Attempting at Lucid Dreaming, getting scared?

I used to have Lucid Dreams frequently as a child and still do randomly now. I am currently attempting to develop and strengthen my ability to connect with Spirit. Recently I have been reading books, listening to hypnotic recordings for lucid dreaming as I fall asleep, and even trialing herbs, all in an attempt to induce Lucid Dreaming.
On three different occasions, while I was mid dream, I have felt as if I was slipping into darkness, unable to move, and felt as if Spirit was around me, suppressing me. I became frightened and jumped ship each time.
After reading around these boards I am wondering if I was slipping into an out of body experience or astral projecting. Maybe even sleep paralysis, but each time I was actively dreaming and felt like I was bringing it on myself. I was able to pull myself out of it relatively easily by calling my Spirit back to myself, and woke myself up. However, it still scared me, and I am not sure what was happening.
Any ideas or input on what is going on?

[Michelle11]

I haven't done much astral projecting or lucid dreaming on purpose. I have had lucid dreams mainly when I nap and most of them involved my boyfriend but I am not really sure how to do either thing on purpose. Hopefully someone will jump in who has an idea but you may want to also post this question in the Astral Projection section and see what they have to say over there. I guess the main thing I would focus on is that spirit is near protecting you. Did you feel protected by them? If so maybe when you try next time ask them to help you move past the fear and see if that helps. Good luck.

I think its quite common.

First of all, its nothing to fear. It is all a balancing act that will come naturally with practice.

There is something built into us that as soon as we realise we are dreaming, we wake up. I think its because the conscious mind is what we need to realise that its a dream, and as soon as the conscious mind becomes active, it starts the wake-up process. At least that is the 'default', but we can override that default through lots of practice.

I think what you experienced is the sort of 'progress-but-not-quite-there-yet' stage. Through your practice so far you've delayed the wake-up sequence, but your conscious mind is then getting confused, because your body is still paralysed (the brain produces a chemical that weakens the signals between brain and body so that we don't act out our dreams), and its dark because your eyes are shut. It can cause a bit of panic, but luckily the heightened activity of panic just accelerates the wake-up sequence.

With a lot of practice, you can find that balance and let the conscious and subconscious work in harmony to create lucid dreams and astral projections of your making without waking up until you're ready, but in the meantime, you might get these episodes of feeling temporarily trapped or out of control. The thing is, once you realise that's all it is, it stops being scary but in some ways is worse, because then its just disappointing. You accidentally dip into that state, realise, try to steer out of it back into your dream, which sometimes works, but sometimes all that happens is your dream world starts collapsing and fading around you and you know you're waking up and you can't stop it, and its so disappointing when you were just having fun.