Aware - The Mortal Mist NewsletterMay 12, 2009
From The EditorGreetings, fellow dreamers!
We try to put out a newsletter every couple weeks. I often head into the job wondering how we can pull enough news together to make it relevant and interesting, as life here in The Mist seems so low key and relaxed. Time and again, after looking back on recent events, I am amazed at just how much has gone on. We have a strange way of accomplishing a great deal without a lot of pyrotechnics, shouting and hand-waving. As usual, we have a very full newsletter. I hope you enjoy it!
Today's issue includes:
- How Do They Do It? Featuring iadr
- One Year Ago In The Mist
- Mortal Mist on Twitter
- The Great Lucid Weekend of '09
- Unseen Wombat's Homemade Lucid Dreaming Mask
- System and Community Notes
- A Tourist's Guide to the World Lucid Dreaming
- Special Thank-you to our behind the scenes help
How Do They Do It?iadr is a founding members of Mortal Mist, and is among our most prolific Lucid Dreamers. It is not unusual for him to post eight or nine lucid dreams each night in his dream journal,
iadr's Lucid Adventures. He currently holds the top spot for recorded dreams by a margin of over 2000 dreams, and holds the second highest number of recorded Lucids. His lucidity level, recall and ability to complete tasks and goals is astonishing.
We recently asked him how he does it:
"How do I do it?
"Concerning lucid dreaming, I don't, as my subconscious does it for me.
"I simply try to stay out of his way and let him do his thing, because he has far more experience in the dream world than I do, and is able to take me places and accomplish things that I would never be able to do on my own.
"I simply let him know what my wishes are by visualizing things that I would like to accomplish, and also have goals that I state out loud each day to let him know my desires.
"But when it comes to becoming lucid and doing things in the dream world, it's all him.
"He's always rearranging things around in my dream world, trying to wake me up to the fact that I am dreaming. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But he's always trying.
"I mainly try to tune into what my subconscious is doing by taking various supplements that make me more aware to what he is doing, and doing certain visualization exercises that help get my conscious mind out of the way so that he can take over.
"Once the lucids begin, I do my best to encourage him to keep them coming by using a technique referred to as Image Streaming, which consists of recording the images I am seeing or things I am experiencing on a digital voice recorder.
(Ed. note - Check out iadr's Image Streaming tutorial here. )"Concerning dream recall, there is a technique I've been using for a few months now that has improved my dream recall to a great extent, which practice is to review the dreams that I've had that week two or three times each day.
"I do this by memorizing the main themes of the dreams, and associating them with a list of 100 peg words that I got from a memory book over 20 years ago. Then at odd times during the day such as when I am jogging or taking a break, I go through those peg words and remember the dreams I've had that week. Sometimes by the end of the week when the dream count can often be 70 dreams or more, it can be a real challenge to go through that list, by it's a great way to improve one's memory.
"Other than that, I record my dreams twice a day, first in an Excel spreadsheet during the night, which I use to analyze the dreams in, and then on this site, as I found some time ago that going over my dreams again before going to bed drastically increases my recall."
Thank you,
iadr.
One Year Ago In The Mist- Seeker was running his Back To Basics workshop
- Our old server was not handling the increased load well. Our present server was nearly configured and ready to be put online
- The Chat Node was added
- The Awake Journals forum was added
- We had topped 120 members and already had more than 11,000 posts
Follow Mortal Mist on Twitter!Thanks to
wolvendeer, Mortal Mist's news items are now being published through
Twitter. Click the link and sign on to stay up to the moment on new items being added to our
News Page.
The Great Lucid Weekend of '09A last minute whim emerging from a chat discussion resulted in the declaration of
The Great Lucid Weekend of '09. The idea was simply to rack up as many lucid dreams from those participating as possible. The Weekend spanned Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. We recorded a total (as of this writing) of 37 lucid dreams. Sunday night's goal was a group visit to Luminous, in Norway, though nobody seems to have accomplished it.
Discussion in that thread has brought up a number of excellent ideas for new twists on challenges and goals. Read the thread
here and chime in on developing these ideas and bringing them to fruition.
Thanks to all who got involved in this little diversion. It was a lot of fun!
Homemade Lucid Dreaming MaskDream Masks were among the first devices developed to help induce and trigger lucid dreams. The idea is to flash lights during
REM sleep, which can be seen through the closed eyelids while dreaming and be a reminder to do a Reality Check.
Unseen Wombat has posted
his method of making a Homemade Lucid Dreaming Mask. The instructions are comprehensive, including sources for components, schematic, circuit board layout and construction notes. If you enjoy electronics projects and lucid dreaming, you are encouraged to check this one out.
System and Community Notes- The More Stats page has been updated to show the Top 10 Lucid Dreamers and Top 10 Dreamers, as reported by our DreamCatcher system. Thank you, Raklet!
- The DreamSketcher applet has been updated with an eyedropper tool. Thank you, dodobird!
- The DreamSketcher Contest is ongoing. You still have a week remaining to submit your entries! The contest involves using the DreamSketcher to create drawings inspired by other people's journaled dreams. See this thread for details.
- Tsunami has written new tutorials for WBTB and FILD. He has permitted us to add the WBTB tutorial to our front page collection of tutorials.
- We now have a custom 404 File Not Found page. Check it out by screwing up any URL on our site, such as http://mortalmist.com/itainthere.html
- If you are reading this newsletter via email notification, you are missing the formatting and links. Reading it from within the forum will likely be a more wholesome and satisfying experience.
- Though we suffered no damage and our system's security was not breached, the Mortal Mist system was successfully hacked this past weekend through the exploit of a vulnerability in SMF and PHP. The hack involved a script injection that added extra code to our PHP files, apparently for the purpose of using our server for gambling spam. We are not alone in having been attacked in this manner - well over 750 SMF sites have reported being damaged and exploited by this same hacker. Thanks to some good luck and the sharp attention of Raklet and Luminous, the situation was caught within a few hours and corrected. Measures have been taken to prevent us from being exploited again in this manner.
Tourist's Guide to the World of Lucid Dreaming KnolI have published a
Google Knol for people curious about beginning a journey into lucid dreaming, titled
A Tourist's Guide to the World of Lucid Dreaming. It is a
moderated collaboration, meaning any and all are encouraged to edit, change and improve the work.
A Special Thank You to our Behind The Scenes HelpA lot of effort goes into keeping Mortal Mist humming smoothly. When the day to day jobs are handled properly, nobody realizes they are being done. There are many who contribute significantly, and I would like to bring attention to two of them today.
On top of all the other responsibilities of being a forum administrator,
Clairity has been handling the monthly challenges and tasks for us. This is not a small job - it requires daily attention to those posting successes and granting the trophy cups. At the beginning of each month the new challenges must be selected and posted, and all granted trophies from the prior month must be removed.
Clairity handles this so quietly and smoothly that it is easy to overlook the time and effort involved in keeping this feature going from month to month. Thank you,
Clairity.
Raklet is the co-system administrator for Mortal Mist, our resident expert on SMF Forum Software and has written all of the custom modifications to our system. Besides being the genius behind the ever-improving DreamCatcher system, he evaluates and tests every update and modification to determine compatibility with our systems. Just this past weekend he figured out we had been hacked, (as mentioned in the
System and Community notes above,) and spent many hours analyzing and helping fix the problems.
Raklet's gracious gifts of time, skill, knowledge, patience and attention to the Mortal Mist community are evident in our unique capabilities and consistent reliability. To say that we wouldn't be anywhere near our present levels of functionality without him is an understatement. Thank you,
Raklet.
There are many others involved in keeping Mortal Mist alive and vital. Everybody who checks in here, reads and comments on journals, shares their lucid dreaming and life journeys through journals and other posts, greets newcomers, offers suggestions and criticism, makes themselves available in Chat, or in any way offers energy and attention contributes to the magic that keeps us going.
Mortal Mist belongs to you, in whatever capacity you wish to own it. Thank you all for taking this responsibility so seriously - and for making this such a wonderful place to hang out and grow. There is no better bunch anywhere with whom to be sharing this amazing Lucid Journey.
It is truly an honor to be among such an amazing group of fellow travelers.
I hope to see you in my dreams!
pj. . .
