Thread: Task of the Month for June 2014

A bit too late to post it here, but I guess it is customary. So yeah first time I succeeded at ToTM. I wish I could write it as elegantly as some of the other members. But Here it is:

06/02/14 (Adv Task II)

I was having a very vivid dream about being shot. I don't actually remember being shot but I do remember trying to take out the bullet. I was looking at my arm trying to take it out. My family was bothering me. I thought I just want to experience feeling a bullet in a dream and I can't.
That's when it clicked. I started heading out. My body was hard to control at first. I thought about doing the task of the month but I didn't want to drop a meteorite unto a city so I wanted to do it next to some body of water. I opened the back door to the house and it served as a portal to an island. It was a tropical island, had trees and stuff. I didn't think too much about the summoning of the meteorite, I just believed that it will show up. I lifted my hands and strike it down. I see 20+ meteorite come towards the ocean splitting the clouds open with fire. I see ships ahead. I hear someone behind me say hurry you are going to miss it. I started to fly. At one point I nearly went into the water and I became terrified since I can't swim very well in waking life. I shook off the fear and concentrated on the meteorites. As they were about to hit the ocean's floor I hear this high pitch frequency and it was painful to hear. When they hit the ocean it wasn't anything dramatical. It had waves but it wasn't as big as I thought it would be. One of the meteorite levitated out of the water. I see Iron man show up and take it. He took it back to the shore. I wanted to see what was inside. He opened it up and I saw a robot. The robot was round like a ball. It was black with blue neon glowing lights highlighting the edges of the shape as well as the face. I started flying and shortly after I woke up. I don't know if I was suppose to go underwater to investigate the ocean but at the time I did what I thought was right. I was pretty happy with the outcome.

Originally Posted by Marm

lol ophelia i only learned about you and tornados after listening to the dv podcasts on youtube a few months back (those are great btw )

uggh i feel like im learning lucid dreaming from scratch nowadays, i haven't had a single lucid dream since january... it usually takes me like 2hrs to fall asleep then i just wake up without remembering anything at all...

I can sympathize. I've had issues with insomnia before and it's tough to get lucid when you can barely remember any dreams. Most recently, I barely slept the other night and then couldn't even doze off on an afternoon nap!

Originally Posted by StephL

Take it with a grain of salt, of course - but if you seriously spend two hours in order to fall asleep - my advice would be - take 3-6 mg Melatonin a quarter of an hour before you want to be asleep. That is a very low dose - see below - and it completely does the trick against my own considerable problems with insomnia (~1 hour was what I needed). In most countries, like the USA for example, you can simply get it over the counter. It is a substance your pineal gland produces on it's own every night, so it is nothing artificial, no unwanted side effects, not addictive, too. Even in much higher doses it only makes you more tired. High doses are even used as antioxidant (like vitamin C) in cancer patients.
How it affects REM is seemingly not clear - but it's used for dreaming purposes anyway. Some people on here say, it lowers REM time in the beginning of sleep and prolongs REM later on, which is also good - Wikipedia says the following on the topic:



Worth a try - good luck - who wants to waste hours of lifetime waiting for sleep? Not me!

I have in the past taken melatonin before bedtime, but I am currently living in the UK and it is not easy to acquire due to strict regulations on these kind of drugs. I've been experimenting with meditation and relaxing techniques as a way of naturally improving sleep, and it has to some extent helped. There's also the issue of me falling asleep and then waking up with no recollection of any dreams I had, which is unusual because 99% of the time I would remember at least some fragments of a dream (or dreams). Maybe it's because I have too much on my mind and my new lifestyle has kinda killed the way I used to be able to become lucid??

@thena Did you take any sleep medication or is your insomnia just periodic?

Originally Posted by Marm

I have in the past taken melatonin before bedtime, but I am currently living in the UK and it is not easy to acquire due to strict regulations on these kind of drugs. I've been experimenting with meditation and relaxing techniques as a way of naturally improving sleep, and it has to some extent helped. There's also the issue of me falling asleep and then waking up with no recollection of any dreams I had, which is unusual because 99% of the time I would remember at least some fragments of a dream (or dreams). Maybe it's because I have too much on my mind and my new lifestyle has kinda killed the way I used to be able to become lucid??

It's the same in Germany - but it's perfectly fine to order over the internet - I get it over Biovea dot com - not sure, if I am allowed to link through directly.

Originally Posted by DefineMeAsOne

A bit too late to post it here, but I guess it is customary. So yeah first time I succeeded at ToTM. I wish I could write it as elegantly as some of the other members.

That sounds like a really cool dream. Especially iron man bringing it back to shore, and a robot inside of it! I would have never expected that lol. Sometimes elegance can get in the way of the message so I wouldn't worry about it. Personally, your description of the dream evoked just as much if not more imagery in my mind as anyone's.

4 more tasks complete! (repeat, kiss, meteor, aquarium)

Spoiler for DJ Excerpt:

The first thing I thought to do was find CanisLucidus for our challenge. I willed him to be in the kitchen, and ran around the corner to greet him. I hadn't really paid much attention to his appearance before, and I was surprised to see that he was really tall and lanky, which is not what I expected. His other features didn't match what I was imagining either - he was slightly gothic looking, with pale skin and shoulder-length dyed black hair, although his appearance changed throughout the dream - he got shorter, his skin became more tanned, he had short brown hair, and then messy blonde hair. (I guess I had trouble with this because I don't actually know what he looks like in waking life.)
I was excited to see him and ran up and gave him a hug. He was kind of unresponsive and didn't even look at me.
I said, "Hey... CanisLucidus, right? It's Dreamer!"
He still didn't say anything, but he gave me a friendly smile and seemed to have a bit more life in him. I took his hand and led him to the middle of the room while I remembered the tasks of the month.

The first one I thought of was Basic Task i - National Repeat Day: Get a DC to say something to you, and just repeat it back verbatim. Try to keep this up for as long as the DC will stand it.
I said to Canis, "Well... say something!"
He put on a sarcastic voice and mocked me: "Well... say something!"
Damn it! This was the wrong way around!
I almost responded, but I stayed silent for a minute to see if he would say anything else.
Eventually he said something that didn't make any sense, it seemed like he just strung a few words together. It was something like, "Are you going to bukka?"
Despite having no idea what that meant, I said, "Are you going to bukka?"
I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't seem to be very interested in the game, and walked off into the next room. I figured I wasn't going to get much more out of him for this task, so I started thinking about the other tasks.

I remembered Basic Task ii - Gay Pride Month: Kiss a DC of the same gender.
I knew Canis couldn't really help me with this one, and he was kind of just staring into space anyway, so I decided to leave him there while I went to find a girl to kiss (sorry Canis!)
I walked outside the house. It felt like the middle of the night, and the street was dimly lit by street lamps. I saw a middle-aged woman walking past on the other side of the road. She didn't look very approachable - she was kind of posh and seemed to be in a hurry, but I decided to run over anyway before she got too far away. I didn't bother with an introduction, I just grabbed her face and went in for a kiss. She was holding shopping bags in both hands, so she couldn't do much about it, but she turned her head to the side and avoided my kiss. I tried again and pecked her on the lips. She looked quite shocked, and I felt a bit bad about assaulting this woman. I thought to myself, "That's certainly not how I imagined that task going down," because I'm not averse to same-sex lovin' with my DCs, haha.

I decided to get on with Advanced Task ii - Meteor Watch Day: Summon a meteor and investigate the impact site. Describe what you find/see.
I was feeling really confident about my dream powers and was certain that I could achieve all the tasks in this dream. I looked up at the sky and held out my hands to summon a meteor. I saw one coming down towards me, but I knew I was safe and didn't need to move out the way. It crashed into the ground a few metres in front of me. The crater was smaller than I was expecting - it was round, with a diameter of about 1 metre. There was nothing out of the ordinary inside, just some rubble and a few small flames.

I decided to go for the 'quadruple hitter' (I just heard this term in the podcast, haha) with the Bonus Task - Aquarium Month: Dive into a huge and empty aquarium - it is up to you to design unique and beautiful flora and fauna to populate it. Create an aquarium landscape and its inhabitants from scratch.
I was still in the middle of the road, so I tried to think about how I could get to an empty aquarium. I considered various types of transportation/teleportation, but then I thought, "Why don't I just close my eyes and dive?"
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fall backwards through the ground. I was free falling through the void and put my hands out into a diving position. I imagined being in the middle of a massive tank, and I soon started to feel myself surrounded by water (I was still in total darkness.) I have never had a problem breathing underwater in dreams, (which is strange considering I have trouble being underwater in waking life - cool story about that at the end*) so I felt perfectly comfortable and confident, and spent a few seconds taking in the feeling of the water.
I opened my eyes and found myself deep underwater in a huge tank. It was really bright blue, like the inside of a swimming pool. I started swimming up to the surface. I tried not to look for the edges of the tank because I wanted to make it as large as possible, since I hate the idea of animals in captivity. I decided that it was going to be a sanctuary for rescued marine life that had been displaced or injured by dredging, fishing, and oil spills, rather than a tourist attraction.
When I reached the surface, I put my hands underneath me and used them as a jet pack to propel myself into the air above the water. I kept flying higher into the sky, looking down at the water below me, with the intention of keeping the edges of the tank out of sight to make it larger and larger. I was flying straight up at high speed for about 30 seconds when I decided the tank was big enough (still nothing compared to the animals' ocean home though, but I reminded myself that they were rescued.) I could see the edges now, which looked like the edges of a swimming pool, but the tank was much deeper.
I hovered in the air and thought about what animals I would place. I remembered reading sivason's dream where he made a point of including a shark, so that's what I decided to start with. I used my finger like a pointer to place a shark, which only looked about 2cm long from this distance. I could still see the shape of the shark very clearly, and could see his little shadow moving under the water. I placed two more sharks, and then placed about 10 turtles using my index finger in the same way. Next, I used all my fingers, wiggling them like 'spirit fingers', to place hundreds of fish. I didn't give much thought to what kind of fish they would be, because they were too far away for me to see in detail anyway - they kind of just looked like specks swimming around. I placed a few dolphins, and before I could think about anything else, the dream started to destabilise.
I was falling backwards out of the sky and losing the dream, but I thought, "NO! The task says FLORA and fauna! There's only animals so far, I need to get back and finish this task!"
I was really determined to get back in control of this dream, so I put out my hand like a jet pack again, and thought, "I just need to hover, I don't need to fly back into the sky because I'm still exactly where I was."
I looked down and saw my aquarium 'canvas' as I'd left it, so I quickly thought, "Okay, flora... lillypads!"
I used my finger to place one single lillypad. YES! I immediately felt victorious, like I had officially completed the task, but I kept going and placed some more lillypads, and some seaweed/seagrass at the bottom of the aquarium.
The dream was still a bit unstable, and I wanted to wake up before I lost lucidity. I started spinning around really quickly, creating a whirlwind around me as I closed my eyes and entered a void, and affirmed that when I opened my eyes, I would wake up and recall my dream.

Full entry: Meeting CanisLucidus & June Tasks

Too bad I forgot about the Father's Day task - I totally could have made Canis grow a pregnant belly!!

Basic ii - mom was in the room, so I kissed her on the cheek.

Advanced ii: meteor crashed & dissolved right in front of the window.

I remember the meteor task and go to the window, stare at the sky to see a meteor form out of the nothingness. It then moves from the distance following a twisted trajectory, decelerates to fall in front of the window and into a shallow water that covers the street where it disintegrates. I'm a bit disappointed that there is no showy splash or damage, so repeat the process with two smaller meteorites that fall and dissolve in the same way.

Yeah baby!


.

Originally Posted by Marm

@thena Did you take any sleep medication or is your insomnia just periodic?

It's been on and off, depending on how much stress I'm under at the moment. Sometimes going through relaxation exercises with visualization is enough, and when it isn't, I take melatonin.

Ha!
It rained meteors last night! With damage!!



After I first got lucid in a building, I had to go up stairs to get out. So I flew up them, maybe 30 cm above the floor - and the quality was soo great - super-realistic.
I touched and tasted things - the carpet on these stairs, the metal-rods, which were proper cool and I even licked them. All great - until a guy comes flying down the stairs in the opposite direction. I knew, I should better not look at him - but I did - and so forth.
So I needed a DEILD, but this worked great - I just looked at the back of my eyelids and waited, till a dream came back optically.
I had even moved about a bit - worked anyway. Then I imagined swimming motions - and flupp - I was back in.

Being outside already - I took aim at a high lamp-post, and wrapped myself around it, not to be on the ground for the following action.
It was night - I looked at the sky and commanded meteors - goddess-style - METEORS ARE COMING DOWN NOW!!
First I thought nothing happens, but after a couple of seconds - I saw the first one.
Then came more. All fiery balls speeding down without a sound and with the impact sites out of my sight.
Next to my pole was a swimming-pool, and I wanted one in there - this somehow didn't happen.
There was a telephone on the mast I clung to - and on a whim I took up the receiver and sung into it.
Yepp - I found it sounded great - and the apparatus seemed to work as superb amplifier - that went on for a bit - I really liked my voice...redface.gif
But then I remembered, that I need to inspect the impact sites.
So I flew to where I had seen earth being spat up in the sky from afar.
What I found was a longish hole in a garden, maybe some eight by two meters, and about three meters deep.
Now I regret not having climbed down to retrieve the meteor and marvel at it. Na well.
But the owner of the place came out of his house, lamenting about how he had just put out seeds for new flowers...cheeky.gif

Lol at the guy with the seeds. Awesome dream steph, congrats!!

Wooohooo - this bewinging went ultrafast - sweeet!

I had some extra time while stuck in traffic this morning

I got lucid last night and tried to go find some DCs so I could do some tasks, but I wasn't able to fly . Lately in my dreams, I haven't been able to fly, so I'm going to look around and find some techniques that people suggest for it and try them in my next lucid.

Random Dream? - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Originally Posted by DragonMaster21

I got lucid last night and tried to go find some DCs so I could do some tasks, but I wasn't able to fly . Lately in my dreams, I haven't been able to fly, so I'm going to look around and find some techniques that people suggest for it and try them in my next lucid.

Random Dream? - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

First off, Get some wings, It's really hard to fly without them
Actually the best way for me to fly is to not try, I just wind up there as necessity presents itself......
And my way is not working too well this month either judging from my present wingless situation....

Originally Posted by DragonMaster21

I got lucid last night and tried to go find some DCs so I could do some tasks, but I wasn't able to fly . Lately in my dreams, I haven't been able to fly, so I'm going to look around and find some techniques that people suggest for it and try them in my next lucid.

Random Dream? - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Ah - look - we have a thread on this topic here: http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...ml#post2106853
This is what I wrote:

I used to have lucid dreams as an elementary school child - the ones I still remember all started in our house, and the only thing, I remember properly about them, was jumping out of the kitchen window, second story, and then using swimming motions to fly - that's what I did very many times - maybe always on the onset of my childhood LDs.
And it is still the technique, which never fails me - even when I jump from a standing position, but it's awkward then. I love the thrill of jumping from somewhere really high - or out of a really small window with a lot of drop.

Besides that - floating over the ground - it often happens on it's own - otherwise a little jump is enough, or several.



Meanwhile I tried other methods - for example for the last competition I tried superwoman flight - standing on a trailer - I just raised my arm up - and wooosh.
I almost left the atmosphere so fast did I fly - and to my embarrassment it scared the living daylights out of me.
Finally I managed to stop the ascent with taking my arm down and accepting a bit of falling, until I caught myself - and then again imagining a resistance like in water and air-swimming about.

One of my dream-goals is to grow a pair of proper wings...

Lmao steph that pic is CLASSIC

My sweet husband stumbled over it on here: xkcd: Jump
and mailed it to me - very nice - him finding LDing comics without even searching!



An edit - just me rambling:

I have been looking at the figure properly once more just now
Perfect!!
It starts by lifting off the back half of the body and takes a leap of faith. The belief is, that it doesn't and it won't fall on it's nose. Headfirst is a good vector.
What is also good, is something I did thanks to dutchraptor.
Stand somewhere and let yourself fall backwards, stiffly. So - and I was pretty much afraid of that. I expected to hit the ground in my unconscious level - my animal brain. But I knew, that absolutely nothing can happen. But I did at the same time not desire, to feel the pain of an eventual realistic rendering of the level of suffering. But my guts did not expect it - my mind did. You know what I mean.
What did happen? I fell on the ground, if somebody would have looked on - it would have looked completely realistic.
Buuut: It felt, as if somebody would tap a wooden board on my thoracic vertebra number 8 probably. Well - I could be academic, and call it pain - but guys and gals - nope - that was nothing.
Do not fear, when lucid!
Because there is no reason!
Do not fear anything, when lucid! Let alone something superstitious!!
One needs to go search that feeling.
You know, you can jump on the ground for longer and longer patches.
You can go gradually, but trusting that the air supports you is what it is all about.
How do you come to trust it?
Repeated experience.
If you want to fly - try run-jumping - you will feel buoyancy - and the softness the figure talks about is gravity getting less rather on it's own.
There is something friendly about gravity and buoyancy in lucid dreams. There really is.
Dream-gravity is gradual and it's definitively not always exactly half the gravity of what we have, though.
Somebody in the back of my mind screams 'HALFGRAVITY".
Bullshit - but to be honest - I know how Frank DiMeglio could get so blown away on his revolutionary "New Theory of Gravity", which he can't formulate, and which is flawed throughout.
Because there is something to gain insight in - dream-gravity is special and fascinating to play with.

Anyway - back to the comic.
Check where it air-jumps over that little fence, too, how it takes some momentum, by pushing off a supposed level in the air - and afterwards, it has to catch itself and thus bows forward. Then it's in progress, and you level off. Maybe with an urge to lift the legs a bit.
All is so calm and nice and normal - omg - will I drown!!? o_0
No - you will not! Sploosh - was only the fish.


What better could one do to let nerdy people stumple - no jump into lucid dreaming than this?
xkcd: Margin is great nerdfood.
Often in normal dreams I realize a loss in gravity - especially when jumping or running, and it is that, which makes me lucid.
Sometimes.
But I know the opposite is also true - I do not have it anymore - but sometimes I had dreams as if in syrup or worse - and of course all which was important in that moment was speed. Can make you lucid.
How did I get here?
It's hot summer here.
Steph off





steph not off just yet:
Devoted to Scionox and his competitions - may dragonity be with him!
I found this - that is about what I would like to grow:

Originally Posted by StephL

But the owner of the place came out of his house, lamenting about how he had just put out seeds for new flowers...

Awwww...It's the cutest thing I've ever heard lol

I had the longest LD ever (like 30 min) and completed the tasks left!!

Bonus task:
I start creating an aquarium but it is very dark and I lack some dream control because I can’t feel things very well… I want better vision and said loud “I want more light” and seconds later all the dream scene is in bright sunlight, the water is crystal-clear and I think of summoning a shark which I later changed for a pair of dolphins because it was getting scary with the sharks there, then I noticed I can see underwater, I pointed a finger to the sand and create some starfish and seaweed. At this point I feel completely inside the dream scene because I can taste the salty water and feel it spraying my face so hard that I had to cover my eyes. Again I look underwater and see that the bottom is not too deep, I can see the feet of other people that are inside, and then I see a strange animal, it’s like a very big/wide scorpion walking fast between people legs, eww it was scary also, so I got out just to appear in front of my house at the top of my car trying to remember which other task I’m missing, I stayed there for a moment trying to remember and then:

Basic task I:
There are some children (why is it always little kids?) coming, one girl looks at me before going into her house and says “goodbye”, I repeat “goodbye”, the girl again: “goodbye” and so on… after many more ‘goodbyes’ she smiles, waves and leaves.

Since I’m still lucid I try what I’ve been trying all these last days: create portals and summon a friend. First I try to summon a friend by the method of “I’m going to walk over there and he’s going to appear in the path”, many people passed by but I finally see him, well, his appearance it’s very different, like he’s 30 years older and different, but somehow I know it’s him, unfortunately he doesn’t seems to act like most of the DC’s, he’s like… a sleepwalker, I talked to him and his gaze was lost… I usually don’t make this but I said: “hey!! It’s a dream, can you hear me???!!” but nothing…. It’s as if he wasn’t there. I shook him, beat him and nothing, still zombie-like. I’ll try that later with other friends…
I left him and flew to another place to heal my (waking life) broken toe. I try to summon a magic wand but nothing happens, so I stayed there gazing at my normal-looking toe. I move my feet and toes and all feels perfectly normal, ohhh I think at how I wish I could bring that one into waking life, I enjoy my healthy toe a few more minutes and then moved to practice the portal thing. Finally I managed to create one, it’s purple but the outline is very faint, it can barely be seen, anyway I stepped inside and everything became black, I rubbed my hands to prevent waking up and seconds later I appear in the next scene: I’m flying… the sky it’s beautiful and I’m impressed by it’s beauty: purple with orange like it’s getting dark, I see there are some clouds organizing to form a written message, I read the first words but the dream starts fading and I woke up, not remembering the words…

I kissed a dude for these wings!

Well here is an excerpt from the dream, prior to this was a battle with some bad guys in an army type scenario.

Lucid: I continued to walk with the scene for a bit and thought I would just keep flowing with the dream, then I thought I would fly straight up and lastly I remembered I wanted to do a TOTM. There was a soldier walking next to me wearing camo and a helmet, I turned him around and he was a younger guy with I assumed blonde hair but I couldn't be sure because of the helmet. I pulled him to me and planted one on him.... I smooched for a bit and it was really just like kissing a piece meat or a piece of bologna. After a few seconds I let him go and he just carried on as he was before with no comments or reactions. I said something to the effect of "That was good stuff wasn't it?". I then thought of trying the repeat task but woke up. It may have been from the excitement of completing the task.

Full dream below

TOTM for Jun 2014: Kiss a dude! - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Awesome dreams, everyone!

I can't wait to complete my final task!
I promised myself I wouldn't look in the Lucid Task Club until I completed every task this month... I'm sooo curious to see the suggestions!

I didn't want to kiss a guy so I wasn't going to do the ToTM for the Basic, but I read woblybil comment, "I will kiss a DC of the same gender IF ! ....... I can become a girl first", and I realized hey I could do that...maybe. Since I didn't know how to transform into a girl, I thought I was doomed. Well it never left my mind and I was given the right circumstances and I got it. The non-lucid dream had nothing to do with the lucid so some parts won't make sense. Here is the lucid part:

06/08/14 ToTM Basic II

I see my body and I am an old white man. We are at a mall. As I was telling her that she could do what ever she wants and she don't have to be afraid, I see myself in the mirror. I am young now, my eyes are hazel slightly blue. I was getting distracted, this was the first time I saw my reflection in a dream. I walked a bit and turned and I am now a women. I had red hair, I had blue greenish eyes. I had wrinkles around my eyes. I am dressed in a red poke-dot skirt. I looked like a 1950s gal. I looked about 40 something years old. I had a wonderful body not too fat or too skinny. I thought about doing the challenge since I am now a girl, I could kiss another girl. I wanted to make sure that I am not a transsexual so I picked up my skirt and saw no penis. Oh yeah the little girl disappeared long time ago, I don't know when but she did. I scattered to look for a women. I saw one old lady, and another that is slightly younger, I would say about 40-50. She had grey hair. She was not attractive but she wasn't ugly. She was doing someone's nail. I rushed and grabbed her head. I first went for a light kiss, then I started doing tongue. I was slightly uncomfortable because she is old. I am old too but dam she was really old. What made it even more sickening was that she started to enjoy it.

Full dream: "Kiss from same sex" - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views