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?