Oh, and speaking of dreams

[beige_alert]

Speaking of dreams, the other morning I had the strongest, clearest sleep paralysis / hypnopompic illusion I’ve had in a long time. This is the sensation of waking up yet being paralyzed, accompanied by various dreamed sensations. People who don’t understand that this is just a weird dream state can be terrified by it (and think that they are being abducted by aliens/molested by demons), but I’ve had some lucid dreams and welcome weird dream phenomena as a gateway to lucid dreams. It was definitely a more intense experience than usual, and there was a moment of confusion and concern before I realized what it was, at which point I started hoping I could get some fun out of it, but as so often happens with these moments of lucidity, I woke up for real very soon.

Comments

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

It seems to be caused by the mechanism that paralyzes you when you're dreaming so that you don't run around acting out your dreams remaining active for some reason while the rest of the mechanisms of normal dreaming shut off, so you're left awake but paralyzed. It's odd, yes, and maybe frightening, but it's not really especially uncommon and it's harmless.