Night-terrors and Lucidity.

Quest for Lucidity General Lucidness
1

A lot of people have discussed nightmares, and how lucidity is a way to overcome them. For a significant amount of years of my life, I have had nightmares that keep clashing with both waking, and returning to sleep. These “nightmares” never seemed to coincide with the definitions of nightmares people always seem to discuss. I recently - a few days ago, infact - discovered that they were defined as night-terrors, when someone gave me a solution to help me sleep, saying that it would also “prevent night-terrors”… Apparently they knew I had them, but I had never heard them being called that before…

There are a lot of different aspects and possible symptoms of night terrors. They do not all apply, so i’ll try to explain as much as possible of what does. If I don’t mention a symptom, it is safe to assume that it does not apply. Long term causes of these NT’s do seem to apply. (PTSD, etc)

I have these fairly often, and I was curious if anyone else was familiar with them. They may have been discussed here before, but I have not seen posts about them. In that regards, I have a few questions.
Firstly, Lucidity is always a arms reach away for me. So I’m not entirely sure how these questions will or if they will apply to others. That being, when I have NT’s, lucidity is a natural retaliation to try to escape them. The most recent being that I was trying to ignore it completely and go through with an LD goal of mine. I ran and lept off a cliff towards a blanked of clouds, in which when I was to pass through, i would be in the future. Unfortunately I just simply could not outrun the entity, and it grabbed me from behind while i was in the air. So the problem is, it doesn’t seem to work. My NT’s are only interruptable through extended amounts of time of being awake, or they simply just remain as i continuously bounce back and fourth between sleep. Which ensures Lucidity for the moments I have of sleep.

A difference in my NT’s, is that I’m very passive about it. I am easily startled, but I do not act more so than that. That is, when I have my eyes open, my feelings are more so annoyance than overall fear. No screaming, jumping of bed, or any other extensive physical activity. I am not aggressive or dangerous to myself or anyone around me. I do not sleep walk, and actually barely move at all during sleep where NT’s are not involved. I always remember every aspect about them, and feel completely conscious when I have my eyes open, But, even seconds after closing my eyes, they return, and I’m overcome by fear. The awareness, and cause of my passiveness with these, I will assume is from lucidity. A blessing indeed…

All that being said, is anyone familiar enough with NT’s and Lucidity to give any ideas or suggestions about how I could suppress, or overcome these NT’s through Lucidity? It doesn’t seem likely, but I believe that any input could be beneficial.

2

I don’t regularly have NTs, but I have had a lot of scary SP experiences. For me, getting through the fear has been a matter of humor or dialogue.

To be more specific, I either question the frightening entities, asking what they want, or what part of me they represent, or I try to joke with them.

Neither approach has been 100% effective at dispelling my fear, but it’s helped significantly. At times, merely holding my ground, instead of running, has resulted in a dream villain turning into a harmless little girl or something.

Also…I had a series of LDs in which an “evil twin” of myself showed up. So I devised a plan. Instead of fighting him, I would simply try to absorb him. Well, one day he showed up again and I got ready for another freaky battle. But then I remembered my plan, and I stepped right into him, absorbing him into myself. I got a surge of energy then and I felt great! I haven’t had that dream since.

Last, I suppose I’d recommend meditation. Be with the fear instead of resisting it. I know it’s hard in an altered state of consciousness, in which your body may be paralyzed and you’re feeling pain or huge explosions of emotion, but you can be neutral within the experience—like standing on firm rock surrounding by tossing waves.

Many of my SP experiences have involved not only monsters, but the real sensation of pain. Even then I’ve tried humor. It’s hard but it can be done.

3

The “face the fear and alter it” method, people have said quite often. This works very mildly. I can never see the entity. Any time I look, it vanishes. I have never actually seen them, but I always ‘know’, what they look like. I hear it, know it’s there, and even feel it’s touch. There have been a few times where I have tried to play with it. I’ve smothered the entity in my blanket when it had crawled on top of me. I have actually gone so far as to conjure a character of my own as a watch guard. This is slightly efficient, but does not do the job. However regardless of what I do to be rid of this, it simply returns. Continuously. The fear involved is something difficult to explain. I am fully aware that it is not real, however, as you had said. These things can so far as to cause physical effects, such as pain. There was a time where it was a dog, climbing around on my bed. I could here it sniffing and shuffling about. I ignored it regardless, and then it bit me in the ear. Hard. It felt no different than if it had been real.

The most bothersome part about it is not truly the fear itself. But the persistence of it. It just simply will not go away.

I will wake up, it will be gone. Close my eyes again, and it returns. This happens continuously until I get up and spend an extended amount of time awake. The issue there, is that once I do, i will not be able to fall back to sleep due to the sleeping disorder I have.

Also, i just noticed you’re from SLC. As am I.

4

(Hail, fellow Salt Licker!)

Hmm…I’ve had the impression of a dog jumping on my bed too, when I didn’t even own a dog. (I still don’t.)

Well, there’s facing the fear and there’s being with the fear. When you face the fear, you might do so calmly, by asking questions, or aggressively, by imaginatively fighting the threshold dweller.

But being with the fear is different. I’m not claiming that it’s more effective, but I get different results by being with my fear than I do by facing or fighting it. What usually happens is that the being becomes less realistic. Being with the fear doesn’t require you to do anything expect internally: you just notice that you’re afraid but that not all of you is filled with fear.

But I can sympathize with situations that don’t change automatically when you face them. For instance, the other night I had a lucid dream in which I stumbled on a whole herd of dragons! I hid, and then I thought, “This is silly, I’m dreaming, I’ll go check them out.” I flew next to one of them and it bit my arm. It hurt! And it wouldn’t let go. Instead of fighting I relaxed and let the dragon carry me along through the air. I was still afraid, though, and I essentially told the dragon that it was a projection of my mind. It bit me harder; it was frightening. I tried to be with the fear, but wasn’t completely successful. I stared at the dragon’s face. After a moment, it became less…real, like a puppet. The jaw weakened and I threw it off, because I was still afraid, and I woke up.

Personally, I don’t think we learn very much by just yelling at our dream adversaries that they’re illusions. Sometimes DCs will tell us something valuable, so ignoring them or blowing them up or wishing them away can be counterproductive.

Of course, there’s also the option of surrendering. I know dreamers who have tried this too and it’s been a positive experience. Knowing that they’re dreaming, they let the entity or DC attack them and destroy them. It would certainly take bravery, I would think. I’ve never done it all the way. Once, I welcomed a dream adversary to do whatever he wanted, but it became too intense. He was stabbing my leg and it felt too real and was painful. I woke myself up, saying “OK, game over.”

But some have actually had breakthroughs this way.

Have you tried looking for the same character inside of a lucid dream rather than in the threshold state?

5

The fear. It’s not really an option to not be afraid really. In my right mind, I’m not really afraid of anything… Except people… A horde of dragons? Interesting. Chased by a giant tyrannosaurus? Thrilling. But for some reason, when these NT’s happen, there’s an unexplainable fear that my mind just throws at me. Like a forced emotion, regardless of whether I am consciously afraid or not. Which is probably why i do not lash out, scream, or throw myself out of bed in surprise. This “artificial fear” just acts as a terrible itch.’

My mind keeps saying “But… it’s scarey! be scared!” but in my conscious eyes, I’m just like “This is stupid…”

But it could just be that… These NT’s feel more like there’s another real presence there, rather than just a dc, or a part of a dream world. The thought of someone poking around my room, or being in arms reach while I’m trying to sleep is enough to drive me up the wall.

But as I said… regardless of how much I try to ignore it, it refuses to acknowledge that. It is determined to cause damage whether i believe in it or not.

So i guess a decent way to approach this is:
What can i do to overwhelm my thoughts with something other than this. That’s really what I need to do… Get my mind to stop thinking about it. To stop feeling the need to produce this issue. I just have yet to figure out how, or what I could possibly do with lucidity to accomplish this.

I’ve learned to ignore it as much as I can actively do myself. I refuse to interract with it in any way. I think that’s quite an accomplishment. Something that not a whole lot of people are ever able to do, but I’ve been dealing with this for as long as i can remember. Though I am wondering if that really is the best solution or not.

Again… it’s just more so become a disturbance, with a topping of fear, than a real terror in itself.

And no… I don’t have any pets either.

Hm? I don’t quite understand.

6

Well, for my part, I don’t totally consider DCs to be “unreal.” A lot of us, in the West, were raised with a cultural theory of dreams that says that they’re “not real.”

To say that dream experiences are, in fact, real, is usually interpreted as a spiritual claim. But you don’t need metaphysics to show that dreams do actually affect us in real, physical, and even measurable ways.

For instance, it’s been shown in the lab that when we dream of sex and orgasm, our bodies actually have orgasms. If we’re sexually aroused in dreams, our bodies are actually sexually aroused.

Likewise, nightmares and night-terrors affect the body: they elevate blood pressure, for one, and it’s probably a safe bet that they increase levels of stress hormones. So dreams are no less real than our ordinary waking thoughts. Our thoughts can have real and measurable effects on our body—positive and negative—and so can our dreams. A dream can depress us all day long, or inspire us all day long.

A lot of research remains to be done with dream characters, but there’s some laboratory evidence (and a lot of anecdotal evidence) suggesting that they can be quasi-independent.

Of course, Tholey’s work isn’t definitive, but it squares with the experience of many lucid dreamers: that DCs cannot always be bossed around, and are sometimes quite intelligent, regardless of your belief about the matter or your expectation.

I like to remind myself of this: I can’t always control my own mind when I’m awake. Sometimes I get uncontrollably upset or worried, or obsess seemingly uncontrollably about something.

Why would the same be any different in dreaming?

(And this is why so many dreamers recommend meditation.)

You don’t have to accept my point of view, that your entity is real—even if “only” a sub-personality within you.

I recommended seeking the entity out during a normal lucid dream because then, physiologically, you won’t be flooded with fear. Physically speaking, during night-terrors—if I understand them correctly—the emotional center of the brain (the amygdala) is in overdrive. It’s true that it’s also very active in dreams, but less so in lucid dreamers, and even less so in meditators. There’s a lot of research around this, particularly with people suffering from PTSD.

Of course, there’s the spiritual perspective, too: that humans are not alone in the universe. It’s a can of worms, but if it’s true, so what? Is the idea of interacting with non-humans in your dreams, or ASCs, really more scary than the idea that humans can mutually dream?

PS:
If you’re interested in that Tholey article, PM me with your email and I can send it to you.

7

I’ve experienced dreams being a personification of feelings I had, or of an issue I was working through. I’ve even been able to observe the changes in the dreamworld as I worked though the issue I had in reality. Antagonistic dream characters being overpowering, slowly becoming weaker and then dreams where I beat them severely. I interpreted such dreams as me starting to come to grips with my own power. I don’t fear my nightmares, because they tell me a great deal about what I need to do, to improve my self-understanding and remove issues which disrupt my inner-stillness.

Saying all that I’m not sure how much of it relates to night-terrors, I’ve never had them and I know they are distinctly different from nightmares. If nightmares are caused by your mind ‘forcing’ you to face things you are repressing, night terrors being an extreme type of this is an interesting theory. I’m still reluctant to just assume they are, it’s possible other biological processes are at work, or they have entirely different reasons.

When it comes to the spiritual side, I tend to be of the mindset that extreme caution is advisable. The mind, dreams and such all react very strongly to expectation. It’d be a massive irony if you were to ‘surrender’ your power by believing it away. Even if such entities do exist, I strongly believe they can’t touch you unless you let them.

8

Have you tried visualizing a defensive (safe) zone?
Something that makes you feel very comfortable, for instance:

  • Armor/energy/some sort of cloak
  • A weapon you may know from a movie/game that you know is very powerful.

Anything that might shift your mind from fear a bit.

I once had a dream where I was actually chased across a field by someone with a gun, I knew he would kill me if he found me.
Funny thing is I actually became lucid as he caught me. This immediately erased all my fear and all I remember is thinking: “Wait a minute…Death doesn’t hurt.”
He shot me straight in the face(lol), but It didn’t hurt. It did wake me up, though. (luckily this was 5 minutes before my alarm was set to go off)

I felt really good going over that scene once I was awake, a fear lifted, I felt closure and haven’t had a dream like that since.