A few questions(Oldhag,stuck in dreams,staying lucid,recall)

Quest for Lucidity
1

(Have had no lucid dreams so far) *Please be prepared to read ALOT :razz: *
My name (or at least my screenname) is MentalWar (not a crazy war or anything, more of a war taking place inside of the head if anyone is curious about that, anyways, back on topic) I am thirteen, and a very, very paranoid person :razz:. I have learned about lucidity about three days ago on a site, which i was browsing due to lack of interest into any other activities that had been lying around my house. Anyways, i got very interested at the interactions avalible to a “simulated reality” that is projected inside of ones sub-consciousness. I researched many sites, the downsides, the upsides, the left and rightsides ( :razz: ) and concluded that lucid dreaming seemed like something that i could use to test in living out fantisies, restoring my friendships with my (ex?)-best friend, and perhaps getting a glimpse of this “enhanced” self-awareness. Now as i mentioned many,many sentences ago, that i am paranoid. Yes. Very. I am scared of death, (probably everyone is but this is at an extreme level basically). I fear of going on self-journeys with no guidance or help (but perhaps a DG would help me in a LD, except i dont know if i could find mine right away.). Now to my questions. For one, i have had a technique i have been using, which has actually almost worked until, yes, i freaked out and thus woke up. I would sit in the bed and basically tell myself “I am going to be dreaming” in different forms until i could sleep, and yes i did research many of the other ways (if im using one of the ways, please tell me). I could concentrate, and keep myself awake-sleeping in a sort of way. After a while it would feel very numb and i could feel myself drifting away,and being still self-aware of existance, but then comes the “what the heck” feeling, making me sit up and lose all focus on the dream. Once i came close to being in the dream, and as soon as i awoke, the feelings of grass and wind and all (at least i think that was what it was) dissapeared.
--------------SECOND QUESTION----------- My second question focuses around the “Old Hag Syndrome”. As you may have heard me say, and tell you that i said, and now are hearing me tell you that i told you that i said that, i am paranoid. Paranoid, with a slight case of OCD. (Very mild, no lining things up, but sorta, repeating things and thinking things over and over until my freaking brain hurts, but i do have some control.) I dont WANT, someone sitting on my chest, faces flying around the room, or giant solitare cards dancing everywhere, in fact i want to go from sleep to dream, no sleep paralisys. I know nature or whatever spiritual force, perhaps just a force from our minds, is not always (or is it?) perfect. I have the best family in the world, the best life, well not socially, not too many friends, like 3, and i intend to keep them all. My father was saying how he thinks the old hag might be some sort of manifestation, or some spritual being that intercepts the between awakeness channel of your mind. Like if a radio is on half channel, anything can leak in. NOW, tell me how i could get around this, PLEASE! :help:

--------Third Question----------

Can i get STUCK in a dream. That is my main problem (well the hag part is my first priority, maybe this is my second.)
I dont want to live in some fantasy world (all the time) where dumb DC people say “Vinegar grows on the moldy fingernails of pineapples.” or “I bought a car from that tree over there.” In fact, im worried about concsiousnesses switching, for instance, my awake life seems like a dream while my dreams are… awakeish. Please tell me if dreams end at some time no matter how long you spin or rub your hands. Cause i think i freak out enough trying to get off a subway.
(BTW, please dont bash me down and say all i say is pointless. Its my first 3 days attempting LD and im only 13.)
Please help me
-MentalWar

2

You were nearly there and WITH NO OLD HAG :happy:
Old hag is just your mind making up a reason for the feeling you can sometimes get on your chest due to sleep paralysis. There is nothing to fear. You could change it into something like a cute puppy … on the lucid crossroads site ‘the figure’ can be a guide to where you want to go in your dream.
If you really want to avoid Old Hag and being aware of sleep paralysis then use MILD or even FILD instead. Information on all the techniques are in the knowledge base forum.

You can’t get stuck in a dream. most dreamers complain about the LDs ending sooner than they would like :wink: You will always wake up … just enjoy the experience :happy:

3

Thanks! I think im going to fall asleep easier tonight without all those troubles on my mind :razz:

Er… i have ONE more question though, itd be nice if someone would tell me this and until i had a LD i probably wouldnt have any more questions.
Is there any techniques that someone could provide me that could boost my dream recall? Ive remembered 3 tonight but i usually havent remembered any for the last 3 months, if someone could list a way to help me then i think most of my questions would be gone.

Thanks!
-Mental War

4

Sounds like you’re using WILD, which I’ve heard was the most reliable but also the most difficult. If you don’t want the startling, tilting feeling of your inner ear balances shutting down for the night; sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations… maybe DILD techniques might be better (RC’s, autosuggestion)? If you wake up in the middle of the dream itself, you would have skipped all the falling asleep.

The Hag is cultural… In Japan and Vietnam the same experience is attributed to a ghost, and so I think if you can get into a more modern mindset then you can recognize the state for what it is if/when it comes (and affirm that it does absolutely no real harm.) That latter mindset can be your personal “white noise” between radio frequencies.

If you think about it, that’s the state we’re already in: we autopilot through waking life, and mistake dreams for reality while we’re asleep, and that’s why we have non-lucid dreams. Exercises in lucid dreaming should make us more aware of what’s real and what’s in our head, not less.

Of course, if you’re going to (for example) do RC’s while you’re awake, that means you’ll have to sincerely doubt what you know to be reality for a few seconds every day… but it shouldn’t spiral into delusion unless you’re also getting into philosophy (Our eyeballs make everything look upside-down until your brain corrects it: the physical senses lie! You know how everybody has a different opinion, and everybody’s opinion should be respected even though they’re different views of the same thing? That means that… there is no objective reality! Mwahahaa!! :ebil: We are all stuck in the dream of our paradigm!)

My only warning, is that lucid dreamers tend to have more FA’s… and if you dream of going to the bathroom because you think you’re awake, you might wet the bed. Embarrassing, but not something to call the asylum over. :shy:

I only expand the detail into real sentences if I’m putting the dream on my online DJ’s for other people to read. When I first wake up, though, I write in keywords and broken phrases. Sometimes, reading it over, I remember something more and squeeze in another phrase between the lines. But it waxes and wanes: sometimes (after years of more-or-less diligent DJ’ing) I won’t remember one thing about it, rarely and randomly I’ll recall five or six dreams from one night in vivid detail and I don’t know what caused such high recall, most times I only remember one “story-arc” per night and that’s good enough for me.

I’ve heard advice like, write in present tense so that you’re re-living the dream as you record it, and don’t wake up naturally-- use an alarm clock or something to interrupt REM sleep and leave you with a better memory of where you’ve just been… but I personally haven’t found either of those working for me.

Hope this helps!

5

rather than read your post or answer your questions,
for that shall be done by others

lets focus on this statement You are (“a very paranoid person”)

whether that is true or not, its your obligation from now on to think yourself into being a confident happy blissful person,

there are people that are blissful and cheerful, so everything always goes right for them,

so recruit your imagination in making yourself as you want to be.

6

my suggestion to you is to calm down. it is impossible to get stuck in a dream. about the needing guidance in a dream, my suggestion is that you tell yourself that it is impossibloe to get stuck in a dream and that NOTHING can happen to you. anything wierd that you feel is just a feeling. thats it. a feeling that cant hurt you at all. plus a dream is the perfect place that you dont need guidance, you will have to make choices on your own and a dream is the best place to start. (PS i know the feeling of needing giudance, when i was little if my mom asked me to get something she would need to give me exact intructions. i would start to freak out if she just said get me a blank.) (pps im also 13 and know the wierd feeling your get sometimes when trying to LD.) happy dreaming and i hope you sucseed.( wow i cant spell)

7

Thanks for all the awesome replies, About white noise, i tend to not be able to sleep with static in the background. When i was little i had a false awakening… i think i got like… about 30 minutes into it until i realized that we didnt have random explosions on a regular basis. XD

Edit:
I almost had a dream induced lucid dream last night ^^… er… but sadly something else happened that made me forget it was a dream halfway in the second i was realizing it. So is there any ways other then rc’s that can help me realize its a dream?