Strange problem with sleeping masks.

[Inside This Fantasy]

I recently started using sleeping masks because of a thread I read about it helping with recall when you wake up. The problem is that the last two lucid dreams I've had started from FA's..and I wake up with the mask on and unable to take it off! Its like my body feels the mask on my real head, and since I'm not actually taking it off it doesn't come off. I end up taking a mask off of my head, but there is still one there, and as a result I can never see...and blind LDs just arent as fun. Has anyone else ever experienced this?

[Paradox-db3]

Never experienced this. How interesting that your external stimuli affects your dreams in such a way and yet you do not wake up. I used a sleep mask for a while, too. But I found that it would be off by morning several times. Has it helped with your recall, though? If not, I would simply stop using it. If it has...well I don't know what to suggest.

[Mes Tarrant]

In your next blind LD I would try to bend down and touch the ground (and rationalize to yourself that even though it's pitch black, you must be standing on something), feeling the texture with your fingers. The more you feel it, the more stable it should become, and finally with luck you will start to see it as well. Do the same for the walls, etc.

[Inside This Fantasy]

I guess one of the weirdest things is that I am not blind in the sense that my eyes can't see. I'm blind in the sense that there is just something over my eyes. It is actually exactly like my sleeping mask. With my real sleeping mask I can see a little bit of light where the mask doesn't perfectly fit around my nose. If I tilt my head I can point the hole at whatever I want to see and see little bits of the world at a time. It is the same way inside the dream. I can see the slightest bit of the outside world through the opening in the mask. With a little work I was eventually able to open the crack a little bit, but in the end I couldn't get it completely off.

[Mes Tarrant]

That doesn't matter, because it's a dream and in the end there isn't really a mask over your eyes. So you can trick your eyes to see through it.

[Inside This Fantasy]

Very true. I'm not very experienced with dream control yet so I think I'll try it without for a while. Maybe when I get better at it I'll try with the mask and see if it still happens, and if so see if I can control it.

[Draoi]

Yeah I've had that happen before. I dream I take off a series of masks. I've also had LDs where I spin a new scene, lose my lucidity and then regain it when I notice I still have the mask on. Interesting that in Castenada's "The Art of Dreaming", Don Juan recommends wearing a headband when LDing.