task of the month

Ritual: I had time to sleep in this morning so I was motivated to get lucid. Went to bed at midnight and woke at 6am to feed the cat. Didn't do a full WBTB, but took a few supplements (alpha-g, choline, l-theanine) plus a tiny amount (between 1-2mg) of very old galantamine. I lay down on my back to delay sleep onset and practiced progressive relaxation, a few SSILD cycles, and counting. Couldn't count very high (usually not past six, my focus is terrible these days) but clearly noticed onset of hypnogogic imagery and managed to put in a number of rotations before falling into dreamless sleep. When I awoke after a few minutes (guaranteed if I fall asleep on my back), I turned on my right side and let myself fall asleep normally, feeling adequately primed and hoping for the best. This "kitchen sink" approach has pretty much become my standard and despite being really haphazard has a decent success rate, often resulting in WILDs. This time I had an NLD or two that I don't remember well, then the following semi-lucid that turned into a DILD.

SLD: I am on a beach. All is not well: there are what look like tiny floating islands approaching from across the sea, and on each one stands a little stone tower and a menacing-looking figure in black armor with a horned helmet. The armored figures to be using the islands as transportation. Though not quite lucid, I remember that I have certain broad powers in this place, so I walk along the beach until I spot a couple empty islands, and try to summon one toward me. It turns into a little white sailboat and promptly sinks. I try to summon the second one, and the same thing happens. So much for island hopping. I turn right and continue to walk along the waterfront.

Something seems oddly familiar about this place—I've been here before, haven't I? I note the urban architecture up ahead, the sprawl of a city just past the beach and I'm distinctly reminded of a particular dream I had once, years ago now. It was here, I am sure of it, though this corresponds to no earthly place. I don't remember much about that earlier dream, except that it started in one of the apartment buildings a few blocks from the beach and then I went down to the parking lot, but saw the beach in the distance. [I think I actually found it, an entry from 12/29/13, but I misremembered the order of events: I was in the parking lot initially, then dropped by the beach before going up to the apartment.]

Various people are wandering around the beach, and a distinctive figure approaches. He is a thin old man with stringy, longish grey hair, carrying three lidded boxes in different colors, each about eighteen inches square. "What do they call this bay?" I ask him. "Sigismund?" he suggests, then modifies it. "Or Sigisroot?" He seems uncertain. I am about to ask the name of the city, but we are interrupted by the approach of a huge wave. We try to scramble up the beach but don't make it in time, and the wave crashes over us. I have to struggle against the pull of its wake, meanwhile trying to reach around to find the old man, to help him if possible. I grab someone's hand in the water, but it turns out to be a short, dark-haired woman. After helping her to shore, I come across the old man again on the beach. He has made it to safety, but lost two of his boxes. I feel partly responsible for the loss of his boxes, so I go back to the water to look for them. I locate the boxes but their contents have spilled. Apparently they contained cassette tapes, so I dredge as many as possible out of the water and wet sand, restoring them to one of the boxes. After I've grabbed as many as I can find, I return the boxes to the old man.

FA-DILD: The dream resets, perhaps a half-waking, and I am in my house again. I start reviewing what just happened, and write down the name of the bay, both variations—not sure I realized at the time I was writing in a dream notebook. As I think over the events of the dream, I realize I must have been semi-lucid at the point where I was trying to summon the islands and then recognized the setting from prior dream. I reason that if I was semi-lucid then, I must be actually lucid now. Dream logic is terrible, but this time it did the trick—thinking about lucidity made me recognize that I was still dreaming. Since I was back in my house, I decided to do the TOTM of walking through the wall. I had interpreted "my room" to mean the bedroom, so I head in there and immediately turn left to look at the wall. I'm pleased and surprised to find an ample stretch of wall between the door and bookcase (surprised because in WL there is no free wall space in the room at all, to the point where I thought I would have to do the task by going into the closet!) Instead, the dream has obligingly provided sufficient room for me to stand in front of the wall, so I press both hands flat against it and concentrate. The wall resists the pressure at first, so I increase it, then watch as my right hand starts to sink into the surface. The wall crumbles under my hand like weak plaster with an impressively realistic texture and sensation. As I continue to push, a whole section about two feet wide dislodges and falls inward under my right hand, and then I push my whole body forward and break through the rest.

I find myself in a cramped, closet like space, empty yet messy somehow, like it was poorly constructed—for instance, there are exposed 2x4s at odd diagonals. There is no visible way out, and I remember back to a time I was exploring the use of mirrors as portals and got stuck in a labyrinth of empty rooms that became ever smaller and more claustrophobic. [The dream I was thinking of occurred on 4/17/14, and the earliest experience of this kind I recorded on 12/18/10]. Simply recognizing the dream's tricks gives me the confidence not to be waylaid by them again, so I turn left and push through that wall too. Unsurprisingly, I am in an even smaller, darker, and more cramped space. I remind myself to remain optimistic and keep pushing forward with the expectation of getting out. I push through a couple more dark, tiny, empty spaces and then find myself in one that is different. It feels like an actual closet, with coats. What catches my eye is the style of those coats: they remind me of the cheap winter coats we wore in the 1970s, made of smooth synthetic cloth in drab colors and augmented with wide fake-fleece collars. I push through the coats and finally tumble free into an outdoor space.

It's one of those transitions that are so striking in dream. I had been struggling in narrow claustrophobic space with poor visibility, and suddenly everything has changed: I'm in open space, the air is clear and fresh, the light is bright, colors are vivid, my vision is sharp, and I feel a surge of ebullience. I remind myself that it is worth it, all the trouble I go to over dreaming, even if dream isn't always cooperative, because of experiences like this. I even notice that little flutter in my solar plexus that I associate with deep dream.

I move forward, on my hands and knees at first. I am at the base of a steep hill, and there are a number of animals sitting on the hillside, placidly watching me, including several ape-like creatures. As I crawl through the grass, I note the distinct texture of it: it might not be grass at all, actually, but some kind of ground cover with stiff, spiny stalks that flatten rather than bend under my hands. When I get to my feet, I see that a number of these stalks have actually adhered to my palms. They look like black tubes about three inches long and only a couple millimeters across, hollow, with a longer thin hair sticking another inch out the end. I try to pluck one out and it won't come off. I have the impression that even if I manage to pull off the outer tube, the hair will be left behind. It occurs to me to wonder if this explains the ape-like creatures, which seem unusually intelligent and anthropomorphic: did other people come here before me, and end up with so many of these hairs attached to their skin that they became furry?

I consider flying, but decide not to: I'm really interested in this place, and flying would destabilize me from this particular scenario, if not the dream itself. So I continue walking forward on foot, reminding myself both literally and figuratively to stay grounded. As I reach the end of the flat terrain at the bottom of the steep hill, I look up at the animals arrayed on the upper terraces, who are still quietly watching me. What should I ask them? I never seem to get anywhere asking the names of things, so I decide to be clever, and call up to them: "What would be a really interesting question for a newcomer to ask?" No answer. I repeat myself, but still no reply, so I start climbing up toward them.

When I reach the upper terrace, things get complex. I can't remember what passes between me and one of the creatures, who is more man-like now, before he pulls a knife on me—though it is unclear if he he is using the knife to threaten me or the grizzled, older-looking apeman creature who is sitting to his left. I wrest the knife from his grasp, which knocks him off balance. He nearly falls off the cliff (which suddenly seems a lot steeper now, almost vertical, than when I climbed up it a moment before) and grabs on to my waist to save himself. I check my moral compass and find that I feel no compulsion to save him—something about his attitude puts me off—so I peel his arms away and he falls to the base of the cliff, presumably to his death. The elder creature has retrieved the knife, which is now lying at his feet, and I go over to look at it.

When I pick up the knife, I find it to be a wide, cleaver-like implement made of thin cardboard with silver foil stuck to it. There is writing on the cardboard side, and I read through a whole confession, apparently by the creature I just sent to his death. The text describes an elaborate scheme that involved getting me pregnant and then killing me after the child was born, because it concludes, "I won't regret killing you when I see your features in the face of our infant." I find this repulsive and it resolves my lingering doubts about whether letting him fall was the right thing to do. I ask the elder creature if I can keep the knife, and he doesn't speak, but I take his silence as assent. I notice that there is a second knife on the ground, made of roughly-forged steel or iron and elegantly curved like a viking blade (the handle a loop of the same metal), that resembles like the one I wrested away initially, so I swap out the mock-up I'm holding for the real blade, and walk forward on the hilltop.

I encounter another man, this one entirely human in appearance except for a strange feature: his face is completely wrapped in grimy white bandages, leaving only a bit of forehead and his hair explosed. The bandages are thicker over his left eye, but seem to adhere closely to his right—I can see the shape of the eye bulging under them—so I conclude that must be the one he somehow sees out of. Despite his odd appearance I feel an immediate affinity for him, in contrast to the last guy. He leads me into a building, where a girl approaches us and asks me, "Who made that knife?" I look at the blade in my hand. It doesn't bear a long text like the mock-up, but there is a row of runes along the top edge that I can't read. "He's dead now," I reply laconically.

In the entryway of the building, we immediately go through a door to the right, into what looks like a machine shop. The machines are in the center of the room, and two people are operating them, but I can't tell what they're making. The machines have some kind of spinning disk that either cuts or polishes. The bandaged guy is telling me about a hardware store somewhere. "That's where the first ship came from." I have the impression he is talking about a spaceship, and gather that there is a whole complicated plot behind all of this, but I don't know the details. By the time we finish walking through the room, I am waking up.

I was inspired by a post on this site to do a 21 day MILD routine as well. I will be posting each day as time progresses at the beginning of my DJ's. This will be starting tonight. I will be doing the "MILD routine" before I go to sleep and when I wake up after a dream. My mantra will be: "This is a dream, and I am aware". Simple yet powerful.

Anyway,

Happy Dreaming!

the teacher was frustrated that i was not being serious, i was goofing off in class, making jokes, amusing people, not following the lesson and i said to a girl on the desk behind me: "if im dreaming ill be able to breathe through my nose (closed off)" i tried it and it worked and i got excited. i got up and ran around the school, going from classroom to classroom to find pretty girls and kiss them. after a few minutes i wanted to do something else and remembered the totm. so i made my way outside, i had to go through (not literally, i opened them) several doors and windows, at the last or second to last window i got impatient and tried to (literally) go through the window and it bent but didnt let me through so i opened it and

when i was outside there were orange balloons on a rope stretched between buildings so i needed to walk a bit forward so i could see the sky without the balloons. so i did and then saw the sky with the balloons still in view but it was good enough. here is a link to what it looked like: [url]http://imgur.com/zFRlC0z[/url]
i named the file "close enough". the clouds had that shape and there were probably more and they were smaller but you get the idea. you see the orange balloons on the rope. the clouds were actually of a slightly darker grey-ish color, but its close enough :tongue: the sky was bright blue.

and then the dream ended.


notes of forgotten dreams: "a dream in turkey. danger? (that one was 15-20 minutes) turkey car?"

techniques: counting down from 100 and thinking "lucid dreaming" at every count. and the nose plug rc

the lucid dream was ~7 minutes.

March 3rd edit: So this is where i started the countdown thing. It's been 3 weeks now. And I'm at 31 lucid dreams. Makes sense.

Near my house one man is hiding his backpack. For the three days ( in dream world) i saw him hiding and picking it up. On the third day ( It was raining) i came to him and said : "you can keep your things in my house". He looks at me and says nothing. I went to my house. In a few hours a lot of people were in my yard and that man and his mum ( maybe) came to my door and looked inside ( the door was opened) I came to them and said : hey, stop it! We were talking about things, i don't want you to live here! Than his mum said that i stole something from the backpack. I became angry in a moment and beat her. We were fighting a bit, and i thought that i never fight in RL. So it must be a dream. I gave up fighting and went away, but i was really angry, made a fireball and threw it in my yard. I remembered about TOTM and looked at the sky. Nothing intresting. It was night, some clowds and some stars. I looked around finding some wall, but i had only fields around me and my yard with some smoke. I summoned a shop behind me. It was old and i tried to go through the wall, but couldn't even come to it. There were some forse between me and the wall I imagine that i'm a superman and flew to the wall and went through it. After the wall i saw a big room with a lot of chairs upside down. And i awoke.

5/2/2016 (thu)

Long LD 354 "Tank Rampage"
The dream copies our ealier Thursday night tabletop session where we are making up characters for a new Star Wars Edge of Empire campaign. NH is there along with JK and a random guy and a girl. The room is also my bedroom. Having finished my character I lounge in bed listening to the others talking.

In a micro dream I am in a Star Wars themed space port. They have weird model helicopters and boats stuck on the wall. I see some kind of rollercoaster build in to the buildings as well.

The dream skips back to the earlier scene. Bedroom/Living room table.

My model lego quinjet is right next to the pillow and I accidently break it by resting my head on it. Part of the wing falls off and the cockpit. I reattach the broken bits and find lego Han Solo has stolen the quinjet.

Anyway Im desperate to sleep and suddenly hear AB in the next room, along with Star Wars mysic and assume she is watching The Force Awakens. I go ask her if she could turn the volume down a little. The music reduces in volume and I go back into the other room. The others pack up and leave, along with mysterious blonde girl.

After lying down to sleep a false awakening happens. There are people back in the bedroom talking. Also there is a cat and a large grey wolf. I study them and become lucid. Recalling the TOTM I walk through the bedroom wall. It goes slightly black for a moment then I end up in a hospital corridor. It seems deserted. I walk along to some kind of foyer and see my parents sitting in the waiting room. I wave and then run and do some parkour over the packed waiting room benches to get outside.

The car park has a chain fence running along it. I remember a personal goal to drive a tank through a city and decide this is a fence protecting an army base. I rip the fence down like its tin foil.

Inside is a weird white building that reminds me of a mission setting from MGS V. There are guys in military uniform hanging around chatting on the balconies. Possibly they are off duty. I decide to avoid them and try to fly over the building, because there are explosions and some kind of battle going on on the far side.

I try to use fast flying and after a slightly wobbly start launch up over the building. A battle is going on between several tanks. one looks like a small predator tank. I land on the roof, yank open the hatch and jump inside. Things switch to a first person view without any of the controls of the tank. Just as well cause Ive never been in a tabk and have no idea how to drive one. Instead it handles like a reasonably fast car. I head back towards town, following a road that is thinner than the tank but that doesnt matter. I see some vehicles and drive over them, smashing them up. And of course I fire the tanks main weapon off a few times in the direction of various buildings, watching them blow up in unrealistic Hollywood style. Vision goes a bit fuzzy and all visual sensations vanish but the feeling of movement continues.

The dream attempts to trick me with a false awakening. Nope.

I pinch my nose to confirm this is still a dream. The room looks bizarre anyway with stacks of orange boxes on shelves. The door leads into a hospital. Childrens ward. I quickly head through a few corridors to get out when a gorgeous red head catches my eye. Taking her hand I push into the closest room, which is a storeroom and filled with crap. I make a sweeping gesture to destroy it all.

For a moment I hesitate, just staring at her. A weird false memory suggests she is a coworker. (Nope). Also she looks about 18, dressed in green hospital scrubs but she looks to have a great body hidden under those not-so-flattering clothes. She waits patiently until I move in for a kiss, and she reciprocates. I have trouble with my trousers and have to look down to work out how to get them off. She is now holding up a mirror, reflecting the view of my privates back at me. Uh. That looks a bit wrong. I look from the mirror to my dream body and back. The reflection is not me its um... significantly wider, but my dream body seems normal.

On looking back up the mirror is now a laptop screen and the red haired woman is now inside the screen. Dammit. I try to enter the screen. "No! We'll be trapped!" she shouts. "You have to pull me out!"

I try to reach into the screen and grab her hand but can't get through. Frowning I try to get her back into the room with willpower. Her face starts getting dragged into the screen, some horrific special effects that nake it look like her face is dissolving into sand. She is screaming. Shit this isnt supposed to happen!

The scene fades. Can't leave things that!

Its another false awakening. An RC confirms it. I yank open the bedroom door searching for the red haired girl. She is waiting on the other side. She smiles weakly as I pull her into a tight hug and start appologising for what happened. She seems fine so we start kissing again and I get her top off this time. I'm trying to focus on giving her a good time since I still feel guilty about the whole ripping her apart through the screen thing.

I take my tshirt off and she looks at me with a slightly critical eye. Normally I wouldnt give a crap about my appearance but since this is about what she wants... "What?" I ask her.
"Kinda skinny." She says, stroking a hand down my abs.
"Ok, how about..."

My usual dream method of bulking up is to pull in some deep breaths and make some wrestler poses. "Hrrrrrrr! Rrrrrrrh!" This makes her giggle but seems to have the right effect. She seems quite happy with my new muscular physique. Following this we start to have sex but I get the feeling it isnt what she really wants.

We head outside to go flying. I take her hand and lift up into the sky. We head onto the roof of a tall building where there is loud music playing that seems familiar. I start rocking out and play air guitar. The girl is gone.

I head through the streets searching for her and run into a couple of thugs armed with knives who decide to try and rob me. Bad plan. As the first goes to stab me I slow time for him giving me plenty of time to block the strike and turn the knife back on him. The other guy steps in and I repeat this until they both have a couple of nasty knife cuts.

I wake up and consider trying to chain back in but think back on how long the dream has been and decide it might make me forget all this.

dreamviews/safari ate my ENTIRE DJ ENTRY for today. Only re-posting one-sentence summaries for now:

bedtime: midnight

~ 5 hrs:

+ train

WBTB: 45 mins to 1 hour

+ LD#171 blimp ToTM Basic II (sky)

+ LD#172 paralyzed, sucked into sky, cartoon bridge

+ LD#173 "L" science museum, girls, kiss, ask to dance, kiss

BTS

+ (f) offering pizza to friends/guests in a house

+ caveman: oral attention to girl

Now this dream had a seriously weird start. I think there was something happening before I got lucid but I don't remember it.

I was in some kinda camp close to a small creek. There were tents and some structures which I guess were placed to dry clothes or so. I had some self made "arsenic meat" with me, it was in an aluminum pot and was essentially raw meat in a clear liquid that consisted mostly or to some degree of arsenic. It smelled abhorrently chemical and I know that I accessed a Wikipedia page on arsenic via some kind of direct neural interface, no intermediate electronic device needed. On the page it talked about its psychoactive properties (not existent in real life as far as I can tell). Either I ate a piece of that or the smell alone was enough to induce said effects and I experienced visual distortions and some degree of control over these. That promptly made me lucid.

Spoiler for TL;DR: I had sex with my wife:

Though I became lucid I didn't really remember my goals or anything, instead I instinctively summoned my wife and had some forceful but pleasant sex with her, it was way shorter than in real life only a few minutes. And we were in an impossible position too. The sensation caused me to have a wet dream as well...

After that I had a FA but I did not wake up. I was in my home, and for once it was spectacularly close to my actual home, only minor details like color were off which is super rare. I was standing in the bathtub and was fiddling with a tarp that had seemingly become dirty when my wife and me had fun. I had also worried about my wife getting pregnant since we didn't use any contraception. And the tarp was mostly in the toilet... the weirdness of it all snaps me back into lucidity, I do the nose pinch RC. I go onto the bed in my bedroom, and my wife was also there, talking about something. I know I half consciously listened but since I knew it was DC I didn't pay it too much attention. I thought about trying shared dreaming but ultimately didn't try.

I jumped outside, I'm pretty sure from my balcony. I look at the sky and... it's obviously bright day from all my surroundings yet it's actually night in the sky, it's black and I see the stars.
(I only saw it in the dream but found it weird after I woke up and thought about it, this mix between night and day at the same time is new to me.)
I thought about flying up but didn't want to spent too much time in a black void, so I improvised and filled the space partially with a beautiful green nebula, it worked quite spectacularly. I fly up into the sky, aiming at the border of the nebula. I was rather disappointed to see that the night sky was only a texture several kilometers above the planet. Instead of fixing it I turn back towards earth and spin it around to take a trip to Japan. It takes me a moment to find it, and it's not a normal earth globe either but I managed. The globe was... it was still a perfect sphere and the countries had roughly the right shape but it was vastly scaled down, so that each country was only barely a large city. I entered Japan on the east in some kind of harbor and went westwards into an industrial area. I remember seeing some soldiers and then I used a weird high precision zoom interface to inspect my surroundings. I see some products and wares and eventually find and pick up a lead-pouring game, you know that Sylvester tradition thingy. Right then I'm violently yanked out of the dream and wake up.

And incidentally I realize I had this dream right on time to finish my first TotM (I had this dream only hours into February), and I didn't know the task by then either.

No dreams from last night, since I only slept for like 4 hours. Did get a nap in, however.

I immediately WILD into the dream. I'm in the main building for classes at my college. My parents and brother are here, and we’re in a long hallway. My brother is walking somewhat ahead of me, and my parents are way behind me. I notice I’m just kind of floating down the hallway, which feels pretty cool. My dad shouts something for me to tell my brother, but I can’t hear him. Besides, I’m lucid, might as well do some things. I mainly just enjoy flying around a bit, while this random woman follows me around, asking if I want to join her in private. “Not until I get some tasks done first.” (*pats dream self on the head* Good boy)

I decide to start with the basic task - look up at the sky. I see this room off to the side that looks almost like a cockpit to a plane, with a huge control panel against the wall. The windows are huge, so I go in and look outside. The sky looks an incredible shade of blue, with several clouds that look almost copied-and-pasted across the sky - it reminds me of the wallpaper in Andy’s room in Toy Story. The horizon starts to turn orange - the sun is rising. However, I can’t shake this weird feeling that something hilarious is gonna happen. Sure enough, as the yellow circle rises up, inside is Michael Jackson dancing to Beat It, with all his backup dancers barely visible in the background. Immediately I can hear the music start up, and I find it funny. Before I even realize what’s happening, I’m dancing along with the music, doing pretty much all the choreography from the music video. (*smacks dream self on the back of the head* Dude, what the heck?)

As I do this one spin move, I realize that I should get back to doing stuff, so I instead continue to spin a bit to stabilize the dream. Unfortunately, it seems to have the opposite effect, and I wake up. I almost manage to DEILD back into it, but my roommate decided to watch YouTube videos on his big speakers, which jolted me awake when they fired up.

Woke a few times then listened to George singing - he left at 7.02 and it's then I had my Lucid dream🌷🌷🌷
I as chanting

" I lucid dream tonight " ( I remembered this has worked for me many times now and I felt exited that a lucid dream is on its way)

As I drifted off to sleep I recapped the totm's - actually I had been in a kind of Wbtb since about 5 ish just laying in bed and watching my mind thoughts floating around..

Not sure what triggered me in this one - I think it was in having a conversation with Lisa telling her about a dream and getting lucid and her saying oh " was it the man on the bus that made you lucid ? I often get that it's great!"
No I said it was when I went to sit down on the bus and I had to sit in a baby's pram - I looked up to the mother and asked if she could remove the over hanging piece of the hood as I couldn't get comfy! I knew something was up and realised
" I am dreaming "
I got off the bus and walked towards the nearest house - I was about to walk inside when I remembered its better to phase through the walls in Lucid dreams as it trains my mind - so I did - at first walking through with ease and then feeling a little stuck ha ha then the wall got all stretchy/morphy but I came out the other side in the end. had the feeling of wanting to accomplish something and could feel semi lucid state close by. At that moment I remembered the task to look at the sky. I walked back outside and looked straight up at the sky - it was a beautiful vast light blue - but then I noticed hanging over us ...within the sky, was a huge figure ... Like, made of black woven netting - just floating/hanging in the vast sky - a being of sort, as if looking down on us ...I dint like it but knowing it's a dream thought this could be a good adventure and am exited to conquer this dark force. I called up the the gigantic figure that I was coming up to sort it out Xwoman patience on her way I jump up into the sky and sharply catch my hair in a hook hanging on the open door behind me

I will be back

T.O.T.M. (Task of the Month), T.O.T.Y. (Task of the Year) Dragon, AND Shared Dreaming Attempts
~ Dream #1 ~
100% Lucidity

Approximate Real Life Time: Around 10 minutes
Approximate Dream Time: About half an hour

Backstory: So, I guess I am back! Woo-hoo! Same Dream Journal Template as usual... let's start!

Story: I am in the void... I feel the emptiness... I stress my hands, but instead they were mechanical sharp pointy needles... It looked very awesome, and I decided to complete the ToTM and ToTY tasks. I started off with the basic task, and I created a few books. I wasn't able to read out what the first book's title said. The second book scored the goal. The book's title was "Economics", and it had a red cover with oldish, light brown paper inside. I skimmed through the book of random text. There was nothing useful. Afterwords, I created a paradise with floating islands, green vegetation, and waterfalls. The sky was still dark, and I decided to make it better and added an atmosphere to my little paradise. The sky is now light blue. After I decided that it wasn't enough, I added a sunset to my small paradise. Now my little world looks way better. I decided to summon a DC. POOF! They appeared, and I changed their gravity and they started floating upward. I started giggling as they were so confused, and started saying, "WHAT IS GOING ON?". Soon, I guess I have forgotten about the DC, and they were gone. ToTY Time! I told myself. I flew up really high above my floating islands, and I created a huge island with many houses and people. I summoned a dragon (I thought we were supposed to summon the creatures, but I guess I am wrong) and a dark mist formed in the middle of the air. A dragon appeared, and it flew directly for the village, and burnt it into smithereens. The houses were made of wood, so they burnt really fast. I patted my hands, and my job was done. Later, I drop down to the ground and I move to the right side of the islands. I wanted to start my shared dreaming journey.

I decided to use doors to enter other people's dreams.
I decided to go to gab's dreams first. I open the door, and a wormhole speed area appeared around me.

[SLEEPY SO I WILL FINISH THIS TOMORROW]

[THIS IS WRITTEN AROUND 1/15 ~ 1/17? I don't want to finish plus I forgot]

DILD 1
I was at an intersection with my sister. It looked like there was a fire over the hills. We see what looks like a huge rocket fly into the sky. We look at it in awe as it flies around, gradually getting closer to us. We find it's actually more like a car as it almost hits us. I start to think "what if I'm dreaming" and realize I'm dreaming. I decide to attack the car by punching it. "Die! Die! Die!" The scene suddenly changes to me looking at the ground. I see some minty fresh gum, and eat it. Very minty! I jump up to fly but can't go too fast because my body is heavy. I look around and it's very overcast. The landscape had sort of an end of the world look to it. I woke up.
DILD 2
I wake up to the sound of a television. I don't have a television. I realize I'm in my grandmas house and stumble around, feeling dizzy. I remember my dream goal to summon a book and read the title. I put my hand behind my back but feel a hand instead. I spin around to see who it is and wake up.
DILD 3
A young lady and I are racing around a house down some stairs. I realize the house isn't mine and that I'm dreaming. I go outside and put my hand to my side and summon a book. A felt a hefty book and looked at the title. The title was in big letters and was short but I still couldn't read it. I turned the book upside down and could read the title. It read: Old Bot Book. I put it down and tried to summon paigeyemps but couldn't and woke up.

Ritual: Last night's moment of lucidity made me crave good dreaming again, but I woke up after six hours with nothing but a few shreds of bland and wan memory. Determined to do better, I dug out the silent vibrating alarm I was using last year for my DEILD experiments and strapped it to my wrist. I set the timer for 33 minutes at first, so I would likely be asleep by the time it went off, but after lying awake for about half that time reset it for 17 minutes. I reminded myself that it would be fine if I was still awake when it went off, a good opportunity to re-familiarize myself with the sensation I was anticipating and to RC. I did feel the pulse once before I fell asleep; afterwards, given that another 45 minutes went by before I woke up, it must have gone off a couple times that I didn't notice. However, I did get lucid, even though the timing suggests that the onset was not triggered by the vibration, because when I finally woke up the alarm was 30 seconds from going off again, and I don't think the dream lasted that long (though I could be wrong about that). This would be consistent with my other experiments with this technique: it works, but not in the way one might expect. Rather than directly inducing an awareness of the dream state with its signal, it seems to be rather that the anticipation of the alarm serves as an anchor for the attention that makes it easier to transition directly into dream. Consequently, rather than a DILD I had a WILD.

I knew I must have transitioned when I realized I was holding a piece of paper in my hands. I used the paper to better integrate by running it between my fingers and being attentive to the lifelike sensations. They were vivid enough that I figured I should just get up out of bed, even though my vision hadn't kicked in fully yet and everything was dim and blurry. Since there are bookcases right next to my bed in WL and my intention was to do this month's Basic Task i, the moment I was on my feet I started examining the books. My vision was no better overall, but I could see well enough in the area of my primary focus. Reading was surprisingly easy as well, although the words themselves did not always remain stable, sometimes changing into new ones right before my eyes.

I read a half dozen book titles right away, some better than others, but none so striking that I felt like putting special effort into memorizing them. I hoped a few might stick with me naturally, but unfortunately I didn't remember any of them on waking. After browsing the books in the bedroom for a while, I moved out to the kitchen, where I have more bookshelves (there are books almost everywhere in my house). I continued reading titles, trying to find a really good one for the task. Finally after moving on to a second shelf in the kitchen I found what I was looking for. The book was a slim hardcover, about 9"x11" and 3/4 inch thick. The cover had a glossy sheen and was white in the upper half and a darker color, grey perhaps, in the lower half. In the very center, where the colors met, was the word: "REVOLIOTUN" in red and black stylized capital letters. I took note of how it appeared to be the word "revolution" with some of the letters transposed. I wasn't sure if this was part of the title or designated something else, like the series, publisher, or maybe just a cover design, since the actual title seemed to be printed below this in the lower half of the cover. The title was David Bowie's Dreams: Naked in Flight. This tickled me, especially given his recent passing, and I knew it was the one I wanted to bring back for the task.

I set my mind on remembering that book, but glanced at a few more for good measure. There was one small paperback titled Blue Skulls Book that struck me, but that's the only other title I can remember.

Now that I had completed the task, I wondered if I should wake and write immediately, but it seemed a waste of good dream state. Was it really that good, though? My vision was still terrible. "Then maybe I should work on that," I told myself reprovingly. So I looked out the kitchen window and tried to clean up my vision. "Just open your eyes," I instructed myself. "But be careful not to open your real eyes!" I actually did have a sensation like my eyes were opening, and suddenly my vision cleared up beautifully! I looked out the window and was startled by the amazing color and clarity of the landscape, a wide grassy expanse bordered by distant hills, so unlike my actual concrete pool patio. The vision from my left eye was perfect, but my right eye faded in and out: it kept feeling like something was covering it, which I tried to brush away with my fingers as though it were an errant lock of hair. I realized that it was probably the bleedthrough sensation from the way my face was pressed into my pillow (I was able to confirm this on waking) and decided I'd better do my best to ignore it.

The beauty of the outdoors lured me, so I stepped through the sliding screen door into this marvelous dreamscape, and immediately felt my heart fill with joy. I wondered if I should plan to do anything in particular, but decided no, it was enough just to look around and drink in the sights, now that I could see so clearly. As I moved over the ground, I was more dancing than walking for the sheer pleasure of it. Momentarily I wondered if I should be careful not to accidently blunder into any WL obstacles I couldn't see, but then had to remind myself, this isn't like google cardboard: I'm not just surrounded by an illusory overlay on the real world, this is a whole world in its own right.

"This is my favorite world!" I murmured in fervent appreciation, then caught myself. That seemed like a radical statement. Was it really true? I reflected for a moment and had to admit that it was. I felt a bit sorry for the real world—how could it compare to this? As I looked around, marveling at the beauty of my surroundings, my eye was caught by a brighter spot in the dream sky, a white disk surrounded by intensified illumination, like the sun filtering through a haze. For some reason this struck me as remarkable, and I thought back and couldn't remember ever seeing a sun in my dream sky before. Unlike the unpleasant brightness of the real sun, this one I could gaze at directly.

I wandered across the lawn until I discovered a large headstone. It had the traditional rounded shape but was very wide, maybe three or four feet tall and five or six in width. I was pleased to discover that I could read the chiseled inscription very clearly: "THE EARLY DEATHS OF BLAKE GRACE." The name meant nothing to me, but what particularly caught my attention was the plural, "deaths." How could he or she have died more than once? Oh well, in the dream world, I suppose anything is possible.

Encountering the tombstone hadn't diminished my joy in the slightest. I still felt radiantly happy, even when I glanced down and noticed that I was standing on a carved piece of stone that covered the grave itself, like the lid of a sarcophagus. "I hope I'm not disturbing the inhabitant!" I thought amiably, and stepped off the stone, watching closely to see if it would move, on the off-chance that the corpse might decide to rise from the grave in indignation. Even this possibility did not dampen my mood; I felt fully capable of dealing with such an eventuality, should it occur. But the dead slept. I felt compassion for the person buried here and thought I should make up for my accidental insult by doing something to honor the grave. In the hollow of one of the carvings toward the foot of the stone was an accumulation of gravel on which an uprooted mushroom was lying. I picked up the mushroom and tried to set it upright, pushing the stem into the gravel to help it stand up. The surface of the mushroom was starting to rot, but the sight filled me with a sense of tender compassion, much like the grave itself.

After this I decided that it was probably time to wake up, since I didn't want to risk wandering off and forgetting the book title and the engraving on the headstone. Since I was waking myself up deliberately, I was able to get ready and do it in a very controlled way. As the dream began to fade into void, I grabbed a pen and got ready to start writing in the notebook next to my bed the moment I transitioned, until I realized how ridiculous this was. There was no point in picking up a dream pen—it wouldn't save me any time—I would still have to move my physical arm and grab the physical pen once I actually woke up! What a hassle!

I went home by car and noticed that there were a lot of snow. I turned to another street and found myself in unknown place. I went into a shop, and when leaving ,remembered about LD, count fingers and remembered about the TOTM. I went to the shop once more and took a book from the shelf. The name was in big letters. Something like SOOSAN. But in russian. I looked at it onse more. It was SAANSOS. funny. I put the book and went out. I had to find a DC to make him fly. First creature i met was a small white dog. I made him fly, but from the second attempt. Then put it on the earth. Some old woman came to me and asked some money for the food for dog. I had nothing in pockets, but imaging, that i had money in rucsack. I opened rucsack and found enough money and gave it to the old woman. Then i desided to do TOTY and turn into the dragon. I had a nice plan in RLife how to do it, but i forgot about it and flew, and tried to turn into a dragon flying. I failed and had a false awaking. My sister and her hustband were in my room. Then i woke up in real.

Another "ANA" like night. This time influenced by Jamie Alexander's ebooks: "Lucid Dreaming on Command" and "Meditation For Lucid Dreaming". The main thing about his approach is to focus your awareness in your head, forget your body, and "go deeper, let go." I choose his recommendation to focus awareness on HI.

I felt this is a lot like what dolphin does, staring at the back of his eyelids and waiting for FAs/dreams to appear.

The first half of the night seemed to take forever before dreams began. I may have been aware in NREM because at one point I moved on to my back and when I felt entirely aware, my wife told me that I was snoring which woke me up and I thought that was strange because I hadn't felt that I was snoring.

I kept trying to fall asleep to watching my HI and letting go/relaxing. Then the dreams started. Ordering not clear.

+ I'm on my way to get lunch, maybe I'll get pad thai. I encounter a (Round Table?) pizza place and go in, I'd love me some Kind Arthur Supreme! They have a buffet lunch going. I'm skeptical because I want the KAS, but I head that way. "Don't worry, " the cooks say, "we've made plenty of pizza for the buffet." I indeed see large circular clear containers full of pizzas stacked one on top of another.

+ semi-epic?
I'm watching some presentation. A woman is talking about a piece of real-estate. She's trying to conceal her location, i see location on address on street, I know where this is [false]. House is large, 3 rich families live there. Look for a long time at the column marking the left front corner of the property, it's being reconstructed/rebuild? Around right front corner to side, the buildings are huge, right now just construction skeletons with girders. They're like 100 yards long, the size of a football field, what would be in there, a gym?
Then my team is playing on the ground level under the construction, it's a soccer field. I stand back and watch for a while, we're scoring goals, they're making good kicks, too. Then I run forwards and start participating. It's not all that easy for me to run, like I'm overweight. We make a run for the goal, and I try to kick but my kick is weak, it's not a soccer ball but instead some small colorful triangle things (paper?). I kick to my teammate, and we make 3 goals like that in a row with me assisting. At one point the goalie is grad school classmate KA, then he's on my team and we're scoring a goal together.

Enter a restaurant with my team. We're seated at a table. 3 out of 4 of my teammates are overweight.

+ semi-epic
I'm walking among and looking closely at suburban houses. I recommended a painter to some friends and I'm looking at the results [false]. I observe the colors: deep, grayish blue main building, sometimes an odd variant of raspberry/mauve, very dreamy colors. These painters always do a great and careful job. I'm in the carport of one such house and notice that they've painted the foundation a different color (this one is the blue/gray house with a reddish/pink foundation). They've painted a slightly uneven line between the house and the foundation, but that is because the foundation is bumpy concrete so the uneven line blends in to the texture of the house.

I pull myself up to look over the the roof and get a quick glimpse in a neighboring yard of a large fluffy dog.

I then climb fully on to the roof and launch into the air and fly. I gain some altitude, to avoid the dog in the next yard. The dog is barking/jumping at me as I fly over. The dog jumps at me and falls off the roof into the garden. I'm hovering/circling about 30-40 feet in the air, a girl is walking below me, she has notes for me, she's upset about the dog falling off the ceiling. There are letters stuffed in between the pages of books. The girl is my daughter?

Down on the ground I enter the house. There is a woman and a boy there seated at a table. I get a close up view of her right eye. It is strange. She has parallel vertical age lines above and below her eye on her forehead and her cheek:

||||||
<o>
||||||

I think this is unattractive. Then I notice her skin on her shoulder and chest. It is exposed (no shirt) and colored reddish-orange and of a very strange texture: the skin is pulled and cut into regular rectangular arrays of flaps about 1/8inch wide that stick up in the air about 1/4 inch. Her entire upper body is covered with these arrays of skin flaps. I notice a wrinkly nipple. The whole thing is a very odd and fairly repulsive sight.

Our team push starts a train. push hard, run to catch it, jump on. The woman train inspector may catch us. We've been riding around like this for a long time (is the track circular, how can we do that?) Uh oh here comes a end-of-track barrier, we're going fast, brace for impact, we plow through the barrier with no problems, and land in a cushion zone made for cases like this, with large slats of wood and piles of sand. There is a house for sale beyond this area?

Something odd like a guy opening his mouth around the for-sale sign (?) and indicating that the other guys should stick in their (ahem)s? It's a joke.

+ traveling through town, looking for ice cream/yogurt, some places catch my attention, I go into one. At the counter/register there is a light on the left that indicates you can place an ice cream order, and on the right that you can place a yogurt order. The ice cream light goes off and I try to communicate with the servers but they speak a different language. I go walking around the large store. I see people sitting in booths. Up ahead there are some large, fat, nudist women (lesbians?) sitting in a hallway booth. I walk by them trying to avoid looking at them. Around a corner there is a large room off to the side, with a male rock band and some female groupies.

+ (f) I follow into my jr hs best friend DD's house, his father is there, we're there with friends, we start discussing world history. Something about my dad? Sewer pipe exits? Every fifth pipe has elevated salt levels? I feel my skin peeling off of my foot from the high salt levels?

+ (f) I realize that I've lost my toilet seat shaped pillow for the night, they have reclaimed them. I need to pay for another one before they're all gone. I get one(?) and return inside to the equipment rack?

+ (f) exchange of candy. I wanted M&Ms I leave the area and check the (gas pumps?) the attendants/adult, guards are there but they don't bother me, I have a bag of candy, I turn around and re-enter the area

+ LD#167 ToTM advanced II (change gravity for a DC)
I look up into the sky and I see some puffy things like giant cotton swab puffs, and to the right a giant advertisement for a chocolate bar with many little bits of chocolate strewn around, I think "this is a dream-like sky, because only in dreams do you get particles like that in the sky". I do a nose pinch and am confused that I can breathe. That gets my attention, I try again and I can breathe. What? Oh! I run forwards and take a leap off of the road over a big drop with a small thought of "is this a bad idea?" but I fly and I'm firmly lucid now. I'm near a major university and think "I'm going to go mess with the students!" The thought of ToTM Advanced II (change gravity for a DC) enters my head. Down on the sidewalk below I see people, I choose a group of 3 walking together, 2 guys and a girl. I point my finger at the girl (who's standing on the right end of the 3 walking together), and will gravity to reverse for her so she falls into the sky. And indeed, she flies up high into the sky, 60 feet or so, when I un-reverse gravity for her and fly to catch her in my arms. Her head is to my left, feet the right. Her face is turned away from me. I turn her towards me, hoping/expecting to see a young/pretty college girl. She seems to be and I immediately kiss her. She's confused and I explain (punctuated by a few more short kisses) that I made a tiny modification of the space/time continuum around her, but that for her it probably felt like a large change. I ask her where she wants to go: New York? Europe? To the <rock band name forgotten> concert in Austrailia [false]? "Oh, the concert!" she answers. Darn, I think, I didn't really want to go to the concert. At this point there's a strange transition and we're outside a secret restaurant in Iran, and I'm now a small, dark-skinned, dark-haired local boy speaking through another local boy through a guy who works in the restaurant, explaining to the girl that I don't speak (Iranian?). The implication is that we're stuck in this situation (she accessed my dream power somehow to make this change?)... and then I wake up.

I was riding a bike around an oval indoor track. I started thinking about how this would be a good lucid dreaming technique, just imagining doing something repetitively until I'm dreaming. It dawned on me that I was dreaming. Still riding my bike, I found an exit door and plowed through it to go outside. I got off my bike and jumped up to fly. It was nighttime but it was cloudy so there were no stars. My body was feeling heavy, so flying into space wasn't looking too good. I thought maybe I could go underground into the void and go to space from there. I dove down into the ground and entered a void. As I was dropping, I could hear a fountain. I landed and saw I was now in a huge domed building. Below me was a giant pool with a couple of large fountains and what looked like a track to a water ride. I jumped down into the water and swam along the track. I found that it wasn't really a track, but more a rubber snake. The ride went into another room. I found the ride was like a storybook canal with intricate miniature sculptures of villages along the side. I was able to rotate my right forefinger in order to speed up time to go faster. After a few seconds of fast-forwarding, though it lost it's effectiveness. I was trying to make it work again, when I woke up.