Unable to open eyes while lucid

Hi!

I'm new to the lucid dreaming practice although I have had several lucid dreams with varying levels of lucidity over the past month in which I have been actively practicing. Most if these dreams I have been able to stabilise well and have good control of eg flying, changing dreamscape, walking through walls and changing items to be specific to my needs etc and they have lasted at least 5 or so minutes.

However I was recently trying out DEILD and chained 3 lucid dreams all of which I had the same problem in. As I was in each dream I would begin to feel lucidity slip and my eyes would close and I was unable to open them. I would then call out to the dream 'eyes open' but it would only cause my real eyes to open and I would wake up. The third time this happened I called out for my dream eyes to open and this time one real eye opened and the other dream eye opened and for a second I swear I could see the dreamscape through one eye and my waking life bedroom through the other before I fully woke up with both eyes open in waking life.

I haven't gotten lucid since but I was wondering if anyone had come across the same issue and has a remedy to solve it in case it happens again in a lucid dream. Any help would be much appreciated!

Ah, I've had similar problems before. I've found the best way to (re)gain sight is by engaging your other senses. Try listening to the dream, feeling your surroundings, even smelling and tasting if needed. Keep doing so without obsession, and you'll be able to see (again).

This problem might be occurring because you simply didn't finished your DEILD transition. In other words, you were still awake during those moments you couldn't open your eyes.

DEILD is a funny thing, consciously speaking: When it works properly, during the DEILD transition you don't become fully awake and you also don't let go of your last dream; confusion can occur. You may have thought you were fully back to sleep and in your dream, but instead you might have still been slightly awake, with your physical eyes still trying to process sensory input. So, though you thought you were asleep and back in your dream, you really weren't quite there yet; your physical eyes were still working in wake-mode, looking at the backs of your eyelids, feeling quite closed (because they were); opening them, as you discovered, only results in seeing the waking-world rather than the dream world (because you were never asleep). Seeing the dreamscape through one eye and your waking-life bedroom through the other seems a sign that you were almost there, but wakefulness won.

The solution to this, to me, is simple: keep your eyes closed for a little while. Relax, assume your dream will return in full clarity shortly, and then calmly let it do that. Eventually sleep will settle in, and your dream eyes will be open. The key word there is "calmly," because as soon as you become focused on your eyes being closed, or, worse, worried that they won't open, you may be breaking the delicate balance of the DEILD process. Relaxed patience is your most powerful tool in the DEILD process; practice it, and you might learn to wait out those closed eyes.

Thank you both for your advice! It is indeed such a fine balance which takes some getting used to. Although in the weeks since I posted this I have had a lot more success which I think may be to do with being able to keep my emotions in check and stay calm whilst thinking of a way to get the dreamscape back whereas before I was panicking because I wanted to stay lucid so badly. I'm finding more and more that patience really is key with the whole practice of lucid dreaming!

You have to accept that you have no eyes in your dream. I mean, it's your "dream body" not your physical body. The thing that helped me - try to look through your "eyes". Don't try to open them. Just look through. And you'll see.

+1 for what has been said.

Learning to see with your eyes closed is a very handy skill for LDs in general. It can fix all sorts of "bugs". Just close your eyes and you can "see through them" as awalker says. Or just learn to see without your eyes...