Waking up due to closing eyes inside LD

So last night I had a DILD. In the dream after I did reality checks and what not my eyes involuntarily closed (like, what happens when somebody drugged you) and when I closed my eyes I instantly knew that I was going to wake sup surely. And I woke up.
Is there anyway to prevent this from happening?

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I had exactly this issue in my last LD. From what I remember I didn’t close my eyes in the dream but my vision went black by itself. From past experience I was also sure I would wake up now. But instead of waiting for my real world eyes to open, I basically “willed“ myself to stay inside the dream because it was super awesome so far and I didn’t want it to end. Surprisingly this worked.

I think during your lucid dreams (and normal dreams and even regular sleep actually) there’s always a certain threshold how close you are to waking up. As the REM cycle approaches its end the threshold will get lower and lower. On the other hand there are factors that can wake you up, internal ones and external ones. If any factor is stronger than your sleep threshold, you will get thrown out of the dream and wake up.

Now the external stimuli you will have a hard time suppressing while asleep, so you can only work on the internal factors. Which things inside your head and inside your body can wake you up? There are actually a lot of things but the most common one to prematurely end an LD is excitement. Another less common one is will power. From what you described it sounds like this one might have been your issue:

That sounds like you suggested to yourself that you would wake up, just like I did in my dream. But I turned it around and instead told myself the opposite, I guess that’s how it worked out for me and it could have worked out for you. However, sometimes your waking threshold is so low already, it’s pretty much hopeless to stay in the dream. At some point, for better or worse, we must eventually wake up.

Just don’t forget to do an RC immediately, because these situations cause false awakenings more often than not ;p


A little note about my dream, because it could become important to you as well if you run into the same situation again: After I successfully stayed adream (I just created a very useful new word), my vision was still all black :joy: That caused quite the frustration and even despair which had me on the verge of waking up again, or even giving up :nuu:
I had to fight really hard to get my vision back. One aspect again was willpower and constant auto suggestion that I want to stay inside this dream, enjoy the view and explore inside the dream. I also closed and open my eyes multiple times and pinched them in between. I also tried to work more with my other senses and go on inside the dream even though I was blind because I thought a change of scene might help. In the end I got my eyesight back but it was quite the struggle.

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