The relationship between darkness and dream stability

**Hyu** · 03-27-2012 06:29 PM

Darkness has always been an indicator of the stability of my lucid dreams.
No, I'm not talking about dreams fading to black, although I'm assuming that is a related phenomenon.
I'm specifically talking about darkness being an indication on how stable the dream is, or in other words, what the odds are of spontaneously loosing the dream.

Darkness might not be the ideal term though.
I guess "the vividness of colors" or "richness in contrast" would be a more adequate way to describe it, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll just refer to it as darkness.

Over a long time this has become more and more obvious to myself, and it has actually turned into some sort of an obsession to make the colors in my lucids really vivid before doing anything else.

Obviously this doesn't always work, and sometimes I waste an entire lucid trying to achieve this, which is rather annoying.
Then again these dreams are rather short anyways I suppose.
But this state of mind has made me overreact quite a few times when I start out in a moderately dark dream, and instead of calmly approaching the issue and attempting to stabilize the dream, I sometimes panic and immediately lose the dream.

On the other hand, if I manage to get rid of this darkness, I am super confident that I'll have a long lucid dream, which is then most often the case.
I also use it as an indication to re-stabilize the dream.

I'm curious as to what the relation between darkness and stability is in your lucids, or what role if any darkness plays in your dreams.

**gab** · 03-28-2012 06:21 PM

Hi Hyu. I wish I could give you better answer to you interesting question, but I have not had that many experiences yet to be able to compare. Most of my LDs are super short, but lately, I had 3 that were longer than 5 min and perhaps concidentally, they were all at night. In one of them, I added some brilliant colors shouting 'clarity'. But I can't say, if colors/lack of colors or nighttime/daytime in my dreams has anything to do with stability. I'll get back to you in 6 month

Happy dreams

**lemonDrops** · 05-09-2012 07:45 PM

i'm having my problems with darkness - most of my wilds start where i went to sleep, and there its night. here i cannot see very much. i then try to switch on the light, but switches are rarely working in my dreams (my #1 dream sign). when i can force the scene to a brighter one, it feels much easier to stabilize.

but i think it should be also possible to have a very vivid 'dark' lucid. maybe thats just another nonsense we expect to be so, or have learned in our early beginnings.
see my DJ entry for a similar experience: Getting help with teleporting - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

**Hyu** · 05-10-2012 08:49 AM

Yeah, I fully agree that it is something we've picked up in the beginning but is actually completely false.
Since I've had a lot of lucids lately, I've been able to work on this issue, and I can now go as far as to casually close my eyes in my dreams without waking up or causing stability issues.
I don't mind darkness in dreams anymore, you can have dark scenes that are rich in contrast, so it's all good.
I think it's really just a matter of confidence.

I guess I've picked up the whole 'darkness is dangerous' thing, because lucid dreams often fade out when they end?
I must have associated darkness with lack of dream stability because of that.