Atral Spiders taught me how to LD

[butters]

My recent work in trying to be able to Astral Project, has made me remember how I learnt to Lucid Dream as a very young child, possibly around the 4 or 5 year old.

At this age I keep dreaming about being attacked by giant spiders, which I now know were astral spiders, and being paralyzed and unable to move while the giant spiders came closer.

I learnt to stop these nightmares by becoming lucid and waking up. I do remember the relief that I had a way to overcome them if I encountered them, by becoming lucid.

I guess I have to thank the astral spiders for teaching me to be able to lucid dream. The problem is that I seem to have learnt that once I become lucid it is time to wake up, I still cannot hold a lucid dream or an obe (which I understand are almost the same thing) for very long, possibly because becoming lucid was learnt as a way to escape from the astral spiders.

Has anyone else had childhood experiences like this?

[CFTraveler]

I'm fairly certain that a lot of people attain lucidity for the first time by reacting to nightmares, especially recurring ones. I know I did.
I have to say that I wouldn't be 100% sure it was astral spiders; when I was younger I remember watching lots of movies with giant spiders in them, and they never were nice. Now, not so much.
Just an observation, of course.

[The Cusp]

My parents tell my when I was young, I had a dream where I was attacked by spiders. My face was full of scratches from it.

They figured I had just done it to myself, but they say the scratches were so fine, they don't know how I could have possibly done it. I don't remember it at all, but I do remember keeping a kitchen knife in my closet to deal with spiders.

[Beekeeper]

I became lucid in two dreams as a child because of a very unpleasant little creature that I referred to as the thing with "snail shell eyes." It was short, dark grey, ugly. I'm not sure they weren't actually projection experiences.

My lucidity in my adult years initially came about because of an odd little lephrechaun-type character. He was completely non-threatening.

Lately, meeting people I know are dead has gotten me lucid. Most recently it was my grandmother. She was so flat and unexpressive I realised she was simply a dream character.

A few nights ago, I dreamt we'd been on holiday and left our baby girl at home. I said to my husband that it just wasn't possible we'd do such a thing to which he replied, "It means one of two things: either we took her with us or she isn't real." We have two sons. That was enough to get me lucid.

As for sustaining longer lucid dreams, energy raising should make a difference for you. Saving emotional energy by not worrying, fretting, getting angry or being overly imaginative at bedtime means more sustained dreams for me; it may the same for you. You can recover lucid dreams too if you're still basically in a mind awake body asleep state. There are also techniques to restore a dream on the brink of dying out, such as twirling around or touching something prickly.

[butters]

I am glad to see I am not the only one who escaped from nightmares by learning to LD. I remember the spiders and being in a dark underground environment in these dreams, I have heard a description of the lower astral realms that match my childhood experience.

I sometimes think that is partly why any emotion (even excitement) seems to end the LD. The original reason for going lucid was to escape and wake up -- now we want to stay lucid and not wake up. I do need to do some more energy work, and I know this is very effective, but I feel that I have to retrain my early experience to not automatically wake when achieved a LD state.

[CFTraveler]

It has been my observation that the longer I can stay in the hypnagogic state (in meditation) without passing out the longer I can stay lucid in a dream. So with this I'd advise practicing meditation.