A strange experience I had a month ago - Layered dreaming and sleep paralysis

[Timey]

I'm not sure why I didn't share this earlier, and I cannot remember most of it, or in what order the dreams came.

I was semi-lucid during the dreams, and I get fearful when I'm lucid dreaming.
Because I was scared, I made an attempt to wake up, and thought that I had, but I was just on another "level" of dream.
This happened a few more times, each time I thought I'd woken up, only to discover that I was still dreaming.
At some point, I realized how to levitate. And I did so. I saw myself float up off the ground.
I think it was after this fun levitation session that the wierdest part of the dream happened. I think I should stress that I was still "semi-lucid".
I became one with this golden, all encompassing light. The way I remember it was that I projected myself upwards "into" it, and became it.
When I entered it an image of what looked like hands clasped together in prayer flashed in front of me.

At some point something began to intrude into my being. I fought against it and it began to twist and bend me, like a tug of war with my inner self as the rope.
It literally felt like whatever it was was trying to "pull" me out of myself.
I was also fighting to wake up, and when I did I was paralyzed. I was so scared at this point, and had to fight the paralysis.
I managed to wake up, and was so terrified that it took me ages to get back to sleep.

 

[mkrnhr]

Hello Timey,
Dreaming to be dreaming is not unusual, it's even funny. Also, you may search for sleep paralysis in the forum, there are many threads on this subject. Most of the time, it is just a natural physiological phenomenon. It is very disturbing but it is not that dramatic. If you manage to decrease your anxiety and have a quiet emotional state in your life, you will see that these states will happen less often, even disappear.

 

[Timey]

Hello Timey,
Dreaming to be dreaming is not unusual, it's even funny. Also, you may search for sleep paralysis in the forum, there are many threads on this subject. Most of the time, it is just a natural physiological phenomenon. It is very disturbing but it is not that dramatic. If you manage to decrease your anxiety and have a quiet emotional state in your life, you will see that these states will happen less often, even disappear.

Thanks, mkrnhr.
Paralysis does seem to happen when I'm under stress, and it happened a fair amount when I was a child. Incidentally, I haven't been experiencing it as much since beginning EE.

 

[mkrnhr]

I had sleep paralysis since childhood too. But since I'm on the paleo diet and the EE meditation, it didn't happen again. Maybe you're experiencing a transition where lots of tension are being released. In any case, do it slowly and be gentle with yourself. Don't do the Ba-Ha portion and whenever you feel stressed, do some belly breathing to calm down. It's a long process and it requires patience. Also, if you are fearful of your dreaming states, that fear will feed those uncomfortable dreams, just take it easy.

 

[Timey]

It's a long process and it requires patience.

Yeah, I often find it hard to get motivated to do EE, even though its yielded such great results for me. Its strange really.

 

[Sol Logos]

The physiological conclusion to sleep paralysis is another need for everything to be material based – so an assumption in my opinion. Robert Monroe’s initial experiences with OOBEs began with sleep paralysis and if you go through his first book, you can see how rigorous he was to rule out whether his experiences where merely hallucinations caused by being stuck between waking consciousness and dreaming. What you describe is a classic OOBE.