Hey guys, I wonder if any of you could help me work out the difference between an outer body experience and false awakenings? I've been lucid dreaming for around a year or so and have experienced false awakenings a few times. The first time, it confused the hell out of me, but as I have a habit of looking at my hands, I tend to notice quite quickly when I am dreaming, which helps me to become lucid. On two occasions, including last night, I experienced one or the other.
Obviously the correlation between the two, so far as I am aware is that you 'wake up' in your room, presumably most of the time. Well, this time as well as the last (a few months ago), everything was verrrry blury. It wasn't just that the dream stability was fairly weak, but it as incresibly difficult to see some things, almost as though my eyes were working at 10% efficiency. I was able to pull off a few lucid dream tricks, like spawning people, although it was far less easy than in a normal lucid dream and often it just didn't work at all, which is significant as I usually have relatively good dream control for someone who's only been going for a year.
Further to this, whenever the dream fell apart, I was able to re-enter it with moderate ease. So far as I'm aware, the first time in the night I became lucid or OBE'd, I became conscious of it within the 'dream', although each other time was more like a WILD (wake induced) experience. I could usually tell whether I was truly awake or still in a dream, but if I waited enough seconds, I'd eventually fade back into the dream.
Anyway, given all of this and given that each time I experienced this, getting out of my very own bed, what are your thoughts? False awakening style lucid dreaming or OBE? I'd appreciate any and all thoughts on this, whether they based on your own experience or research, both spiritual and not.
P.s, I was awake for nearly two hours from 4:30-6:30 am prior to this (unintentionally).
Many thanks,
Dave
Well i can only comment with any real experience as of a couple of weeks back when i had my first WILD after a few years of only MILD lucid dreams. My WILD followed a similar pattern, floated above my bed and saw myself and partner below me, bu impossibly far below me due to a normal height ceiling in our room and I seemed to be floating a good 5 metres above my sleeping self, i also had very limited vision, dark and blurry as others have experienced in WILDs so I took steps to try to will more light into my dream.
Having studied OBEs previously I'm of the strong opinion they don't exists and people have, understandably, confused experiences such as we've had with actually leaving their bodies. As we generally only will into being dream characters and actions because we know we are lucid, anyone else experiencing these would just let things happen as they would in real life and therefor not notice that they were in fact dreaming, experience and knowledge is everything here I'd say.
Sounds like you're doing well on the control front. If it happens again, trying willing more light/visual sharpness into your dream or changing the scene as I did, although my wasn't exactly fully willed into being, it just happened in a scene shift a bit later after a flight.