Thread: Attained lucidity, scared the heck out of me.

So a while ago i attained conscious lucidity for the first time.
I remembered opening my eyes and standing alone in a big field. When i looked at my hands i could see energy flowing upwards from my fingers. From this moment on i knew i was dreaming. When i tried to stabilize my dream something weird happened.

For anyone that has seen the movie Constantine, the part where constantine visits hell, and everything that is real seems to fade away in a fiery wake. This is exactly what happened and as soon as i saw my entire world fade into flames i woke up, heart pounding and sweating like hell.

Now i've tried to look the meaning of this up on the internet but couldn't find anything. I was wondering if anyone had similair experiences and what this might mean?

Whatever meaning your dream has is personal to your views on life. Personallt I wouldn't be thrilled about seeing my world go into flames and fade away either. If you hold religious views in waking life and the concept of hell scares you, then this probably "was" hell for you. REM sleep (where you dream) has a natural increase in heartrate which can produce a variety of effects on your emotions. Now the difference to this heart rate increase in waking life is that you might attach the emotions based on the scenario you are subconsciously creating, whereas you would be presented with the stimuli from the external environment -> hear rate increase in waking life. So you could say that in your dreams you attach the cause to the effect you are already experiencing.

Besides that lucidity is always (and especially the first couple) a powerful experience and it can be frightening. The fact that you yourself refer to Constantine could be that that would be your interpretation of how it would look like if your world was coming to and end (in this case this is exactly what happened as your "current" world was in fact ceasing to exist because you were about to wake up), and I think that may be the only meaning you should attach to it =).

Now besides this it is normal to struggle with dream control and stabilisation during your first lucid (Hell I still struggle sometimes, especially when attempting to WILD), the way my dreams destabilise is normally a fade in vividness or I feel like I am being pulled out of my surroundings. Keep at it mate, now you know a bit more about what to expect from your body for your next lucids and I promise you the fear will fade with time.

I will congratulate you on your first lucid and advise you not to read too much into the way it ended =). If you have a hidden fear lucidity will be the best way of overcoming it ^^. Besides that, it took me nearly 40 lucids before I could set my surroundings on fire, whereas you seemed to nail it on the first attempt. Recognise what happened and practise controling it

Best of luck with your journey and welcome to the world of lucid dreaming =)

I'm guessing that you were nervous subconsciously so that when you became lucid, the overwhelming sensation was a shock and you produced scarier thoughts than positive ones. Just keep in mind that Lucid Dreaming is incredibly fun and exciting. Nothing in a dream can hurt you and it's your to control. You should be happy that you had your first lucid. It means that it's going to get easier now.

It's just the shock of being "awake" in a place that you normally think is impossible. If we were like this everynight, imagine how scary it would be, if every night you had the chance of going into a nightmare and basically ending up in an hour long hell until you woke up? Scary right? Thats why dreams are just dreams. They are places we go and just be, until we wake up.

Now that you have started to try to breach that barrier, you get the pros and the cons. You get to go to that magical world of impossibilities and do whatever you want. But if you are new enough, like you are currently, you might just end up in a chance nightmare. Thats how dreams go, the same for lucids. It's like watching a film. You might have cool action scenes and some scary scenes. If you want to enjoy and be in the action scenes, then you are in the movie- you have to go through the scary ones.

But with time and practice, you can change the script.

How's that for a metaphor?

Haha thanks for all the responses guys. Was just the reassurance i needed to continue to try to master my dreams.

Dreams come with nightmares- it's just a fact of life. Nightmares are rare, and I'd say for you after maybe your 3rd lucid or so, you will be able to abort yourself from a nightmare lucid.