Sleep Paralysis / Lucid 50/50 split. Anyone else? (CRAZY)

[Blizzz]

Ok, last night I had one of those experiences that completely baffled me. I feel like I've been through alot with lucid dreaming, but somehow always manage to find something new that completely confuses me. This is one of those times. Two hours after drifting off to sleep (I don't remember anything from this stage), I woke in my bed, experiencing sleep paralysis. Or was it? I knew I couldn't move because I tried to and failed. So here I am, lying in bed completely paralyzed and after trying to fight it for a while, I decided to relax and let myself go, because I was really close to becoming lucid. I kept focus on the room, which remained unchanging, identical to how it is in real life. In fact I could not tell at this point if I were dreaming or not. If I were to bet money on it, I would say that it was my real room. You know that feeling you get with your eyes when lucid, that sometimes It's hard to focus and you need to pay extra special attention to what you're focusing on? That feeling engulfed me, so I was thinking that I was lucid and struggled to keep my focus. After about 45 seconds of waiting, I was able to move. Now keep in mind, I'm looking at my actual room, not my dream room because I was originally experiencing sleep paralysis and kept focusing on my room until i was able to move. I then decided to reach forward with my hand to try and grab a rectangular portion of my window (shade) off the wall which was much too far away for me to really grab. I was able to pick it up, and that shape was now in my hand. So now I realize that this must be a dream, because that is certainly impossible, but remember, I've been conscious the whole time waiting to determine if this were real or not. I then decided to turn this rectangular shape into a Nintendo controller since it was about that size and just for kicks, i did the Contra code for 30 guys. I maintained consciousness right from when I awoke with sleep paralysis right through until i spawned the controller. Now how am I able to see my actual room, and have control over lucidly spawned items at the same time? Who knows, but I wanted to find out. I maintained consciousness although being confused as all hell to what was going on. I then decided to do a reality check, which failed. I was confident now that I was not dreaming, but was experiencing the mental state of being in a dream... that grogginess / mental excitement at the same time. It was very difficult to accept, because there was no transition whatsoever from being in a dream, to being awake. It was like a 50/50 split the whole time until finally I became awake without ever losing consciousness from the dreamworld into the real world and nothing in my surroundings changed at all. Explain that. Has this ever happened to anyone? It was the most ridiculous thing ever to try and analyze!

[danbarber]

Something wierd happened to me last night too. I was lying in bed awake just thinking about stuff when sudenly I just got a weird feeling, I thought that perhaps I'd just fallen asleep although nothing around me had changed. I did the nose-hold reality check which told me I was awake, however this reality check has failed me in the past so I decided to try something a little different. I closed my eyes and imagined my bedroom wall changing colour, something in my mind told me it wouldn't work, so I tried to really focus on it and put all my will power into it. I then entered what felt like sleep paralysis (vibrations and stuff) so then I asumed I had been awake and was now accedently doing a WILD. Then the vibrations started to hurt, so I stopped and found myself to be awake (or was I?). I can't work out exactly what happened, I was either awake the whole time and almost did a WILD or maybe I was dreaming about doing a WILD, or maybe the ammount of concentration I used caused me to wake up in sleep paralysis. So far thats twice I can remember being in sleep paralysis and both times it started to hurt shortly into it.

[wombing]

tis nutty blizz. i have no idea what happened..

[Xei]

I once managed something similar. I keep getting into Lucid Dreams, but with no idea how. Two times now, I've woken up knowing that, by using a special mental trick, I'd been able to get into a dream; but I can't remember what the trick is! Anyway, I had one of these five second transition dreams. I got out of bed in my dream, walked along the hall outside my room, and then... I saw my real room. I'd opened my eyes in the real world. But the freaky thing was that I could still feel my bare feet in my dream walking along the rug outside my room, perfectly vivid. It was one of the weirdest things ever...

[TravisE]

I once had a brief dream (or at least it seemed like a dream) where I woke up lying in bed in my room in the morning under sleep paralysis. Everything looked perfectly normal--nothing was out of place, and the light coming through the windows was perfectly right for the time of morning. However, I had that familiar feeling that I was actually dreaming. Assuming I was dreaming, I was trying to make it so that I could move, but was unsuccessful. It seems like when I tried to get out of my bed and walk across my room, it actually felt at first like my body was doing that, but I saw that I was still in bed and hadn't changed position at all. Then I blinked and I suddenly felt like I was awake again. The weird thing was that my vision had not changed at all--my room still looked exactly the same and I was in the exact same position looking in the exact same direction. Weird! So I have no idea if I was dreaming or not. One other time, I had a very brief lucid dream once where the last image I saw was almost the same as what I was looking at when I woke up. When I woke up, it seemed like my eyes were already open. More recently, I woke up in the middle of the night after an interesting dream. It was dark, so all I could see was the dim rectangle that the faint light coming through my window formed. But it felt like I was holding something hard in one of my hands--it felt like I was holding the graphing calculator I keep on the head of my bed that I use to record dreams (it has a text editor program on it). Then I suddenly saw a shadowy image of the calculator in front of me (with the buttons faintly visible), as if I were actually holding it. Then I became more aware and thought that this didn't make sense, because why would my calculator suddenly appear in my hand without my actually reaching for it and picking it up? Then I blinked and it was gone. Then I thought, "That was interesting!" and reached for my real calculator and a flashlight and entered my dream notes. I really was awake when this happened--the proof was that the dream I recorded was still there in the morning, and I typed it into my computer. It turned out my hand had been resting under my head (I believe I purposely put myself into that position before falling asleep as I was trying to get comfortable), and the weight from my head on my hand made it feel like I was holding my calculator. Anyway, this is my guess: I think it's possible to still be partially dreaming as we wake up, which can result in hypnopompic imagery. There was also a discussion here some time back of whether it's possible for one's eyes to open during sleeping, and the consensus was that it was possible. So perhaps in these cases our real eyes might actually have opened during the dream before we woke up, and the dream incorporated what we saw through our eyes with the dream imagery. That could have accounted for the "half-real/half-dream" feeling of those incidents.

[Blizzz]

[quote] Anyway, this is my guess: I think it's possible to still be partially dreaming as we wake up, which can result in hypnopompic imagery. There was also a discussion here some time back of whether it's possible for one's eyes to open during sleeping, and the consensus was that it was possible. So perhaps in these cases our real eyes might actually have opened during the dream before we woke up, and the dream incorporated what we saw through our eyes with the dream imagery. That could have accounted for the "half-real/half-dream" feeling of those incidents. I think I have to agree. I've thought about it for some time since it happened and that seems to be my position as well. It was completely weird, and hopefully it'll happen again so I can try to analyze a little further.