Aware - the Mortal Mist NewsletterJune 16, 2009
From The EditorThis is the
International Year Of Astronomy 2009, a global effort to promote astronomy, initiated by the
International Astronomical Union and the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Star gazing, for me, fits wonderfully into lucid dreaming efforts. When I am away from the city lights, I love to grab a pair of binoculars and head outside during
WBTB time. No matter where you are, there are interesting things to see and learn about in the night sky.
I have added a
link to the column of my favorite astronomy writer,
Phil Harrington:
Phil Harrington's Binocular Universe. His monthly column is freely accessible at
http://cloudynights.com. While Phil hasn't (yet) been lured into the world of Lucid Dreaming, we do have his blessing for adding the link.
Astronomy is an easy and non-fattening hobby to get hooked on, especially when you don't need any major time or monetary investments. While telescopes are nice, all you really need are your eyes and maybe a pair of binoculars, because
two eyes are better than one!This issue includes:
- How Do They Do It? Featuring Naiya
- DreamSketcher Contest Winner is Pancaka!
- Dream Recall Workshop In Final Week
- One Year Ago In The Mist
- Chat Update
- A Word About The MM Staff
- Are You Asleep? A Short Film by joshbotch
- Community and System Notes - many cool updates!
- Last Word on Featured Challenges
--
How Do They Do It?Naiya was our 100th member here in The Mist, and was the co-sponsor of our recent Dream Yoga workshop. She has attained what most of us aspire to - the ability to achieve lucidity pretty much at will, though she is not what we would normally call a "natural" because it took effort and practice. She remains among our top lucid dreamers here at
MM - be sure to check out her
dream journal!
We recently asked
Naiya how she does it:
"The most important thing that helps me have more lucids is consistency. In order to become good at anything, you have to practice. A few lucky people have enough talent to get by without practicing, but the rest of the population will never get anywhere unless they are consistent with their routine.
"The first things I started doing many years ago were the old-fashioned RCing when I looked at my hands or checked the time, and the very basic "I will have a lucid dream" autosuggestion.
"What I do now is not very different. During the day I keep my eyes open for things that are common in my dreams. My dreams often take place in places I haven't been to in years (or at all), so I try to be very aware of where I am at all times, how I got there, and where I'm going. I also
RC whenever people around me act strange because a lot of my DCs like to masquerade as people I know. Two or three DCs only exist in my dreams so when they come as themselves, I realize I'm dreaming instantly.
"There are several things I do diligently every night. First of all, I keep water and a journal next to my bed so I don't have to get up for them. I jot down anything in my journal that is on my mind and might prevent me from thinking about dreaming, for example things I need to do the next day. I have a tendency towards anxiety so sometimes I have to tell myself "the best thing I can do for myself right now is get a good night's sleep." It helps to give myself permission to not worry about things when I'm trying to sleep.
"As I'm falling asleep, I tell myself that I am already dreaming as I fall asleep, and I try to make sure it's in my very last thoughts. If I have a task I want to do, I just imagine myself doing the task.
"I am a light sleeper so I wake up during the night a lot. When I wake, I jot down details from the dreams I just had, get a sip of water, use the bathroom if I need to and then repeat the above as I fall back asleep. I never need to be awake more than a few minutes for a
WBTB.
"When I
WILD, I do something similar to a
FILD. That is, I relax my body, think about some of the previous night's dreams, and when I feel as if I'm about to drop off, I pretend to move my arms. I don't make them twitch or move, I just pretend that I've moved them. If I do this a few times I usually fall into
SP, which sometimes only lasts a few seconds. When it subsides and I try to move, I'm in a dream.
"I have a lot of false awakenings so I always
RC when I wake before even thinking of anything else. Sometimes I can induce false awakenings by telling myself I'll wake in a dream as I fell asleep. Autosuggestion in my opinion takes a long time to sink in, but once it does you can do almost anything. When I get up in the morning I record details of my dreams, and then I type them up in detail on
MM.
"When I'm having a dry spell, it helps to go over my old dreams and remember my favorite lucid dreams as I'm falling asleep at night to give me inspiration."
Thank you,
Naiya!
--
DreamSketcher Contest Winner!Pancaka's drawing of the robot from
Cold Blooded's Shootout dream took the top spot in our first DreamSketcher contest. Runners up were Serith and eencrypt. All three drawings will take the place of our
Featured Dream for the next month, and all entries will remain enshrined in a
permanent gallery.
--
Dream Recall Workshop in Final WeekTopics covered so far include
Dream Journaling, (a topic we have added to our front page tutorials,)
Nightly Notes,
Factors Influencing Dream Recall and
Questioning Your Dreams.
This leisurely-paced workshop will wrap up this week, but there is still plenty of time to get involved. As always, the material presented will be archived and accessible at any time. Thank you,
Luminous!
--
One Year Ago In The Mist- Raklet was interviewed by AspirationRealized for the June 11 Newsletter, discussing his vision and work on the DreamCatcher, the Mortal Mist system and a bit about his personal life
- Snowy Egypt had been made chat moderator
- Our 150th member had just joined
--
Chat UpdateOur chat node was recently updated. The biggest visible change a status icon in the upper right corner, which shows orange when your client is waiting for a response from the server and green when chat is idle. Clicking the status icon will force your client to retry. Multiple bug fixes are included as well.
We tried implementing a Flash Socket for improved chat response, but the results were not very good. We will continue watching for improvements in that option with the hope of eventually being able to make it available for flash-enabled browsers.
--
A Word About The MM StaffThe staff arrangement here at Mortal Mist is a bit different from what might be expected if you have spent time at other online forums. We have an administration team consisting of
Burns,
Clairity,
Moonbeam,
Raklet,
Seeker and me. Our roles here vary a bit, but all are focused on system function and security, maintaining backups, and with implementing and facilitating various activities and projects.
The Admin Team members are not here to act as moderators; it is up to member-owners take to take care of moderating themselves. If you look at it that way, we have three hundred and eleven (and counting) moderators here at Mortal Mist - a perfect one-to-one ratio. Tools available to all for moderating purposes include editing and deleting posts without time limit and the ability to lock any thread you start.
We do have two moderators for the Chat System -
Snowy Egypt and
Luminous. Beyond that, you may notice some here have blue stars. These are our
Ambassadors - representatives of all the different nations represented here at Mortal Mist.
Anybody with an interest in changing or improving things around here is invited to do so. Mortal Mist is YOUR community. Member-owners may take as much responsibility as they wish, from graphical and skin work to programming projects to planning and conducting workshops. If you have an idea, just start a thread in
Town Hall and we'll work together to find a way for you to have at it.
--
Are You Asleep? A short film by joshbotchA wonderful short film,
Are you Asleep?, based on one of his lucid dreams, has been created by
joshbotch and added to the Mortal Mist YouTube channel. The thread with the link and discussion about the short film is located
here.
--
Community and System Notes-
Luminous has contributed a collection of
Advice for Beginning Lucid Dreamers to our growing collection of front page tutorials
- You can view ALL
DreamSketcher drawings by following
this link- Thanks to
Raklet's ongoing efforts, you can now add alt tags to you
DreamSketcher images to make them search engine friendly.
Dodobird should soon be implementing this part in his applet so that it prompts you for a title. You can also add the title manually using the built in BBCode function:
[img alt=My Title]pic.gif[/img]
You just add an alt= statement inside of the opening img tag. If you do not specify an alt tag, then the dream sketch will automatically be detected during the post process and a default alt title will be added "Dream Sketch"
-
Sara had requested the ability to rate dreams on a 1-5 star rating. We now have a set of smilies that look like this:
Suggested use - add one of the smilies right after the title assigned to your dream. Multiple titles in a single post will work as well.
Boring Fragment This dream was just ok
Sex dream This was just average
Super awesome dream! Wow, it rocks!!!!!!!
The smilies can be found on the popup menu for extended smilies. They can also be added manually, using the following codes:
:1s: One Star
:2s: Two Stars
:3s: Three Stars
:4s: Four Stars
:5s: Five Stars
Use of any of these smilies is automatically detected during the post process and an appropriate tag is created. You can easily see, for example, any five star dream by clicking on the tag "Five Stars".
One downside to the automatic detection is that they are detected everywhere. Any post (not just DJs) that uses these smilies will be tagged and show up, and they can't be deleted because the tag interface is not shown anywhere other than the dream journal section. This issue will be fixed at a later time.
- Your personal
tags can now be viewed in addition to "My Tags", "Popular Tags", "Tags by Gender", and "All Tags". Look for a little green tag after the Email, PM and IM icons in the user's quick profile that is displayed next to their post. Click on the tag. This will open a new window that will display all of that particular user's individual tags.
--
Last WordYou will notice that I'm sporting some cups in my signature! These are from the
Featured Monthly Challenges. (For most people, the trophies will be displayed in their avatar block.) This is a great month to go for the gold! Here are the challenges:
Basic - Do a REALITY CHECK to become lucid or to confirm lucidity. Describe in the challenge thread where you were, what reality check you did (i.e, breath thru plugged nose, finger thru palm, counted fingers, etc.) and what happened next.
Intermediate - Go through glass (dive or push yourself thru, etc.) Describe in the challenge thread where you were, how you did it and the final outcome.
Advanced - Visit the Mortal Mist Dreamscape, a virtual gathering place to share whatever you can with other dreamers. Find it here:
http://mortalmist.com/forum/index.php/topic,1373.0.html. Describe how you did it, what you saw, felt, etc..
-OR-Time Travel - travel either forward or back in time. Describe where you were, how you did it, what you saw and the final outcome.
My three cups are from completing the Easy and Intermediate tasks.
If I can do it, it should be a breeze for you - so get to dreaming!
pj. . .
