Paralysis

Because this is my first post, I guess a good place to start is at the beginning - where my journey into the lucid state first began. I have always had an interest in dreams. My non-lucid dreams are arguably just as interesting and exhilarating as my lucid ones. My first lucid dream though, freaked me out and to this day (roughly two years later) I still panic when I become lucid - which happens, a lot. I can best describe the place I was in as the Island's of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida. To those of you that have not been, my apologies. I was no doubt in an amusement park abundant in trees and lacking in "rides" - very Jurassic Park I guess. Interesting about my dream was that I became lucid twice. The first time, I was trying to jump off a type of jungle gym that was high off the ground. In real life, I have an irrational fear of jumping off of things - probably because I am horrible at it. I do not know how, or why, but an odd thought came to my mind in the dream - I thought, I will jump off and if I land, that means I am dreaming because there is no way I would land in real life. It really was as simple as that. Surely enough I jumped off and BAM! I land perfectly, I knew I was dreaming. As I walked through the dream I seemed to forget all about my lucidity - this was until I came across the first real amusement ride I had encountered throughout the entire dream. It was, as all dream-related things, strange. It was huge, and it was T shaped. The top would spin, much like a merry go'round but high up in the sky and the only two places to "sit" in where at each end of the T. Somehow, I end up on one of these ends and the contraption begins to spin on its own. At this moment I realize again that I am dreaming, as I look down on the landscape of my dream and see a large, dark, ominous-looking lake and think to myself "this will turn into a nightmare if I fall in there." I suddenly remember something my friend, who is very interested in LD's, told me one could do should you ever achieve lucidity - ask your dream a question. And so, I did. I asked "why am I dreaming this dream?" Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I knew I would regret it, the words literally produced ripples in my dream and suddenly, it was all gone, everything was pitch black. (I swear, this happened) I am in total darkness except I am aware that behind the darkness there is some sort of building, a temple of some kind with hundreds of arched doorways. At the same time, everything in my dream was shaking, vibrating and - I know this is crazy - there was this disturbingly loud opera-type music playing. It was not pleasant, the longer I stood there the louder it became. Terrified, I willed myself to wake up, but could not. As is custom, I experienced sleep paralysis for what seemed like eternity - I distinctly remember seeing eyes all around me as I fought wake up. I think back to the dream today and it still scares me, I do not even know what it means. But I figured it was important to share, considering it was my first experience. My apologies if it sounded like I was trying to make it overly-dramatic, it was just crazy. Amazing the kind of things the mind can do - but also terrifying.