Thread: Should I Flip the Red Switches?

I became interested in lucid dreaming a few months ago when I had my first semi-lucid one, spontaneously. Since then, to no avail, I have attempted to induce another: I have been listening to lucid dreaming hypnosis videos on YouTube, and I have been doing a couple of RC's every day.

I did however have a dream a couple of days ago where I was shown a wall panel with two very bright, red switches mounted one under the other, and I was made aware that "these are the switches you need to flip in order to enter the world of lucid dreaming." I have racked my brain since then to figure out what these switches remind me of. I just now figured it out. There is a similar release switch on the battery compartment of my old laptop. It is capsule-shaped sliding switch, albeit black.

My first take on the dream is that it is a warning. The switches are not marked with skulls and crossbones, mind you, but they are bright red, I feel certain, that the dream is telling me to proceed with caution. My second take is that the dream is representative of my fears of who or what I might encounter in lucid dreams.

I have good reason to be cautious. Twenty years ago, I was journaling my very vivid, often dark dreams where I was shown paintings and then IWL painting those paintings. I became very obsessed about the journaling and the painting, and wound up in very dark place. I had to stop all of it.

Also, during this time, I had an intensely frightening dream/experience where I thought I was awake trying to go to sleep, but I was dreaming that I was trying to go to sleep. I encountered a dark, evil malevolence and experienced horrifying sleep paralysis.

Fast forward to this past year -- the most difficult and devastating year of my life. The death of a loved one has triggered a cascade of events which I could never have predicted in my wildest dreams (seriously, no pun intended), but suffice it, for now, to say that, unlike 20 years ago, my dreams have been my salvation, and have anchored me. I am seeing my deceased loved ones often, and I am traveling to other beautiful and bizarre worlds where I get respite from what is a very difficult day to day existence here on this earth. It has been a very spiritual journey and I see lucid dreaming as the next step in my spiritual evolution.

So I am going to go for it. I am going to flip those red switches. In other words, I am going to give my unconscious permission to let me enter the world of lucid dreaming. So much this year has come down to facing fear...and I am much tougher, stronger, and much, much more comfortable in my skin that I was 20 years ago.

As an aside, earlier this year I became interested in Ayahuasca, but I decided, that as of now, I do not have the constitution for it. I also decided that I can access the same spiritual channels through mediation and dreams.

This is my first post. I will go to the introduction forum tomorrow. Also I will add some of the above information to my profile.

I did browse through some posts by novices earlier tonight and read responses by helpful gurus/afficionados. This made me realize that the first thing I need to do is to get serious about a daily mediation practice. Then there is so much to learn about the various induction methods, for example. I see a lot of great resources here and am very excited about what I will learn.

Edit: changed wrong word, spelling.