Task of the Month for July 2014

And yes, speaking of "caveman/woman" mode in dreams, this is basically the only dream ending experience I have. I have barely ever had a LD fade on its own, once stable. The only other kind of LD ending I experience is dream control concentration: usually starting a summon. Both these experiences share something in common: withdrawing attention from the dream environment "into my head."

I think this is actually an incredibly important point: sivason wrote in a post in the dream yoga section that to maintain a dream one must maintain simultaneous focus on: your dream body, the fact that you're dreaming, the dream environment, and your short-term goals. In my experience this is entirely correct, as my LDs only ever end when I withdraw my attention from the environment and focus on (the beauty in my arms / starting dream control).

Makes one wonder just how long those LDs could go on. I've tried setting goals of just walking around enjoying the scenery but usually the caveman urge becomes overwhelming.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

I think this is actually an incredibly important point: sivason wrote in a post in the dream yoga section that to maintain a dream one must maintain simultaneous focus on: your dream body, the fact that you're dreaming, the dream environment, and your short-term goals. In my experience this is entirely correct, as my LDs only ever end when I withdraw my attention from the environment and focus on (the beauty in my arms / starting dream control).

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Wow, that really makes a lot of sense. Having it pointed out like that makes it crystal clear when looking back at my previous lucid dreams and how they ended.

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Originally Posted by OpheliaBlue

You should come to IRC and play our acronym game.

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That sounds fun! I don't have a sound card in my computer, nor a mic, so I think I'm disqualified for now. But it is fun to make up new acronyms. I always guess when I see them, and make up new explanations for existing ones.

I'm still practicing the TILD method. I got 3 more attempts in today, but no lucidity yet. I was thinking that it would make for my most epic TOTM completion if it was also a TILD. I'm trying for the elevator task. All I got was a brief dream of holding green onions and sorting through the good bunches from the bad ones...

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Originally Posted by SammyTheSnake

The bunch of us start heading back to the campsite and I realize chasing tail isn't the highest calling in a lucid dream,

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Whoever told you a silly thing like that? :yddd:

Wow, we really are a bunch of horndogs!

I'm going to see if I can do something with that 4-way balance thing of Sivason's that FryingMan mentions above. Perhaps some kind of mantra or visualisation practice to get the mutual importance of these elements into the right part of my subconscious so that it's all there during the dream to guide my balance...

Just looking at the four items, I'd say that to my somewhat inexpert eye, I'm not sure I'd put equal emphasis on all four.

I think the balance of "the fact that you're dreaming" and "the dream environment" seems very important - if you focus too much on the dream environment, you risk losing lucidity, and if you focus too little, you risk losing your dream altogether and waking up. Get that wrong and it doesn't make much difference what you do about your dream body and goals.

Can anyone shed any light on the benefits of focusing on your dream body? None spring to mind, excepting if it's part of your goals for the dream...

I guess I'll search for Sivason's dream yoga stuff :-P

SammyTheSnake

Finally found Sensie! :)

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My mind is very blurry as I try to remember any tasks for the totm. I recall the DV goal and look around to see if Sensei might be nearby. There's an older teenage boy on a bike with a slightly longer hair that could do. But let me try to get Sensei here. It's a whole street full of DCs so one of them has to be him. I concentrate and think about Sensei, turn to the side in the opposite direction and to my surprise there he is - tall with browish hair, etc. He smiles happily.

We go up the street which turns into a gray building and I decide we will be learning superpowers. I feel that instead of me doing all the controling as in tk, I should try to give the DC more free will and let it demonstrate super powers, while I'm just saying what we are about to do. There is a a pencil like object and I throw it in the air, trying not to hold it with my mind and say that BB should try to lift the object. Before he can react, it falls on the floor.

"Ok, maybe you can demonstrate fire magic instead", I hint. Sensei takes the initiative and produces a large peach colored napkin, unfolds it, throws it in the air and tries to blow in its direction. I now understand what trick he had in mind, he was going to ignite the whole paper with his breath. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen and the object just remains in the air for a while. I feel a bit guilty because maybe I have sabotaged the demonstration by being slow to understand the procedure and didn't put my expectation into it. I'm saying something mid-sentence when the dream abruptly comes to an end.

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Sensei - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

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Originally Posted by Schmaven

That sounds fun! I don't have a sound card in my computer, nor a mic, so I think I'm disqualified for now. But it is fun to make up new acronyms. I always guess when I see them, and make up new explanations for existing ones.

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Irc doesn't need any of that fancy schtuff! It's just text chat. Just click on the "chat" button at the top of the forum.

Congratulations to all that have completed and attempted so far!

I'm looking forward to doing advanced task I, advanced task ii, and the bonus task. I'm planning on bringing gab and Ophelia with me on a fun adventure ^o^

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Originally Posted by OpheliaBlue

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Originally Posted by Schmaven

That sounds fun! I don't have a sound card in my computer, nor a mic, so I think I'm disqualified for now. But it is fun to make up new acronyms. I always guess when I see them, and make up new explanations for existing ones.

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Irc doesn't need any of that fancy schtuff! It's just text chat. Just click on the "chat" button at the top of the forum.

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Yeah you should come to the IRC, I'm on there all the time, it's really fun! The acronym game is also a ton of fun :mrgreen:

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Originally Posted by SammyTheSnake

Wow, we really are a bunch of horndogs!

I'm going to see if I can do something with that 4-way balance thing of Sivason's that FryingMan mentions above. Perhaps some kind of mantra or visualisation practice to get the mutual importance of these elements into the right part of my subconscious so that it's all there during the dream to guide my balance...

Just looking at the four items, I'd say that to my somewhat inexpert eye, I'm not sure I'd put equal emphasis on all four.

I think the balance of "the fact that you're dreaming" and "the dream environment" seems very important - if you focus too much on the dream environment, you risk losing lucidity, and if you focus too little, you risk losing your dream altogether and waking up. Get that wrong and it doesn't make much difference what you do about your dream body and goals.

Can anyone shed any light on the benefits of focusing on your dream body? None spring to mind, excepting if it's part of your goals for the dream...

I guess I'll search for Sivason's dream yoga stuff :-P

SammyTheSnake

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Dream body attention grounds you in the dream and keeps your focus away from the waking body, and focus on goals gives you a reason to continue. Motion really helps as well: just about every LD ending comes when I'm standing still.

It gets bad so I hid some of it,


7/11
3:00am It started with a call with someone saying my father was in the Erie Pa. hospital and I flew there wearing just shorts without thinking about it and went all over the hospital looking for him and up a wide stairway with beer colored water cascading down it maybe two inches deep and as usual I pee'd in it while flying up and at the top was one wavy looking nurse at a desk and another peeing making the flood on the stairs and when they saw me they asked can we help you and I told the sitting one about the call and she checked computers and said someone like that was registered in a hospital in California and I said no he's not, He's been dead for thirty years and finally thought maybe I was dreaming and and I evaporated the shorts thinking what a way to do a task and joined the other nurse peeing helping to flood the stairs and the sitting nurse got up and draped a hospital gown on me saying I looked sick,

(In between is over here) But it's rotten. http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/wobl...ask-one-59067/ :yddd:

I got an awful taste in my mouth and it tasted like toast with peanut butter and vinegar and I woke up with gut rot so bad I didn't even check to see if it was a false awakening but beat it into the kitchen for a bicarbonate of soda cocktail..

Hm, hm - looks like I should pull my socks up - no lucid dream for more than a week.
Or rather pull them down and off or something - but I sort of have to chime in with the general depravity - if I'd do the undress task, I know what will happen.
And I won't dare to propose it was DV member xyz then either...

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Originally Posted by StephL

Hm, hm - looks like I should pull my socks up - no lucid dream for more than a week.
Or rather pull them down and off or something - but I sort of have to chime in with the general depravity - if I'd do the undress task, I know what will happen.
And I won't dare to propose it was DV member xyz then either...

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It could be worse if you were a nurse :P:

Why is nobody eating any junk food? :cookiemonster:

I had a WILD this morning. I managed to find Dreamer AND get on an elevator, though I don't know if it actually counts since the elevator moved so slowly that I never actually ended up anywhere. Still, here's the attempt nonetheless so that a moderator can decide.

07.11.2014

Journey Toward Hell (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I'm lying in bed awake with my eyes closed when I feel a slight vibrating feeling that means I'm about to enter sleep. It would be great if I can turn this into a WILD since I wasn't even aiming for that. The vibrations grow stronger, and by the second wave I am fully within sleep paralysis. I figure I can just get up and start the dream. I'm wrong. I open my eyes, but I seem to have opened my physical eyes instead of my dream ones (something that I'm able to do while trapped in SP). When I do, the vibrations feel like they're tearing my head apart. I quickly shut my eyes again.

Surely if I just lie here, it'll HAVE to turn into a dream. I wait, but nothing happens except for more uncomfortable vibrations. I try to move, hoping I can just get up and walk into a dream. I'm completely unable to budge a single muscle, phantom or otherwise. Normally I can imaging rolling out of the bed to get the dream going. This doesn't work either. Maybe WILD isn't the best technique for someone who suffers from chronic sleep paralysis anyway.

Finally, I'm able to lift my dream arm. I grasp around blindly, reaching for something that I can use to pull myself up out of my body. I reach a dresser and finally manage to succeed in untangling myself from the physical world.

I'm standing in my bedroom just in front of the door. I do a quick RC just for good measure, but it's not necessary. I'm already lucid.

I run out the bedroom door, ending up in my childhood home. No way am I going to fail at my task this time! I do my best not to think of the dream ending as I exit my house. It's night time and pitch black outside, unlike in real life where the sun has just barely risen. I sprint across the street toward my neighbor's house. I call out for Dreamer, banging on the door.

The door swings open and a sleepy looking purple-haired girl stands there staring out at me. Finally! Some hint of success! "I found you!" I exclaim in delight. "Now we've got to find an elevator and make it down to Hell!"

I grab her hand and pull her out of the house, trying to convey the necessity for speed. We start to run down the road together, full throttle. "I know where an elevator is," she tells me, seeming to understand what's going on now after her brief confusion. "Follow me!"

As we run down the street, she asks me why I'm asleep at such a strange time. At first I don't understand; then I remember that she lives in Australia. "Oh, right. There's a huge time difference between where you are and where I am," I tell her. "Last time I checked, it was 7:00 in the morning here. That seems like a while ago and my alarm is supposed to go off at 7:30, so we really need to hurry!"

She leads me to a section of the street that never fails to have some kind of evil within my dreams. I hope this time will be different; I don't need any distractions. Dreamer veers to the right toward a farm that used to have donkeys irl. We run through the dark field toward an outhouse-shaped building. Suddenly, an evil looking farmer in a tractor begins riding toward us. I feel a twinge of fear at his appearance, but I ignore it.

We run into the "outhouse" which turns out to be far bigger on the inside than on the outside. I expect there to be an elevator in here. Instead, it's filled with hay and dirt. Dreamer and I climb up and hang from the ceiling like ninjas hoping to hide from the evil farmer. He'll never look up here, I tell myself.

He does. He looks up and sees us as soon as he walks into the building. An evil grin spreads across his face. Once spotted, Dreamer and I drop from the ceiling to face him. The man wordlessly turns and pulls a lever by the door. The floor drops away beneath us--- we're falling into a pit which most likely leads to Hell.

Dreamer gives me a helpful smile. "Does this count as an elevator?" she asks.

I don't think it does. I summon a platform beneath us. It's one of those circular platform elevators that I've only ever seen in video games. There's a vague rumbling noise as the elevator slowly descends deeper and deeper into the ground. It's dark, and there's not much scenery, so I start to become concerned with losing the dream.

"Can't this thing move any faster?" I complain. I run from wall to wall, trying to keep focused on the minimal imagery. It's no use. The dream fades and I have a false awakening.

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Originally Posted by LolaTheLoner

I'm completely unable to budge a single muscle, phantom or otherwise. Normally I can imaging rolling out of the bed to get the dream going. This doesn't work either. Maybe WILD isn't the best technique for someone who suffers from chronic sleep paralysis anyway.

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Wow, Great dream Lola but I wouldn't wish sleep paralysis on anyone.. I use mostly MILD and get SP only on waking maybe 3 times a year..MILD has it's drawbacks also though, Like becoming lucid from a dream sign in the middle of an already well developed story then trying to extricate yourself from it to do something else which is usually almost impossible but I don't like SP, I don't like it at all......

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Originally Posted by NyxCC

Why is nobody eating any junk food? :cookiemonster:

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There was a fair amount of noshing on my junk in my dream, does that count? :oops:

SammyTheSnake

Yay! I take it from my wings that that's considered a success. :D

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Originally Posted by woblybil

Wow, Great dream Lola but I wouldn't wish sleep paralysis on anyone.. I use mostly MILD and get SP only on waking maybe 3 times a year..MILD has it's drawbacks also though, Like becoming lucid from a dream sign in the middle of an already well developed story then trying to extricate yourself from it to do something else which is usually almost impossible but I don't like SP, I don't like it at all......

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Thanks! I've never had much success with MILD myself. I don't usually have much success with WILDing either, but every now and then it'll happen. I end up in sleep paralysis sometimes as much as once a week depending on stress levels and other factors that I'm not sure of. It usually spikes when I get back into LDing for some reason. Probably because of all the interruptions in my sleep schedule. It can be... torture sometimes. Vibrations so intense that it borders on pain, entities attacking me with almost no means of defending myself, creepy figures looming over my bed... Even so, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with SP. Even the bad episodes give me a cool story to tell, and there are some instances that are actually quite pleasant. So I wouldn't ever give it up (not that I have a choice in the matter), despite how terrifying it can be sometimes.

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Originally Posted by NyxCC

Why is nobody eating any junk food? :cookiemonster:

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I was going to eat "Mexican Kia" which is apparently a dream dessert Gab found in a mansion, but I woke up before I could taste it. It looked like a scone.

Wonderful dream Lola!!
You wanted to go to hell with her!? Well - you're an adventurous spirit then - I really like it!
May your SP not bother you too much, but equip you with good stories and many successful transitions more!

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Originally Posted by LolaTheLoner

Yay! I take it from my wings that that's considered a success. :D



Thanks! I've never had much success with MILD myself. I don't usually have much success with WILDing either, but every now and then it'll happen. I end up in sleep paralysis sometimes as much as once a week depending on stress levels and other factors that I'm not sure of. It usually spikes when I get back into LDing for some reason. Probably because of all the interruptions in my sleep schedule. It can be... torture sometimes. Vibrations so intense that it borders on pain, entities attacking me with almost no means of defending myself, creepy figures looming over my bed... Even so, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with SP. Even the bad episodes give me a cool story to tell, and there are some instances that are actually quite pleasant. So I wouldn't ever give it up (not that I have a choice in the matter), despite how terrifying it can be sometimes.

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There is a cure for sleep paralysis, Well known to shrinks and AP'ers.. At any time you don't like it just suck in a quick breath and it will be instantly gone.. That's the reason we can be startled awake and jump right out of bed, When were startled we usually suck in a quick breath.. Of course all your sleep prep and any chance for a lucid dream are also gone with it......
Just saying ...

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Originally Posted by StephL

Wonderful dream Lola!!
You wanted to go to hell with her!? Well - you're an adventurous spirit then - I really like it!
May your SP not bother you too much, but equip you with good stories and many successful transitions more!

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Thanks! :D
And yeah, the Hell part is a personal task of mine.

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Originally Posted by woblybil

There is a cure for sleep paralysis, Well known to shrinks and AP'ers.. At any time you don't like it just suck in a quick breath and it will be instantly gone.. That's the reason we can be startled awake and jump right out of bed, When were startled we usually suck in a quick breath.. Of course all your sleep prep and any chance for a lucid dream are also gone with it......
Just saying ...

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I've tried it, but that seldom works to get me out of SP. I've tried changing my breathing pattern in all different kinds of ways, even holding my breath, but doing so takes ages to pull me out of it and usually makes it worse in the process. Only one thing I've ever tried works consistently. I can usually manage to take control of my right foot and shake it back and forth enough to jar myself awake. This doesn't always work, and it still takes quite a bit of effort, but it's better than any other technique as of yet. Why my foot is the only thing I'm able to move is beyond me.

I am a newbie, so I am very excited that this is the first lucid task I accomplished. Last month I tried the candy land task but could not succeed. This time I tried to eat lot of junk food, after an unsuccessful attempt to eat potato chips, I remembered I loved a deep fried item my grandma used to make. So I conjured her(she is deceased) and she made it. First I ate it hot off the oil, that was very soggy inside and then I remembered I need to wait for it to cool down before eating. Weird I did not burn my tongue. I went about talking to other DCs in the meantime and then went back to eating it again. It was very crunchy and tasty with right amount of salt and spicy. Wow it was awesome.

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Originally Posted by greendrive

I am a newbie.

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Welcome to the forum! :-)

SammyTheSnake

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Originally Posted by greendrive

I remembered I loved a deep fried item my grandma used to make. So I conjured her(she is deceased) and she made it. First I ate it hot off the oil, that was very soggy inside and then I remembered I need to wait for it to cool down before eating. Weird I did not burn my tongue. I went about talking to other DCs in the meantime and then went back to eating it again. It was very crunchy and tasty with right amount of salt and spicy. Wow it was awesome.

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That sounds awesome! I can definitely feel you, because there are some things that only my Oma makes, and I love them so much. Thankfully, I've gotten all her recipes from her this past winter <3 Does anyone have the recipe for that fried item your grandma used to make? It would be amazing if you could make it for yourself! Also, welcome :D

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Originally Posted by greendrive

I am a newbie, so I am very excited that this is the first lucid task I accomplished. Last month I tried the candy land task but could not succeed. This time I tried to eat lot of junk food, after an unsuccessful attempt to eat potato chips, I remembered I loved a deep fried item my grandma used to make. So I conjured her(she is deceased) and she made it. First I ate it hot off the oil, that was very soggy inside and then I remembered I need to wait for it to cool down before eating. Weird I did not burn my tongue. I went about talking to other DCs in the meantime and then went back to eating it again. It was very crunchy and tasty with right amount of salt and spicy. Wow it was awesome.

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Wow - well done - grandmothers are usually rather advanced! :wink:
Congratulation - what a first post - welcome along!

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Originally Posted by KestrelKat

That sounds awesome! I can definitely feel you, because there are some things that only my Oma makes, and I love them so much. Thankfully, I've gotten all her recipes from her this past winter <3 Does anyone have the recipe for that fried item your grandma used to make? It would be amazing if you could make it for yourself! Also, welcome :D

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We could make a recipe thread - but I actually answer to you for extended platypussic greetings!

http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/...ps158c11ce.jpg

I fell asleep while stretching, and had a dream where I was about to act out the "Turn Down for What" music video. As the intro to the song was building, I realized I was dreaming, and it would be fun to do the TOTM at the same time. The naked task was the first one to pop into my head, but I woke up before doing much of anything. That dream was naturally headed in the naked task direction anyway, so it seemed like an easy two in one deal for me.

I had a soup boiling over on the stove, so probably good that I woke up before it got too messy.

That is an amazing platypus! It looks like its flying through the air, completely dry except for a small wet patch by the bill. Just want to rub its chin!