Fear of Fear

[Timm]

Hello everyone.

Sorry I'm new here so I don't know if this topic has been threaded to death.
Well I would like some help to try and get my self thinking more positive
thoughts. Every time I go into a lucid dream I am just doing my thing and
having fun and then I think "Oh I hope this doesn't happen"
and it is mostly something negative and then oh crap it happens and then
I get scared and wake up. This happens every-time I lucid dream. What can I do to prevent this?
I have tried not thinking of bad things but then I just think of them even more.
Please help it would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers Timm

[CFTraveler]

A few comments and maybe an idea:
When you say this happens when you lucid dream, you mean you are aware you are dreaming, right?
If you know you are dreaming, then you should know you are safe. So why do you fear manifesting something negative, if you know it's not going to hurt you? Is it that you don't want to have the experience itself, or is it something more?

Even though when you lucid dream your consciousness is present, it is not always in charge. So, if your subconscious knows you have to get rid of your fears, experiencing them firsthand is the way to get rid of it, and your subconscious will follow this programming until you change your mind or reprogram it. But your subconscious is right- the only way to get rid of a fear is to face it, and then deal with it.

One thing that helped me years ago when I was going through a period of intense nightmares was to, before going to sleep, to imagine the worst nightmares that I could, think of every bad possibility, imagine and live it, (in other words experience it) before going to bed- and that stopped them from continuing.

[Timm]

Yes I am lucid when this happens and it is always something different. But if being more logical is the key how do I get more logical
in my dreams? I just want to have a good time aye.

Cheers

[Beekeeper]

CF already explained the remedy, face your fears in your dreams. This is one reason why people see lucid dreaming as a spiritual path. It can help you develop because it can make you aware of what it is you actually do fear and by practising fearlessness in your dreams you gain competency in life. Additionally, learning to control your thinking can transform the way you act in life, making you aware of your many options and underlying motivations. So, it's not just about logic but also about courage and control.

Fun is okay too, of course. :wink:

[Jambu]

CF already explained the remedy, face your fears in your dreams. This is one reason why people see lucid dreaming as a spiritual path. It can help you develop because it can make you aware of what it is you actually do fear and by practising fearlessness in your dreams you gain competency in life. Additionally, learning to control your thinking can transform the way you act in life, making you aware of your many options and underlying motivations. So, it's not just about logic but also about courage and control.

Fun is okay too, of course. :wink:

I found this technique helpful in facing fears in life. Recently, I've had these weird 'episodes' of intense fear, mostly fear of dying. I had to get myself to embrace the situation and face what was scaring me so bad. It really helps.

[Korpo]

Yes I am lucid when this happens and it is always something different. But if being more logical is the key how do I get more logical
in my dreams? I just want to have a good time aye.

Cheers

Hello, Timm.

The problem with "logic" is this - we keep on applying "real world logic" to the dream environment, so when something scary happens we get scared, and so on. We become unaware of the differences in what we're experiencing. We take the input we perceive and react in ways we know.

I once was recommended to keep on looking for synchronicities in waking life. Keeping an eye out for these little miracles trains the mind to think differently about waking reality, to think more in terms that are helpful when facing nonphysical reality. I was told this might help overcome problems with "logic" (or perceptual biases) in dreams.

Our understanding of waking reality and dream reality are related. That's similar to how the reality-checking test works. By developing a habit in waking life we can make use of it when dreaming. It works similar for our emotions and beliefs. By trying new beliefs on for size in waking reality, by exploring beyond what we think are givens in the waking life we also enrich our dream life.

Take care,
Oliver

[Timm]

Hey Guys and Girls.

Thanks so much for the input. It is great to have people that help :D
I had another lucid dream last night and found that when I was thinking
about stuff that if I didn't really want it to happen it wouldn't.
I also found that I was having so much fun that I only thought of something
bad for a few seconds, then I blew it away with superpowers.

Just a few more things.

If
So, it's not just about logic but also about courage and control.

If thats the case, then how to I get better at controlling my thoughts?

Cheers so much,
Timm

[Jambu]

For me, sometimes the harder I try to quiet and supress, the worse it gets, like one of those chinese finger torture thingys, lol.

In some cases, it helps to shift into observer mode, letting the thoughts roll by like clouds. This shift can allow intellectural and emotional detachment from the content of the thoughts. But, there is a pitfall in constantly doing the detached thing, one can miss out on developing courage in the face of fear, which is, as I am discovering, a very necessary step to master.

Man, all over the road on this one... not sure if it's helpful at all! :?

[Timm]

For me, sometimes the harder I try to quiet and supress, the worse it gets, like one of those chinese finger torture thingys, lol.

In some cases, it helps to shift into observer mode, letting the thoughts roll by like clouds. This shift can allow intellectural and emotional detachment from the content of the thoughts. But, there is a pitfall in constantly doing the detached thing, one can miss out on developing courage in the face of fear, which is, as I am discovering, a very necessary step to master.

Man, all over the road on this one... not sure if it's helpful at all! :?

Haha

Yeah I might just have to try to destroy all of my fears with supreme awesomeness.
But while I was reading that lucid dreaming complete tutorial it said not to use
Forced control

E.G

"Forced Control

Both of these sort of speak for themselves. Forced control involves directly forcing events and immediate happenings to occur in your dream, and passive control is less direct. With forced control, if I wanted to be somewhere, I could just spin around in a circle quickly (also called body spinning) which always makes the dream scene blurry. While you spin, think of the scene you want to see, and voila. You are there. This is a method of forced control because you are directly reshaping the environment to suit your needs or desires in a dream. There was no justification for doing it, you just know that you are the god of your universe and can do whatever you want. You can be talking to someone you hate in your lucid dream and just decide to have them suddenly die a gory and painful death. You can change the color and brightness of your environment directly. These are all forms of forced control. Forced control sounds fun doesn't it? It is. However, I HIGHLY advise that you absolutely never use forced control unless you find yourself in a critically horrifying dream from which you need to escape immediately.

This is because using direct control demonstrates to your mind that the world you are in is not realistic. As soon as it realizes this, it becomes less realistic. It appears less vivid, less clear, and you can't control them as easily. Overtime, your lucid dreams become completely lame and can change at random. Have you seen the movie "Click"? He keeps fast-forwarding moments of his life, so when a similar situation arises, the remote automatically fast-forwards. It is exactly the same with lucid dreams. If you force control upon your dreams, or directly alter them, you will find that in the future, they start to alter themselves, and you can't control it. Why is this? Because when you try to alter something in the dream directly and without justification, you are in a sense removing yourself from the dream, altering it, and then coming back into it. Forced control is something that should be used very very rarely, and only in extremely necessary circumstances. (And usually the extremely necessary circumstance never comes. I've never had to use it, and I anticipate you never will either.) AVOID forced control."

So how can I face my fears when I shouldn't use forced control?

The other option in the tutorial was the Passive control

E.G

"Passive Control

Passive control is the other type of control, and there are no negative consequences from this method. Passive control still gives you complete and total control over the dream. It's not as direct as forced control, which is why it's better to use. You can still "warp" to new scenery, or spawn people that you want to see, or conjure up some item you want, or use super powers, whatever. It's just about how you go about doing it that separates this method from forced control.

Let's say you wanted to have superpowers. You could just decide to have super powers, because you know this is a dream. That would be forced control. Any type of ability you use should never be a result of you "knowing that it is a dream". Taking that approach will show your mind that you do not appreciate the realism, and the realism will disappear. Always act as though you are in a real place. If you want to have super powers, create a reason, or justification for why you would have super powers at this very instant. I do so by deeming that the dreamstate is a realm. It is the "Realm of Wonders". Anything is possible in the Realm of Wonders, therefore you can have superpowers. That is a method of passive control. Do you understand the difference? I was changing something about the dream, but in an indirect way. Passively.

Want to conjure up/summon/make someone appear in your dreams? Not just anyone. Let's say someone specific. Maybe a love? There are several ways to do this. It would be of course very difficult to just make them appear before your eyes, and even if it was easy, that would be an example of forced control, which we want to avoid. My favorite method is to just think about what they look like, walk somewhere, and expect to see them running from behind the next corner. Remember that schemas are what power a lucid dream. Schemas are based on expectation. Because of the fact that the dreamstate is run by schemas, what you expect to see is ALWAYS what you will see. But you have to genuinely expect to see whatever you're trying to make appear. So if I expect to open a door and see my friend Kayla standing there, she WILL be standing there. If I approach a building corner, and expect to see my friend Steven just coming around the corner as I reach it, he will be there. Get the idea?"

I don't get how I can use passive control to face my fears.

Thanks for the tutorial Jared Jones

[Beekeeper]

Beekeeper wrote:
So, it's not just about logic but also about courage and control.


If thats the case, then how to I get better at controlling my thoughts?

The control and logic can work together. The first thing is to catch your thoughts and not just let them ramble along. Then challenge those thoughts that are fearful to determine if there is any real basis for them. If there is, then attempt to alleviate fear through being proactive rather than reactive.

We can't control everything that happens though, so we have to learn acceptance in some instances. Acceptance is sometimes easier for small annoyances and sometimes much harder for personal tragedies or bigger dramas with serious ramifications for our well-being. Again, we try to think these through with some objectivity but when they evoke intense emotion it's unlikely we'll just accept with perfect equanimity. That's when you accept the emotion as a valid part of who you are and an authentic response to what has occurred.

Fear is valid. We don't want to eliminate fear. What we want is to avoid being controlled by fear.

[Jambu]

Ah, that helps a lot. Thanks beekeeper. :)

(it's not my thread, I know, but I found it super helpful :))

[Timm]

The control and logic can work together. The first thing is to catch your thoughts and not just let them ramble along. Then challenge those thoughts that are fearful to determine if there is any real basis for them. If there is, then attempt to alleviate fear through being proactive rather than reactive.

We can't control everything that happens though, so we have to learn acceptance in some instances. Acceptance is sometimes easier for small annoyances and sometimes much harder for personal tragedies or bigger dramas with serious ramifications for our well-being. Again, we try to think these through with some objectivity but when they evoke intense emotion it's unlikely we'll just accept with perfect equanimity. That's when you accept the emotion as a valid part of who you are and an authentic response to what has occurred.

Fear is valid. We don't want to eliminate fear. What we want is to avoid being controlled by fear.


Yeah thats the stuff.

Man, you people are so helpful. Best forum I have ever been on.

Thanks so much everyone

But I still need to know how to passively control everything in my dreams.
That way I can manipulate my fears easily.

[CFTraveler]

You can't passively control everything in your dreams, because one of the reasons you dream (not the only reason, just one of them) is that your subconscious mind is trying to communicate with your conscious mind, and the only way it can do it is via symbols. So a lot of dreams will have a message for you, and if you try to manipulate it to what your conscious mind wants, you then lose the message. So it is my opinion that it is not good for you to try to control every aspect of every dream, instead opt for trying to find out what aspect of yourself is present, and what the message is.
Controlling dreams is fun, and is in the menu of 'things to do', but it gets to a point in which you should move on to some other aspect of consciousness evolution- Someone wrote (could have been Monroe, but I think all OBE and LD Gurus share this percept) that the object of this type of discipline is to make the subconscious conscious- then the rest just falls into place.

[Timm]

Ah ok.... So what you are saying is that I should have some fun just playing around and then go
into a more spiritual perspective??

[CFTraveler]

There are no definite 'should's- what I am saying is that sometimes things will seem easy to do, and then they will become more difficult, and it's an indication that maybe it's time to do something different- your own self will let you know what you're supposed to be doing.

[Timm]

Ok. Thanks for all of the help. :)

[Jambu]

In the immortal words of the Isley Brothers... "It's your thing, do what you want to do..."

[midix]

I guess I am in a similar situation – lots of DILDs and afraid of WILDS. But to be able to explain my experience when falling asleep, I need to explain my way of thinking.
One day I decided to explore how my mind works. I have heard about conscious, subconscious, verbal, associative, ego and other kinds of mind levels but that was not enough for me, so I have invented my own (I guess, pretty subjective) map of mind. I am not sure if it is applicable to all people or is it just my own way of perceiving myself. So here we go:
1) generators (G). They generate words for verbal thinking, images for visualizations, and sounds (if you are a musician, I guess). This level is pretty loud and slow, it controls my body directly – verbal part certainly kicks in when I am talking;
2) subgenerators (SG). The same as G, but they are much softer and faster. If you do not use them, they tend to generate some gibberish – vision blobs, touch feelings, memories of sounds and images, some sticky melody that doesn’t go away (it is then passed to the G sound part) even while I am actively (verbally) thinking about something else. SG is definitely connected to the subconscious because it can generate also some intuitive or precognitive thoughts. If I try hard, I can make the verbal part of this level more slower, although it usually generates entire sentences in a flash of a second. Also this layer is connected to sensors. During day time the body sensors trigger actions of SG but at night it works on its own.
3) will and intention (WI). It is connected to the self-awareness, it is exactly what the name says – it controls, what I want to think, what memories I want to bring up, where I want to go;
4) self-awareness (SA) or maybe that is the same as ego. It is me, knowing that I am and who I am and where I am;
5) recognize-evaluate-emotions (REE). Maybe it is not good idea to put it in a single layer, but for me it is enough. This layer recognizes thoughts and evaluates them in some emotional manner, like: oh, I thought of something. Do I know what it was? Yes. Was it good? Yes. Feel satisfaction and acceptance about that thought. This happens in a flash of a second, no verbal thinking is involved, if I do not want to. Although in day time the verbal generator kicks in and says: “Hey, this is a good idea, I want to do it” and then this thought is passed to the WI layer.
I guess there are also other layers, but they are much closer to subconscious, so I haven’t detected them as a separate layers.

Some days ago I decided to monitor how I fall asleep. I did that monitoring some nights but I never went really deep, I guess also because of the same fear.
At first I make an intention (WI layer) to monitor the falling-asleep process. Then I take a comfortable sleep pose and relax. I do not do anything special.
Then I turn off G. Even no visualizations. As Robert Peterson in his online book says, I try to simulate a waiting state. It is like waiting that the phone will ring in a minute, so I can better “shut up” my G layer and stop my inner talking. But I must avoid putting that waiting feeling into WI layer – having intention to wait for something to happen may spoil relaxing.
The following is letting my SA level a bit loose, just for a second. The REE level seems to go off with it. Then my SGs generate flashes of memories or sounds.
At this point I had a problem until last night. As my verbal level is shut up, I cannot analyze what SGs are doing. It is like – hey, I saw something! What was it? And while trying to remember and analyze, I wake up too much. So I started using SG verbal level for thinking! It is a bit hard – like forcing the fast-talker (remember, SG verbal usually spits entire sentences at once) to talk slow. But it seems it does the trick. It is in some way a cyclic process:
1) let SA level a bit loose; if your WI is motivated to monitor, then it will do its work fine;
2) SGs generate something. As G is shut up, the SGs result may goe up to the G level – it seems weird, like someone used my own voice to talk to me :D;
3) WI wakes up SA. Now do not wake up G! At first wake up REE and ask (not verbally) – did I understand what I saw or heard? REE often says – no, I did not. Then force your SG verbal to think slower about what happened. It often explains pretty well. After getting the answer (like “it… was a 24hjhfff24y4fy .. please slower … a scene from a …. dining room … where .. ok, I know now”), shut up REE to avoid any emotions which might accidentally trigger G level. Sometimes I fail here and get excited with memories or something, it takes training to stop G again.

After some cycles when WI wakes up SA I notice that my body feels different. I do not know where and in what position my arms and legs are. If they are crossed, I do not know it at this point if I do not move them. Sometimes there is a slight vibrational-tingling feeling. I guess that is the start of the sleep paralysis. Now I keep SA, REE and the verbal part of SGs active. Then sometimes I feel like a heavy liquid in my head. I can play with it for a while – like move it from one side of the head to the other, that is weird feeling but not scary anyway. But if I let that liquid go on, that there is something more. There is a feeling of presence. Not the presence of someone else, but the presence of myself somewhere else (sounds unclear, but I have no other words to explain it). This “liquid” in my head is pulling me forward deeper into the place where I feel my presence – but there is nothing where I can be pulled in, no dream scene. I guess it is that 3d-blackness, where my subconscious is pulling me. And at the same time there is a feeling of falling backwards. This combination - pulling forward into nothingness, falling backwards into unknown – that is what scares me. My REE level is awake and is going like: recognize situation: falling, unknown – evaluate: not good – emotion: fear.
So this is where I stop, wake up my verbal part, take some deep breaths, and then go to sleep without any intention to monitor myself.
Anyway, I do not intend to have WILDs or APs, so getting this far is enough for me now.

[CFTraveler]

Very interesting midix.
Too complicated for me, though. I am simple.

[midix]

I guess, I am as complicated as many programmers - they like to analyze everything (even themselves) just for fun :mrgreen:

[Korpo]

I guess, I am as complicated as many programmers - they like to analyze everything (even themselves) just for fun :mrgreen:

I'm a programmer, too. I have to say, though, that the fun of this kind of analysis diminishes over time. Now I would say I am at a point where I just wait and wonder - what next? What is going to replace analysis? What will happen on a day when most of my desires and most of my run-away mental processes come to a standstill?

Maybe I'll find out.

Oliver