I’m a lucid dreamer, I’ve had my fare share of sleep paralysis experiences, and False Awake dreams as well.
One of my favorite recent lucid dreams would be one where I walked into a hotel building as a commercial HVAC tech. (A previous profession I once held). Right away I feel like something is off. Although everything displayed before me appears to be obviously real, how I felt for a fraction of a moment made me question the reality I was in. I then stop in my tracks to contemplate if I was in a dream or not.
To prove if I was indeed dreaming, I decide to just drop my bag of tools and bolt down the corridor to my right.
[Edit] Now the reason why I made this decision is because my dreams seem to follow a narrative path where I’m being pushed or pulled down in some way. So, by stopping in my tracks, and bolting down a different direction from where I was originally going proceed, I’m attempting to pressure test the constructs of a dream. Think of it as breaking outside of the boundary in a video game, in that the game won’t render or operate as expected when one does this. Anyways, back to my dream description…
As I’m running, I start passing an endless amount of hotel room doors and I never reach the end of the corridor. I come to a stop satisfied in proving that I am indeed in a dream. Just as soon as I reached this conclusion though, I feel that all too familiar, ancient sense of fear. It was the same fear and dread that would overwhelm me in my youth during my sleep paralysis experiences.
Feeling it’s presence behind me, I turned to see a large Shadow Figure standing by my tool bag staring intensely at me. The Shadow Figure was humanoid in form, stood somewhere between 8 ft - 9 ft tall, and had the bulk as if a shadow from a Strongman competitor was given a three dimensional form. Even though I’m being confronted with that same ancient feeling of fear and dread, I think to myself, “I’m going to fight this thing.”
[Edit] So the reason why I decided to do this was that I understood the sandbox I was now playing in. I’ve ran into Shadow Figures in past dreams, and I know the history regarding peoples accounts with them, going back centuries. In the accounts I read though, no one ever tried to fight one. I personally wanted the XP and the personal bragging right that I had done such a thing. Anyways, returning back to my dream description…
With my mind focused solely on this goal, I bolt down the corridor once more, this time towards the Shadow Figure (SF). The SF, seeing my actions, roars out and starts running towards me. As it gets closer I can both hear and feel each of its footsteps make impact on the floor, which increase in magnitude as we get closer. I think to myself, “This thing has some weight to it. This is going to be a great fight!”. Then the moment arrived for the bout to begin.
As we are about to ram into each other the SF gives out one more guttural roar as I clench and wind back my right fist. We both leap at each other and I throw my puch as hard as I can at the SF. As my knuckles make contact, the SF starts to dematerialize into smoke, diffusing away into nothing. This leaves me feeling very angry. I was denied the fight I wanted, and just as frustrating the SF didn’t even feel like anything when my fist, followed by my entire body, crashed through it. Reaching my peak level of frustration about being denied a fight with a SF, I force myself awake to return back to this plane of existence.
After contemplating on this dream, the best I could come up with is that I experienced an allegory to what fear actually is. The type of fear that keeps one from speaking up, not visiting that place they always wanted to go, not taking the time to invest in oneself to make a career change, . . . etc. Those fears can fill one with a sense of dread and make you feel like personal harm can result if you don’t respect its presence. However, fear is exactly like the Shadow Figure in my dream, which will evaporate away like a puff of smoke once confronted.
So, lucid dreams can be pretty neat.