Mentally recoiling from hypnogogic imagery

[onebir]

This has happened to me a couple of times now & I wonder if anyone recognises the experience. While falling asleep, the visual images I've been presented have seemed so bizarre that I've been jolted wide awake. The first time the image was a pulsating 3D fractalish thing, more recently it was an infinite field of tesselated cartoon faces.

 

Like most people I get some interesting hypnagogic imageary, but these seemed so out-of-the-ordinary for me I immediately woke up thinking "WTF"!

 

I was able to get to sleep without too much trouble both times, and I'm not distressed by these experiences. But I am curious...

[HandsInTime]

I have had similar experiences. The imagery wasn't even that shocking, it simply came on so suddenly, and as soon as I reacted to it, it disappeared. It would come back shortly, but the cycle would repeat.

I think a significant amount of "surrender" is useful with this. I tried to relax into the imagery (a woven basket spinning like a gyroscope), yet the experience dissipates. Hypnogogia was a fascination of mine, but recently I've been focusing more on dream yoga and lucidity in waking life, and eventually in the dreams of sleep. OBE seem truly fascinating, as I'm sure one would have to go through hypnogogia yet remain conscious until their body is asleep and they can exit it.

[Practitioner]

Does sleep paralysis and seeing ghosts and other things fit into here? I'm sure many of us have had the common experience of going to sleep and in the moments between consciousness and sleep being visited by something.. a cloud of mist, a ghost or an entity you could actually see there in your room while you could not move your body. Scary as hell, which is then why you struggle to move your body get away from it.

[onebir]

Does sleep paralysis and seeing ghosts and other things fit into here? I'm sure many of us have had the common experience of going to sleep and in the moments between consciousness and sleep being visited by something.. a cloud of mist, a ghost or an entity you could actually see there in your room while you could not move your body. Scary as hell, which is then why you struggle to move your body get away from it.

I've had an entity visit (scary), & I get lucid dreams now & then. This wasn't like the former (too visual) or the latter: visual in a much more intense way, without a sense of dissociation from my body, but with a strong feeling of incongruity. Funnily enough, despite the fact that the pre-lucid dream dissociation often comes with a sense of impending death, I found it easier to surrender to than these bizarre images

[Owledge]

This has happened to me a couple of times now & I wonder if anyone recognises the experience. While falling asleep, the visual images I've been presented have seemed so bizarre that I've been jolted wide awake. The first time the image was a pulsating 3D fractalish thing, more recently it was an infinite field of tesselated cartoon faces.

Sounds to me like you are directing your awareness towards the crown chakra, a bit like a psychedelic trip. You say the images' bizarreness awaken you. Is it maybe that there are associations, especially fears, that cause that? Are you afraid of 'going there' or 'understanding the message of what is being shown'?

And after you are 'back', you feel fine?

 

After my ayahuasca experiences, sometimes at night in bed when I focused on third eye and/or crown chakra, I would feel that way. Then I focused on the lower dan tien and felt comfortable again.

[Owledge]

The answer to how to feel comfortable.

 

I'd recommend playing with the phenomenon as long as it doesn't have negative influence on normal awareness.

A comfortable setting is helpful, too.

Edited May 19, 2012 by Owledge

[onebir]

Sounds to me like you are directing your awareness towards the crown chakra, a bit like a psychedelic trip. You say the images' bizarreness awaken you. Is it maybe that there are associations, especially fears, that cause that? Are you afraid of 'going there' or 'understanding the message of what is being shown'?

And after you are 'back', you feel fine?

 

After my ayahuasca experiences, sometimes at night in bed when I focused on third eye and/or crown chakra, I would feel that way. Then I focused on the lower dan tien and felt comfortable again.

I wasn't deliberately directing my awareness at all - both times I was just nodding off. I was jolted back awake, thought "WTF was that all about? What was THAT doing THERE?". I'd never seen things like those (in that state) before, and just wasn't expecting them. But I didn't dwell on it too much & was able to go back to sleep.

 

If I was directing my attention inadvertently, it was likely at the point on the upper lip just under my nose. I've spent several hundred hours focussing on that point & there's sensation there more or less continuously, so my attention may rest there out of sheer habit.

 

This seemed to contrast quite clearly with the other two types hypnagogic experiences I've had* - which seem to be relatively commonplace - and that was why I was wondering if the 'incongruity experience' was familiar to anyone. Fortunately all these experience have been rare and generally not unsettling.

 

(*The entity experience was VERY scary. I'd read about building psychic barriers

somewhere, and spent quite a while throwing one up, & couldn't sleep for a couple of hours. (Funnily enough, around the time of this experience I was woken up by a huge cockroach gnawing on - or possibly doing something unmentionable to - my finger.)

 

Dropping into lucid dreams I'd either just wake up inside the dream (sometimes repeatedly) or sometimes stay conscious as contact with my senses shut down. I mistook this for dying the first time it happened, so I did have a sense of not wanting to 'go there'. But my breathing and pulse were both imperceptible by the time I realised what was happening, so I thought my death was well underway, & there was nothing I could do. It was quite a relief waking up in the dream.)

[astralc]

I wasn't deliberately directing my awareness at all - both times I was just nodding off. I was jolted back awake, thought "WTF was that all about? What was THAT doing THERE?". I'd never seen things like those (in that state) before, and just wasn't expecting them. But I didn't dwell on it too much & was able to go back to sleep.

 

If I was directing my attention inadvertently, it was likely at the point on the upper lip just under my nose. I've spent several hundred hours focussing on that point & there's sensation there more or less continuously, so my attention may rest there out of sheer habit.

 

This seemed to contrast quite clearly with the other two types hypnagogic experiences I've had* - which seem to be relatively commonplace - and that was why I was wondering if the 'incongruity experience' was familiar to anyone. Fortunately all these experience have been rare and generally not unsettling.

 

(*The entity experience was VERY scary. I'd read about building psychic barriers

somewhere, and spent quite a while throwing one up, & couldn't sleep for a couple of hours. (Funnily enough, around the time of this experience I was woken up by a huge cockroach gnawing on - or possibly doing something unmentionable to - my finger.)

 

Dropping into lucid dreams I'd either just wake up inside the dream (sometimes repeatedly) or sometimes stay conscious as contact with my senses shut down. I mistook this for dying the first time it happened, so I did have a sense of not wanting to 'go there'. But my breathing and pulse were both imperceptible by the time I realised what was happening, so I thought my death was well underway, & there was nothing I could do. It was quite a relief waking up in the dream.)

 

onebir, sounds like you are awakening to your Self, nice, but agree these are not so nice. You have had quite a few experiences out of the norm so it shows something is up so, I hope, that you are doing regular tai chi or centering meditations. I found that when i started OOB and astral traveling initially there were some weird experiences but after a while I got better and better at it and the scary ones stopped happening. I would mostly drop off to sleep and get a piercing white light in my third eye, nice, let me know I was 'in the zone'.

 

I'll go find a I wrote post about my scary experiences and why the centering at the Dan Tien is so important.

[astralc]

[onebir]

Thanks These entity encounters really sound like fairy stories - until you have one yourself. ;-)

 

Recently I've been doing quite a bit of vipassana meditation; it's not exactly a centering meditation, but it's all about staying in the body, so I guess it's similar enough. At various times I've done a fair bit of yoga & Yi Quan, but I can't correlate these 'events' with any particular practice (or intensity of practice).

 

If I get another 'visual incongruity', I'll try to remember your tip not fixate on visuals too much. Perhaps that way I'll get a closer look

[astralc]

Thanks These entity encounters really sound like fairy stories - until you have one yourself. ;-)

 

Recently I've been doing quite a bit of vipassana meditation; it's not exactly a centering meditation, but it's all about staying in the body, so I guess it's similar enough. At various times I've done a fair bit of yoga & Yi Quan, but I can't correlate these 'events' with any particular practice (or intensity of practice).

 

If I get another 'visual incongruity', I'll try to remember your tip not fixate on visuals too much. Perhaps that way I'll get a closer look

 

Hi onebir, looks like you are doing fine, I wanted to illustrate the power of the dan tien to extract oneself from the dangers out there, all the best and keep doing

[onebir]

Hi onebir, looks like you are doing fine, I wanted to illustrate the power of the dan tien to extract oneself from the dangers out there, all the best and keep doing

I've been doing vipassana for 'real-world reasons' (to help me get over a series of somewhat - but in the grand scheme of things not very - disastrous life-events & their emotional hangovers).

 

Unlike some of the dyed-in-the-wool vipassana people, I'm don't think vipassana is the only path to 'liberation'. But it's what I'm now used to, and offers a supportive practice environment with access to retreats and teachers at very little expense. So I'll stick with it.

 

That said, vipassana is a body-awareness meditiation, so I can't see how fixing awareness on the dan tien would be inconsistent with it. I've often spent the first 10 minutes or so of meditation sessions focussing on the point under my nose - particularly when concentration's been a problem.

 

Based on what you've said, perhaps using a dan tien focus would be a good idea. I'll give it a go for a few weeks

[fizix]

Whenever I've had sleep paralysis its usually when I was sleeping on my back on a couch and I'd see this enormous black form with like a large wing span looming over me sucking the (fear) energy out of me...I definitely recoiled from that.. then later on I read about Carlos Castaneda's "Flyer's" and the description he gives of these interdimensional entities seems to match up with what I've experienced.

 

In my hypnogogic experiences un-desirable images are karmic traces of negative energy surfacing from the shadow of the soul, the energy vibration invoking a corresponding image unto the mind...do not entertain this image, this thought, this energy..merely observe it from the window of emptiness, and watch it dissolve back into emptiness from whence it came as myriad manifestation of the 10,000 things/desires.. energetic/subconscious aversions that are being free'd up/released being surfaced to the conscious mind..

 

astralc you mention drug addicts yes they are definitely the most susceptible to these beings' energy vampirism... aura is extremely weak and defenseless, low positive willpower (but very high negative willpower) and are usually easy targets of siphon and even possession... I was hooked heavily on heroin/cocaine myself for quite a while, while ironically maintaining a periodic chi-kung/nei-gong practice (I was addicted to drugs AND meditation) and I've seen/heard/felt things that most people would want me locked up for if I told them. Now clean and of healthy strong energy I can easily feel the recognizable, dismal negative/low energy frequency of drug addicts when I encounter them and it is unbearable to be anywhere near within their over-expanded, holed aura unless I lock my chi with mudra in dan-tian/compress aura..they will try to sap my energy and its subconscious behavior, not even theyre fault in a way its all they know to try to feel the hollow 'void'. Addicts themselves employ energy sucking techniques to make up for the lost energy that is sucked from them; they play ego-games, psychic vampirism, etc

Edited May 21, 2012 by fizix

[Owledge]

Sorry for nitpicking, but "with LIKE a large wingspan" - how does that make sense? Confused me a bit. I've recently read a text that mentions three or four different uses for the word in 'teen speak', but this one doesn't fit.

( )

 

 

A propos nitpicking... "pic-knitting" would be a much funnier word for "photoshopping".

Edited May 22, 2012 by Owledge

[fizix]

Sorry for nitpicking, but "with LIKE a large wingspan" - how does that make sense? Confused me a bit. I've recently read a text that mentions three or four different uses for the word in 'teen speak', but this one doesn't fit.

( )

please request your ego to forgive my unintentional impression of 'teen speak' if its really so hard for you to figure out... I meant something akin to, "with what was like (as in similar, correlating) a large wingspan, but not exactly 'wings' per se"... maybe you should check a real dictionary instead of spending your time researching teenage colloquialism...

like/līk/

Preposition:

Having the same characteristics or qualities as; similar to: "they were like brothers".

I'm bored at work don't spend much time authoring my posts to grammatical perfection.. speaking of teen speak/not making sense, care to explain your signature? just kidding don't really care about your creepy owl fetish.

Edited May 22, 2012 by fizix

[Owledge]

Ah, OK, so the "like" was referring not only to "large", but "large wingspan".

 

Now I don't know whether the clarification will make me sleep better or whether the large winged creature will give me nightmares.

 

P.S.: Still... something can be like large wings, but a wingspan is an attribute without the object.

If you insisted that the creature had something like wingspan without the wings for that, then I'd suggest it was one of the Old Ones, an Eldritch Abomination, a creature that once murdered logic in its dreamless sleep.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Owledge

[fizix]

then I'd suggest it was one of the Old Ones, an Eldritch Abomination, a creature that once murdered logic in its dreamless sleep.

 

(Drugs are bad)

Edited May 22, 2012 by fizix

[Owledge]

(Drugs are bad)

That's why I don't take aspirin.

 

 

P.S.: Psychdelics rock! They are the real medicine.

[fizix]

That's why I don't take aspirin.

 

 

P.S.: Psychdelics rock! They are the real medicine.

this is true, if one were to have to take an external remedy to alleviate emotional/mental/spiritual malady, psychedelics do indeed rock...though many take them unprepared..prematurely..unwilling to surrender the ego.. Though I've come to see they are no longer part of my path, but they have definitely helped...

Edited May 22, 2012 by fizix

[Owledge]

Well, regarding taking psychedelics for spiritual advancement, I'd say it's either always prematurely ... or never.

[fizix]

Well, regarding taking psychedelics for spiritual advancement, I'd say it's either always prematurely ... or never.

Yes I see your point, but would you condone giving psychedelics to a willing 10 year old?

 

Semantics of 'prematurely' are in play here I know, but I'm curious about answer, even if it's not what you meant by prematurely

Edited May 22, 2012 by fizix

[Owledge]

In the Amazon region, there are 10 year olds participating in ayahuasca ceremonies.

 

You know what's funny? I probably had some symptoms of 'trippiness' as a kid when I had fever phantasies. You know, stuff like your pillow feeling like rough stone, or falling into a bottomless abyss.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Owledge

[astralc]

In the Amazon region, there are 10 year olds participating in ayahuasca ceremonies.

 

You know what's funny? I probably had some symptoms of 'trippiness' as a kid when I had fever phantasies. You know, stuff like your pillow feeling like rough stone, or falling into a bottomless abyss.

 

lol, that happened to me when I had tonsilitis and fever, and again when I had them out, floating up on the ceiling, lifting off with bubbles floating in the air, it was nice.

[Owledge]

...when I had them out, floating up on the ceiling, lifting off with bubbles floating in the air, it was nice.

Sounds a lot more fun than going to the hospital and having them removed. Man, those are some magical tonsils!

[astralc]

Sounds a lot more fun than going to the hospital and having them removed. Man, those are some magical tonsils!

 

lol, considering I vomited blood for 3 days after the operation I think I might have been heading up to heaven