[xtrupoke]

i know exactly how you feel and have experienced this to a continuing degree, strong and total physical paralysis while asleep and yet apparantly awake in the face of something overtly unwelcome and horribly cloying yet as lucidly real as the day is bright - sometimes layers upon layers of thinking i am awake, but not, as it turns out. i find that a conscious affirmation and intent to be protected works wonders, before laying myself down to sleep.

one time i awoke and turned to and awoke my loved one and shared my unctious feelings of the just passed moment of sleep paralysis, only to have turned over and found that it was just another episode layer... she was not in my bed at all. a very lonely feeling, overwhelming.

i feel it's a function of my experiences and as yet unresolved fears amassed over my life, rather than an external visitation - an internal facing of that which i haven't properly faced in waking life. i think i know what i haven't been brave enough to face. need to get back to the place where i was able to have a complete experience out of body, and know what was happening so as to soar! fear prevents that. mark