Thread: Can you dream about inducing LD?

A dreamer can become lucid after the dream has started, even if they initially think the dream is from waking life. This is known as a dream-induced lucid dream or a DILD. A MILD is a type of DILD.

A dreamer can also become lucid immediately upon transitioning into the dream state. This is known as a wake-induced lucid dream or a WILD. The dream you described sounds more like this type of dream.

As far why the dream didn't turn out how you thought it would, my best guess is that the subconscious mind influences the dream as well your conscious mind, so subconscious expectations also play a role in what happens during the dream. Because of this, things that happen in a dream can be unexpected at the conscious level because your subconscious expectations can be both different and stronger than your conscious expectations.

I guess I doubt whether it was a WILD or not because I have no idea what watching myself fall asleep feels like. And I have read and concentrates so much energy on it that I think my subconscious played a trick on me and I dreamt of a WILD. But the feeling I had of being pulled in doesn't sound like what I've read in the tutorials.
Btw dolphin, you are the first person to provide me with any kind of input so thank you so much! I don't feel so alone in this exciting journey anymore lol

I think I found what the feeling I had in that maybe dream of WILDing. It was acceleration, so it might have been a real WILD. I am so intrigued 😭

Describing the experience of a WILD, one moment you will be trying to fall asleep and the next moment you will be in a dream, and there will not appear to be any moment in between those two moments.

You can experience many things in the transition from waking to dreaming. Personally, during a transition, I've experienced flying, floating, sinking, accelerating/sliding, spinning, noises, voices, dream characters jumping on me, random thoughts related to starting/choosing a dream, and being able to see with my eyes closed.

A dream about WILDing would be something like dreaming about waking up in bed from a dream and trying to fall asleep before transitioning into another dream.

Originally Posted by clmn96

Can you dream about inducing LD?

Of course you can! Since you can dream about anything, why couldn't you have a dream about, say, completing a WILD?

Though not exactly the same, something similar to what you describe has happened to me many times:

I think I have woken up from my LD, but when I go to take off my sleep mask -- I actually grab it and pull it away -- I discover it is still on. Now, when not lucid this is a real issue, because I get confused about why my sleep mask is still on and proceed to cartoonishly tear off one sleep mask after another. But if I'm lucid I just sigh and work through the moment. I do this working through by simply closing my dream eyes (with the knowledge that they are dream eyes) for a moment and think about where I would like my dream to restart (usually I make this easy by thinking about returning to the dream I just left). After that moment I open my eyes, usually to find that the mask is gone and I have indeed returned to a recognizable dream (though not always the to which I expected to return).

I think this happens because one of the by-products of WILD (and LD'ing in general) is that you might find yourself lucid during stretches of NREM, when your dreaming mind/unconscious is taking a break from production of dream imagery (and you would never have noticed this break, were you not lucid). When this happens, you might experience a moment of emptiness, popularly known as the Void around here, or else your dreaming mind might respond to your continued presence by hurriedly offering up some dream imagery based on your most recent -- thus most easily accessible -- waking-life memory, that memory being you lying in bed. This sort of dream can be frustrating and, I've found, can be more difficult to escape the harder you try (I think this is because your dreaming mind responds to your struggle to, say, get rid of the bedsheets, by firming up the imagery of those bedsheets; I don't know why it does this, but it could be because your dreaming mind still has nothing else to offer, so it simply amps up what it has). That's why doing nothing for a moment can be helpful, because it allows your dreaming mind time to spool up a new dream, and helps you avoid the frustration of struggling with your bedclothes not to mention helping you resist the urge to wake up in order to clarify where you really are.

tl;dr: Of course you can dream you completed a WILD, just as you can dream anything else. If you "wake up" in bed but something is amiss, try to remember that you are still dreaming, and that, if you just close your dream eyes for a moment to give your dreaming mind a chance to catch up with you, you might find yourself in a new dream when you open them.

Thank you Sageous, that concise explanation really helps. It seems to explain why the dream is so unstable and I don't feel control over the top half of my dream body. That is to say, I have control of myself "geographically", I can move around inside the dream, but I can't really look around, move my head and see that she sheet moves. As in another lucid dream I had this morning where I couldn't shift my vision by moving my neck, maybe I'll use my dream eyes to look around alternatively.

Also, if I may ask something else Sageous. Do you suggest I rub my hands together while closing my eyes and waiting for my dream mind to catch up to make sure I stay lucid and don't wake up?

Over the 9ish years I've been LDing, I've had about 6 or so dreams I can remember where I tried to WILD in a dream and then I become lucid after a successful induction and realize I was already in a dream to being with.

dolphin, the seeing with my eyes closed is what I seem to experience. Hard yet to feel anything else but I am excited as I will have a warning to my lucidity. When I just close my eyes and it's a dream I am not prepared for the dream and I encounter issues such as the sheet-over-the-face. Or so I hypothesize. We'll see what other challenges my lucidity sparks up.

Wow snoop, I wonder why I seem to have so many accidental WILD-like dreams. I mean this in respect to my lack of non-lucid Dream time in the lucid dream. I really think it's because I am so captivated by the technique that my sub-conscious is working with me to make it happen, so I hope I can find a way to solidify my dreamscape when I encounter myself in these effortless lucid dreams. I'll surely try anything you guys suggest on the forum since you all have very through ideas I very much respect. I feel like I'm in lucid grade school

Originally Posted by clmn96

Also, if I may ask something else Sageous. Do you suggest I rub my hands together while closing my eyes and waiting for my dream mind to catch up to make sure I stay lucid and don't wake up?

I wouldn't.

Though certainly a slight one, handrubbing is an aspect of dream imagery, since you are requiring your dreaming mind to create your dream hands and rub them together. So, because of your focus on such an aspect, your dreaming mind might use it as a foundation for the new dream. Better, I think, to leave the slate blank at a time like this, in my opinion, so you don't wind up in another extremely simple dream revolving around your rubbing hands!

Also, events like this tend to occur when you are very close to waking, so there is a chance that if you do this you might find yourself awake rubbing your waking-life hands together... I'm not sure this applies in your case, but I figured it worth mentioning.

Finally, from your descriptions it sounds like you wouldn't have a problem with losing lucidity anyway, so there seems no need to complicate things.

Thank you so much Sageous, I will follow your advice religiously, hopefully next time I dream. I'll keep eating cheese, that seems to be working.