In The MistJanuary 21, 2010
Greetings, fellow mortals!January is bringing changes to the Mortal Mist community. We are moving ahead with a major board clean-up and reorganization, as noted in the System Notes section below. We welcome a new Aegis Guild member. Our Featured Lucid Dream Of The Month has returned from wherever it had run off to. The Technical Guild is beginning to evaluate new options to open up the HTML front end in a way that will make it truly and completely member-manageable without the need for sysop intervention. We are preparing to host an exciting 15 day workshop focusing on some of the prevailing theories about dreams.
What else is going to change and improve? That, my friends, is entirely up to YOU. Jump into
The Guilds and get involved!
We are also announcing a new angle on the effort of reaching out to the world to raise awareness of lucid dreaming:
http://lucidityblog.com.
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Engaging With DreamsBurned Up will be hosting our next workshop,
Engaging With Dreams, from February 1 through 15. He describes it:
". . . a short facilitative workshop where we can explore what happens when we engage with our own dreams and other people's. And also to critically engage with some of the theories which exist about dreams. Although intended for non-lucid dreaming, people may find it useful to see how the methods can be applied to lucid dreaming too.
"The workshop involves sharing material from two dreams (one each week) and discovering how our own resources, other people's resources and published resources may be of interest to us.
"I hope to show that dreamwork is not a dull, pretentious discipline limited to those with fixations about mothers, sex and tenuous symbolism. It is about how we can use our own resources - essentially our selves and our own experiences - to the mysterious unconscious world of dreams.
"The workshop takes place 1st to 15th February 2010, with sessions starting each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The more the merrier!"
Join
Burned Up and the rest of us in
Seeker's Corner to share in this unique opportunity to expand our relationship with our dreams.
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Community and System Notes- Please join us in welcoming mu to the Aegis Guild. While he may not be the most visible member on the boards, he has contributed tremendously to the technical side of things here at Mortal Mist. mu has been with us since August of '08 and is among our top lucid dreamers. He is focusing on system integration, programming and security, and joins Raklet and me as a sysop responsible for running and maintaining the host computer. Thank you, mu, for agreeing to take on the responsibilities of this level of involvement.
- Our Featured Lucid Dream Of The Month has returned, thanks to Moonbeam, along with the programming wizardry and innovation of mu.
- If you wish to add your thoughts and ideas for reorganization of the board before the change takes place, jump into the discussion here.
- We suffered a communications outage this morning, between about 10:00 and 11:30 Eastern time. There were no problems with our systems or infrastructure - the problem was an area-wide outage.
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LucidityBlog.comhttp://lucidityblog.com went live on January 15. A few alert people have spotted the link running in the newsflasher or the Mortal Mist twitters linking a few of the articles, but this is the first formal announcement to anybody.
Here is the
About from the site:
What could possibly justify the addition of yet another blog to cyberspace?
Lucid dreaming is the reason for this one. But there is more to it than lucid dreaming, so please let me explain.
The world of lucid dreaming is well represented by websites explaining how to do it and by forums full of people sharing the experiences. The art and practice of lucid dreaming, however, remains veiled to the general population. The uninitiated often don’t know it exists or believe it is possible, and many of those who are aware tend to lump it in with the occult and New Age spiritualism. Lucid Dreaming, in short, has a generally bad or nonexistent reputation outside the circles of those who practice it.
Those of us who are lucid dreamers know it is a safe practice that doesn’t require any particular belief system. It is something pretty much anybody can learn to do as an art and discipline rather than as a spiritual undertaking. And what an amazing art it is! The reward is being able to enter a world all your own, where you can wield unlimited control over. . . everything. For examples of the possibilities, just read some of the lucid dreams posted in public dream journals.
The one thing you won’t find much of in the Lucid Dreaming world is any effort to reach out to the rest of the world. If somebody isn’t deliberately searching for information, they aren’t likely to ever learn about it. This is where LucidityBlog.com is intended to fit in.
Here we will share information about Lucid Dreaming and its impact on the lives of those who practice it. We will publicize the places Lucid Dreaming is showing up in society and culture. We will do all we can to let the world know about this amazing human capability.
If you have an interest in contributing, please register and then drop a note to pete "at" lucidityblog.com with your username. If you wish to use anything here, please respect the terms of the Creative Commons license under which all material is published.
We invite anybody who wishes to share in this endeavor to join us, and warmly welcome you to LucidityBlog.com.
The idea is to publish essays and articles about lucid dreaming intended to be read by a very general audience rather than lucid dreamers. Anything that sheds light on lucid dreaming, connects it to popular culture, reveals where it is showing up in society and events or simply explains it in a way that is easily digested by the general population is encouraged and welcome.
This outreach is not going to be limited to MortalMist, but you are the first hearing about it, and we will have an advance opportunity to be involved in getting it started.
Anybody who wishes to be involved is encouraged to join up. Drop Moonbeam or me a note here if you choose to register, and we'll grant you author status. (Registering sets up a "subscriber" account by default. If we recognize you from here, we'll grant you immediate author status anyway.)
I'm very excited to be sharing this with the Mortal Mist community, and look forward to the possibility of it becoming an effort that can begin pulling all of the lucid dreaming communities together in a joint effort to tell the world about lucid dreaming. This blog is just the first step - there is more yet to come.
We know something the world would love to know about. They just don't know it. . . yet.
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Final ThoughtsIn closing, here is one of my short essays from the
new site:
The Call Of The DreamMy discovery of lucid dreaming was really more of a re-discovery, as I had some strange lucid dreams as a child. I didn’t know what they were though, so most of my life was spent in ignorance of what I was missing.
In February of 2006, I stumbled onto an online article talking about lucid dreaming. That night I had a brief lucid dream that ended with me running through a beautiful lush meadow with my dog. The experience was hyper-real to all my senses and seemed absolutely miraculous. I could run like the wind, do cartwheels, smell and feel the air as I rushed through it. . . and my joyous dog began turning into a panda as she ran along with me.
That taste was enough to know that I wanted to spend as much time in that magical place as possible. The anticipation of getting back there remains as intense as anything I’ve ever longed for in my life.
It is frustrating to try explaining this to people who haven’t experienced lucid dreams. There just aren’t words that can be put together to convey the majesty and magic of it. Even after four years of lucid dreaming, the passion to get back there and spend as much time as possible hasn’t waned a bit.
Anybody who has experienced a lucid dream will understand exactly what I’m talking about.
And to those of you who haven’t. . . all I can really think to say is that you quite literally have no idea what you are missing. There is no way you could possibly know.
But you can find out.
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I'll be looking for you in my dreams.
pj. . .
