Help me, I'm scared

[Keryo Koffa]

Context:

I had my first nightmare in a decade today. I've done a lot of psychedelics since 2 months ago and that got me out of wasting my life away. But the last high/heroic dosing was a month ago and it was amazing and fascinating. I've been integrating every day wvery hour ever since. Last week I took a small dose and had a beautiful god realization and my mind was a vessel where I felt the flow or emotions and avatars. In between my trips I integrate quickly and contemplate existence and open myself up to everything, feeling to an extent I can't recall having done before or only as a child.

And I was about to start my next retreat, I haven't even taken anything yet. I felt lonely, the same loneliness I felt all my life when I couldn't be around those I love to spend time with, I cried, I felt content, I made some notes, I went to sleep.

I had a nightmare, short version: I was watching TV (so I was safe even in the dream), but in the movie I was watching a little girl tell others to stop hinding behind a mask and show their true self and then morphed her face into a scary amalgamation of distorted and overlayed faces, with a similar effect to what you see in "The Thing" but condensed in the space of a head.

I woke up sacred shitless, it passed after a few seconds, I noticed I had slept  9PM to 3AM. I made a long post about it and my life on the forum. I felt I understood the message even if I wasn't able to fully handle the sight, but it passed after a minute of waking up. I felt content. I felt I learned. I felt it was preparing me to be more conscious and aware of the experiences psychedelics can give me and learn to accept whatever comes my way.

And then:

I slept for one and a half hours. My next dream was weird but not really scary at first. But at the end, in the dream, it felt as though there was something stuck to my eyeball obscuring my vision, I looked in the mirror, it was a small piece of cloth, I gently removed it, in my hand it was suddenly the size of a towel. I woke up. I was falling asleep again. I was thinking as I was in the state of mind of slipping into sleep. My last thought was reflected by a voice the second I transitioned into sleep. I woke up. I thought that was cool and was wondering if I could initiate a direction for my dream with my thoughts. I thought again, I was already in a half asleep state and immediately went in, a voice said three things, the first was a repetition of my own, the next assured me I was fine, the third I don't remember because at that time I felt a sense of dread. I woke up. I was very much still half asleep and I fell asleep again but I heard breathing and that scared me out of the dream to immediately wake up. I still heard some simiar noises, I saw me lying on my bed irl, it was dark, in my half awake state I felt a tingling, a weight and a sensation of my blanket being drawn down from the sides. My whole body shivered. I told myself its not real, but I was too afraid to sleep and face it, so I stood up to fully wake up and turned on all lights. And now I'm writing about it. I'm scared, I know it can't hurt me, but I'm the most scared I've ever been. It's like I'm building a link to my unconscious and either its inherently scary or my ego does its best work to scare me away from it, or maybe it's too much to handle at once.

[Osaid]

You are experiencing sleep paralysis and maybe hypnagogic/hypnapompic hallucinations. Your fragmented sleep schedule caused it. The horror setting of the bad dream was an unlucky coincidence, but also somewhat related, as it interrupted your sleep quality allowing for the later sleep paralysis to occur.

I know exactly what you mean when you say "you could think while falling asleep", that is the state/gateway for sleep paralysis.

I had one once where a foreign voice "entered my head" and it was reading my thoughts back to me, my inner monologue was replaced by the voice of some female. Auditory hallucinations and physical sensations are a common occurence in such states.

It won't happen again unless you switch up your sleep schedule again, that will boost its likelihood.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Osaid

[Rafael Thundercat]

1 hour ago, Osaid said:

You are experiencing sleep paralysis and maybe hypnagogic/hypnapompic hallucinations. Your fragmented sleep schedule caused it. The horror setting of the bad dream was an unlucky coincidence, but also somewhat related, as it interrupted your sleep quality allowing for the later sleep paralysis to occur.

I know exactly what you mean when you say "you could think while falling asleep", that is the state/gateway for sleep paralysis.

I had one once where a foreign voice "entered my head" and it was reading my thoughts back to me, my inner monologue was replaced by the voice of some female. Auditory hallucinations and physical sensations are a common occurence in such states.

It won't happen again unless you switch up your sleep schedule again, that will boost its likelihood.

Yes,  by my experience this phenomena also happen after 3 or 4 days after some psycadelic retreats or if my speep patterns are disrupted.  Voices similar of a radio station in a old radio, feelimg of being pulled from the bed, falling, seeing weird angry animals in dreams like weird insects, morpging faces etc... 

[Keryo Koffa]

@Osaid @Rafael Thundercat Female voice, radio station sounding effects, it's exactly as you two describe, strange how similarly it manifests. Well, I slept again and this time nothing, the feear is gone too. And it's true, I have been switching up my schedule. Before my trip a week ago, I used to fall asleep mostly at 1-3AM. But by becoming aware of its impact and importance for my daily life, I started sleeping earlier, at first it took a while to adjust so I fell asleep 11PM-1AM, then 10-11AM, yesterday at Midnight and today as early as 9AM. Whenever I go to sleep earlier, I tend to wake up feeling rested after only 5-6 hours later around 3AM and going to sleep again typically causes REM-like sleep. And if I just get up instead, I feel the need to nap later.

It was so strange, because I didn't even feel fully paralyzed, more like halfway sedated, and like I was experiencing the psychological effects of the dream interpreted over physical reality. In the context of Spirituality, where one is seen as a self-limited less aware form of god-consciousness, the seperation of the self into different forms one isn't conscious of and the nature of the unbconscious creating the experience and the subconscious hiding away details and memories from direct access to allow focus, we're already compartimentalized. But to have one's consistent seeming experience challanged like it, it sure is scary and fascinating. If everything is a mental construct it is the case regardless of paradigm, brain or mind, then Schizophrenia and Paranoia sure make a lot of sense to me now.

But I'm to explorative to hide from it, even if I'll get insanely scared again and again. The way my experiences happened, it feels like my unconscious wants me to see and accept it, despite how scary it is to the ego. I think this is exactly how I can grow, because the ego's most primal defense mechanism is fear. And I can think about being god, or the universe all I want, but the test to see if I truly mean it is to take action and also work through fear. I intuit that I facing fear is a necessary part in expanding my sense of self, to face any form of discomfort and learn to accept, even love it. Limit my preferences and open myself up. Not facing fear is not facing the ego. I need to accept every part of my experience to become whole and suffer less. Since suffering is a natural part of limited love, losing it, not being able to express it, being isolated from it, to have that preference that cannot be met. The more I align myself with accepting the present experience as it is, the less I will suffer, since resisting and wishing somewhere else is a futile mental activity that dismisses the moment and leads to conceptual proliferation, more ego, suffering and doesn't change anything. I can still set a path, but I need to learn to love the obstacles as well and see them as part of the journey.

[An young being]

Nothing to be worried about, I once had a dream where I know I was in the dream, fought hard to escape it, then finally woke up, only to realise I am still in the dream. This continued on a loop for around 4 to 5 times, and finally I got a huge sigh of relief after realizing that I am back here. It's scary since it's a long while since you had a nightmare, but it will vanish on itself after some time.

Edited December 11, 2023 by An young being

[Osaid]

1 hour ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

Voices similar of a radio station in a old radio

I heard my TV playing, and I swear it feels like the "entities" did that to distract me and trick me into opening my eyes. If you open your eyes during sleep paralysis it's much harder to escape IME because now there is visual stimuli to scare you.

10 minutes ago, Keryo Koffa said:

strange how similarly it manifests.

It is very strange, I saw a Youtube video of someone who had my exact same auditory hallucination. The consistency leads me to believe that the entities are real in some way.

[An young being]

1 hour ago, Osaid said:

It is very strange, I saw a Youtube video of someone who had my exact same auditory hallucination. The consistency leads me to believe that the entities are real in some way

Lol, this sounds scary to me than the nightmares itself!