man, etc. Incarnate a ghost, a vampire, a leprechaun, a wizard, a zombie, a skeleton, an Alien, a ninja.
31. If you're a female, incarnate a male, and reciprocally.
32. Incarnate a child. If you're a child, incarnate an adult.
33. Incarnate an animal. Incarnate a plant. Incarnate an inanimated object.
34. Incarnate several people simultaneously.
35. Incarnate God/Satan. Choose to control people or to give them free will.


Interacting


36. Talk to other people. Tell them your problems. If someone comes out with an interesting proposition, where does it really come from? Are you experimenting MPD?
37. Talk to animals. Animals are kinda strange in the waking life. They seem pretty alive, but it's difficult to tell whether they are machines or not. Well, in dreams you can talk to them, like Yakari does.
38. Talk to other people, to your friends. Tell them they don't exist. Do they agree ? Do they laugh at you ? What are the differences with the reactions of people in the waking life ?
39. Talk to dead people.
40. Talk to a dream mentor. Let him guide you and show you what to do.
41. Give your friends a few friendly phone calls. What do they say? Try with your waking alter ego as well.
42. Talk to God. Transmit salutations from the webmaster.


Thinking


43. Observe the dream environment, the details. Watch other people living.
44. Explore the hypnagogic imagery, while being in the hypnagogic phase of sleep. What are all these intricate patterns and these floating objects?
45. Sleep, and try dreaming. Nest your dreams.
46. Meditate, that is: do not think.
47. Think to your waking reality.
48. Try to forget you're dreaming, and to take control again.
49. Die. When you wake up, enjoy your resurrection.

have fun!

---

Little Neo, Oct 2008