Please share your bad experiences with LD here
This morning I had an awful LD, but first, some background. If you don’t wanna read the background, skip to [THE DREAM].
[BACKGROUND]
tl;dr: I’m an experienced oneironaut.
After the LD of today, I just realized today is my first day after 3 months of LD practice for real. I finished reading the book “A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming” on October 18th and, on that same night, I had a LD and even achieved a complex pre-set goal with therapeutic purposes. So, it’s been officially 3 months now. Since then, I’ve logged 299 dreams, which 53 were lucid (counting with the 3 of today). I have LD’s since 8 and used them to counter nightmares, by waking me up. They were very sporadic, but after I read that book my mind blew and I’m having them frequently. I think this makes me a natural lucid-dreamer, since it looks like my development is off the charts for the amount of time invested when I compare it to other people trying to LD. I don’t even do RCs while awake anymore (I still always do them while dreaming though, just to make 100% sure before, you know, I jump off a window and stuff).
I’ve read 4 other books in the meanwhile about the subject and I’ve successfully achieved lucidity through many techniques. Even though DILD is my main source of LDs (85%), I’ve done them through WILD, FILD, WBTB and DEILD as well (I don’t count MILD cuz it can’t be accurately measured, but I normally use mantras before sleep so I’m sure they influence my DILD). I’m also developing my own techniques now, click my name and check out another post of mine here about DEILD if you’re interested (it’s the post “Today I rejoined the same LD 4 times, this is how”).
I’m also well experienced with hypnagogia, hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis (it’s been years since I last had a SP). I don’t do drugs, have an above-average intelligence and I’m mentally healthy, even though I’ve dealt with depression a few years back (I’m 27 by the way).
I’ve been using LD’s to learn new skills like surfing, self-healing from a relationship that ended badly and for fun of course, like flying. Everything was going fine.
This morning I had to wake up early for some calls and went back to sleep after an hour, so it was a WBTB. I was sure I’d have a LD today because I went back to bed.
[THE DREAM]
tl;dr: a freaking human-size shadow scared the shit out of my life while lucid.
I was in the underground garage of my building when I saw a kitty. It was tiny and very angry and agitated. I had to hold its neck in a way he wouldn’t turn around and bite my hand, it was like handling a poisonous snake. Looking closer, it was creepy: one of his eyes were missing and he had a big open wound behind his ear all the way to the missing eye. I was taking it to my apartment when he suddenly escaped the elevator and ran back to the garage.
When I approached him, he said “help me” looking down to the metal grid of the sewer on the ground. That surprised me and was a bit scary, but I immediately gained lucidity, because I knew cats don’t talk. I looked at my hand for the usual extra-fingers RC but it was a perfectly normal hand. Sometimes the hand RC does that to me, but since I was pretty sure I was dreaming, I tried pinching my nose. I could breath normally, which led me to the conclusion I was really dreaming after all, thus going lucid as usual.
Usually when I get lucid in a dream while interacting with a dream figure, they get a blank stare and leave the scenario completely ignoring me, as if they were robots. The cat actually did that for a second, but then he returned standing on the metal grid on the floor. I thought to myself “maybe he wants me to help him grab a mouse stuck there or something, let’s see where this dream takes me if I help him”, but I barely finished that sentence in my mind when A FREAKING BLACK CLOUD LEAKED FROM THE KITTEN’S WOUND AND BECAME A BLACK HUMAN FIGURE WITH #@¨!& RED GLOWING EYES AND A TERRIBLE, THREATENING PRESENCE. Completely unexpected.
We were immediately teleported to my bedroom, which I hate because whenever I’m in my bedroom in a dream, it’s dark (as if it’s in the middle of the night). This is also the reason I stopped using the DEILD technique explored in the book “The Phase”, it feels like what people believe to be an “OBE”, Astral Projection and all that bs talk that goes beyond the science field which I despise, otherwise I wouldn’t be posting here but in the Paranormal section (definitely not my style).
Anyway, the whole thing gets weirder. The shadow starts trying to touch me and teleporting all over my room really fast, crossing from one invisible portal to another in zigzag patterns. Another reason I don’t like dreaming in my room is because of false awakenings. To make really sure I was still dreaming and maintaining lucidity, I kept my right hand pinching my nose and breathing and with the left hand, I was trying to keep the creature away from me while praying and trying to banish it. It was scary and vivid as shit. I know the drill here and while fighting that thing I even remembered Morley saying in his book about “accepting the shadow aspects” of ourselves, giving them a hug and absorbing them to us. I’ve done it before with different dream characters, but nothing like this. I promptly dismissed the idea, as if I KNEW deep inside I shouldn’t touch that thing. My body was all screaming at me that it wasn’t right, I was in a super-state of alertness and euphoria, as if my life was threatened. It was AN INTRUDER, something really bad and indescribable. I know the stuff my dreams are made of and I’ve even ben through some deep crazy daddy issue traumas for healing while in a LD, but this… thing, it wasn’t something mundane.
After I got tired of fighting it, I went through my wall and started flying in the sky, turning the night into day. I made a beautiful golden sky and was finally having fun in that LD. After a while, I woke up, but DEILD’d my way back into the dream thinking I would be safe now. Nope, I was right back in my bedroom, all dark and the damn thing was still there with those freaking red eyes, man just imagine if it were you looking at that right in front of you, vivid. I went through the wall again and flew far away. Woke up again, stayed still in bed with eyes closed, DEILD’d my way back and same thing happened for the third time. When I couldn’t DEILD my way back again I stayed in bed for another hour, all sweat and terrorized by the experience.
[CONCLUSION]
When I was 8, the first time I got sleep paralysis I saw a shadow figure on the corner looking at me and when I understood hypnagogia a while back I stopped fearing it and was sure everything could be explained. I was also relieved many people around the world went through the same experience. “It’s just a hallucination”. That’s what I’ve told people many times whenever they had a scary experience while lying in bed. Plus I never saw that shadow again until today, didn’t think nor remember it, so I thought everything was cool. The first thing I thought when I woke up for real was “I’m never doing LD again”, but now I’m calmer. But it was a hell of an unexpected experience. And even though I couldn’t see it’s mouth, I felt as if the damn thing was smiling at me the entire time, as if it was having lots of fun while I was terrified. This is messed up.
On a regular dream this would just be a scary nightmare, and on SP there’s the hallucination explanation of hypnagogia. I still don’t rationally understand how things turned out that bad. My advice: don't try the Morley technique of hugging this thing if you ever come across it in a LD.
I'll try to engage it in a different manner next time, like talking from a distance or holding it captive in a dome or something I don't know, but don't "absorb" it into you! That was my gut feeling back then.
Anyone ever had a similar encounter while lucid?
