Thread: Who turned out the lights?!

Originally Posted by Syruplord

This has been happening pretty frequently for me in my LDs. In the few that I have, everything's going great. I'm making sparks come out of my fingers or flying or getting ready to have sex...then the lights go out and I'm in pitch black for a few seconds, then wake up out of the dream. When I wake up I'm like fully rested, so my LDs seem to occur right before I'm supposed to awaken.

In the dreams it's happened for a number of reasons. 1) It just starts to fade out into darkness for no apparent reason. 2) I flew into the night sky and it was really dark. 3) Someone actually turned off the lights in the room and it got dark.

I don't know how to stop it because usually when it gets dark, I'm only like a second away from waking up so there's no time to react. Is this happening because I'm actually just waking up or could my dreams actually last longer?

More than likely, this is not just you naturally waking up. In fact, unless something wakes you up randomly, the odds are that you will not wake up during an LD.

This kind of stuff happens to me all the time. At least half of these occasions are not real awakenings, though. Rather, it is a false awakening. So try doing an RC whenever the black-out awakens you.

Beyond that, if you really are waking up when the lights go out, I should think that you are waking up because you think you will wake up.

My suggested solution? Next time the lights go out, stay totally calm and clap your hands to turn on the lights again. Now, if the light is just fading away it is a bit trickier. In this scenario, realize that things shouldn't fade or be blurry because your eyes cannot fail you- you have no eyes! The dream world is just your perceptions. If you have to, pull out a pair of glasses from your pocket and put them on.

if this only happens before you wake up, this might just be the transition period from dream to awake. For most people it is just the dream blurring away.
So what you want to do is just learn how to make your lucidity last longer.

Yeah I gotta realize I'm dreaming sooner so I can have a longer LD. I'd say usually about 90% of my dream time is non lucid

Try and brace yourself for a DEILD reentry.

Also, don't be afraid of it happening, and I think it wont.

But hey, never had a lucid here, so who am I to give any advice?

Carmine's right, it sounds like a great chance to do some DEILDing, if nothing else.

This had happened to me a lot, here's what I've found.

When you wake up from a dream, your senses don't switch from dreaming to waking all at once. Your sight usually switches at least a second or two before your sense of movement and touch. This effectively means that even though you've begun to see the inside of your eyelids, you can still move within the dream.

You can sometimes use this to go back to dreaming, and interrupt the process of waking. The trick is to ignore sight, and focus entirely on movement. Once the lights start dimming, but before you feel like you're in your bed, start moving actively, focusing on the feeling of movent, your sense of balance, and the feeling of any objects you run into. Most people recommend spinning in circles, and that generally works, though I haven't had much luck with it. If it feels like your eye are closed, don't try to open them. Often, after a little while of this, your vision will simply fade back in.

Originally Posted by Serith

This had happened to me a lot, here's what I've found.

When you wake up from a dream, your senses don't switch from dreaming to waking all at once. Your sight usually switches at least a second or two before your sense of movement and touch. This effectively means that even though you've begun to see the inside of your eyelids, you can still move within the dream.

You can sometimes use this to go back to dreaming, and interrupt the process of waking. The trick is to ignore sight, and focus entirely on movement. Once the lights start dimming, but before you feel like you're in your bed, start moving actively, focusing on the feeling of movent, your sense of balance, and the feeling of any objects you run into. Most people recommend spinning in circles, and that generally works, though I haven't had much luck with it. If it feels like your eye are closed, don't try to open them. Often, after a little while of this, your vision will simply fade back in.

I've noticed this too. At least, when I am waking up from a dream I have been enjoying and I try to stay dreaming, (we all know the feeling,) it seems my in dream sight goes first. I then try and imagine that I am seeing stuff, visualizing like a day dream, and when I do that I can still hear or touch things, (sometimes,) even though I am only imagining the scene.