strained lucid dreaming

Hello, I’m new here and was hoping some of you could help me with a conundrum I have with my lucid dreaming. Thank you for any advice.

So anyways, I guess I’ll start from the beginning and work my way to my question. This might be long. Sorry about that.

For the longest time, I had a nightmare which involved a ram’s skull that my father hangs in his office. In these nightmares I would walk into my dad’s office and I would suddenly get the feeling that things were not quite right, and the moment I made eye contact with the ram’s skull my whole body would become paralyzed and a feeling of fear would permeate through my entire being, and my perception would become distorted and I would have unpleasant gut feelings. overall it wasn’t very pleasant and I would wake up soon after in a sweat.

So after a few times that the dream recurred, I began to realize that I was dreaming whenever the nightmare happened. So, when I was awake, I began to plot against the nightmare, and since I now realized it as a dream, I imagined ways in which I could face it.

I decided I would face the fear head on. I told myself that because it was a dream it couldn’t really hurt me and I would face it and try to talk to it. So the next time I had the nightmare, I prevented the paralysis and confusion, but there was still some fear and when I tried to talk to it, my mouth wouldn’t emit any intelligible words so I couldn’t ask the skull anything. I felt that the skull was purposely being hostile. I got so angry at not being able to do anything that I jumped up and pulled the skull off the wall and smashed it to bits. And I felt so good after that, and the dream continued too! So I practically entered my first self-controlled lucid dream.

The skull in my father’s office has practically become a dream symbol for me now, because whenever I see it I subconsciously do a reality check to see if I am dreaming. The nightmares still continue ever so often (not as often though), and they are still slightly frightening, but now I am able to overcome the paralysis and confusion every time and destroy the sucker, and thus continue on with my lucid dream.

So…

Here is my problem. I really hate encountering this skull, but it is an easy way to access lucid dreaming, Though sometimes it has happened that after I destroy the skull, I am so excited that I wake up and lose the chance to continue lucid dreaming.

I’ve tried to bypass the skull entirely when I see it in dreams and tried to continue my dream elsewhere, but the things envelops my entire attention whenever I see it and it will not let go off my attention until I have destroyed it.

I’ve tried to discontinue using it as a dream symbol, and tried replacing it with other things, but it seems to turn up whenever I have an intention to lucid dream. Is there any way I can eliminate it completely as a dream symbol, or somehow resolve this fear I have of it?

Isn’t a ram’s skull used as a symbol for the devil? Psychologically speaking, the devil is your dark side. Perhaps the ram’s skull reminds you of it. Just a thought.

Maybe if you keep having the dream and continuously become lucid, then over time the skull will become less an association with the nightmare and more with the lucid dreams. You just gotta stay asleep after the skull scenario.

Imagine looking forward to some exciting lucid dream thing you want to try, the sight of the skull may seem like a blessing then because it makes you lucid.

I guess should note that it isn’t always a ram’s skull. It usually is, but in some dreams it has been the skull of some animals I don’t think exist in nature, I remember one that distinctly had 6 tusks coming out from its cheeks. Sometimes if I try to concentrate looking at the skull it will change to a different skull of just become blurry.

I already consider the skull symbol a mixed blessing… I’ve had some wonderful flying dreams because I realized I was lucid. I just really want to resolve the fear I feel when first confronting the skull. I always feel a slight trepidation whenever I try to lucid dream because of the skull, and not to mention whenever I see the skull in real life, I can’t exactly look it in the eye because I feel that same trepidation.

Hi edgewalker, welcome to the forum! :wave:

Your account is very interesting. As you said, this skull is a blessing, though you’ve still experience a feeling of fear. I think you had a good reaction when, realizing you couldn’t speak to it, you smashed it to bits. Here you can notice one interesting point : you managed to modify your emotion (fear transformed into anger) hence you could face your opponent and it did no more prevent you from continuing your LD. It’s a very good point.

Now what can you do against this fear ? I suppose the first reaction you had (trying to speak to the skull) was a good thing. You experienced some little problems cause speaking in LD’s is sometimes difficult or gives strange results. Anyhow, I think it was the good way and there are bunches of possible solutions.

This skull represents certainly something for you, but its meaning is hidden. That’s the reason why you experience fear or anger. You don’t have to worry, generally, such things doesn’t represent a very big problem. But of course I can’t tell you what sort of problem it is, I don’t know it, you have to discover it by yourself. :wink: In some cases, it doesn’t represent anything important by the way. :neutral:

You have to ask the skull what he represents, why it is hostile. You can try to communicate with the skull by “telepathy”. You don’t need to formulate loud your sentences in LD’s, just think them. It’s a first solution. If it doesn’t work, you can also, when you go to sleep, imagine yourself asking these questions to the skull. By visualizing this some times, you’ll probably will solve this problem in your next LD. Or you even can (though it sounds like strange) ask the skull in real life: this would be a strong autosuggestion and perhaps it will give you the answer in a LD.

Anyhow, preparing yourself IRL to ask the skull, by the way you prefer, will certainly help you to do it in a LD. You can also solve this problem by other ways than talking to him: transforming it in what he represents, for instance. I think you can imagine many other possibilities by yourself.

I’m very interested in knowing your results. I hope you will post them in this thread when you’ll have solved your problem. :smile:

I recently had a similar experience in a nightmare. Let me first describe how I normally resolve fear in a nightmare (if I become lucid) by describing an earlier dream I had.

At some point in my dream I was hunted by a dark person and I kept running from it. Suddenly I realized that I was dreaming and that I had to confront that person in order to resolve the fear. It wasn’t easy, but I turned around to look at him. At first his face looked really scary, like a vampire or something, and I felt really afraid for some seconds. After that, his face transformed into a normal one and suddenly I felt relieved and happy!

This dream was representative for the way I normally resolve my fears in nightmares.
But here’s the point. About a week ago I experienced something different.

I can’t remember the start of my dream, but suddenly I awoke and realized I was dreaming and was having a FA, because I coulnd’t open my eyes. I felt afraid, but I really didn’t know where that feeling came from. Suddenly I realized that someone was standing next to my bed. I decided to open my eyes to confront him, just as I normally do in nightmares. I saw a dark, transparent figure with bright red eyes. My fear stayed and didn’t go away like it normally did. Then I decided to ask him what he was doing in my dream. He didn’t answer. Then I tried to push him away, but when I did that he grabbed something like a scythe and fully hit me with it. I don’t remember much of what happened next, but the fear was never resolved.

It was a very strange experience and I keep wondering why my fear stayed, even when I confronted him.

This may happen, unfortunately. In my experience, it happened sometimes when I had not a good lucidity level.

For instance, I was once lifted by a strong wind and transported into a dark sinister-looking castle. There some evil people explained to me I was trapped forever : I was no more on Earth, it was another planet (this was related to some Castaneda’s writings I’ve read many years ago.) Though I was lucid, I was completely convinced that what they said was true. And I was not very happy to be trapped forever in this dark castle, as you can imagine. It was the only depressing LD I’ve had by the way, it’s curious to have a depressing LD.

More recently, I become lucid because there was a frightening ghost in my brother bedroom. Generally, I can act directly upon my emotion, thus I was just half afraid and I decided to confront the ghost. But in this LD, this reaction was just a sort of lucid habit. I didn’t remember exactly - cause I wasn’t very lucid - how to do. Thus the unpleasant feeling of fear remained and I decided to wake up.

In another case, I remembered that I could act directly on my fear, thus I decide to feel an intense feeling of love for my opponents (they were a hord of evil clever cats)… yet I imagined that they had a counter-spell that made me afraid of them! :happy: As you can see, it’s completely stupid, first because my love wasn’t a spell, second because they couldn’t act on my emotions. By chance, my feeling of love remained, they became my friends and we flew together, but I was still convinced during the remaining of the dream that if I did no more love them, they would become dangerous.

Thus, what you describe may appear due to the lucidity level, when it’s too low and you can’t unstick yourself from the dream scenario, or it may also be due to things you believe strongly in. Some people also told me that in some cases, it sounds like there was no clear explanation, but I never experienced this.

Thanks for your reply Basilus West.

What you are saying is very interesting. My lucidity level was indeed not very high. So you are saying that the extent of your believe that you are able to confront the fear is important.

It was indeed very hard to believe that i could handle him, especially because he felt so hostile.

Well, I’ll try to beat him next time I encounter him, if I’ll ever see that thingy again :wink:

It sounds like a good summary. :smile:

It’s often the simplest. And grab a weapon if your opponent is armed (as Indy does in Raiders of the Lost Ark. :wink: )