Thread: Closing eyes in LDs

If you can't open your eyelids, imagine looking through them or imagine anything else in order to create a new dream scene. Don't overthink it; just try. Intention is all you need.

If you can't see you are basically in the void, that is you know your asleep and you know that what you are hearing (if anything) and feeling are just dream stuff. Touch is the last sense to go so what you should do is to slap your hands together and rub them, if you feel like you are lying down then get up, walk along as you rub your hands, eventually your vision will return if you can stay in the sleep/dream state.

as you walk along rubbing, expect to encounter a door, that is your going to walk right into the door handle (Helen Keller style), then take hold of the handle and turn it and open the door. Expect the dream scape to be on the other side, I have used this trick.

I usually can close my eyes tho and be just fine.

Once I was in a dream scape and after an epic gun battle with the dream cops (crimes against dremanity my azz), I found my self in the void, I rubbed my hands until the dream scape returned but it was dim and blurry. So I closed my eyes (probably a mistake to do) and said get clearer, when I opened my eyes the dream scape was all sharp lines I could make out very nice beams and such, just one problem the dream was sharp but nearly pitch black. So stupidly I closed my eyes again, and said get brighter, when I opened my eyes it was like twilight (still sharp tho). I thought to heck with it and just started off across the dreamscape flying commanding and doing awesome stuff (it lightened up almost immediately by the way).

All in all this was my most epic lucid dream. But closing my eyes (twice) after coming out of the void probably was a bit stupid.

Maybe because you heard that closing eyes means the end of the dream, you actually believe in that. Once I had a very vivid dream, and I went to my bed and tried to WILD, closed eyes, started to see some hypnagogia, but felt bored, opened the eyes and continued the dream.

One thing you could remind yourself of, BruceLee, is that in truth you have no eyes to close when dreaming.

When you close your dream-body eyes during a dream, what you are actually "closing" is the perception of your eyes/eyesight, and not your actual eyes. This might sound like semantics to you, but it really is not: if you can remember that the things you are closing are not actually your eyes, you might also remember that making a dream image briefly disappear (aka, closing your dream-body eyes) doesn't necessarily mean the end of the dream. If you remember that, then you might find yourself still in your dream when you open your dream-body eyes, or perhaps you'll be in a new dream but still lucid, or (if your dreaming mind is that stubborn) you might find yourself in a void but still lucid (which can be pretty cool in itself).

tl;dr: I guess it all comes down to remembering... remembering that closing your eyes in a dream really doesn't matter, because, in the end, you have no eyes to close in a dream.

One other point about void survival,
You might succeed but think you failed

your in the void rubbing your hands but then find yourself in bed
'darn woke up' <--- maybe but maybe your dreaming your in bed

you could even just lose lucidity and end up like driving a car, or your at work, you might think you just woke up but really your just non lucidly dreaming, ask yourself how you got from the void to the car, or how you got dressed for work if you were just asleep.

obviously if you false awaken in your reality-like dream bed you'll need to do reality checks to be sure your wake.

thank you, I will try to rubb my hands and walking next time I an't open my eyes

^^ Again, I think it might help if you can remind yourself that there is no actual eye-closing going on during a dream, only the perception of eye-closing. If you can understand that you never actually closed a real set of eyes during your dream, then that darkness might fade quickly and you might find it much easier to invite new imagery into your dream.

I will try as well to keep in mind that there is no actual eye closing then =) but it might be hard to trully understand this while it is happening

^^ It may be hard to do at first, but when you gain this sort of understanding during the dream, you may find that many things become easier...

When i close my eyes i usually get false awakenings. When i am in the void and am trying to create a new dream scene, i usually try and pretend i am lost. I ask out loud 'where am i?'

A new dreamscene usually appears. Closing your eyes can be a good way to transition i think

This is great info as well, thank you very much =)

I had today similar problem but I wasn't closing my eyes on any purpose. I just felt this feeling which you have when you're very sleepy and tired and you can't keep your eyes open. Maybe I also did that mistake and I was trying to open them too hard (which resulted in opening them in RL ;p). But I had really poor stabilization and couldn't do much. Do you guys also have with it this feeling of fatigue?

I don't have this feeling of fatigue but last time (last ight =) ) my eyes closed by themselves as well :s

Next time I will pretend I am lost, conuing to walk and rubbing my hands. I should also keep in mind that there no actual ee closing as Sageous told us

Originally Posted by LiLeila

Do you guys also have with it this feeling of fatigue?

No LD is not associated with fatigue for me, the opposite, when I lucid 80% is on Saturday morning and another 10%+ Saturday night (Sunday morning). I think the reason is lack of stress, nothing to think about worry about etc, but I say not associated with fatigue because I sleep in that day and Lucid 75% of the time after my normal wake up time mostly just at or just after it and most of the rest soon after.

I do sometimes equate working on recall and journaling with fatigue, I wake up in the night remember a dream and think go back to sleep why journal that, or I wake up remembering little to nothing as this morning then pull from the nothingness 3 full segments of dream, and even as I ask my self can I pull more, I think why not go back to sleep, but in this case journaled. But in general on other nights (not weekend) I only journal about half the time (unless its a contest). So it is then that I feel like returning to sleep not journaling, sometimes not even bothering to recall any more, just accept the fragment and hit the internal snooze button, of course hours latter when I wake up all I remember is the time of night I awoke not the dream or fragment it is gone by then, If I do fight the fatigue turn on the computer and type it up in journal, I will always remember it on awakening and be able to talk about it thru the day. So fight the fatigue and journal

But it is eliminating stress and sleeping enough to nap that are the key to success for me.

I didn't mean fatigue in RL but in LD. I can't describe this feeling better I think. So the tiredness from RL can reflect in the dream? I was rather sleepy after waking up then so that can have sense but I thought it can't have any connection (especially that I'm almost always tired after waking up). I thought it's only a body condition. But maybe my mind just created this feeling for some reason to show somehow that I'm not stable enough to maintain the dream. I sleep long (that night ~8-9h, usually longer) and all I have is free time by now so not much stress coming out ;p

Of course I have this fatigue with journaling sometimes too. It's nice to write 1 or 2 dreams down but when it's 8 and million fragments then it feels like forever. However I'm doing my best. Unless I know that I must be rested.

Well... I close my eyes in about 70% of my LDs now. I lay down, close my eyes and teleport. A good time to slow down, raise awareness, remember goals, and convince myself that time doesn't need to be a factor. Every LD, you will eventually wake up, so I try not to worry about time unless I am trying to dilate it.

I used to have all sorts of problems with my eyes and I actually think that the eyes is a sign of the LD ending. You start with the fatigue and all because you are feeling your waking eyes instead of your dream eyes. I would recommend either ignoring it, trying to DEILD, or just step away and out of your eyes. Don't know if you have gone away from your body in a dream, but if you can do this, it doesn't really matter what problems you are having in the dream before, because it was connected to that dream body, step out and be "ethereal" or go to a different body.

It also could just be that that is what waking feels like for you for now. It says you have 8 LDs, so most of the times with that many LDs, your lucids will be short, not just because of excitement or thinking about the end of the dream, but because you highest awareness points in dreams are near the end, so you realize you are dreaming as the dream has already started kicking ya out or close to it. It will pass with time. hopefully.

I'm probably a bit too late to the party here, but I've never really had problems with closing my “eyes” in LDs. Maybe this was because I had had some LDs in my early childhood where I did this, long before I knew LDing had a name and long before I even heard of people having issues with closing eyes in dreams. I have had occasional LDs in the past where my “eyes” were seemingly glued shut and I couldn't open them, but those were very rare.

cooleymd brings up some good points on voids that fit with what I've experienced (the darkness or lack of sight problem usually eventually goes away once it no longer has your focus). Sageous and Sensei have a really good point that I hadn't even really thought of. Closing your dream “eyes” does sound like a handy way to teleport. That's something I want to try now, since changing dream scenes happens to be one of the things I'm planning to practice with in my upcoming LDs.