I have a problem (or I think I have one) regarding the whole topic of lucid dreaming.
While I’m very interested in this and I know a lot of ways to put lucid dreams to good use, with many ideas on what to do and how to approach it, for some reason I have no clue about, just thinking about it or even reading about it makes me feel uneasy.
After I read a lot about it, I had some very memorable dreams I could remember easily, but I only once got lucid and that woke me up because I was too excited.
I know there’s nothing to fear, but it somehow creeps me out sometimes, and I guess that may be a reason for this blockade - and I strongly wonder where this fear comes from.
Well honestly, I think to combat this you have to figure out what about dreaming/lucid dreaming you’re getting scared about. Because really, like you said, there’s nothing to fear.
I’ll list a few possible fears here in case it’s one of these that’s causing you to get scared about lucid dreaming, this often happens to me where I just get scared about something and then find out what about it I was getting worried about.
-SP
-FA
-WILDing
-Some really strange myth about dreams
-Feeling pain or getting hurt/dying in the dream
If it’s not one of these, I can’t think of what would be causing the fear, and I don’t think I would have any advice after that.
Is it fear of the unknown? Or fear that you may experience sleep paralysis?
I had an uneasy feeling at one time due to the real feeling of lucid dreams that there is no police force/authority to protect you - you are on your own. But then I reasoned that I had all the authority I required within myself.
I wonder what it is. As far as I understand it, SP doesn’t normally happen when sleeping normally. It’s much more common with WILD - of which I’ve not yet attempted to get to learn much about. I thought about trying DILD first.
However, when I think about looking at my hands in my dreams and having 7 fingers, or looking into a mirror only to see some sick monster, the thought of it alone really scares me
The thing is if you are lucid, you know it’s a dream so it shouldn’t be scary. Also, ANYTHING can happen in a normal dream and you aren’t scared of sleeping
That’s true, and while (or maybe because) I’m fully aware that this is a totally irrational fear, I can’t quite get a grip. Heck, I don’t even know what’s so scary about it. I should grin and find it funny, but it doesn’t work this way.
It has to be something deeper, because at a conscious level, I’m astonished a grown up, 38 year old guy can feel like a 5 year old about something like phenomenons bound to happen in dreams.
SP Happens every night, atleast if you’re healthy.
The only difference is you normally aren’t concious of it.
The reason you often notice / feel it with an attempt at a WILD
is because you are holding on to your awareness whilst letting your body actually fall asleep. Because of the awareness you can follow and feel almost every step the body takes from stage 1 of the sleep cycle to stage 4 and beyond.
Kind of a ritual of splitting your mind from your body.
I used to get a little scared sometimes too. What if I have a nightmare? What if I wake up to scary HI? Etc etc. To be honest if you want to seriously give LDing a go, you have to get those thoughts out of your head and just do it. Often. I know it’s easy to say, but the more you face the things you’re wary of, the easier it will get. Just keep a positive attude, and always remember it’s your dream!
Also, don’t dwell too much on the whole ‘irrational fear’ part. The more you worry yourself thinking about it the worse you’ll feel. I think everyone’s scared of something no matter what their age so don’t get hung up over being a 38yr old male.
Good luck with the DILDs, I honestly think you will be surprised at how well you’ll cope. You’ll probably be too excited to worry about scary stuff happening
I’ve just read the SSILD tutorial and am really interested in that. As it covers some pretty frightening stuff like HI and FA I thought tackling this might have the fastest effect to directly confront and hopefully overcome my problems with the whole LD thing.
I do SSILD now and again. It’s actually very relaxing. For me, a lot of the HI is just patterns floating around, or pictures of random things that disappear as soon as you notice them. Good luck and stay relaxed. If you start to panic just leave it for another night.
I do it pretty much every night. I think it’s improved my dream recall, but hasn’t yet led to any LD. Right now, I’m going through a pretty stressful patch, and I find that SSILD is a fantastic way of relaxing and getting to sleep. I guess I’m using it as a meditation technique.
I can second that. I didn’t have a LD with SSILD yet, but I’ve only started using it, and if anything, it makes me sleep in in no time, which I find remarkable. Normally, it takes me closer to half an hour.
This is a bit tangential and it depends highly on your belief system. I will couch it as such.
I have had about 1830 or so lucid dreams. I have never had a truly scary or unpleasant situation. It’s almost always the opposite.
But to say nothing can hurt you or someone else, is probably not true either. There is growing evidence that healing from within the dreampsace is possible. Of course the darker side of this is that harming from within the dreamspace would be possible as well. I am quite sure I’ve done both, accidently, to targets that were not me.
Going out a bit on a limb … Who is to say that you don’t have past life experience with lucid dreaming, and that your supermind harbors fear and resentment over things you have done, or experienced in the past?
This is what is jumping out at me. Heck, if dreams are nothing more than little stories playing out in our mind, and in a LD you have some non-trivial control over the matter, than how could one logically be fearful of it? I think your sense of fear is deeper than a purely conscious one.
I never really thought about past life experiences, but what I thought is that something in my subconscious tries to hinder me from exploring lucid dreams and other means to connect my conscious self with my unconscious one.
Maybe there is something deep-rooted, some guilt-based complexes.
The mere fact I’m aware that there’s no rational reason for me to be afraid of anything, that I could just say “stop” and freeze the time whenever something not so nice closes in on me in my dreamworld, or that I just could think that creeping black thing on my chest into my wife, in case of SP - all these things I’m aware of on a rational level.
There is, however, some fear somewhere deeper down there, and I’d like to find out where it comes from and how to handle it.
