Re: Scarier Turn/Lucid Dreams

Did some Google research and found references to something called Sleep Paralysis, which is I guess was happened to me in my last post.  Most people who described experiences with it reported feelings that they were pinned by something sitting on their chests. But a few mentioned feeling pressure on their foreheads.

Sleep paralysis happens when stages of sleep get mixed up and start happening at the same time. The reason you can’t move is that your body releases chemical inhibitors to keep you from flailing about in your dreams and possibly hurting yourself.  The sense of terror comes about because the brain’s fear machine, the amygdala, is being put through its paces at that time. Sometimes people in sleep paralysis still dream even though their eyes are open and they’re awake, and those are the people who report being abducted by aliens, according to another article.

People who experience sleep paralysis tend to suffer from sleep deprivation or other disturbances like narcolepsy. In my case I’ve been quite the insomniac here lately.

However, my research also indicated that some people use sleep paralysis to shoehorn themselves into lucid dreams. It looks like it may be a step in the process of being lucid dream proficient. Here I have to admit that over the past several weeks, all of my meditative routines, including those of lucid dreaming, have gone to shit. The only thing I still do on a regular basis is pray to Salgye Du Dalma to help me lucid dream. So maybe I got what I was asking for, though it scared the shit out of me.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading a book about the history of Central Asian shamanistic practices and thier influence upon Bon Buddhism. This book, Bo And Bon, talks about how in the shamanistic worldview there’s a spirit realm that, while it’s not strictly a part of our world, it has effects in this one. For example, according to the Bo it’s a bad idea to build your house on a spirit road. All that otherdimensional traffic and coming and going will disprupt life in the house on a very subtle level and it can make people sick, and one source reports having an experience similar to sleep paralysis shortly after his parents moved the family house onto a spirit road. People might see or dream of dwarves and such if their home is on a spirit road, and they’ll have to relocate the house. So maybe yesterday’s dwarves and goblins and today’s ETs are the same thing or at least similar.

If you can learn to manage sleep paralysis without feeling terror, that’s probably good preparation for how not to panic in the Bardo.