Dealing with darkness or "the void"?

[Gravman]

first off, i just wanna say this is a great forum. been lurking for almost 2 months and have gone from remembering like 2% of my dreams to amazing recall and even quite a few lucids. anyways i have hit a road block. seems like a huge majority of the time (unless i am not aware enough to control my dream self) when i become lucid, i go into instant darkness (i have heard people call it the void i think). so it is just me standing alone in complete black for 5-10 sec. with full control of myself. dream spinning is useless if i can force myself to make a vision blur and rubbing my hands usually end with my dream restarting into a false awakening. anyone else have a similar problem? i try hard to think about my dream and it is so instant i don't have any time to grab onto anything to try and stay in my dream. next time it happens i wanna try running as fast as i can to try and break free but maybe it's too late when i get to this point because like i said i only have seconds to do what i can before it's totally gone. thanks! also sorry for my writing. i am using my phone

[MisterHyde]

I have this too except it lasts the whole duration of the night. At first I was freaked out by it, but lately I've been doing stuff whilst falling. The other type of void I get isn't just darkness. It's like a dark liquid, it has resistance.

[Novise]

If you want to get a dream going you need to open your dream body eyes somehow. If they are already open, you've got to open them again or get them working. I did it once by flapping my hands in front of my forehead, or simply thinking I was waking only to find myself in a FA. It would make sense that a FA would be the easiest dream to induce from this point, I'm not sure if it is, but it would. I have been in the darkness a lot myself, started a thread on it too, but you are asking for something else as in how to get a dream going from it, where I was asking how to mess around IN it. So yeah get the eyes open or relax and let yourself "wake up" only you have decent odds you are going to wake to a FA.

[Gravman]

yea, my problem is that i want a full lucid experience and i seem to continuously be denied because the moment i become lucid my surroundings disappear into black. i think i'm getting better at catching myself on false awakenings now because of it though, haha. anyways, i keep thinking that it could be that once i become lucid, my mind races with so many thoughts at once and loose track of my dream? well, i will definitely try to reopen my eyes next time if i remember, i honestly couldn't tell you if my eyes were open any of those times, i hadn't really thought about it... thanks

[Samael]

I have this right before I wake up, sometimes. If you're in no danger of waking up, have you tried opening a portal? IMO, this requires a bit of preparation. Throughout the day and before you go to bed, visualize opening a portal/teleporting/disolving the dream/whatever method appeals to you. For instance, visualize cutting open a hole in the dreamscape, making a portal to another place with a bit more substance. Daydreaming about it tends to help me.

[Novise]

I have this right before I wake up, sometimes. If you're in no danger of waking up, have you tried opening a portal? IMO, this requires a bit of preparation. Throughout the day and before you go to bed, visualize opening a portal/teleporting/disolving the dream/whatever method appeals to you. For instance, visualize cutting open a hole in the dreamscape, making a portal to another place with a bit more substance. Daydreaming about it tends to help me. I actually have not had much success with portals. That would be perfect. It seems like the mind will only do so much, like walking up steps. Baby steps. As it fully forms the dream. Now that could be entirely incorrect, visually it is possible to be seeing things instantly, your room obviously, or a world. But there is something about teleporting that is difficult. I did have another experience with the blackness a few weeks ago. I was about to start flying and do the tunnel thing, but I could feel the ground. I stayed still a minute and listened. I could hear running water. Slowly I must have looked at the ground, when I looked back up I was in a forest at nighttime, with a stream running down a hill below me. Visually it was very weak, but it was something. I think I lasted a minute or so before waking. So I didn't make anything, but my mind slowly, automatically almost created this place, or took me there. But I guess my body was not ready to wake up yet. I guess it's up to your mind whether a new dream will start or not. It will make that choice, wake up or stay asleep. That's one thing we can't really force, that sort of ultimate decision - sleep or awake. I woke because I was lucid, not because my body was ready to wake up, that's my theory at least.

[Novise]

My first several lucids, maybe my first dozen lasted less than 15 seconds. Most of them only 3-5 seconds. I'd have just enough time to freak out with joy and fly a second or two as I awoke, and I would react fast. You'll learn to relax, and chill in the background to make them last longer. But that goes along a slider scale. Now that you've gone lucid, it just takes time and effort, I'd say journalling.