Thread: Piecing Together the Puzzle - My WILD Attempts

^^ First, welcome to Dreamviews, DannyDesu!

I hope you'll take some time to browse the resources here, especially the WILD tutorial or perhaps my DVA WILD class; I think you might find them helpful. Now for my 2 cents:

I think that the greatest obstacle you are having is the one you may have inadvertently put up on your own: you seem to be paying way, way, too much attention to the noise that can -- but does not need to -- accompany you on your way to your dream during a WILD dive.

Contrary to what you may have read on the internet (and even some books, sadly), WILD is not about feelings and sounds, but about getting to sleep and the dream without losing touch with your waking-life self-awareness. If you focus too heavily on the noise, you will very likely become too distracted to notice the dream starting or, as you may have already done, you may find that your attention to the noise has triggered your reticular system to wake you up, as a sort of defense mechanism. I highly recommend that you just relax, let those sounds and feelings come and go while you stay focused on your upcoming dream.

Also, one small thing: I'm not sure where you heard that you're supposed to forget your body, but there is no need for this...in fact, it doesn't hurt to have the memory of your sleeping body with you as your dream begins, because this helps strengthen your lucidity during the dream.

Oh, and as long as I'm here: REM is literally Rapid Eye Movement, so if your eyes were moving rapidly you can call it REM if you want; though it might not have anything to do with dreaming (your eyes might have just been twitching for some reason). Here's a thing to think about, though: Actual REM -- as a sign that you are dreaming -- occurs because your physical eyes are following the action of a dream; it really doesn't work the other way around. And, keep in mind also that, since you would already be dreaming when REM has begun and probably wouldn't notice your physical eyes moving (unless you are also seeing dream imagery), feeling your eyes rapidly moving during a WILD attempt likely has nothing to do with your dream and could probably be ignored as just some more noise.

I hope that helped a bit, and that you'll check out those links; see you around the forums!

tl;dr: I suggest that you pay less attention to the noise, and more to the dream -- and welcome to DV's!

Thanks for the quick response!

I have already looked at and read the tutorials because I've lurked around for a while. I'm going to take into account everything you said when I try again tonight! I thought I was supposed to forget my body because every dream (including lucid), I don't ever feel my physical body, and when I do, that's the signal that the dream is ending. So, I tried to make an effort to forget the body (might have had an adverse effect, to be honest) to actually enter a dream.

Thanks again!

^^ You don't need to feel your physical body to remember it; just remember that your sleeping body is right where you left it, in your bed. Feeling your body is not part of the equation.

You are correct that you shouldn't feel your physical body during a dream, but you're going to do that naturally, no need to dwell on forgetting it... and, conversely, if you do start feeling your physical body it probably means you are waking up, and time to start your DEILD!

Thank you for taking the time to post to my thread! I'm starting to get beginner's excitement again, so hopefully I won't be too awake when the time comes!