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    CanisLucidus

    The Giant Killer

    by , 04-25-2014 at 03:39 PM (1329 Views)
    Finally on the board for Task of the Year 2014!!

    Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

    Lucid #206: The Giant Killer

    I sense a transition into the dream state, but just as it begins I hear our dogs start barking downstairs. Wife stirs in the bed next to me and I wonder how much of this is pure dream and how much of it might be sounds and sensations from waking life bleeding over.

    I will myself to roll out of bed OBE-style and I decide to phase downstairs to see what the dogs are on about. I pass through walls and the floor like a ghost and I think to myself that “I’m spirit walking.”

    I pass through one last set of walls and the geometry gets weird for a moment and I wonder if I’m losing this dream. I rake my fingers across the floor but I pass right through. Still, it seems to bring me back into the experience and there in front of me are our 2 dogs laying on the floor panting.

    Their food and water bowls both lay empty and I figure that’s what they were making a fuss about. Even though I’m still floating like a ghost, I’m able to grab the water bowl and sling it across the room and it clangs realistically against the floor. I consider asking Wife the next morning if she heard any of this commotion.

    I head out into the garage, walking like normal now. Rather than phase, for some reason I lift the garage door manually and walk out into the night. I move past the circular driveway to the grass, thinking of the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I dig a quick hole and everything’s feeling very vivid now. I do a behind-the-back summon of a seed which feels very half-hearted but fortunately still does yield a tiny seed. I quickly cover it over with dirt.

    For water I move my hands in a little sprinkling motion over the little mound and a few drops of “rain” fall. The plant immediately springs up through the ground and stretches skyward. It looks like a normal vine at first but as it continues up it looks more like a twisting rope bridge that goes all the way up into the clouds.



    I grab the lower rung and start hauling myself up but I feel like I’m getting nowhere and won’t ever be able to tackle all that distance. I decide that the planks are being reeled in from above and are pulling me up toward the clouds. It works! In a couple of spots the planks twist and turn oddly as if they’re trying to throw me off, but I ignore this and before long I’m at the top! I float up over the edge into what looks like a restaurant that’s being prepared for a party.

    Two women standing nearby appear to be in charge of the scurrying wait staff. One of the women, an attractive lady in her early 40s, looks up at me as I walk nearby. She has a streak of her short brown hair bleached almost white. My task is the defeat the giant that lives up here, so I ask, “Where’s the giant?” She points behind me and to my left.

    When I turn, there’s a guy roughly 9-10 feet tall walking through the door of the restaurant. He’s mid-40s with dark hair and a thick, barrel-chested build. “So you’re the giant?” I ask leadingly.



    “That’s right,” he says and immediately takes a swing at me. His punch catches me square in the face but I decide that it will have no effect. I wind up not feeling anything or even falling back and it kind of feels like cheating. I strike at the man, trying what I for some reason think is a “kidney punch” but actually hit him in the side of the gut. He winces a bit but doesn’t move much.

    I follow this up with a kick to the body and the giant clutches at his chest. I feel like this is working but I become paranoid about losing the dream, so I leap up and grab onto the giant’s face. I try to do this thing where I burn him with my hands but it completely fails. The failure makes me kind of vicious and desperate, so I gouge at his left eye with my right thumb and then strike him on the neck with my forearm. He collapses hard to the ground and I go with him. As I’m picking myself up to see what’s next,
    the dream ends.
    FryingMan, Xanous, NyxCC and 3 others like this.

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    Comments

    1. Bharmo's Avatar
      Hey! Congrats on the TOTY!! Very good dream control, BTW.
      Would you say that the dream being a WILD contributed to your success? Like, more clarity of thought or something?
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    2. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks, dreambh! Yeah I was fortunate that my dream control was running well last night and I had enough time to get everything done.

      You know, I can't say for sure but it does seem reasonable to me that there'd be a bit more mental clarity in a WILD. I think it was Daniel Love who said that with a WILD you start with a more rational mind but may have to focus on building up the dream and making it stable. And with a DILD, you often have a nicely built up dream world but a fairly loopy mind. That seems like a pretty compelling theory to me. Although I've certainly had some WILDs where I am not thinking straight at all.

      I just checked and when I did Task of the Year items in 2013, they were always via DILD. Then again, I tend to have a lot more DILDs, so it's hard to say if there's any difference in effectiveness! I'll take as many as possible of both.
      dreambh likes this.
    3. Xanous's Avatar
      Congrats on the task! Do you find being paranoid about waking makes you more likely to wake up? Seems its true for me. As soon as you said you were paranoid about losing the dream I thought for sure it would end too soon but you just barely managed..so good job.

      Did you ask your wife about the noise and more importantly did you see ifbthe bowl was misplaced? Im always looking for a OBE/waking-world connection thought it seems unlikely.

      Edit: And Im really impressed you got over the inability to climb so creatively. I also have to agree with what Daniel Love has to say about WILD vs DILD.
      dreambh and CanisLucidus like this.
      Updated 04-25-2014 at 08:23 PM by Xanous
    4. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks, man! Yes, I completely agree about the paranoia. The cruel part is that once you know this, you worry more about the paranoia, which makes you more paranoid until... I had a micro-lucid earlier in the night that ended exactly the same way (burst of self-igniting paranoia) but fortunately this time I was able to still stumble across the finish line.

      I have not asked her yet but I certainly will! We overslept this morning so we were too on the run for me to ask about this. And yeah, even if we're skeptical that there's any kind of connection, you just can't help but look for the hint of a pattern... if for no other reason than the chance of feeling that little thrill that yes there was some cool coincidence that night. (Edit: Oh, and bowls were moved around, but not abnormally to the point where they looked thrown.)

      I appreciate the compliment on the climb. This was my 3rd attempt at the Jack and the Beanstalk task, and I think that I wanted it pretty badly this time!
      Updated 04-25-2014 at 09:00 PM by CanisLucidus
    5. NyxCC's Avatar
      Awesome! Congrats CL! You really beat the hell of that poor giant! Now that the word spreads in dreamworld, all the other beasts will be scared and run for dear life!

      That long wbtb seems to have been very conductive indeed! Great on the spot thinking, from watering the sprouts to being lifted by the vine robe bridge! Fantastic concentration! Once again congrats!

      The first part of the dream was cool too! It really did sound like a OBE and so realistic with the dogs! Tell me more about the wall geometry!
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    6. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks, Nyx! I appreciate it. This is the combo of length and control I'm always sort of looking for but you can't always count on it falling into place. What was encouraging is that things didn't go "perfectly" but it was good enough that I could fix whatever was wrong. Even if the fix wasn't always pretty and smooth.

      Yeah, even though they scare me, those super-long "Am I gonna get back to sleep?" WBTBs can produce some pretty strong lucidity. I'm gradually getting better at relaxing myself enough not to freak out about doubts of whether I'll manage to do sleeping of any kind.

      Yeah, it was quite realistic, or at least "realistic" as how you might imagine passing right through solid walls as a wandering spirit can be. Yeah, the wall geometry thing was this strange moment where I was going through what seemed like a normal wall but exposed this vast, void-like interior with geometry that seemed to go off in an odd diamond-like pattern that seemed wholly out of place in that spot. I just kind of powered through it and wound up on the other side. I wonder if I'd grown detached from the scene and if a scene change may have been queueing up...?
      NyxCC likes this.
    7. Bubble's Avatar
      Congrats on the successful TOTY! Interesting fight with the giant... that was a really clever way to find him and lead him into announcing he's the giant. I've never had a "fight" with anyone/thing while lucid.

      As far as the diamond pattern you described, it reminds me of the sorts of geometric patterns people see when they are having entoptic hallucinations.
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    8. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks, Bubble! Yeah, I've found the sort of "Jedi Mind trick" approach has been effective for me in getting DCs "steered" in the right direction.

      I would actually say it's great to have avoided all fights while lucid! This was part of the task, so I went ahead and got into this scuffle. But I've found that I get much better dream outcomes if I avoid getting into scraps and use a little more finesse. Still happens sometimes, though!

      Oh cool, your mention of entoptic hallucinations sent me straight to Wikipedia. I shouldn't have been getting hit with any light but I was sleeping face-down... wonder if I smooshed my eyeball a bit during this part of the dream?
    9. fogelbise's Avatar
      Awesome dream control all around! I really liked the trick of reeling in the rope from above! I completely missed when you hit and passed #200! Big congrats!!
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    10. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Hey, thanks fogelbise! I was so glad that the rope-reeling worked because the climb was one of those things where you climb and climb and... the sky doesn't look any closer.

      I wish that I was able to make tricks like this work every time! I've been wondering lately if it's helpful to "think past" the current obstacle and just sort of treat it as if your idea is already working and all you have to worry about is the whatever you encounter next. I've often found present tense thinking to be very powerful for dream control, so I guess this is really just an extension of that.
      fogelbise likes this.
    11. NyxCC's Avatar
      Yeah, the wall geometry thing was this strange moment where I was going through what seemed like a normal wall but exposed this vast, void-like interior with geometry that seemed to go off in an odd diamond-like pattern that seemed wholly out of place in that spot. I just kind of powered through it and wound up on the other side. I wonder if I'd grown detached from the scene and if a scene change may have been queueing up...?
      That sounds pretty cool! This confirms what you've been saying that there so much to do and every single item in an ld can become a universe full of detail. I once found a miniature object and as I kept examining it, it kept changing to other complete perfect miniature objects, like a mini-scene change itself, this went on for quite a while until I was completely incapable of memorising all the cool stuff it had turned into. The wonder of dreams!
      fogelbise and CanisLucidus like this.
    12. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Yes, a universe of details, great way of putting it! That's an amazing feeling right after waking, like you've experienced so much in so little time that you're desperately trying to file it away even as the day's concerns try to flood in and crowd it all out.

      Makes me want to do some kind of super zooming in thing on the first object I find!
      NyxCC likes this.
    13. bemistaken's Avatar
      Hey ole friend! I see you are still killing them! You are the coolest!
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    14. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      bemistaken!! Great to see you on DV! How've you been?? I'm fresh back from vacation so I'm only now seeing your comment. I need to go catch up with your workbook!