task of the month

Other way round - I don't remember much of my dreams and nothing interesting - but I had two short LDs in the meantime and will keep record of it like this.

From one of my workbooks:

Well - anyway - I've been moaning about not meeting my main dream-sign irl - but a bit of activity almost two weeks back, with mantraing and visualisations on our old house - like recommended - gave me two further detections!!
Its sort of receding - I'm not living there any more meanwhile, it is about to get destroyed.
First time while being sick and not motivated in any way - I just slipped out of lucidity after taking a look around and dreamt on with my story.

Then last night was some weird back and forth reasoning:
The house - I dream!
Then - no, it's getting ripped down this day - that's why I want to get something out of the empty building.
Then - noo - it has already been, so I can't stand in front of it!

The normal dream, which I forgot by now - was something nice and I wanted to go on with it actually.
But the TOTMs came out just on time for this - since there were two DCs standing behind me - I thought take the first task in stride - and so I found out, that a woman with really beautiful long black hair - has as middle name Niniana!
Groundbreaking, earthshaking news!!

Shortly thought of the aliens - I have to and I will get abducted by aliens this month!!
But somehow I reckoned, I wouldn't have enough dream quality or control - and without so much as trying - I slipped back in non-lucidity.

So I guess I should concentrate on keeping up the motivation to actually do something lucidly - waking up seems not so much the problem atm.
My real life darting has a dip in the moment - so that went to the back of my mind lately - but this whole alien thing with space-ship tourism - I have to!!

Not patient enough here - maybe I'll edit it more extensive - but for now:

Since some days I do around 5 min. of meditation - only watching my breath and quieting my inner chatter - got to write more on that, too.

And - I sleep with a sleeping-mask since 2 days - that might have played a role as well.

And - I read up a bit on Melatonin, which I sometimes use, when I have sleeping troubles - and I found people swearing on it for LD and info, that a dose of 15 mg is completely harmless.
So - 5 pills I popped - I slept altogether maybe 12 h - no other side effects - woke up fresh.


Edit - bit tired I am today - and I have put up a post in TOTM, which I want to put in here, too:

It's not available over the counter here.
But do not worry:

Studies in humans have shown melatonin toxicity to be remarkably low with no serious negative side effects even at high doses (3 to 6.6 g) administered over a period of 35 days.159,160 Nevertheless, minor reactions to melatonin supplementation such as sleepiness, vivid dreams, headache, abdominal pain, and nausea have been reported to occur occasionally in a small proportion of individuals.

From: LE Magazine, January 2004 - Report: Melatonin and Cancer Treatment

You can find the references there.
Cancer patients receive around 80 mg a day in in other studies - and now please consider - it has been shown to be safe in 3-6.6 grams over 35 days - not milligrams. 6000 mg/35 d = 171 mg a day, if they mean 6 g over the whole period and not per day.

There are threads in the supplement department that seem to say, Melatonin does go against REM and lucidity and vividness and should be taken to be able to fall asleep with stimulating other supps.
This is completely wrong. It enhances vividness and is conductive to lucidity - this I read in several places - and my own experience was really impressive.
I had never taken more than 6 mg for falling asleep before - while I can sleep wonderfully like that - it seems not enough to be noticeable in the dream-department.
Of course one instance doesn't say a lot - I will report, once I do it again!
Something else - with ageing - our natural levels decline - maybe a hint at why children tend to vivid and also lucid dreams..?



Stupid just I didn't journal but slept on after my 3 lucid instances - and so I forgot almost everything.

Good that I did a TOTM and doing it I firmly remember:

First I jumped from the balcony on which I got lucid (old house - noticed it!! - yayy!), which was a bit funny cause I jumped and then hung in the air motionless.
And I didn't want to make flying motions or anything - but in the end I did - good ol' air-swimming..
Swam about a bit - then I saw a woman sitting on a bench and watching birds on the ground - colourful ones in the size and shape of sparrows.
They were walking about in rows, which turned and they walked a pattern like that - hard to describe - I almost forgot what I wanted over watching them.
Then - as I had imagined doing it irl - I "remembered" that there was a little knob to turn to open my chest up. After so many people have reported problems with reaching through their breast-bone - I thought, that would be practical - and it was.
I opened up - reached in with my hand - and got to grip a slimy blob - it didn't beat - it quivered, but more like it wanted away from my grasp.
Got it - tried to take it out, but it was quite fixed to blood-vessels - in the end I had to really rip to get it, which felt weeird - not painful - but I felt the ripping. Looked very realistic, did my heart - only the colour was a bit less than fresh!
My DC didn't like that whole manoeuvre at all - she screamed and ran away - me behind her - and in the end, I threw it at her, but I didn't hit her - she was gone then.
I decided this must be enough.


Later in another instance - I tried to phase through a window - but it broke and by that I got pain from the shards in my hands - weird - heart-ripping is painless - but a window causes me illusionary pain..







There was much more - but I'm too lazy now..

Having a cold - I decided against any activities, except bit mantraing on dream-signs, when going to bed.
But I will do my peppermint WBTB, when I'm able to normally breathe again!

So anyway - I could write a lot around this - has to be a draft now, I am tired.

But the basic thing was - without concentrating on lucidity, let alone the TOTM of skiing up a mountain - I did part of it again - obliviously. The first time I had been non-lucidly operating on myself.
Now - both topics are pretty unusual - I guess there is a connection.

I was back in my dream-sign area of choice - it was winter, and I was out on my own with not regular skis, but ones for ski-walking, or however that is called in English.
This on the background, though - that I wanted to impress somebody by my unusually sporty behaviour.

Normal all - then comes a vertical rock wall covered in snow - and first I think, this is not possible.
It's maybe 8 m high, supposedly something natural - it went right down almost vertically again on the other side, but there it was more like only a very difficult piste - not true 90°.

I went back at least twice, too - after my first adventure - I went into a cosy Bavarian pub and met friends and this guy, and was bragging, that I made it up that wall.

I had taken a run at it, and sort of hacked them in in v-steps, and probably flew a bit on the side.
I took this guy back with me there, he was really fast - and for some reason, I was there later with my mother, and it was dark and cold and dangerous - there were supposedly wolves around at night.
I even saw two - but very far away - and I wasn't afraid for some reason.

What is even freakier - in a following dream - this wall appeared again, but in spring, and it solved itself from the ground, and in the end it was from stone and came "from the heavens".
Had a lot of holes - like almost a web only - and a hermit!!
A friendly old man - maybe 8 m up in the air, in a white bedsheet..

And something else to the side of it - also reaching far up and up - but forgot, what it was, and most that dream anyway.

I recognized a dream-sign, which had only shown up once before and got luucid again last night!
Compared to two days of doing nothing before - I had done maybe 5 RCs in the day and matraed a bit going to bed, and when I naturally woke up and went back to sleep.

Again I dreamt of digging a bit into the ground for some reason, and finding lots of different finger rings.
I had dreamt exactly that some weeks before, and so remembering that - I got lucid from it.
No need to RC - I was instantly convinced.

And the dream was really vivid and realistic - I didn't want to change something and risk loosing quality.
But I made a small pause to recollect what all I had planned for an LD - checked if I know exactly what is the case and engaged all my senses - which worked very nicely.
Usually it doesn't and I sometimes lost lucidity hunting down dream-senses - not this time.

For taste I licked a tree, since my dream-teeth wouldn't let my take a bite - or the tree was very resilient.
It tasted salty.
What I kept doing throughout was hand-rubbing and touching things.

It was a really beautiful landscape - much better than I usually LD together - a bit fairy-taly - but nothing completely mad.
There were plants, like they don't exist - with interestingly shaped leaves and white and violet flowers.
Beautiful weather and a deep blue sky with some fluffy white clouds - sun shining and giving a fine warmth, like spring.

I walked about and then hovered.
Doing experiments with the hovering - getting up was instantaneous - but for the first time I really played with it - direct the height, fly in hover mode in such and such a height and such and such a speed.

I had to practise a bit but got it down real nicely - except for getting an impression of long distance and high speed, where other forms of flight might fit better - I think, I will be a hover-fan now!

I did remember darts - but was worried to destroy the beauty of this fairy-tale landscape and get something less enticing.
So I thought - lets at least do a basic TOTM, when I cam to a little valley with two houses.
Also fantastic looking - the one I entered had a door which consisted of very intricate webbing of branches into patterns - looked great.

So I went in in the expectation to find a DC for asking the question.
That seemed nicer than summoning dog-food.

A woman in her fifties, very good looking with black hair and a red dress and some strange jewellery was behind the bar - it was a pub or café of some sort inside.
So I sat down on a bar stool and asked her, who my true love would be.
She got a conspirational look on her face, took out a piece of paper and pen and wrote down a sentence - one word per line.
And I couldn't read it - the letters were clear and I could read it as in read it out loud, but didn't understand it. So I asked what it means - and she said, it would be in a language, I was yet to learn.
A mix of Latin and something else. It became apparent then, that there was indeed Latin shining through the words.
She said - once I learn that other language - I would know the answer, too.


Forgot to mention - I looked into a mirror too - and I looked like I am supposed to look - just that I have a new short haircut and not in that reflection. But I didn't notice that.

Soo happy - pure DILD without WBTB - I recognized being at my childhood home with my mother.
Did RC - and actually I have been thinking, that my fingers being not countable might be pure expectation - since in the past I had just seen my hands normally.
And so it was - counted 5 fingers on each hand - I knew somehow I was dreaming anyway, though - and convinced myself with nose-plug.
I stabilized with handrubbing and with turning around slowly.
I had read, that the spinning, which is meant to stabilize should be done slowly.
And it worked - seems my brain produced ever clearer surroundings by me relatively slowly turning around and taking it all in.

I did this twice more in that dream, and found it a real help with sub-optimal optics.
I mostly did have suboptimal optics - but could freshen them up like this.
This time I started out with remembering, what my goals were.
And they were step two for comp. - basic summoning, and then I wanted transformation in that arctic wolf.
But the snowman also came to my mind.

So I started by imagining a necklace a bit like the one from my last lucid in a drawer.
It wasn´t in though - but a chaotic assortment of socks and gloves and folding umbrellas.

So I tried it with the door of the house - really convincing myself, that a certain friend of mine would stand on the other side.
I hope it counts, that another guy stood behind that door??

So then I went out - left that guy standing - he wasn´t overly animated anyway - and went out.
Flew around a bit - looking for snow - and it worked again, that from seeing something white - I was able to transform the landscape a bit in the difference into a winter-scene with thick snow lying on the ground.
No need to let it snow.
On the way - twice a DC wanted to lure me into doing something else - but I told them, I had no time.
Then I tried to transform into an arctic wolf.
The only thing I managed was feeling white hair growing from my body everywhere - and that took ages - somehow I gave up - thinking - common - December almost through - do at least that snowman.

And I did - a small one - maybe 40 cm all in all - but from real snow, and this time I had some stones and branches for a face and it looked nice and friendly.
Then I animated it - that was quite easy - I just pretended it was a dancing decoration snowman already - and it started dancing - it had two snow-ball feet (not from me..) and hopped from one to the other to a melody which he somehow caused himself.

Very happy with the achievement - I woke up.
Probably somehow on purpose - having thought, I had done all there was to do in that LD.
Weell - I don´t regret it.

One normal dream:

Something I have dreamt before - I had finished school already - and had gotten a good mark overall - but suddenly this was not enough for some reason and I had to do the last class again.
With younger classmates - some people I knew from real life, who were much younger than me.
I was angry and not motivated and didn´t attend most classes - being on the lake instead etc. - not accepting this sort of.
But when I had to attend - I suddenly wasn´t able to follow the proceedings - and got more pissed off, they made me do it again.
There was a bit more, which I want to leave out - also not nice.
In the end I got thrown out, because of misdemeanor - and it was unclear if I could go to university with what I got.
Dream ended before I could find that out.
I wonder, why so many dreams go about school and old friends from school - and comparatively much less with my actual recent friends and my husband, with whom I really spend time - also older jobs are not represented accordingly..?

After 8 h WBTB - maybe 10 min. SSILD-activities - these made me tired and want to roll over.


First dream:
What resulted was a very vivid dream - started nicely with being hiking in the summer with a group of friends - we made a pause at a cottage to eat and drink something. But first I was missing my cigarettes - then also mobile phone and purse.

We suspected a woman, who had behaved weirdly and turned her eyes away when looked at.
So a friend of mine helped me nail her down - like managed against her will to look into her bag - and there the cigarettes were.
And I saw something, which looked like another purse of mine than the one, I was looking for.

I left it be - but later, considering the cell-phone - I wanted to catch up with her, to look again.
I knew at that point, that she lived in the same house where I lived - just one story below.
There was only her kid - telling me, his parents would be at the gynaecologist.

So I went there - confronted her - and against even physical hassling from her husband - I got my phone and purse back, and left the practice.
This was all in front of the other patients/their partners.

On returning home - the story had seemingly gone on without me - and the janitor of the house had called the police about it.
This husband would have been violent again and was shot dead - lying on a stretcher - with a law medical examiner - who by the way had made an x-ray (in our flat - wtf??) - he showed it to me - and again there was a fixateure interne in his spine (like in mine some dreams back).
This whole thing somehow lead to a general police alert all over the city - and throngs of police were holding a meeting in a big railway-station hall - really huge.

Second dream:
Like so often I was in search for a flat - and was with several other interested people looking at a weird longish flat with glass roof.
It looked like some train-department with 70s-style rounded windows rimmed in red etc.
But then the real-estate-guy took a remote control - and the roof folded away - so you could make the whole flat open to the sky.

Later I was test- sitting on a high-bench maybe 50 cm deep but around 4-5 meters up.
Now comes the mad part - I got lucid from the fact, that I was afraid of that height.
Even sitting there safe and all - I had such a visceral fear - and I couldn´t overcome it - looking at the side of that bench, and considering climbing down made me almost sick.

Now in real life - I have almost no fear of any heights - going rock-climbing in the mountains sometimes.

So - I went for nose-plug - questioning this reaction - yepp - I was able to breathe.
But like once before - I had the feeling, I might subconsciously be cheating - like not really holding the nose completely closed or whatever.

So I took my hands up to look - and again - they looked all right at first - just a bit blurry - but that didn´t convince me - when I started counting fingers, though - it seemed my hand was sprouting fingers as I went - they even bifurcated.
But somehow, I wasn´t as lucid as I used to be two weeks back with easy fearless flying.
I climbed down that thing..

Unfortunately - I didn´t first change something or somebody - but did basic summoning then.
My comp tasks are first object/DC change - and then summoning.
I was sitting on the ground - and expecting somebody coming round the corner.
Instantly something dark moved about there - but I willed a guy to come around because I was in a certain mood ..ähämmm.
He did come around the corner - was naked and inspiring - but we didn´t touch.
Mixing stuff up - I stupidly first asked for a present - and got a cat-reaction (when I asked a cat last month, what she was thankful for - she looked disdainfully and stalked off).
He shook his head and went back around that corner.

I woke up shortly - and right back into a lucid dream - so DEILD.

Third dream:
I was standing outside at the border of a meadow with many trees.
And I had to RC several times again - not high lucidity, but high realism.
After that - I had nicely stabilized by hand rubbing and inspecting things closely.

So I thought - meanwhile pretty clearly - lets make that snowman.
I saw a birch or otherwise white-branched tree - and convinced myself of that being snow - and it snowing back there.
I think, I get the hang of that firmly expecting stuff.
Instantly it started snowing everywhere and strongly, and there was snow on the ground, which didn´t first have to pile up like last time.
This second time around was so much faster and better.
I am really surprised how much practice seems to really help with specific things.
So I knelt down - felt the snow very realistic again - and made a small ball - maybe 20 cm diameter only.
It didn´t really easily want to stick together, by the way.
And then the damnated real life doorbell rang!!

Now I get angry at this quite a bit - but I took it unusually mellow and didn´t rip anybody´s head off, when it happened.


Fragment one:
There was a physics experiment with a complicated installation and it was about, if my emotional state could influence the flow of electricity - and there was something, to make the flow visible.
And I could change that - what it read/showed.
But later it was found out, that I didn´t really change the flow - only what we all saw as a read-out.


Fragment two:
I was listening with a group to somebody recommending vacations, and what you could do there and there.
Strangely - it was also about lying in the sun - and the recommendation was to do sunbathing at a lake - but when at the sea - he said, one could then at least sun-bath in the forests close to the sea..??

I went to bed late - woke up only 2 h later - and had no recall - didn´t try very hard.
Seven hours after falling asleep - I did my WBTB.
Reading through my workbooks - I found out, that the successful tries were all rather late - misleading, that I had put alarms earlier - but did the actual attempts later.
Good that I kept book with this.

I remember two dreams from before, one older fragment - and the dream, that made me lucid.
Again I had given up on WILD - with RC this time - not a FA - rolled over and fell asleep.

That dream was again situated at my old school - but I was grown up - like my friends - and we were organizing an exhibition of what we were doing now - it later changed into mainly an art/handicraft/invention show.
I was going outside on the school yard - and noticed, that I was naked - two attractive young beaus close - after a short shame reaction and flight reflex - I suddenly realized that noo way I would be naked there!!

Copy-Paste from TOTM:

Originally Posted by StephL

Soo happy - 7 days nothing - and now I even managed a task!
Also the "harder" basic one.



Bit weird - I had be-mantra-ed and visualized and so on - my most frequent dream-signs in the day - and also put intent on all but that task.
What made me lucid, was ironically one of my dream-signs, which I hadn´t worked on: being naked in public.
I thought - noo way would I be naked here - bam!

Was obvious - needed no RCing - buut: I did the hand-looking again - and first I thought - wow - they are perfect from the get-go - no need for staring them sharp - but when I counted fingers - I had one more on the right hand!
Now I´m not sure, if it was because I expected it or not - but it was an interesting sight.

And then - an attractive guy, who was standing there with a friend - came up to me - hugged me, lifted me and started swirling me around.
That´s when I closed my eyes - spontaneously - and remembered the task - and kept them closed and counted.
All the while being hugged and swirled, which felt wonderful.
And when I opened them - he put me down - and there was still the dream - so I guess it counts - even if I woke up maybe only some seconds afterwards..?
This eye-closing can be great, if you have something to feel!!


Soo happy, it started working again!!

Earlier Dream 1:

Again a journey with a bus (not that I would have ever done a lot of these - in school/in my youth latest).
Me and a group of maybe ten more people were staying at hotel, which was almost empty - and had for some reason two staircases next to each other - some weird spatial relations - can´t really it picture any more - only a bit.
We had been staying there - but in far apart rooms - and most of these rooms didn´t even have furniture besides a mattress and some junk - but there was a breakfast room, where we met up - all a bit over plush and baroque-style there - lots of velvet and diamond-knurling (looked it up..).
When the bus was about to depart - I had to use the toilet super-urgently - and hunted through this building for a facility. Finally decided on an unorthodox one - and got caught of course.
But I managed to keep her from telling somebody else and making stress.
Then of course - the bus was gone - but I found it after some back and forth around the corner.
And we departed - home actually it was to.

Earlier Dream 2:

I had to lead a discussion and brainstorming group - and nobody wanted to contribute - and it was not on me, to do it myself.
So I thought, how I could lure them out.
I tried to plant some ideas, but making them think, they would be theirs - and be in the mood to follow them.
This worked quite nicely - until one woman stood up and kicked up a general fuss - accusing me of this - and making it sound as if I would brain-wash people.
But then she got going, and came up with tons of ideas of the sort, that was useful.
The others only looked on - and me and her ended up in agreement.
So sad, I forgot, what it was about.

Earlier Fragment:

Doing removals again - this time not from free choice and after my will - but I had to.
Needing to find a new job.
It was stress and I felt, it was my fault how it came to pass.

I will edit in a bit from the normal dreams later, too - buut - first:


Something happened!!


The same way, the other two longer episodes came to pass - WILD-try induced DILD.

WBTB after 6h with alarm - I got up and stayed out of bed for about almost half an hour.
I think, this helped me with not being lazy and impatient.
So when I went back to bed to try WILD - I had some persistence - but couldn´t fall asleep.


I went at is less than optimally though - with a mixed up approach throwing together breath-counting and mantras and a bit of SSILD - still unsure how to really go about it.
For a while after the actual efforts - I ended up in a weird state of mind - half-sleeping, but awake and thinking about things.
I sort of enjoyed this - thinking over some real-life stuff in a rather detached manner.
Then came another normal dream, I woke up from that - went to the loo - thought - ah - sleep a little more, which I did.

I was instantly lucid, when the dream started.
No need for nose-plug or anything - I knew it for sure - and almost automatically started hovering.

I felt, the dream was quite unstable - not throughout vivid - only on what I directly concentrated.
I came down on a meadow with some trees and started my remembered stabilizing repertoire.
Hand-looking and rubbing - foot-stomping and going on my knees and smell at the grass - I smelled that.
There was also a bit of clover - so I ate some of it - but it did not taste of anything.

I also shouted "more clarity" and such - didn´t seem to work a lot in this first episode - the shouting something.
I also wasn´t feeling my body except my hands - and those not really either.
The whole thing maybe was only a minute.
I guess it was too late already and I had slept enough.

Woke up - but - was able to immediately fall asleep again and found myself back in lucidity.
It felt like the same dream - but the meadow was out of sight - I hovered over a road.


I thought - okay - take your chances as they come - and tried for the snowman-task:

It was summer - I hovered over a street and then flew on a bit - shouting as loud as I could "snow" "I want it to snow" for a little while.
This - and the little one before - were the first LDs where I tried shouting something, by the way.
And with summoning snow it worked a treat.
Started snowing and more and more and some snow lay on the ground finally too.
So - down I went to a place where there was a bit more of it.
When I grabbed some of this snow - it was really cold and felt like snow!

Funny thing is - there were two children sitting close by - and they had snow on their heads and faces.
As if they had just sat there in the quite thick snowing for half an hour or so.
It was a bit more snow than I first saw covering the ground.
So - I took this snow from their heads to start building - they were looking a bit weird at me - but didn´t complain.
Meanwhile - there was more snow everywhere and I built a snowman - good size - but only snow.
I was feeling the dream collapse - there was no time to decorate it or give it a face or anything - but I stood a bit in front of it - visuals fading - and tried willing him alive before I wake up again.
But no - it started melting a bit, only..
Next time!!



Sooo - very happy - and I feel this WBTB DILD inducing is going to work better, the better I manage the timing - and maybe finally a WILD too.
Time for a little bliss:

I had my alarm clock on 5 h after falling asleep - but was too lazy to do something - but two hours later then.
Did a WILD attempt with mantras - but I was not very patient and rolled over to sleep normally.

There was a dream - one of these classics - me too late for an exam, and didn´t know where - and another woman showed me the way.
I had a huge bag, which I couldn´t leave somewhere to not have it stolen and we went cross country.
Suddenly she did a jump of some meters, and me behind her - that made me pause, and do a RC - my nose plug again.
Yepp lucid.

So then - she was gone, I was in some flat onto which´s balcony we had jumped these meters for whatever reason.
And the most important thing was, I wanted to know, what somebody is thankful for.
But there was only a nice fluffy grey cat.
So I asked the cat - but it wasn´t interested and stalked away.

I then made a private experiment - woke up from it - but with falling asleep again, was instantly lucid once more.
Scenery another flat.
So - the months then - no problem, actually! None at all.
Then I let myself fall over backwards without looking - and it hurt a bit coming down on the wooden floor with my spine.
I should probably have told myself, that nothing bad would happen??

Anyway - window got opened the usual way - and even then I was first afraid to fly out this time.

But I did it - and I even managed to stop the silly swimming motions.
That had me hover and somehow I wanted to move and thought I might loose orientation.
So I remembered the zooming thing.
There was an old wooden shack with a damaged writing on the front, and I zoomed in on the A.
First - nothing happened - so I concentrated more and tried really to see details of it as if it was in front of my nose..
Well - then I almost ran into it with my nose - had to air-brake to keep me from crashing into the thing..
Might have even been one more task to try to go through - but that I didn´t think of at that moment.

So - down I went - and I saw 3 people through a high perimeter fence around a sports-ground.
I might have been "talking in my sleep" to them, because I had a certain kind of problem with vocalizing, which I had before and that was in a nightmare and I got told, I would have talked out loud then.

Whatever - after the initial problems - I did as if I was a radio-reporter and asked what the first woman was thankful for - she said - of all things - the church and what it did for humankind, weell.
Okay - two more left - next was a guy - and - believe it or not, he said something trivial and I forgot it, in my rush to reach the third person acoustically - didn´t think of phasing through that fence - too much concentration on the task as such.

But then I did phase through the fence anyway and was close to her.
And she said - she is thankful for the fact, that humans can understand what other people think, from talking about it.

The dream was loosing a bit of colour then - and I woke up on purpose not to forget it all.