Partially formed dark dreamworld

Hi. In some dreams I find myself within a very peculiar environment, lucid or not, that I am curious about. I was wondering if anyone else knows anything about it, why it happens, or how to escape/alter it. Here’ a brief description.
1. There is no color, and it's very dark. Shapes and people are defined mostly by a slight contrast. It's like when you’ve been out in the sunlight then enter a dark space and can’t make anything out.
2. It’s extremely disorienting, with lots of motion, and usually I’m attempting to find my way out of it.
3. It tends to happen in earlier cycles during the night.
4. Mostly it makes me feel panic.

When I’ve become lucid in this stage I’ve tried to create or find light, but have been unsuccessful so far. I’m curious if this is a typical experience for others. When I’ve been lucky enough to WILD, I do not experience this environment, which I find odd considering it seems like some stage of sleep wherein my brain has not correctly lit the environment...IOW, using WILD it seems reasonable to think I should pass through this stage on my way to a fully formed dream. But that doesn't happen. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or feedback!

I get something similar to this quite frequently. I usually use a variation of WBTB to have my lucid dreams, and like any method in which you enter a dream state while still conscious, there is a transitional period in which the "blackness" of just having your eyes closed becomes the dreamscape.

Just after I get sleep paralysis and then "exit" my body, I usually cannot see anything though I can feel my dream body moving. What typically happens is that the dreamscape will slowly begin to develop itself (visually), but some of the time I get stuck inbetween a fully manifested dreamscape and no dreamscape at all. This can usually be described as being very dark or dim, like I am trying to walk around with the lights off and my eyes half closed.

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Originally Posted by ethen

I get something similar to this quite frequently. I usually use a variation of WBTB to have my lucid dreams, and like any method in which you enter a dream state while still conscious, there is a transitional period in which the "blackness" of just having your eyes closed becomes the dreamscape.

Just after I get sleep paralysis and then "exit" my body, I usually cannot see anything though I can feel my dream body moving. What typically happens is that the dreamscape will slowly begin to develop itself (visually), but some of the time I get stuck inbetween a fully manifested dreamscape and no dreamscape at all. This can usually be described as being very dark or dim, like I am trying to walk around with the lights off and my eyes half closed.

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Hey Ethen. That's interesting. The transitional period for me is usually a feeling, a rushing forward with no visuals (no panic either). Then a scene emerges out of the darkness, and I "step" into it. The first time it happened I knew exactly what was going on, but everything was blurry. So I instinctively reached up and took off a pair of dirty goggles covering my eyes and the whole dreamscape became stunningly vivid. Funny how dream logic works like that, and the mind follows.

I've never been able to exit my body, or astrally project. But I'm working on it. So when you get stuck in this half world, do you usually wake up again? Or does the dream world eventually form?

When this happens to me, I usually am able to conjure up the rest of the dreamscape. What I do is simply use my sense of touch to help bring forth the visuals. For example, after I get to the sleep paralysis/vibes stage, I can usually feel myself sit up out of bed and begin to fumble around...but am still blind as if my eyes are closed. I then will run my fingers through the carpet, along the surface of walls, etc...and for some reason it works pretty well to help "establish" the atmosphere around me.

This is something I actually have to do quite frequently in fact (maybe 75% of the time) as I am conscious during that transitional period more often than not. One thing I have been meaning to try (but can never remember to) is rubbing my hands together to help establish/maintain the dreamscape should it not be all that stable on its own. I have heard it works quite well, and seems to be right in line with how I already do things.

I have also gotten the "rushing" sensations you describe...sometimes with panic, sometimes without. It used to happen to me during the vibes stage, but I rarely get vibes anymore, nor do i get the odd loud noises that can accompany vibes. I was never really a fan of those things to be honest. Nowadays the only time I get this sensation is when I find the "seams" of my dreamscape. For example, there have been plenty of times where my dreamscape will start to dissolve away, and after it does (but before I am awake) I find myself aimlessly traveling through this void at extraordinary speeds and random directions. It can be pretty terrifying.

The other situation in which I encounter this involves the horizon. In some of my lucid dreams, should I fly too high and be able to see "past" the horizon (or skyline), instead of there being more dreamscape as would be expected, there is this same void. The problem is that, as soon as I am aware of this void, the rest of my dreamscape tends to break down (or I get pulled into the void against my will).

I have to be honest, during my OBEs/LDs/APs/etc I have experienced some pretty awful things. Because I am aware that fear can manifest in a dreamscape, sometimes the fear snowballs and I end up in a god-forsaken place where my worst fears are present. It's like when I feel myself starting to get scared, my mind begins to think "Ok, make sure you do not think about X, because if you do, X may just be waiting for you on the other side of that creepy looking door..." which ends up resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy of X indeed being on the other side of the door :bang:

However, I have been able to overcome most of those fears with practice maintaining my rationality (and sometimes with nothing but unadulterated courage). That damn void though still gets me. I don't know why, but it shakes some core part of me. I think it might have something to do with my fear of death, and along with that, the threat of oblivion.

I typically LD through WILD and end up in my bedroom - it's almost always dark. I feel my way downstairs and tell myself that when I open the door and walk outside it will be light (sometimes I just walk through the wall of my room and float to the ground). This works about half the time. The rest of the time I can usually see some light - typically a point. I start to spin my body and see the point everytime I turn around. The faster I turn the more the point turns into a line, then eventually that line opens up to a full dreamscape. Sometimes I can choose what the dreamscape will be - most of the time it ends up being my neighborhood, which means more work for me to try and get where I want to go. Either way, once that dreamscape is there it is usually extremely vivid.

I think that's a good method, giving a little more attention to my tactile senses in those dark spaces. And the hand rubbing, that's a classic. I've used that method more times than I can count. Very Castaneda.

I always find the line of thought "your lucid dreams are limited only by your imagination" quite humbling. Though of course there are always things at play that are out of our hands. I've never quite experienced the type of sheer oblivion you just described, but I have had plenty of epically dark encounters, all of which are fascinating especially while lucid.

Stephen Berlin did a short series of video podcasts which are chock full of little nuggets of wisdom. One thing that really stuck with me is his thoughts on "dark" and "light" lucid dreams. The dark ones are often terrifying, challenging, self critical. The light ones are comforting, peaceful, self affirming. Both are insightful and rewarding for their own reasons, and you can basically choose what type of experience you are going have simply by looking around your dream environment and walking towards a lighter or darker area. It's deceivingly simple.

As far as the boundaries of the actual dreamworld itself go, I have never experienced this in the way you described it. I can't even really imagine it! I have, of course, experienced limitations. At one point I was unable to fly above a certain height; I could fly about 13 stories high, but any attempt to go higher and my lucidity would begin to wane. This was frustrating to me because one of my goals was to fly into space (i know, real original). Eventually I found the practice of "previsualization" to be quite powerful in getting past some of these limitations.

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Originally Posted by djv

I typically LD through WILD and end up in my bedroom - it's almost always dark. I feel my way downstairs and tell myself that when I open the door and walk outside it will be light (sometimes I just walk through the wall of my room and float to the ground). This works about half the time. The rest of the time I can usually see some light - typically a point. I start to spin my body and see the point everytime I turn around. The faster I turn the more the point turns into a line, then eventually that line opens up to a full dreamscape. Sometimes I can choose what the dreamscape will be - most of the time it ends up being my neighborhood, which means more work for me to try and get where I want to go. Either way, once that dreamscape is there it is usually extremely vivid.

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Hey djv. I have never once been able to spin myself to any effect, be it prolonging or strengthening the lucidity or changing location or anything. I know that different people have different methods that work, and it's always intriguing to me how those methods manifest themselves. One friend of mine describes spinning as a giant orange unraveling around them until the environment has changed completely. You're description of a point to a line to an environment is really interesting.

One of my new quests is location change. Never really been able to do it. My goal is to change the channel (scenes/locations) on a 70 inch flat screen, and them jump through once I've found a scene I like.

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Originally Posted by bishop

Hey djv. I have never once been able to spin myself to any effect, be it prolonging or strengthening the lucidity or changing location or anything. I know that different people have different methods that work, and it's always intriguing to me how those methods manifest themselves. One friend of mine describes spinning as a giant orange unraveling around them until the environment has changed completely. You're description of a point to a line to an environment is really interesting.

One of my new quests is location change. Never really been able to do it. My goal is to change the channel (scenes/locations) on a 70 inch flat screen, and them jump through once I've found a scene I like.

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This is the only way spinning works for me. When I try to prolong a dream with spinning it doesn't work. When I try to transport with spinning it doesn't work. But getting the dream to lighten up like I describe - it works. I guess sometimes I transport in that way when the dreamscape is other than my neighborhood, but I'd say 90% of the time I stay in my neighborhood.