Waking up from a nightmare

I just realised that I have almost a 100% success rate of waking myself up from nightmares. I seem to be able to wake myself up so fast that I’m usually in SP and can barely move. I usually do this right at the beginning of my nightmares. So I started thinking, if I can do this why can’t I become lucid from my dreamsigns. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can use this “skill” to get lucid. If it’s even possible. :help:

you could try to ingrain it into your subconsious that a nightmare means dream and that that means you can become lucid. Its kind of like a face your fears thing

I agree with Sentient: when you go to sleep, mentally repeat that you’ll recognize a nightmare as a dream.
Perhaps it also helps if you’d improve your critical state of mind during the day. For instance when doing RCs, don’t do them quickly but think about it and investigate everything you perceive with a critical mind. Ask yourself if there are ANY clues that you might be dreaming. Do you see, hear, smell, taste anything weird which might suggest that you’re dreaming? Take your time with this and imagine how it would feel to discover that you are indeed dreaming right now.
If you do this a few times a day, especially when something strange happens, you develop a healthy critical mind towards anything unusual or out-of-the-ordinary. In time this attitude will also appear in your dreams and hopefully a nightmare triggers lucidity then :smile:
This method doesn’t work right away, and you really have to practice it until it becomes a habbit before you can see clear results.

Good luck! :happy:

If I see, hear … something strange IRL I almost always do a RC, about 90% of the time. When I see any of my dreamsigns I do a RC too, about 70% of the time. The only thing that seem to happen is that I dream about my dreamsigns alot more. This week I have had atleast 1 dreamsign/night. In some dreams I even had 2 dreamsigns at the same time. But no lucidity :cry: .
Guess I have a dry spell or something.

But do you have enough critical state of mind? This is essential I think if you want LDs. Taking the step from non-lucid towards lucidity means that your mind has reached a sufficient critical attitude so self-reflexion can be possible, with lucidity as a result.
If this isn’t the problem, then it could be a dry spell yes… In that case I suggest you keep practicing the methods you’re using, and one day this drought will be over.
I hope this helped :smile:

I’m not sure if I’m critical enough or not. But I try to be critical but sometimes I just do a quick RC and don’t think that much about it. When I started to LD I could somehow force myself to become lucid if I noticed something unusual. In one of my first LD’s I saw a lcd-screen that said lucid and then I forced myself to become lucid, atleas that is how it felt. Now I just sort of fade into lucidity, I just realise that I’m in a dream. Maybe I’m just getting used to getting lucid and don’t feel the forcing. The “forcing” feel about the same as it does when I wake myself from a nightmare. That’s why I posted this in the first place, hoping someone had similar experience and some good tips or something :grin:

In regards to fading into lucidity thats probably a sign that youre pretty experienced in the realm of LD, kind of like youre learning to recognize dreams more as they happen. Thats pretty damn cool. :happy: As for the ‘forcing feel’ im not too sure what you mean by that but im guessing you mean like ‘forcing something’ to happen. Well that makes sense what you said cuz with experience things tend to get easier and less effort or force is needed. I guess a good application of waking yourself from a nightmare is to be able to pull a technique while youre still in deep, like WILD or maybe even go for Astral Projection if youre interested and believe in such. SP is a good place from which to do many things. I recall a dream i had where i was fleeing from some people hunting me, and i went to some grassy area behind a hill and forced myself to wake up. I returned to such after ‘waiting awhile’ in real life (my mind is a little odd at times esp after i wake up) and was back where i left off but they had found me so i induced another waking. The point of that is that perhaps you could go back into your nightmare knowing it is a dream, right after you wake up from such, maybe after a little mental preparation to face the darkness. hope that helped :smile:

It’s hard to describe how I forced myself. It feels like I’m inside something and force myself out of it by ripping trough it.

Example: Woke up from a dream and didn’t move. Then I saw an image and suddenly I started to WILD. When when the vibrations where very intense it felt like I tried to push my head trough my pillow and suddenly I was in a LD.

Woa that sounds cool to be able to WILD like that, you see i myself am not too good with that technique (i never remember to employ it), thats cool that you kind of had a spontaneous WILD. How was your consciousness at that point, i mean how aware were you? Whenever i tried WILD i always end up getting too into the imagery and ending up in a ND.

Hmm but anyways it could be like your awareness is tearing through the ‘covering’ that is what makes a ND a non-LD or basically ripping through whatever it is that suppresses consciousness? Oh wait now i know what your talking about (reflecting on my own limited exp) its kind of like a buildup of…something (is that what you cannot describe?) like a sort of tension and a huge motivation or effort, like a huge tidal wave on the horizon that you caught an uncertain glimpse of…and boom it hits and there you are standing (or whatever) in awe and then full consciousness… :smile:

or am i way off? oh wait well that haphazard description there is what i feel i get, for you it sounds like youre already partially aware of it, like you kind of know there is a barrier, are aware of some sort of suppression… for me its more like an event horizon, like a slap in the face hehehe (well hey ima noob im still in the ‘majority of LD is spontaneous from LD interest’ spiel). wow thanks for the insight ive never really thought about the ‘breaking through’ thing :content:

I was very aware when I WILDed and the LD was probably the longest I have had. When I started to LD most of them where WILD’s but now I mostly get DILD’s. Or maybe I WILD without noticing because I usually get lucid in the beginning of dreams.

I think we are talking about the same thing but it seems like we experience it in different ways. I just figured out a way to describe it. It feels like I’m in a SP and trying to move. When the SP feeling goes away I’m lucid.