Odd waking from LD.. thoughts?

[ashraen]

So I had an interesting experience the other morning, and I thought I would see if any of you guys could shed some light on what exactly happened. I was at my grandparent's house (in dream), looking for my car (which I thought was parked outside) but being unable to find it. This happens quite a bit in my dreams. Anyway, it hit me that I was probably dreaming, so I levitated a rock in the driveway to check.. and it worked. I was lucid. However, as I stood in the driveway, stabilizing and deciding what to do with my lucidity, everything went pitch black. I had about 5 seconds of dream time in complete darkness in which I was thinking "Crap, I bet my alarm is about to go off.." And then my alarm sounded. This is the second time this has happened. What's odd is that everything went black several seconds BEFORE my alarm actually went off. The first time was an afternoon nap, and this time it was Sunday morning after spending the night at my GF's house. I went to bed late and woke up several times, and my alarm was set at a random morning time because I wasn't sure exactly when we needed to get up (but I knew it would be sometime around 9-10). I give these details because I don't think this was one of those things where your body just *knows* it's time to get up. I didn't specifically think to myself "I need to get up in X hours," and in fact I wasn't sure exactly how long I wanted/needed to sleep in either case. So what happened? Do you think my subconscious detected some "precursor" to the alarm actually going off (like maybe it makes some small sound or vibration before it actually starts beeping)? I'm curious as to whether any of you have similar experiences.

[Pandabear]

Yesterday I tried something like that! (I only remember the end of the dream) I was talking with someone, and suddently it hitted me, that my alarm probably was going to wake me up, and a few secunds later it ringed! The weird thing was, that I use to set it to 4 am for WBTB, but this time I sat it to ring 3:30 am. I've tried something like that before..

[Zenithar66]

well, ive had many such experiences. and i do feel that there is a programmer or a protocol that monitors your dreams and outside light levels etc and wakes u up. one thing ive noticed is that when i am about to wake up, the dream KNOWS i am going to awaken, because all of a sudden it becomes utterly sill and senseless. this has occurred many times, i will be having a dream and just before i wake up, it begins to make less and less sense, and infarct the dream will actively change the scenario to "make sense" of the waking up process, like someone randomly running in my back door and scaring me awake, other times like a car almost hitting me etc.. and of course another possibility as regards your alarm clock situation is the the clock was infact already ringing, and you simply couldn't consciously here it, but your brain could and therefore began to wake u up, by which time you thought the clock had only started ringing! who knows, interesting stuff though!

[ashraen]

Yea, I had considered that maybe the alarm *was* ringing, I just couldn't consciously hear it yet.. I think you might be right about that. It seems like the most logical answer. The 5 seconds of dream time between "blank screen" and hearing the alarm would translate to an extremely short time in the waking world. Thanks for posting about your experience I find the best way to make sense of things to hear details accounts from what others have encountered

[Summerlander]

On the other hand, it could have just been a coincidence. By the way, I think it is better to have a plan of action in lucid dreams as it can prolong them and avoid an undesirable exit from the state via hesitation. Techniques that help you with sensory amplification are a great help too. The dark void is quite common but we can always turn vision, sound and everything else on... We must also remember that expectation plays a major role when we are lucid dreaming. If we think that an unusual event heralds the beginning of something happening in the physical world and that we might wake up, then this is what is likely to happen. I do agree with programming of the mind. The brain is very much computerised so...perhaps on many occasions it is not all "coincidence".