Lucid Blindness, false awakenings, fake SP.

[Nathan-kun]

Sorry guys, this is a long post. I hope you don't mind reading it. Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been to this forum, but I am a moderately experienced DILDer. So, hello again, all. I've had some good LDs before, and when I first started about 3 years ago I was really good at them. However, over the past year and a half, I've noticed that whenever I become lucid, I immediately lose my vision. Even if I rub my hands or shout "clarity increase" or whatever, I still remain blind most of the time. I also feel during these times that my dream is about to end, and then it is usually followed by a false awakening or a dream that I am having sleep-paralysis. The things is, I've never even had sleep-paralysis before (that I know of) but I have had dreams about it ever sense I read about it. So, after the blindness and the false awakening or the fake sleep paralysis, I usually feel pretty discouraged and end up losing my lucidity. The only time that I've conquered this phenomenon occurred recently. I had at least 3-4 false awakenings in this dream, all in the course of one nap. At one point, I was in my dorm room (in the dream) when I became lucid and subsequently blind. At first I panicked, but then I calmed down and tried to conquer my senses one step at a time. I stooped down and felt the carpet. It felt very soft. I pulled my hand away and thought: "now I want to feel grass." Then I reached down, still blind, and felt blades of grass below. Next, I decided to feel concrete. By the time I finished feeling the concrete, I noticed that I had my vision back and I was standing on one of the sidewalks near where I lived. The rest of the dream was very vivid. I was proud to have such a vivid dream after so long. I tried to repeat that experience in another LD to conquer the inevitable blindness, but it failed and I lost my lucidity to fake sleep-paralysis. So it seems that I have a compound problem here. I need to get into the habit of doing a reality check every time I get out of bed or have SP. I also need to have confidence that just because my dream vision is fading doesn't necessarily mean that the dream will end. Lastly, I need a reliable way to get my vision back immediately, if possible. I did a little research, and found out about pulling open my eyelids or something like that, so I will try that next time. Does anyone have any other suggestions that might help me out of this plateau? Being blind while lucid is a real bummer, it limits my dream capabilities greatly.

[ebullere]

Gah, I get lucid blindness all the time, but my main problem is limb-heaviness. I feel like I'm wading through molasses when I first emerge during WBTB. :/ Maybe it's a psychological block of some kind. You don't believe you can get fully lucid, so you can't. Distracting yourself from the blindness in-dream sounds like a good idea, because the harder the concentrate on it the worse it will become... My method is usually opening my eyes really wide, but that just wakes me up. I think the key is in being relaxed and receptive to whatever madness your sleeping brain throws at you.

[Nathan-kun]

Thanks for putting things in perspective. Yeah, I feel as though it's a mental block; It must be an issue of confidence. Ignoring the blindness is a strategy I'll repeat, I think. Also, I need to be better prepared for false awakenings. I had to regain lucidity in that dream about 4 times thanks to all of those fade-outs and false awakenings, but once I got that far, the dream let me take control.