Frustrating night, a very short LD and some doubts. Please read!

First off, thanks in advance to anyone who decides to read this. I realize it’s quite long but I could really use some advice.

Last night marked my second night of my deciding to consciously be aware of my dreams in hopes of one day learning to become lucid on demand. My objective for the night was to recall as many dreams as possible and perhaps be lucky and get lucid in one of them. It didn’t go quite as planned.

As I went to bed, I suddenly became very anxious about what was going to happen. Was I going to freak out if I LD’d? Would I be able to remember anything? Would I have an out-of-body experience? So I started counting my breaths to relax and after a few minutes (not sure how many as I intentionally refrained from looking at the clock) I felt I was at last calm enough to sleep.

I started repeating “I will remember my dreams” in my mind each time I exhaled and, soon enough, I was seeing a void, dark and empty for a Louis XIV red armchair occupied by a black man dressed as an old-school pimp, illuminated by a spotlight. He was holding a drink and was blabbing out merrily and having some good laughs, although he wasn’t talking to anyone in particular and I couldn’t actually hear the sounds he was making. This went on until the pimp accidentally spilled his drink onto his lap, which half-woke me, enough that I could write a note about the pimp in my DJ before being swept away again into sleep.

This pattern went on throughout the entire night. I would drift off to sleep, have a very brief hallucination/dream and I would be awakened. A few times I felt trapped in some sort of limbo between awake and asleep. This was not a pleasant feeling. I found myself constantly attempting the nose-plug RC, failing every time. At one point, I suspected I was experiencing a false awakening and wanted to do the nose-plug RC, only to find myself quite incapable of moving my arm and hand. Upon waking up, I would sometimes take a second to jot down a small note in my DJ about what I was seeing/thinking/feeling before waking up. My DJ in the morning was full of odd stuff, including a note reading “looking for lost dog, but the dog is just an idea” and even some incomprehensible scribbles. The last entry of the night reads “I’m too tired to do this, I’m letting go”. I then remembered I did decide to give up sometime around 5:00 a.m. because I was feeling constantly troubled and anxious and I felt like I wasn’t getting any rest.

The highlight of all this came when I was dreaming of a red car (which I may or may not have been driving). The car then crashed into another red car. But, instead of a normal crash, the cars acted like they were made of rubber, bouncing back after the collision and remaining unharmed. I immediately realized that could not be real, but as soon as that realization dawned on me, the dream started dissolving. I quickly remembered I should rub my hands, but suddenly I was aware of my physical body while still half in the dream and I couldn’t figure out which set of hands I was supposed to be rubbing, the real or dream ones. I finally concluded that I had to rub my dream hands, but by that time all I could do was imagine my dream-self rubbing its hands. I did no longer possess my dream-self, although I could still faintly see him in my mind. I quickly did a RC, only to find out I was already awake.

All in all, these small bits I’ve shared with you are all I could recall in the morning. This, compared to the night before, in which I went to bed extremely drunk and only got about 5 hours of sleep, but still managed to recall 7 dreams and had a semi-lucid dream (see here). As you can imagine, I am a bit frustrated and I wonder if I did anything wrong. What should I be doing differently or avoiding? Any other advice?

One last thing. I’ve noticed I keep dreaming red stuff. Does this mean anything?

Out-of-body experiences are rare unless they're purposefully induced.
On the topic of your dreams, it seems like it's just one of those nights where your dreams are very dark and fuzzy. It happens to me sometimes. Or, it could be leftover effects from when you were drinking the night before, but I don't really have a right to say if that's true or not.

Here's something about the color red that I pulled off the internet.

Quote:

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Love and War:
Red is hot. It's a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Red is Cupid and the Devil.
Nature of Red:
A stimulant, red is the hottest of the warm colors. Studies show that red can have a physical effect, increasing the rate of respiration and raising blood pressure.

The expression seeing red indicates anger and may stem not only from the stimulus of the color but from the natural flush (redness) of the cheeks, a physical reaction to anger, increased blood pressure, or physical exertion.

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Maybe something's really upsetting you, or you're angry about something. Or it could just be a coincidence that lots of your dreams have red in them; sometimes I dream about the same person or animal for a few nights in a row.

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Originally Posted by Puffin

Out-of-body experiences are rare unless they're purposefully induced.
On the topic of your dreams, it seems like it's just one of those nights where your dreams are very dark and fuzzy. It happens to me sometimes. Or, it could be leftover effects from when you were drinking the night before, but I don't really have a right to say if that's true or not.

Here's something about the color red that I pulled off the internet.



Maybe something's really upsetting you, or you're angry about something. Or it could just be a coincidence that lots of your dreams have red in them; sometimes I dream about the same person or animal for a few nights in a row.

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Thanks Puffin! And what about my short LD? What could I have done differently?

Do you think I was trying to hard and that made my night uneasy?

You could try stabilizing to keep yourself in the dream more (spinning slowly around in a circle to see all of what's around you, or feeling dream objects), but sometimes the dream still just ends. I'm sure that trying too hard has something to do with having LDs, but then again it can also motivate you more. It's hard to tell which it does for you.

Sounds like you are just too excited and over-thinking things. Your nervousness could be putting you in a very light sleep state. This light sleep can be good for lucid dreaming, but your unsettled state of mind is making you wake up fully too often and putting you into this sort of feverish state.

You might want to try relaxing a bit and just start off with writing down what you remember in the morning. You won't remember as many dreams, but you will get used to the idea and not be so worked up about it. Then you can work toward writing stuff down several times during the night.

Also, OBEs (or LDs that start off from your bed) are nothing to worry about. They are fun as long as you remember nothing can hurt you.

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Originally Posted by stjimmy

Last night marked my second night of my deciding to consciously be aware of my dreams in hopes of one day learning to become lucid on demand.

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Two whole days? You are doing fantastic for such a short amount of practice. Keep it up and be patient. Many of us have been at this for months or years, and still have dryspells of recall and or lucidity.

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Originally Posted by Perlinfalcon

Sounds like you are just too excited and over-thinking things. Your nervousness could be putting you in a very light sleep state. This light sleep can be good for lucid dreaming, but your unsettled state of mind is making you wake up fully too often and putting you into this sort of feverish state.

You might want to try relaxing a bit and just start off with writing down what you remember in the morning. You won't remember as many dreams, but you will get used to the idea and not be so worked up about it. Then you can work toward writing stuff down several times during the night.

Also, OBEs (or LDs that start off from your bed) are nothing to worry about. They are fun as long as you remember nothing can hurt you.

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Thank you, I'll try to be calmer and perhaps I'll put off trying to let mi mind to do stuff and just go to sleep as normal and write what I remember in the morning. Maybe this way I'll give myself more time to get used to all of this.

I know OBE's are harmless, but they creep me out, probably because when I was a child I had a dream in which I woke up and tried to wake up my mom (we were sharing the bed that night), and she wouldn't wake up, and then I started looking around and saw myself sleeping beside her and I then woke up for real and was scared shitless. I know I'll get over it someday, but I'm not quite ready to experience something like this again.

Anyway, thanks!

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Originally Posted by zhineTech

Two whole days? You are doing fantastic for such a short amount of practice. Keep it up and be patient. Many of us have been at this for months or years, and still have dryspells of recall and or lucidity.

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Thanks, I needed that boost of optimism! =)

I don't see how you can call this frustrating at all! You had an eventful night and a (brief) Lucid Dream. And you'e only been trying to do it for a few days. I'm going on a month now with no sign of progress, outside of bettering my dream recall. I would gladly trade your frustration for mine.

Seriously, man. You're doing incredibly well for the amount of time you've put into it.

Also, the "limbo" state is something that you need to embrace and explore. One mustn't be afraid to explore one's mind.

One lives there, after all.

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Originally Posted by bbbblaahhh

Seriously, man. You're doing incredibly well for the amount of time you've put into it.

Also, the "limbo" state is something that you need to embrace and explore. One mustn't be afraid to explore one's mind.

One lives there, after all.

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One fears the unknown, am I right?

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Originally Posted by jasonresno

I don't see how you can call this frustrating at all! You had an eventful night and a (brief) Lucid Dream. And you'e only been trying to do it for a few days. I'm going on a month now with no sign of progress, outside of bettering my dream recall. I would gladly trade your frustration for mine.

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Ah, my frustration was not from my night being uneventful, it was because I kept floating in and out of consciousness and that was a frustrating sensation. No proper dreams and no rest. Like Perlinfalcon put it, it's like a feverish state, not being sure about what you see and hear and feel. It was rough night. But thanks, I'll quit bitching about it now =)

I would say that maybe you were getting to the end of a cycle in your sleep phase, if its not over excitement or shock of realizing you are asleep (the shock still gets me now :P).
I've noticed after about 3 to 5 dreams, short or long, the lucids become really fragmented and short and I wake up a lot. Sometimes its best to have nice long blocks of dreaming, rather than bits and pieces. Maybe you just need more dense dreaming, if that makes sense.

For me, its as if I have 5 strikes or I'm out. :P

i looked up what red could mean in a dream and this is what i got

Red is an indication of raw energy, force, vigor, intense passion, aggression, power, courage, impulsiveness and passion.�The color red has deep emotional and spiritual connotations. Consider the phrase "seeing red" to denote anger. Alternatively, the color red in your dream indicates a lack of energy. You are feeling tired or lethargic.
Red is also the color of danger, violence, blood, shame, rejection, sexual impulses and urges.�Perhaps you need to stop and think about your actions.

hope this helps

Maybe it was because you were so anxious and stuff about it

I wouldn't read too much into a dreams meaning. The message is either blatantly obvious (I'm scared of such-and-such) or it's just your mind wandering. Things like "the color red means" are just abstract generalizations and likely mean nothing. Often time dream interpretations lingers on mysticism or are just plain fiction.