Breaking illusions: Learning WILD (Amateur vs. Professional)

[adraw]

Breaking illusions: Learning WILD (Amateur vs. Professional) Did you ask yourself question, why your WILD attempts are not successfull? Lets join me, when I try to explain what makes distinction between amateur and professional approach in terms of WILDing. Introduction My average WILD attempt in past looked like this: I woke up early in the morning, just about 4:00am. It was a perfect time to do some WILDing, dont you think?. I remained awake for a while to make my mind more aware, and then entered my bed, tried to do some relaxation. Eventually I got deeper. After some time, some numbness introduced itself and everything went as I readed here in DW. Great, At least I thought. And then i got that famous urge to swallow. I didn't know, what to do. This got my attention and i really had to think about what to do next instead of relaxing.The sensation itself was unpleasant, but having to decide was even more distracting. I finally tried to resist, becouse I read somewhere, that I could ruin the attempt when moving. After some time I couldnt do anything else but to swallow. My first decision was wrong. This got me out of balance and I was so upset, that I couldnt continue... You recognize this story, dont you? I made a mistake just as anybody else and got out of balance, when I could simply continue with (maybe?) successfull WILD, if I only knew, i should just reflexively swallow. Failtures are inevitable. But the difference between amateur and professional is, that the professional learns from his experience, where amateur simply does the same mistake again and again. I was definitely an amateur Learning from the experience WILD is a simple process, but doesnt mean, that you know how to do it. You will do lot of mistakes, start living with it. Sometimes you will enter situations, where what you took as granted, simply doesnt work. Thats a FACT. You can burn your WILDs again and again the same way only becouse you didnt learn from your mistakes. Just let me guess: What do you usually do after unsuccessfull WILD attempt? I will not be too far away if I said, that you: -eighter fall asleep, and in the morning continue with your usual daily routine, -or remain awake, feel miserable and wait till the alarm clock signalizes you have to start your day. Actually... What did you LEARN from your unsuccessfull attempt? That you wont do the same mistake again? And: What exactly was the mistake about? Why did that mistake happenned? What could have been the cause? What did You forget to do? Does this relate somehow to your previous experience? No. You didnt learn anything, becouse you didnt give yourself time to learn. You have to learn if you want to be successfull with your wilds. And learning from experience is considered to be way to success. Journal and Breafing If you want to get better at WILDing, you have to find a way, how to analyze your experience. It really does not matter, if your experience was something you would describe as good for WILDing or something preventing you from successfully WILDing. Everything what caught your attention in process needs your attention. You cannot analyze and even not fully comprehend whats happening on the fly, when you are relaxing or when everything around you collapses while transitioning. The only thing you can do, is to do your best and simply perform what you have learned. Let everything else step aside. After you finished, and you know the end result (success/unsuccess) you may start to actually learn. This is the place, where you should usually start with JOURNALING. You simply, write down what caught your attention, what was special about your attempt. That's all. Its not practical to analyse just after trying, when you are eighter frustrated after unsuccess or exhilarated after success. Eighter way, your analysis would be biased. Journaling allows you to further investigate your experience later, when you can clearly think. Journaling bridges the experience itself and further experiences, becouse you can actually learn from What you journaled. Later at that day, or at the evening, you can take a look at what you recorded after the attempt and think about what happened and what could be the cause to your unsuccess. If you have no journaled data, you simply cannot prepare yourself for the next attempt effectively. Without journal you will forget or bias, what happened and could interpret it wrong way. BREAFING is a time span, where you prepare yourself for the next attempt. Most of the time doing breafing means, that you analyse, what happened in previous attempt (attempts) and then use this knowledge to your advantage. Example: SITUATION: Monday: Performing WILD in the morning, trying to practice deep breathing to achieve trance. failed. JOURNAL ENTRY: I practiced deep breathing, and could not get deeper, becouse i was controlling my breath. BRIEFING: a)ANALYSIS - Probably I was trying to control the breathing instead of letting it go. Maybe I should try one of the following: - Try creating visualisation to distract me from breathing (harder) - Just trying to breath in tempo which feels natural and sacrificing deepness (simpler) b)TODO - Decided i will stick to simpler task. Breathing in tempo. In few minutes i will condition myself to remember breathing as naturally as possible when it comes to situation where I gain focus on my breathing. To do this i will repeat this mantra .....[/I] You start with performing WILD, which is purest experience, then you journal it, so you can analyse it later. Briefing closes this loop and allows the next experience to be different (and hopefully better) than experiences before. BRIEFING relates to WILD like training to performance. If you dont know, what to do, you cannot do it well. In learning process BRIEFING is equally important to WILD, if not more. Conclusion In your WILD attempts, it usually comes to situations, where you dont know, what to do next. Its perfectly natural, becouse you are exploring new teritory presenting itself in ways you could not even imagine before. Making decision on the fly, when everything is soooo complicated usually ruins the attempt. Especially when you dont know, what to expect. If you are not prepared, its hard to enjoy the ride, becouse you have to find out what to do (Which can be stressing), instead of doing something (Which might lead to LD) Remember. When it is 4:00 a.m. and you are tired, but ready to experience something cool in upcomming lucid dream, what is it you wish? -I want to learn how to WILD OR -I want to WILD now!!! Decide by hearth. You cannot do both at the same time effectively. My decision is clear. Hope this helps.

[Denny22]

As always mate your posts are extremely interesting! You make a great point saying that we really must analyze any WILD attempts as after I try to have one I tend to get scatterbrained and in the moment I just assume that the entire way I tried it that night was wrong. Thanks for the wise words!

[Lionsroar]

nice post adraw! btw.. so are we supposed to not swallow? any tips?

[debussy]

nice post adraw! btw.. so are we supposed to not swallow? any tips? You should swallow by reflex. This should happen naturally and you should not even focus enough on your body to notice this function. Your body swallows spit all night when you're sleeping, if you struggle against this you'll just end up making it more difficult for your body to relax.

[adraw]

Sorry, about writing so late. I did not have access to computer in last few days. I would like to thank you for your responses to kick start my response . Actually. It will be pretty a short one. About the swallowing: When you are lying on your back, the probability of swallowing reflex is highly increased. So you can try to switch to other position instead. Second possibility is, that you are using swallowing as a "safety enforcer". That means, it is automatically triggerred, when you are close to transition and are beginning to experience transition symptoms. It could be a result of some of your first attempts, where you used it (consciously or unconsciosly) to switch to something you know instead of exploring those unpleasant (sometimes fearful) transition symptoms. If that is the case, its conditioned behavior, which should be dealt with outside of the experiment itself in separate BRIEFING session. I myself cannot give you answers to your swallowing problem, but may give you a little advice: You already know the answer. The key is to dedicate some time to let it emerge into your consciousness. Hope it helped.

[Denny22]

I've noticed that in certain positions swallowing is easier and isn't as disruptive. To me I almost had to gulp but with the right position it goes by in a instant. I'll be trying a WILD tonight and see if I can put it to use.

[adraw]

Great. And please let me know, if you also did some JOURNALING and BRIEFING, and what were the outcomes of that according to what you are trying to achieve.

[JShaffer]

I've noticed that in certain positions swallowing is easier and isn't as disruptive. To me I almost had to gulp but with the right position it goes by in a instant. I'll be trying a WILD tonight and see if I can put it to use. I find that if I attempt to WILD while reclined in my chair with my head slightly tilted up that I don't have as much of an urge to swallow (insert joke here).

[rockinred]

I always wondered why we were told not to swallow. Odviously we swallow in our sleep! So if we never got this notion into our heads that swallowing was bad then we wouldn't focus on it and VOILA it wouldn't affect our WILD attempts correct? Thats does sound dirty...

[adraw]

This is the procedure I use. I always swallow when the urge comes, but directly afterwards, i try my best to focus on something else (Best if its not body related), to use the little gap between two successive swallows, when the urge is on its minimum. I simply reroute my thoughts when it doesnt need a lot of mindpower, becouse doing it with brute force when the urge is on its maximum only awakens my mind more which tends to ruin trance.

[Denny22]

Great. And please let me know, if you also did some JOURNALING and BRIEFING, and what were the outcomes of that according to what you are trying to achieve. Ok, so I tried a WILD with no pre-sleep and here's how it went. SITUATION I went to bed at 12am. I lay in bed with my arms above my head while listening to music for an hour. At 1am I turned off the music, put my arms by my side and started to WILD. JOURNAL ENTRY I let my mind go for awhile to daydream then I focused on my forehead area and tried to bring my awareness to a certain point. Eventually I was focused beyond my body and felt very slight vibrations. While doing this I must have fallen asleep without knowing it as when I checked my watch it was 3am. I turned to my left on my side and tried to WILD again. After awhile without much focusing I started to feel SP and a slight vibration through my body starting at my chest. Over 10 minutes this got stronger but not as strong as I felt it before during a successful DEILD. I heard no sounds or saw any imagery. I tried to imagine myself doing dream body movements and for an instant I would feel as if my shoulder moved or shook. I tried and tried to break away from my body but nothing came of it. The vibrations died down. I rolled over and went to sleep. CONCLUSION My goal was to have a full WILD but I was impressed that I got to feel vibrations even if it didn't lead to anywhere. I think that i'll try it again but not push visualization to hard. When the vibrations kick in I may let myself daydream slightly. Like this?

[adraw]

Ok, so I tried a WILD with no pre-sleep and here's how it went. SITUATION I went to bed at 12am. I lay in bed with my arms above my head while listening to music for an hour. At 1am I turned off the music, put my arms by my side and started to WILD. JOURNAL ENTRY I let my mind go for awhile to daydream then I focused on my forehead area and tried to bring my awareness to a certain point. Eventually I was focused beyond my body and felt very slight vibrations. While doing this I must have fallen asleep without knowing it as when I checked my watch it was 3am. I turned to my left on my side and tried to WILD again. After awhile without much focusing I started to feel SP and a slight vibration through my body starting at my chest. Over 10 minutes this got stronger but not as strong as I felt it before during a successful DEILD. I heard no sounds or saw any imagery. I tried to imagine myself doing dream body movements and for an instant I would feel as if my shoulder moved or shook. I tried and tried to break away from my body but nothing came of it. The vibrations died down. I rolled over and went to sleep. CONCLUSION My goal was to have a full WILD but I was impressed that I got to feel vibrations even if it didn't lead to anywhere. I think that i'll try it again but not push visualization to hard. When the vibrations kick in I may let myself daydream slightly. Like this? Definitely I like it. Great job in summarizing what you did. How did it feel to you? It is matter of your decision if you feel like it could be useful to you, or if you stick to your normal routine. What I can tell is, that if you have a written entry you will not forget about your attempt that easily and you will probably avoid asking the same question again and again. That will certainly help you in the future. If I might, I would suggest you to try your WILDs in the morning. That time is much more suitable and you wont have to wait as long for REM to kick in. As I read your entry. I found a lot of places, which could be discussed in some of the following BRIEFING sessions. 1. Evening session -> Blackout (Why?) 2. 3a.m. -> Vibrations -> Why not as strong as DEILD vibrations (Could it be becouse you switched position? Could it be becouse you were having expectations? ....) 3. Vibrations died out (What might have caused that? Was it becouse of your intervention? ....) 4. Vibrations themselves (Are they really that important? Are they goal of your WILD?) These are open question which would probably need your attention. I know, its probably too many at once, but you may want to address one at the time and see, if you come to some conclusions. I proposed probably too many questions, becouse your attempt was a wery complicated one. You started at the evening and continued at 3am doing a lot of work, with lots of results. Actually it was not one attempt, there were multiple attempts in one session. If you would like to make your ATTEMPT-JOURNAL-BRIEFING loop more simple and easier to grasp, you could experiment with one attempt per session. Really. Its up to you. Reading your CONCLUSION I found out, that you wrote few sentences about what happenned in your attempt and what you plan to do in your next attempts. This is great, becouse you found out, what (in your opinion) is needed to be done in your next attempt to make it more successful. Still. This is only a couple of sentences. If your really think, that its worth it, you should dedicate a separate BRIEFING session to let this fully sink into your subconscious. The key is to prepare yourself for the next attempt before doing it. I know, it might sound too much for such a simple goal, but you wouldnt believe, how easy is to forget your intention when not trained. In attempt itself, there is no time for training. It was really a nice reply, going straight to the point. I think you are not far away to grasp this method. Just remember. Every attempt should be separated from learning phase as much as possible. Nice day Denny22.

[Denny22]

Adraw, thanks very much for the reply! I found logging that WILD much better as I can now look back, question it, analysis it and see where I can go from there. I don't find myself able to always try to WILD but I plan on getting a book soon about it and that will keep my mind focused on it for awhile. 1. Evening session -> Blackout (Why?) I'm not sure why I would have blacked out. I think I may have been laying there long enough and just nodded off to sleep but waking up not knowing so. My attention may have relaxed too much. 2. 3a.m. -> Vibrations -> Why not as strong as DEILD vibrations (Could it be becouse you switched position? Could it be becouse you were having expectations? ....) I think they were not as strong because with DEILDs I only just came out of sleep and I was fully relaxed. But your right, maybe I'm thinking too much about vibrations in general. 3. Vibrations died out (What might have caused that? Was it becouse of your intervention? ....) Yes. I think I expected them to get stronger and focused too much. I also think this may have led to me tensing up my body slightly. 4. Vibrations themselves (Are they really that important? Are they goal of your WILD?) They're not the goal and I know from reading here that you don't need it to have an LD. I just feel I expected too much from this WILD session. Tonight I'll wake up after pre-sleep and try it out. This time I'll get around 5 hours of sleep first, wake up enough and then try the same method but not expecting any certain results. I'll keep you updated.

[adraw]

Great, you are focussing on your WILD and that you are giving it attention. Also thanx for answering my questions. Although they were not intended to be discusssed here, you really focussed on answering them and the results seem practical. The key in this approach is to ask the questions yourself and answer them using your attempts. Tonight I'll wake up after pre-sleep and try it out. This time I'll get around 5 hours of sleep first, wake up enough and then try the same method but not expecting any certain results. I'll keep you updated. Please dont take this approach as method. Its just a way how to percieve WILD as a two part process. (Learning <-> Doing). You may also apply this apporach to another methods (also DILD based). P.S: I look forward to your next results. Hope you will overstep another borderline in your next attempts.

[Denny22]

I'll need a bit more time as I woke up but didn't stay awake long enough. I fell asleep during the WILD too quickly. As soon as I try my new official attempt I'll keep you updated, adraw.

[OfficerFlake]

Another Great Tutorial! On a seperate note... When you write "Eighter", do you mean to write "Either"? Either means a choice of multiple possiblities. I assume do not speak english natively, so I though I might give you that little nudge is all.

[TJuulsgaard]

Good post - I guess I know that I should be more systematic in my WILD-approach - but I'm always postponing it to the day after tomorrow However I think it is still very difficult to analyze your way to a WILD. I believe that even if you do take all the right turns and decisions along the way, you may still not reach your destination. Your destination might not be there at all. You can't be sure that you will in fact get a WILD if you follow the exact same procedure as last time you had one. Off course you are increasing your chances considerably once you know what works for you - but I still think that trying to get your first WILD - you still need luck. At least thats what I believe, my 2 WILDS I've had after wakening up and staying absolutely still with my eyes closed - but I practise often, and will indeed take up your great professional approach. Thanks

[adraw]

I'll need a bit more time as I woke up but didn't stay awake long enough. I fell asleep during the WILD too quickly. As soon as I try my new official attempt I'll keep you updated, adraw. I hope, you will become successful with your next attempts. I look forward to your oficial report. It will definitely be an interesting one. Another Great Tutorial! On a seperate note... When you write "Eighter", do you mean to write "Either"? Either means a choice of multiple possiblities. I assume do not speak english natively, so I though I might give you that little nudge is all. You bet it, i am not native speaker . Thanx for clarifiing this to me. I am still working on my language skills. Hope they get better overtime. Good post - I guess I know that I should be more systematic in my WILD-approach - but I'm always postponing it to the day after tomorrow However I think it is still very difficult to analyze your way to a WILD. I believe that even if you do take all the right turns and decisions along the way, you may still not reach your destination. Your destination might not be there at all. You can't be sure that you will in fact get a WILD if you follow the exact same procedure as last time you had one. Off course you are increasing your chances considerably once you know what works for you - but I still think that trying to get your first WILD - you still need luck. At least thats what I believe, my 2 WILDS I've had after wakening up and staying absolutely still with my eyes closed - but I practise often, and will indeed take up your great professional approach. Thanks Great insightfull reaction, which clearly defined the limitations of profesional approach. You might never reach your destination, thats true. You may also work purely intuitively to reach LD from waking state. Thats all possible and for some people, it takes just one lucky try to get it. But for most of us, WILDing is a process which not only brings us to dream, but also helps us to find out more about ourselves in the process. Sometimes our WILD attempts are blocked with mental suggestions which have to be overcomed first to proceed further, sometimes our WILD attempts can help us overcome our fears. Within WILD attempts we are comming deeper then ever and most of the time in state of mind, which is not very clear. In my opinion, this experience should be digested somehow. And one of the possibilities is doing it outside of WILD. Rereading main post I found out that most of the people, who read part about briefing, can assume that briefing is only about analysing attempts logically. Thats not the case. BRIEFING session should take whatever form that is necessary to reflect upon last attempt. it really doesnt matter if it is logical analysis session, practical exercise session or just contemplation about the last attempt. Whatever feels natural at that time and space and having WILD attempts as context can be considered learning. "Your destination might not be there at all... ": This one is great. Yet it still makes sense to practice WILD as long as it makes a lot of fun in the process.

[TJuulsgaard]

Personally I've started to regard my WILD-attempts as meditation. Clearing your mind and having no goal - and then see what happens. I believe in energy-body and all that stuff and meditation raises your energy making dreams more vivid dreams and giving you greater chances of achieving LD's and lots of other sideeffects. So when I wake in the middle of the night - I always meditate while lying in bed - Not really "WILD'ing" but if one comes along I'll be happy - most of my LD's have come in the early morning just after meditating like this (DILDs). So i've chosen the passive way to a WILD - I agree completely that if trying to achieve WILDs by method "X" (or whatever) you get to many distracting thoughts, that will eventually get in your way during the process, unless you are really into the method and have memorized it to the point of it being almost "automatic" - and for that to happen you really should be reading, thinking, analyzing your previous attempts and try to make it all seem natural. Phew... sounds like hard work, but its all worthwhile if my short WILDS are anything to judge by... and then again you could also just try to enjoy the process and appreciate the things you learn about yourself. But you're absolutely right, Adraw; an analytic approach is the only way to go forward instead of getting stuck in frustration. (Sorry I'm rambling not really making a point here not already posted. )

[adraw]

Personally I've started to regard my WILD-attempts as meditation. Clearing your mind and having no goal - and then see what happens. I believe in energy-body and all that stuff and meditation raises your energy making dreams more vivid dreams and giving you greater chances of achieving LD's and lots of other sideeffects. So when I wake in the middle of the night - I always meditate while lying in bed - Not really "WILD'ing" but if one comes along I'll be happy - most of my LD's have come in the early morning just after meditating like this (DILDs). So i've chosen the passive way to a WILD - I agree completely that if trying to achieve WILDs by method "X" (or whatever) you get to many distracting thoughts, that will eventually get in your way during the process, unless you are really into the method and have memorized it to the point of it being almost "automatic" - and for that to happen you really should be reading, thinking, analyzing your previous attempts and try to make it all seem natural. Phew... sounds like hard work, but its all worthwhile if my short WILDS are anything to judge by... and then again you could also just try to enjoy the process and appreciate the things you learn about yourself. But you're absolutely right, Adraw; an analytic approach is the only way to go forward instead of getting stuck in frustration. (Sorry I'm rambling not really making a point here not already posted. ) No rambling. You are actually getting straight to the point. This topic complements your approach, and is probably more suitable for people who are more analytical then intuitive. Analytical people have two major tasks when learning wild. Become more intuitive and perform WILD itself. Intuitive people are guided by their subconscious and naturally know, what to do to enter LD directly. Briefing session can help analytical people to cope with new experience, which comes with becomming more intuitive and accepting, yet retains feel, that they are not loosing control over process itself. By splitting experience from learning, the analytical part of brain becomes important in BRIEFING session so that intuitive part of brain is not blocked in WILD itself. When people are more analytical, they might percieve ilogical and new experiences as fearful and could need to devote time to include new experiences into their model to get deeper. Naturally it takes longer for them to enter WILD, but yeah. They are not having only one task to do

[arby]

I've always encouraged things like this in my tutorials. Quite simply, another motivator (the one I think is often most important) is that most things that you must do to WILD well are conceptual. You CANNOT learn them from reading tutorials or listening to people. You must learn them by trial and error or find the innate ability. For those of you who havn't read any of my stuff before and don't know what I'm talking about lets take a look at that swallowing problem for example. HOW does one automatically swallow without disrupting the dream state? We could tell you many things like "oh! it's just reflex! or just let it happen!" but when you're lying on your back having to swallow, that barely helps you. This is because this process, like so many others associated with WILD is conceptual (essentially, impossible to describe with words/pictures/etc.). What you must do is figure out how it is done and how you can let your body do it automatically. Swallowing can be overcome, you just need to find out how, and the best way is trial and error. Good thread =)

[NitePhlight]

I've always encouraged things like this in my tutorials. Quite simply, another motivator (the one I think is often most important) is that most things that you must do to WILD well are conceptual. You CANNOT learn them from reading tutorials or listening to people. You must learn them by trial and error or find the innate ability. Good thread =) 10 / 10 this is a point that i think escapes alot of people. you can read tutorials and guides as much as you want, but these experiences are going to be HIGHLY personal, variable and subjective. you have to navigate and discover your own techniques and that takes time and patience more than anything else.

[OfficerFlake]

Agreed! Learning from trial and error is very helpful. I do like the tutorials, though. They are great pick me ups for when I am stumped on what my errors are. .. Like recently forcing a scenario for VILD, being too aware of the goals rather then letting something form.

[Wildman]

Great advice, it's funny how something so obvious once you've read it, can evade your thoughts beforehand despite your willingness to accomplish something. I think this is good for far more than just WILDs, but almost any technique.