Here’s the latest from the front:

The original problem with the mask was the way the IC chip was installed. After I fixed that problem, I immediately finished the rest of the mask and went to sleep. This is where the progress stops.

It should be noted that becuase this is over winter break, my sleep schedule has been quite irregular compared to my usual 10-11 to 6-7 sleep cycle. I have been going to bed around 3-5 and getting up around 2-3.

First Night:
I went to sleep with the mask on, all systems go, lights blinked that I had it set correctly. I woke up with the mask behind my bed on my bookshelf. I don’t remember taking it off, so I must have done it in my sleep.

Second Night:
I went to sleep again, everything checked out. I woke up about 4 hours later with the mask still on my face, but hurting quite badly. I took it off.

Third Night:
I tried the same thing again, I woke up about 6 hours through with the same problem. I tried adjusting it but the strap slipped into the side of my eye sockets and was too uncomfortable to sleep with. I took it off.

Fourth Night:
Almost the exact same as the third night. I resolved to fix it. So I did the obvious thing and loosened the mask.

Fifth Night:
Slept through the night with it on, nothing happened. I decided to make sure it really went off after five hours. I turned it on and did other things. Five hours later I checked it, and it blinked, four times, two groups of two. Satisfied, I did not alter it in any way.

Sixth Night (Last Night):
I woke up about six hours through with the mask on, still in the correct place. I tried to go back to sleep, couldn’t. I took the mask off and stayed in bed for a while.

There have been a few recurring things I haven’t mentioned. My heater has been going insane during the time I sleep and I have woken up several times being too hot. This may be interfering with the mask. As an alternative, it could also be a recurring dream sign, as I am always too sleepy to know if I’m awake or not.

Another thing that has happened since I loosened the mask is when I wake up. I have woken up in a semi-light environment, which may also be effecting the mask, as the lights are not very noticeable when the room is light.

The third problem might be my sleep cycle. It could simply be thrown out of whack and effecting the time of my REM cycles.

Solutions

1: Turn heater off.
2: Go to bed earlier or darken the room more.
3: Go to bed at the same time and wake up around the same time for a while.

I think I will probably end up simply darkening the room and making sure the heater is all the way off. I will keep you updated with any more problems that crop up and any success I may have.

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Well, I said I would let you know how that mask went, so here goes:

It has yet to work. My friend and I spent a while trying to figure out what was wrong with it, because it certainly isn’t the soldering. We quadruple checked that. At this point, its got to be the batteries or a dead component, and I am not looking forward to that particular witch hunt.

Just that small update. I do plan to get it working though.

-Hatter

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This was a dream I had a little while ago. I had it typed up, and I recently found it. Since it’s been a while since I’ve posted any dreams, I figured I’d post this very long dream.

Day Long Dream
Perceived time: About 24 hours

Ok guys, I have trouble remembering everything that went on in order, because it was a wild night, so I’ll just give you some of the more interesting parts.

When in Rome…
I was with some people vacationing in some place like Rome or Italy, perhaps France. We were in a downtown part of a city looking at the sites, when we meet up with another group of people. They are mostly girls, and hot ones too, so we decide to group with them. We see the sights for the rest of the day, and then when we go to go to wherever we are staying, we all cram into the back of one girls’ car. It was something like a sports car, so cramming 5 people was kind of hard. As we’re driving back to our hotel, the girl drives like she’s insane. I remember this happening multiple times, the girl would slow down, then accelerate as fast as possible, right before curves, while it was raining and wet. There was this one particular curve right next to this lake she almost always flew off of, but she didn’t, until this last time… We come around to that fateful curve, and she guns it like never before. We spin out more then usual this time, and fly into the water. One of the girls I’m sitting next to makes a swimming motion, and I get ready to jump out. Then I notice that we’re still moving, and that the car is skating over the surface of the water, apparently because of the speed. I look, up, see a sunroof, and open it. The same girl gives me a funny look, and I say “Just in case…” However, we make it to the other side of the lake, and drive up into this really undeveloped woody area, the only human presence being a mill. The road is nothing more then dirt, and in the mill yard, its sunk into the ground about four feet or so. I don’t remember any more of the car ride.

The Train

Some friends of mine are on a flat part of a train, the kind they use for those big shipping containers. I think these are the same traveling buddies from before, and I think we might have left from the mill on one of their trains I am telling one of my friends about how crazy that girl drove, and how she made us fly off into the lake. I remember making an angle with my hands to describe the turn she went off, and oddly enough, I can’t remember anything wrong looking about my hands.

memory fades out a little…

We’re still on the train, talking about next-gen consoles. I am saying how I like the Wii the best, and that the PS3 is doomed to failure. My friend is arguing against me, saying that the PS3 is going to pull it out in the end. This is funny because I actually favor the 360. I remember a small part of the dream was me buying a Wii, and playing Zelda for like three hours, and loving it. Again, I would have favored red steel over Zelda, but hey, its a dream. That we would talk about this with that friend in a dream really shows I associate him with the PS3, because he got one in the first shipment.

The “Hospital”

I am in some kind of medical facility, and I am one of the sick. There are many other people there. There is another room for those who are more heavily effected by this disease that everyone has, and I am told I am to go there. I become frightened, because I’ve heard from the other patients that this room, is bad, that there is something evil about it. I walk into the other room, and there are only a few people, perhaps four. It is very dimly lit with blue lighting, it has sort of an evil feel to it. The doctors tell me that I will get these ______ I don’t remember the word anymore, I’m not sure it exists in real life, but it meant something like dots, or spots I am at this point laying down in a weird half circle bed, which is hard to get comfortable in. The doctors, whom I get a very evil feeling about, want to make sure that I know what they’re talking about. One of them shows me his hand, where there are something like ten sucker-like appendages over his hand. Now I’m really scared, this isn’t really a hospital, becuase the doctors have the same disease!

memory fades a little…

I am back in my bed, much later. Some guards come to take me away, telling me that it’s time. They take me through a dark passage outside of the hospital part of the building. Its rock, and its steep, and there are not lights, except for some kind of light coming from the end of the tunnel. There’s another person behind me, another one of the sick. I manage to scramble up this very steep circular spiraling passage, into the top. There, they have some kind of glowing armor with guns and ammunition. I pick it up like a power up, and it goes into third person. They say that I was now ready. Then we hear somebody else coming, and they say: Quick resign _____ Again, the word is lost to me, but I think it meant the same as armor, weapons, and talent I open up a menu and select that option, and I stop glowing. Then I wake up

Those are the best remembered of the many, there were many more fragments that I couldn’t tie into the main scheme of things. When I see the thing as a whole though, it really does feel like a day or so. If it didn’t take so long to write it down, I might have been able to capture more, but unfortunately… there was. Also worthy of note is that I got 12 hours of sleep last night, and woke up to a very small sound. I think this probably means that I was woken up during my last REM, but becuase it was a small noise, that I was ready to wake up. That’s probably why I remember so much. Why it felt like a day…maybe because of all the extra sleep? I don’t know.

EDIT: I just remembered, in another part of the dream, where I wasn’t riding in the back of the car, I looked in the side mirror and noticed I had really long hair. Like down to the middle of my chest. Weird.

-Hatter

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The Topic for Today is Dream Views, another lucid dreaming site with a very nice site layout.

However, there’s got to be substance beneath that for it to be a great site. It qualifies, with a unique way of presenting information about lucid dreaming. There are several articles on the main page that are meant to be read in order, to give a complete novice a decent idea of what lucid dreaming is about, and what they should do to start out. You can also read these piecemeal to get more information about a particular subject. They are somewhat basic though, and don’t go into too much detail on any one topic. For that level of detail, you’ll have to go to the tutorials section. Here there are extremely in depth tutorials for various techniques. There are also a variety of articles on other dreaming subjects.

I recently joined their forums, so I thought a little review of the site and its community might be in order. I haven’t been around the forum for more than a few days, but from what I’ve seen the community is fairly open and friendly. Not as open as ld4all, but that’s a very high level to hit. They have a lot of typical subsections of a dreaming community, plus a few more. Some of them seem a little superfluous, but one of them in particular is a real gem. This forum has an adoption program, for people interested in learning the basics of dreaming, and who are interested in learning in a one on one mentor situation. There are a few requirements, but they are quite reasonable, and the only big one is you must be a member for two weeks before either adopting or becoming adopting.

Dream Views is also in the middle of a large dream journal transfer, to a separate part of the site. I seem to remember reading about specific features that will be available to members using these journals, aside from the obvious organization.

Another topic which drew my eye was the “Community Pages” section. They are offering free hosting and advertising to forum members who wish to start a dreaming related site. I personally think this is a great way to grow communities and encourage dreamers. It’s also a great way to give to the community. I will look into it and let you know what the deal with that is once I get a little more known in the community.

Well, to wrap it up, Dream Views is a very unique site, offering many things that are unique (as far as I have seen.) They have a friendly community, a snazzy site theme, and some great community growing programs in works right now.

Dream On
-Hatter

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Well, it’s time to talk about that oh so famous program, Brain Wave Generator. Why? Because I haven’t mentioned it earlier, and I really should have.

First: What is Bwgen? Simply put, it’s a program for inducing different brainwaves, hence the name. It does this by using binaural beats, which is playing two different tones, one in each ear. The brain hears the difference between the two, allowing sounds to be heard that could not normally be heard in the human spectrum of hearing. Using binaural beats, one can induce the desirable states of consciousness:(Alpha 12 - 8Hz, Beta 40 - 13Hz, Delta 4 - 0.1Hz, and Theta 7 - 4Hz) It a very effective aid in meditation, lucid dreaming, and hypnosis.

Second: How exactly do you use it for the aforementioned activities? It’s fairly straightforward to actually use it, all you have to do is change your routine a little to accommodate wearing headphones. (It will still work without them, but it is far more effective when the sound is isolated in each ear) Now, the somewhat harder part is actually creating a preset that will fit your personal activity, whether it be self hypnosis, meditation, or a Bwgen assisted WILD.

Third: How to actually write that preset. I’ve found a great informational article on Bwgen that I think should be considered the manual for the thing. Philthemn posted this walk through over at ld4all, credit goes to him, and credit is abound, for he really did his homework when writing this. He goes more in depth on the history and how-to of binaural beats, the various states of consciousness, and a few other things, all worth reading if you have the time. However, you can probably get by with my summaries if you don’t wish to read all of his article. If you’re going to skip, skip to the “Using Bwgen” part of the article. There he describes how to make a preset, and in the next section, he describes how it might be specifically applied.

Fourth: Find some time to actually try it, then be prepared for life to get a lot easier with Bwgen.

It really is amazing, and I recommend you download the free trial in the first link I wrote. The web page for the program has a few interesting things on it too, and is good to read as well, although if you read through my summary you’ll have the base ideas, if you read through Philthemn’s article, you’ll have all of the ideas. And if you read through the site, you’ll really get the ideas in full.

In closing, Bwgen rocks, is free, and can be used for many things. I recommended it personally, and so do many other dreamers with far more experience then I.

-Hatter

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I have decided to edit the Mission Statement for this blog a little, as I’ve noticed I’m leaning more and more towards dreaming and less towards psychic things, at least for right now. Because of this, I’ll be covering more dream related subjects.

I’ve also decided to begin reviewing books, sites, articles, and other information pertaining to dreaming and psychic material. I will begin reviewing sites this week. However, I will refrain from giving ratings because I think that dreaming sites and the like are too different to make a standard to judge them on. I will simply state things that I like and do not like. I hope you enjoy my recommendations, and use them to further your own knowledge in the fields of dreaming and psychic practice.

-Hatter

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In MAP News:

I have been extremely busy the past week, and haven’t had much time for anything outside of school. This has shown me that not only does it require will and determination to keep up with the MAP course, it requires focus. However, I am into the trance portion of Mastering Astral Projection. I am fairly excited to see where the book will go after this, but it is very interesting right now. The various methods used to induce trance are relatively effective, and some work better than others, at least for me. Right now my favorite is the elevator method, but I may find another, there’s still about four left. I’ll post my favorite one here

In PsiPog News:

Big things are just around the corner, or at least I like to think so. One thing is for sure, and that is that the forums will be closed sometime in January. In my opinion, it couldn’t happen sooner. The forums didn’t just go downhill in quality, they fell off a cliff. It went from meaningful, intelligent debate to some spam, and then shameless advertising and general lawlessness. That’s about where we are now. My hope is that sometime after the forums close, Sean Connelly (He dropped his old name of Peebrain, so I’ll use Sean Connelly from now on) will begin his new site about out of body experiences. That’s my main focus right now, and I have fallen out of the psychic community somewhat, so this could pull me back in.

In Other News:

I’ve got a lot of stuff right on the horizon, and a lot of it about to land in my lap. MAP would be a horizon, and a current event would be the lucid dreaming mask kit I ordered. I know it’s a shortcut, I know it’s cheating, but I’m going to use the lucid dreams this gives me to induce further ones. Then I plan to wean myself off of it. And for those of you who have ever seen how much lucid dreaming masks cost, I did not buy one of the 300$ ones. I bought a cheap kit, from a blogger who threw it together himself. 300$ is ridiculous considering the technology involved is quite simple. I’ll let you know how that goes. If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, you can see how to build one, or alternatively, you can order a kit for about 30$. You have to do a little soldering, but it’s well within the means of anybody who reads a little about it on the site.

I also recently purchased the Photoreading Whole Mind System. It’s a fancy name for a system that lets you read at about 25000 words a minute, or a page a second. How do you read that quickly? You don’t actually, you just kind of turn the pages, while staring at them with your eyes unfocused. It’s not mainstream, to say the least. You go through about 5 steps total, the actual photo reading is only a small part of it. I picked up this recommendation from Steve Pavlina’s blog. I haven’t gotten far enough in the course to recommend it, but Steve certainly does. Enough to get a discount for his readers. I am not saying you should buy it, but if you do, make sure to get it there, and save yourself a hundred or so dollars.

Updates should be more forthcoming, I’ll aim for once a week, around the weekend. So check back around Saturday weekly, at the least. Not to say I won’t update more often, if something important happens or the mood strikes me.

Keep Dreaming
-Hatter

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