Unwanted Lucid Dreams

[ProjectAL]

Recently some of the LD's I've been having have been unwanted/unintentional. Mostly it is just blackness where I cannot move and I am just floating around the room in circles or weird patterns... this is often accompanied by distorted voices or noise and sometimes very beautiful music that I wish I could remember upon awakening. From what I understand this is some kind of sleep paralysis? This is usually not frightening for me, though there ARE times when I feel like if I open my eyes I'm going to see something I don't want to see. Nothing specific... I just know it's going to be something frightening or weird. Other times I try to open my eyes while I'm floating around like this and nothing, it's still black. I can always shake my head quickly to wake myself up, but then I have to go back to sleep to get rest. Other times I'm actually thrown into a lucid dream where I am walking around/interacting with the environment. But sometimes I am in scenarios I do not like. Last night I had a dream where I was outside in front of my house but it was dark out and I knew that it was bad for it to be dark. I tried making the sun come up to no avail (I have changed my environment before successfully). In another dream I was in my basement and it was dark, once again I did not like that it was dark and attempted to lighten the room, to no avail. Now I understand that changing your environment might be a more advanced technique so I'm not super concerned with learning how to do that on command, but I am concerned with learning how to prevent LD's when they are unwanted/unintentional. I do wish to get back into lucid dreaming but I want to at least keep unwanted LD's to a minimum. What do you guys think?

[Sageous]

Welcome to Dreamviews, ProjectAL! Your OP seems to have two issues, so I'll address them separately... But before I do, I would like to suggest that your problem isn't Unwanted Lucid Dreams as much as it is Unhelpful Levels of Lucidity: Lucidity, to me, ought to always be a welcome event -- once you're lucid, once you are aware that you're dreaming, there is always an opportunity to improve your situation and change your dream, because You are there to make changes; it is extremely important to maintain a positive attitude, as dreaming minds have a tendency to respond to your emotions and desires -- especially the negative ones. But sometimes being positive can be difficult: Recently some of the LD's I've been having have been unwanted/unintentional. Mostly it is just blackness where I cannot move and I am just floating around the room in circles or weird patterns... this is often accompanied by distorted voices or noise and sometimes very beautiful music that I wish I could remember upon awakening. From what I understand this is some kind of sleep paralysis? This is usually not frightening for me, though there ARE times when I feel like if I open my eyes I'm going to see something I don't want to see. Nothing specific... I just know it's going to be something frightening or weird. Other times I try to open my eyes while I'm floating around like this and nothing, it's still black. I can always shake my head quickly to wake myself up, but then I have to go back to sleep to get rest. This sounds to me like you're just lucidly encountering a bit of NREM, meaning that you are aware during a period that your sleeping brain hasn't yet begun manufacturing dreams. This has happened to me many times, and I've found the best thing to do is simply relax and wait for the dream to form -- it will come around eventually! If you're the impatient sort, you can try to do some visualizing, or maybe just concentrate on a particular dream or dream goal you were hoping to have that night; it's a little difficult, but not impossible, to form dreams during NREM, but even if you fail, at least you'll have something to do during the wait that doesn't include concern about where you are, or annoyance that something has gone wrong. Also, I started a thread a long, long time ago called Exploring Delta Sleep, that looks into this phenomenon, and sees something good in it; you might want to check it out. A couple of specific thoughts: * Though you might not have any sense of a body during NREM, both because you are asleep and out of touch with your physical body and your dreaming mind hasn't manufactured a dream body yet, you are by no means in sleep paralysis. SP is something else altogether, and pretty much always happens upon waking, and not while you are asleep or going to sleep. You can learn more about the non-sensational basics of SP here, here, and here, if you're curious. * There's no real need to worry about opening your eyes during NREM, because you have no eyes to open! They're attached to the physical body you've already left behind. As a matter of fact, I would recommend you go through the motions of opening your eyes, because if you are in NREM and truly asleep, then doing something that requires your dreaming mind to act (since it must create the sensation of opening eyes, and perhaps something for them to look at) might help kick-start a proper dream. Also, if opening your eyes (or simply shaking your head) wakes you up, then you might not be fully asleep yet. If that's the case, then I suggest the opposite of what I just said, that you avoid any such "wake-up actions," and just let your body continue it's passage to deeper sleep. Oh, and your body is getting plenty of rest during these events; try to keep concerns about that out of your head. Next: Other times I'm actually thrown into a lucid dream where I am walking around/interacting with the environment. But sometimes I am in scenarios I do not like. Last night I had a dream where I was outside in front of my house but it was dark out and I knew that it was bad for it to be dark. I tried making the sun come up to no avail (I have changed my environment before successfully). In another dream I was in my basement and it was dark, once again I did not like that it was dark and attempted to lighten the room, to no avail. Now I understand that changing your environment might be a more advanced technique so I'm not super concerned with learning how to do that on command, but I am concerned with learning how to prevent LD's when they are unwanted/unintentional. First, you might be careful how you phrase "problems" like this; there are plenty of folks here at DV's who would give quite a bit to be "thrown into" a lucid dream! I think your problem here isn't about the dream at all, but about your level of lucidity. The dream isn't keeping you from making changes, but rather it is that you don't have enough of your waking-life self-awareness present to remember that everything around you is nothing more than a construct of your own mind. I would suggest that you take a pause when you find yourself in a situation like this, and remember something real -- like your actual body (which is not the one you are occupying but is asleep in your bed, right where you left it), your dream goals, or perhaps things like the date, time, and your home address. If you're successful in gathering up some awareness and thus strengthening your lucidity, you might try simply leaving whatever scene you are in, perhaps by doing things like simply walking through a door, turning around, or maybe flying away. So I guess yes, it wouldn't hurt to develop techniques for changing your environment -- they're not that advanced, and its always nice to have a couple of tools in your belt to deal with situations like this. The bottom line here is that you might not want to look for a way to prevent situations like this, but to improve upon them when they happen... of course, I write this from the perspective that sees all lucidity as a good thing, and moments like this are a happy starting point, and not something to be avoided. tl;dr: I think that you might try to consider all LD's as "wanted" events, and try to positively work through difficult or annoying dreams or moments until you reach a point where you are lucidly dreaming the things you want to dream. Since they are all a product of your own mind, situations like those you described are not so much thrust upon you as they are simply waiting for you to raise your awareness to a point where you can do something about them, or at least have the patience to wait them out, knowing full well that they will pass eventually, and the real fun can begin.

[AmicusSomniatus]

I have had many lucid dreams this year where the scene goes dark and I often feel a dark presence. At times this dark presence would cause me physical pain and this jolted me to wake up. It scared me at first and I tried to chase it away, I prayed to white light a few times and I even tried confronting it. The dark presence would leave for this particular dream, but the following week it would show up again in my next lucid dream. Finally, I decided to ask the dream what this was and it became clear to me that this was my shadow side. In the next dream I therefore welcomed it and asked it to show me what it was it was trying to tell me. The shadow presented itself as an ugly disfigured individual but it then gently took me by the hand and explained aspects of my character that needed to be embraced and accepted. So now when the lucid dream goes dark and it feels scary, I call out to it to show me what I need to see. Amicus

[ProjectAL]

Um, no it is a problem, lol. When I have to work in the morning and feel like I'm floating around my room in circles in blackness hearing buzzing/voices or whatever for what feels like minutes on end, it's a bit annoying. One man's problem can be another's prosperity. That being said I tried your advice and ended up having a pretty intense lucid dream where I asked a dream character why he was in my dream? After he dodged my question several times saying things like, "Could not perform image search" and other random stuff I grabbed him by the shoulders and demanded to know why he was there and he said, "Well, what is your problem with consciousness?" Don't know if that was just another way to dodge the question or what but it was certainly interesting. Think I will handle it this way from now on. The initial part of floating around is still annoying and unwanted but I suppose it's a way for me to lucid dream more often. Thanks, guys!