Thread: being dark in the lucid

Originally Posted by kel

When I used to sleep with an eye mask, i'd become lucid and still have it over my face and impossible to rip off. So I continued my lucid ignoring it and it eventually went away.

Well last night I had a dark ass dream where I could only sees a tiny shadow from the corner of my vision. I continued and ignored it but it never got brighter

why do you think this happens?

Perhaps next time i'll yell BRIGHTNESSSSS!!!

These kind of things you talk about make me very confident that you are truely having lucid dreams and not just pretending. You also said one time that sometime you felt blind drunk and could hardly move. I have had my share of both those experiences. If some one always talks about these complex stories that happened, I am never sure what to think.
You are developing your lucid skills to the point where you are becoming aware in nREM sleep, or in REM but long before your brain has started a normal visual dream. If you become lucid in nREM like I often do, the visuals will be less vivid, and the random events and DCs will be few. nREM dreams are not very vivid or creative. You can develop the ability to have fun and amazing LDs in that state by just accepting the poor visual field. Learn to impose your visualization skill in this state and stablize your dream body by touch. Stabize just as if the lights are out. Clap your hands, rub them along your arms and legs or whatever. I enjoy spending a few minutes feeling my self fly or dance or do yoga, anything that can be fun in the dark. You can then learn to initiate a REM cycle so that if you stay stable for 5-10 minutes the REM starts and you can go on your way in a fully vivid normal LD.

Maybe it became a mental block? I got my first lucid dream last night, and I was sleeping with the REM dreamer mask... In the dream...the darkness caused by the mask somehow faded into me just having my eyes closed which I slowly opened.

..maybe you could try to visualize yourself just having your eyes closed, try to open them.
I had the very same thing Sivason mentioned... On my first lucid...I was happy that I could stay calm...but it didn't last long and everything was dark...

I couldn't walk, well, I was standing and tried to lift my leg to walk forward. But I felt dizzy and moving my legs felt hard... It felt like I had to learn to walk all over again? Is this what you mean Sivason and Kel?

Posts merged, ADEzor. Try not to double post. If you want to add something, you always have the "Edit Post" button on the bottom right of your post.

Originally Posted by ADEzor

I had the very same thing Sivason mentioned... On my first lucid...I was happy that I could stay calm...but it didn't last long and everything was dark...

I couldn't walk, well, I was standing and tried to lift my leg to walk forward. But I felt dizzy and moving my legs felt hard... It felt like I had to learn to walk all over again? Is this what you mean Sivason and Kel?

Yes, exactly what I am talking about. They can still b e developed into normal REM LDs with practice, they still count as LDs and can be fun just as they are, but you need to stablize in the dark or that crazy hard to move stuff happens. Last night I had a nREM lucid and by the time I was truely stable the visuals strated to form and I could walk and run but kept fumbling with how my legs moved. The shift into REM was fairly sudden and I could actually feel (just enough to not wake me) my eyeballs start to tweek with little jumpy motions. The visuals came in full force and I played around with trying to see various amazing land scapes, it just took patients and stablizing in thhe dark.

Just summon a light switch and flick it on. that should work... wait.

Originally Posted by sivason

These kind of things you talk about make me very confident that you are truely having lucid dreams and not just pretending. You also said one time that sometime you felt blind drunk and could hardly move. I have had my share of both those experiences. If some one always talks about these complex stories that happened, I am never sure what to think.
You are developing your lucid skills to the point where you are becoming aware in nREM sleep, or in REM but long before your brain has started a normal visual dream. If you become lucid in nREM like I often do, the visuals will be less vivid, and the random events and DCs will be few. nREM dreams are not very vivid or creative. You can develop the ability to have fun and amazing LDs in that state by just accepting the poor visual field. Learn to impose your visualization skill in this state and stablize your dream body by touch. Stabize just as if the lights are out. Clap your hands, rub them along your arms and legs or whatever. I enjoy spending a few minutes feeling my self fly or dance or do yoga, anything that can be fun in the dark. You can then learn to initiate a REM cycle so that if you stay stable for 5-10 minutes the REM starts and you can go on your way in a fully vivid normal LD.

that makes sense because when I used to have dreams where I should up beside my bed and could barely move in the dark, I think those dreams were all WILDs immediately after going to bed (so no 5 hour window)

Originally Posted by kel

When I used to sleep with an eye mask, i'd become lucid and still have it over my face and impossible to rip off. So I continued my lucid ignoring it and it eventually went away.

I have this same problem with earplugs. I pull them out in the lucid, but new ones just reappear in my ear. :p

I'll tell you what I usually do if I'm lucid enough, in most of my lucid dreams I wake up in my bed to a dark boring house, or sometimes I'll have difficulties moving my dream body (this morning I rolled out of sp, only to have a hand appear out of the floor and hold me down), I've also had times were my vision seems frozen or I can barely see. When I see that it's dark like this I lay down on the ground and attempt to re-enter a dream through WILDing within the dream, continuously until I got a dream I like. Generally I'll keep getting woken up back in my dream bed, but sometimes it's light out, and I can go outside and do stuff. Just don't let yourself get frusterated, don't hurry things.

Originally Posted by LucidDreamGod

I'll tell you what I usually do if I'm lucid enough, in most of my lucid dreams I wake up in my bed to a dark boring house, or sometimes I'll have difficulties moving my dream body (this morning I rolled out of sp, only to have a hand appear out of the floor and hold me down), I've also had times were my vision seems frozen or I can barely see. When I see that it's dark like this I lay down on the ground and attempt to re-enter a dream through WILDing within the dream, continuously until I got a dream I like. Generally I'll keep getting woken up back in my dream bed, but sometimes it's light out, and I can go outside and do stuff. Just don't let yourself get frusterated, don't hurry things.

I'll try it, but if I close my eyes ill wake up in my real bed!

Originally Posted by kel

I'll try it, but if I close my eyes ill wake up in my real bed!

Even if you did, it is quite simple to re-enter a dream if you just woke up from it. Just close your eyes as quick as you can, and stay very still. It works almost every time for me.

Cool I should try that too. (DEILDing right?) I already have a habit of staying still when waking up, so I guess I could really make use of this technique.

Originally Posted by ADEzor

Cool I should try that too. (DEILDing right?) I already have a habit of staying still when waking up, so I guess I could really make use of this technique.

do it! There are a few guides around on the forum, check around for them

Yeah that's what I do. It seems like it happens quite automatically for me. Usually I do a wbtb 6-7 hours after going to bed, and I'l go to sleep and almost instantly after falling asleep I'll catch myself in SP, the more sleep you get before this wbtb usually the better. It feels more like a morning nap to me sometimes.

I guess my Achilles heel would be going into a non-lucid dream. Like my WILD attempts before also I'm scared of SP, because I don't know what to expect from it. How can I get out of SP if things go haywire?

For me, anytime I want to escape SP, I just imagine movement (you can even practice in real life to get a sense of it, but it won't be as vivid unless your very focused). Usually I'll imagine summer-salting forward, or even standing up if I want to be somewhere specific (rarely have the idea to think of some place good, but I once transitioned from SP to running across my yard). You'll usually get a modest sense of this actually happening (like a really vivid thought), and at the apex of that sense, instead of imagining movement, actually move your body like you would in real life, and suddenly, your there, out of SP. Your awarness likes to pin it's self wherever it thinks your body currently is, in SP it has no real place to pin awarness too, so all your thoughts will be hazy scenes and tend to be very random and unstable, until you bring that dream body alive by actually moving it inside of your imagined scene, if you don't initiate movement your going to stay in SP where everything is unstable, and if you don't have some idea of where your body is (through that imagined movement/scene) your body will continue to pin it's awarness to your paralyzed waking body.

This is my theory on SP, and I know it wasn't necissary to explain it all out like that. But it helps to understand the concept so you can escape it however you like. You'll get used to SP the more you have it, for me, I've had it occur frequently throughout my life. I'm generally a pretty nervous person, but SP rarely scares me anymore, and it's fear that brings bad things in dreams, so I just smile and relax.

I think that's also why spinning works to stabilize the dream, it brings your awareness back to the dream body. I prefer to look at my hands or my feet though.

Nice, thanks for the calming info. Even more and more people say they have "grown into SP" so that those events doesn't scare them anymore. Maybe I should see it more as an opportunity to experience fascinating/mind blowing hallucinations and somewhat look forward for SP, instead of being afraid.

Sometimes in SP, there is like a radio station that plays in my head. And people talk on it, and it just sounds so real, sometimes it's fun to just listen.

I've had my fair share of (mostly non scary) hallucinations which I could refer as sleep paralysis. They blend with the real world and are really vivid and in color (I've made a more in detail thread somewhere about these things)... The only difference from SP is that I can move in them.

Originally Posted by ADEzor

I've had my fair share of (mostly non scary) hallucinations which I could refer as sleep paralysis. They blend with the real world and are really vivid and in color (I've made a more in detail thread somewhere about these things)... The only difference from SP is that I can move in them.

SP should not really be scary, unless you are the rare type with a certain sleep disorder, you can always break it by intending to move and focusing on it. Think about some one sleeping in REM and then getting touched with a hot needle, that person would have no problem jumping up out of SP.

There are many creative things you can do in order to make your lucid dreams brighter. First of all, do not believe that just because you are wearing a sleep mask, your dreams will be darker. This isn't true, the mind is powerful and you can make your dreams as bright as you want.

Here are some things I recommend you try:

-Assume you are wearing sunglasses in the dream and that is why it is so dark. Reach up to your face and take them off.
-Look for the sun/moon. Point to it and command it to be brighter.
-Find a remote that controls your dreams brightness.
-Pretend there is just a temporary power outage in the dream. Find a power box or electrician and make it bright again!

Good luck

Thanks Sivason! I've had thought about SP in a wrong way

for OP: I again had a lucid (3 in one night wow! Yet short) where I was wearing the sleep mask... This time I could see right trough it and I only saw the frames of the mask, and it actually was the thing which triggered lucidity for me.