It's difficult to explain precisely because it's not any sort of technique, so whether it works or not depends purely on how well you grasp the concept and put it into practice, so I can't do a step 1, 2, 3 guide but I can point in the direction.
I've been using Trello to keep notes on the mental properties we've discussed in this thread and also my own ideas for the last couple of weeks and it seems like last two nights I've "glued" it all together into something that can actually be practised towards.
I'll try and list the key points, each one is important and must be present otherwise you won't have the right state of mind.
- As we mentioned in the thread you need to actually want to have an LD tonight, as in you need the desire for it, this may sound simple but it means pushing all your other "life problems" out of your mind, just like we do in meditation, when you sit down you think "I might have other issues going on, but right now I'm meditating", so you might have other issues going on, but at night you LD.
- - Meditation on the breath, this needs to be done, at least 15 minutes before you go to sleep, or better yet a couple of times during the day, but you have to understand why you're doing it otherwise it'll be pointless, here I will explain what you are trying to achieve because you need to keep this in mind while you meditate and later when you actually try to LD, some meditation experience would be helpful but not necessary as long as you get the idea:
When you sit meditating, your mind is on your breath, you know when you breath in and when you breath out, what you are doing is focusing on what you are currently doing, more importantly what you currently want to focus on. Your mind wonders away even though you know what you want is to focus on your breath, this is why you don't succeed in having an LD, you want to have an LD but your mind wonders away. This is why you practice the ability to not forget what you're doing through the meditation on the breath. It doesn't have to be just the breath, you can practice while brushing your teeth, when your mind wanders you bring it back to brushing your teeth because that's where you want your mind to be.
This is the most important thing to understand out of all the points here, you have to practice and build this ability to focus on whatever you want to focus on and return when you lose that focus, dreams are overwhelmingly distracting, without this practice you simply get lost and can only LD at times when your mind just happens to be focused rather than having it under your own control. This all sounds very difficult but it's actually not, I found that even 20 minutes before bed is enough as long as you realise what it is you're trying to achieve and "keep at it" as you go to bed (see #1, #3 and #4).
So you are developing your ability to keep your mind on your chosen subject of intention, this doesn't happen in the first 5 minutes of meditation, you need to give time for the mind to settle down, you can't do that with effort you can only do it with more time, you should be okay to get up again when you get to the point where you don't want to get up anymore and you're happy to just follow your breath.
As a sort-of-related side-note, it's a good idea to do the practice "for other people", so when you first start you can think something like "may everybody be happy", the reason for this isn't some sappy Buddhist notion, it also helps calm you down because when you do something nice for other people you automatically feel good and that's a good state of mind to have because it frees you from all the crappy emotions you gathered during the day that get in your way. - - This third point is equally important and shouldn't be forgotten, it requires a change of mindset about sleep, normally people go to bed, put their head on the pillow and are "knocked out". The normal mindset of somebody falling asleep is "finally I can get some rest" or "siiiigh *unconsciousness*". When you close your eyes to go to sleep you need to think "I'm not sleeping, I'm resting", this assumes some level of awareness is still present. There's no need to force yourself to stay awake or conscious, that's not what I'm talking about, you just need to stop considering sleep as the "dead zone" of consciousness, which is a really strong habit for most people which is why as soon as you feel like you're "falling asleep" you need to replace that with "I'm resting, not going unconscious", but without force because you still need to fall asleep, you're not doing anything differently, you're just thinking about it differently. Hopefully this is understandable. While doing this it's useful to refer back to your breath to remind you of #2 and at the same time or slowly replace it with #1 because that's your intention to LD, the breath is just the practice, what you actually want to have your mind on is LDing.
- - WBTB - hopefully this point will not be needed after enough practice when we can LD every dream, but right now none of us can keep the above points in mind throughout the entire night 100%, the good news is that when you wake up (don't use an alarm IMO) your mind will still mostly be in a good state if you did the meditation well and didn't mentally knock yourself out when you went to sleep (you can let sleep knock you out, which will happen anyway, the point is not to hit yourself see #3). Now you return back to your breath to ground yourself again, remember #2, you don't need to do the entire practice session, just enough to get remind you what you're doing it for and bring you back to the state of mind where you can focus on whatever you want to focus on without wandering off. This might take a minute (if you did the other parts well then your mind should be mostly set) otherwise if there are kids screaming around the house it might take a while because they are messing with your ability to stay your mind, but it's still possible, more meditation practice will make it easier to do this under any circumstance. Remember #3 also, DILD or WILD is irrelevant at this point, it's like SSILD (except I can explain why and how it works ) at some point you will want to stop following the breath, because that's just the practice and instead simply remember #1 because that's what you want the mind to be on rather than the breath. At this point you will either go into a dream straight away (or after 30 minutes of listening to people ignore your need for sleep) or you'll fall asleep and remember what you're doing in your dream (because #2 and #3 gave you the mental skill to not be distracted by dreaming and bring your mind back to #1).
Don't exert yourself, you may want to put some "force" into it during meditation if your monkey mind is running wild, but if you do or don't it'll settle on its own given enough time, patience and perseverance are the key not effort.
Also don't literally try to keep every single bit of the above in mind as you fall asleep, you'll go crazy with effort, mind on the breath then you feel good you go back to #1 and #3, then you feel your monkey mind is still active you go back to #2 for a bit, keep it balanced, the point is simply not to lose what you gained during the meditation session, especially when you do WBTB.
The success of this depends solely on how well you understand and internalise what I'm talking about, you can get it really quickly (those with meditation experience or those with good mind control) or it will take practise before you understand what you're practising. Either way you succeed based on your comprehension rather than how long you've been doing it.
#2 Meditation will help with everything else, do that correctly and don't lose what you gained during the meditation and everything else will flow from there.
Also everything else we discussed in this thread is worth internalising.
Phew that was not as short as I wanted it to be.... you asked for this.
Welcome to the no-technique zone, try not to have your brain explode.
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