I’ve been worried about my nightmares lately. They are always lucid, but I just can’t manage to make them actually work. Whenever I try to change the plot of the dream a lot, the small disturbance feel becomes colossal, monsters and demons rise from the ground and the walls and I wake up with my heart beating fast as hell. However, my subconcious doesn’t punish me for taking small choices that won’t destroy the plot. This way, I’ve had so many dreams I could “build” a whole State, with three major cities, a countryside, a desert(with a road crossing it), a giant beautiful lake(I’m not allowed to reach), hotels, houses, known characters and all sort of realistic thing. My dreams look more real to me than the life when I’m awake. Someone shares the same problem? Any idea how can I develop my dream-world better so the tastes and smells are more realistic?
This is interesting…
I barely exist in waking life. I’m lost in a dream world, both awake and asleep. My dreams are far more vivid and real feeling than actual waking life. It’s always been that way. Though I couldn’t give you advice on how to achieve it, nor would I encourage it. It’s a very painful place to be.
Nightmares are quite common for me as well. They are stupid little things though that make no sense when I’m awake. (“How is that by any means scarey?”). But your mind floods you with the belief that it is in fact frightening.
The only thing that works for me to be rid of them is to get up for about 10 minutes and then return to sleep. Otherwise it continues seconds after I close my eyes, even when I am not asleep. Unfortunate. So in regards, I have yet to find a solution to overcome these nightmares using Lucidity.
[color=olive] Whoa whoa brawl central here. What movies you been watchin to induce this? Enlighten me. Heh I have to admit I envy your frequent nightmares. You ever try fighting back? Those nightmares may be a wake up call to awaken inner strength or your fighting spirit. I can see it now, your DJ would have some pretty amusing encounters and battles. Not only that once the nightmare phase ends you’ll end up having some pretty epic adventures and such, if you do that kind of stuff.
Welcome to the club[/color]
Do you have any DCs ? They also can help with your nightmares. Some of them (like my Dream Guide) are actually immune against fear, and can fight back these monsters / demons pretty efficiently
But yeah, I agree with Koharo : you have to fight back your nightmares (in really epic battles )
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that my nightmares are quite different than other people. Others seem to enjoy nightmares due to things like this.
My nightmares are more situational and conceptual rather than creatures and environment. If I was simply being attacked by a demon, then whether it was an LD or not, I would probably just either play with it, or turn it into an ice sculpture with a frost ray or something…
That, I can understand why people wish they had nightmares. But that is not the case for me.
Some DCs (like my DG) can actually teleport you in a different dream situation, or can even interact with the Fabric of dreams itself… I really think it worths trying to ask them to change the whole dream setting
[color=olive]Situational and conceptual ones are more of a hassle when they lack action, but in the end make good wake up calls.
Edit: Heh RC[/color]
I have a similar problem, almost half of my LDs are nightmares for some reason. And there’s other problems too; I often have very weak dream control, even if I believe in myself, it’s like i’m out of mana so I can’t beat the monsters. And if I do have some magic skills there’s just too many monsters, so I figure it’s easier to just wake up in a second than bother with them. The thing I hate the most is when sunshine weather turns to night/some grey zone for no reason, like I can’t enjoy a calm beautiful dream for once. I also read that you should embrace your fears, but when I hugged one stupid demon with no fear, he just wouldn’t let me go so I had to wake up.
I don’t think these demons are your fears… at least, it doesn’t work this way for me. They’re more like… an embodiment of your aggressive impulses. The more annoyed I am, the more shadows I can see in my dreams… You should fight them more than anything. Also, there’s another thing I do, maybe it will work for you too: I imagine my aggressive impulses as fires, and I try to flood them with water (in my imagination).
As for your fears… they’ll appear either as they are physically (for instead, if you’re scared of spiders, you’ll see them), or maybe as a potentially aggressive DC that appears every now and then in your dreams. These are the ones you should try to embrace/hug/accept as a part of you. It’s also possible to summon them in the dream itself, but I strongly recommend against doing that, as it’ll make things very horrible. Really. (I only did that once, and that was because I was with a DC that could perfectly keep everything under control)
Anyhow… as for being able to fight back, I hadn’t been able to until I accepted my dark side as a part of myself