I had another lucid dream, but it was different from the previous time I was successful. This time I don't know if it was my dream. I'm pretty sure I wasn't me in it.

Also I don't remember whether the last time I came up into the lucid state from a lower dream state, but this time I felt I went down into it from a waking state. I was lying on my bed watching my breathing, aware of the constant chatter and internal conversation going on in my head, which gets more intense when you haven't had direct in-person social contact in months.

Then as I fell into a quasi-sleep state, I was aware of things in my mind becoming really vivid. I was only quasi-aware of this as well. I'm not sure what those things that were becoming vivid were, if it was my awareness, or my sense perceptions, or the thoughts.

But then I was in a dream state and still fully aware of myself, but the content of the dream suggested it wasn't me or my dream. I actually don't know how to describe it or what was going on. I was totally clueless in the dream.

All I can describe are the very basic impressions and those I'm really squeezing to interpret into physical words and are nothing like the experience.

There were two groups of people, one male and one female. The male portion came first and it was like some white boy institution, like a frat house or military academy. I did feel a basic fear being in that situation, but when I realized they weren't treating me differently or being racist, I just went along with the flow of the dream, the content of which I've completely forgotten.

I had no idea who I was and I don't think I said anything, I just played it cool, but at the same time I was fully aware I was dreaming and that as a dream it was completely unfamiliar territory.

Next I wandered "down the hall" or something to the female section of the dream, and when I walked in a door. A person behind the door closed the door and accosted me. At first I think it was a guy, but then it was clearly female and she was hostile and pinned me down, and I get the sense that it was some issue over a guy, and then I realized I must've been female.

I wasn't resisting or doing or saying anything. It wasn't my dream, I didn't know what to do so I just remained passive. But then I don't know if it was me consciously changing the tenor of the dream, but then the whole incident with this woman on top of me changed and started getting intimate. She was no longer pinning me down and there was a sexual energy beginning. This, no one should be surprised, I tried to encourage and maintain.

The way I came out of it was interesting, too, because the scene transitioned without me changing my position. Still on my back, I was suddenly in a room that had the atmosphere of maybe my uncle's house in Kaohsiung 30 years ago. I was lying on a bed trying to maintain the lucid dream and the feel of intimacy from the previous scene.

I think someone was there, maybe a cousin, bumping or making some noise on a bed next to mine and I was thinking, "darn, they're going to wake me up out of this", but I also thought that I was already awake and vainly trying to maintain the lucid dream.

But then I realized that no, this isn't my room. I tried to imagine my room but couldn't, so then I realized I was still in the dream. But trying to imagine my room was irresistible, and when I did, that's when I woke up.

I don't know if this has any significance, but right after I woke up, I started feeling a sharp pain in my gut, similar to several months ago, but then it resided. Then I felt I should go to the bathroom and surprisingly took the BIGGEST FUCKING DUMP EVER. It felt great, like all the pipes got cleaned out. If someone were to have told me I was full of shit, I would've replied, "Not anymore!!".

I've heard about people who practice lucid dreaming as a way to prepare for traveling through the death bardos. There's more than one source suggesting the closest to the Tibetan bardo experience we can come to while living is dreaming, and lucid dreaming is analogous to being in control through the bardos, rather than swept through like in a stormy current.

I did get the sense after this lucid dream that my reactions in the dream were the result of my practice and how I would ideally like to handle myself through the death bardos. However, my experience was still a duality, I still had a sense of me and everything else as other.

It is said that enlightenment comes when one realizes a non-dual oneness. If one can realize in the bardo that everything is a manifestation of oneself – no separation between oneself and everything perceived around us – that would be enlightenment. I didn't think of that in the lucid dream, but I did remain unattached to what was happening around me.

Short of enlightenment in the bardo, I think that's the best way to go through it: Not being pulled in by what you're perceiving, and not thinking it's real and reacting to it as if it were real, either positively or negatively, which is a function of one's basic karma, which is a function of one's experiences and actions during life.

If what I've been practicing and cultivating as I go about my daily life led to my reactions in this lucid dream, then I should have a good degree of confidence heading into the death bardos. It's not a cold detachment, which could lead to a lack of compassion, but a concerted effort to not be attached or feel aversion to my perceptions and experiences.

It's true that I'm not engaged in life going on around me, but I do think it's important to maintain a base attitude that's prepared to be engaged and to engage it with compassion. The fact that I'm not engaged is circumstantial. And I know it's a reality that I've created by myself.