Thread: My WILD experience, what went wrong?

So ive tried to WILD a few times before but this is the first time i got this far but unfortunately no LD!

So i went to bed around 5:30am (Weird time, i know!) and had set my alarm clock for 9:50am, i had planned on getting back into a normal sleeping schedule but when the alarm went of i decided lets do a WILD and so i got up for around 5-10 minutes to go to the washroom and just get my mind working.
Once i was ready (Bathroom then reading up on WILD very quickly) i decided it was time and went downstairs to get into bed.
now my first attempt (I tried 4 times!) was by far the most successful. I had started by lying down in bed staying very still in my favourite sleeping position. After i was comfortable i started counting my breaths to 100, visualizing each number in my head as i counted them. This was working well and i started feeling odd sensations, little lurches, at times i felt my body was acting like a wave. this was around 20. By the time i counted up to 50 i might have missed a few numbers here and there also stopped counting at times just to enjoy the physical feelings i was having.
Then i started seeing lights in my head, darkgreen swirls, white spots and a sort of pulsing color thing. I was excited because this had never happened before but i did not let it effect the WILD. I took note of the feeling the continued with the WILD.
So now i started seeing actual images i wasnt in a dream yet but i was seeing beautiful images in my head mountains, forests, lakes etc. And then my most intense i saw an ocean whith a boat sailing through it while a light mist covered it, it was midnight and the moon was ontop of it but it wasnt the normal moon it was huge and almost looked like it was touching the water and as the boat sailed under it there was a huge green flash and the boat shot up to the moon.
At this point i kind of felt like i was sinking and at the same time i felt myself get alot lighter and start to kind of float within my own body but then i felt the strongest thing yet it was a sort of pull coming from my mind and it only lasted like 3 seconds and it happened a couple times, during which my arm started feeling like it was getting extremely heavy and at the same time numb and this was slowly going up my arm untill it reached around my bicep. At this point the images in my mind had stopped and for no apparent reason the whole WILD fell apart, all the body stuff stopped, there was no images in my head and i was completely aware i was still in bed so its not like i was in a LD where it was just black. So i stayed there for around 30 seconds and decided that i would try again but each time it was just black and barely and feeling. Except the last where i sort of got the pulling sensation again and i saw awesome colors at the same time.

On a side note: I did not have a False awakening because i did a RC and also looked at my alarm clock multiple times inbetween my attempts and they were all acting normally.

Anyways i will definetly be trying again tomorrow as i barely got any REM sleep and im hoping for REM rebound. Can some one tell me where i went wrong?

It sounds like you either got too excited or became too aware. The balance of consciousness during WILDs is very finicky and takes a while to get right and just a little bit of too much on either side could cause you to just fall asleep or wake up (what happened to you). Just try to focus a little bit less on the things happening with your body and focus more on the dream that's forming. Focus on the ship you saw, the ocean it was in, the moon it flew up to, don't focus on the sensations of your body. If you focus on waking life things you will wake up, if you focus on dream things you should be able to enter the dream (unless you don't have the right balance in which you just fall asleep). You were very, very close so just give it another go tonight keeping this in mind, you'll get lucid in no time .

Originally Posted by Burke

It sounds like you either got too excited or became too aware. The balance of consciousness during WILDs is very finicky and takes a while to get right and just a little bit of too much on either side could cause you to just fall asleep or wake up (what happened to you). Just try to focus a little bit less on the things happening with your body and focus more on the dream that's forming. Focus on the ship you saw, the ocean it was in, the moon it flew up to, don't focus on the sensations of your body. If you focus on waking life things you will wake up, if you focus on dream things you should be able to enter the dream (unless you don't have the right balance in which you just fall asleep). You were very, very close so just give it another go tonight keeping this in mind, you'll get lucid in no time .

Mmmm, i see what your saying about focusing on your body to much, but i find that i was doing that because in between the images i was seeing there was a sort of downtime where it was just black :O, Ill try focusing more on the images next time though.

Originally Posted by Mattorix

So now i started seeing actual images i wasnt in a dream yet but i was seeing beautiful images in my head mountains, forests, lakes etc. And then my most intense i saw an ocean whith a boat sailing through it while a light mist covered it, it was midnight and the moon was ontop of it but it wasnt the normal moon it was huge and almost looked like it was touching the water and as the boat sailed under it there was a huge green flash and the boat shot up to the moon.

You didn't do anything wrong. You were on a doorstep of a lucid dream. The intense pictures you have seen, if they covered your whole view, were a dream. Next time, all you have to do is enter.

You may find your own technique for that, but this is the way I do it. As I'm flying over a dreamscape (in your case the ocean with sailboat, and possible already the mountains and lakes), I pick a spot on the ground and say very slowly and deliberately "I am there". At this moment I feel being moved towards the ground in the dream untill I set my feet down. When I land, I have arrived in a lucid dream and I'm part of it. Here you stabilize and go on to do your thing.

Please ask, if you need help with anything else. Happy dreams

Originally Posted by gab

You didn't do anything wrong. You were on a doorstep of a lucid dream. The intense pictures you have seen, if they covered your whole view, were a dream. Next time, all you have to do is enter.

You may find your own technique for that, but this is the way I do it. As I'm flying over a dreamscape (in your case the ocean with sailboat, and possible already the mountains and lakes), I pick a spot on the ground and say very slowly and deliberately "I am there". At this moment I feel being moved towards the ground in the dream untill I set my feet down. When I land, I have arrived in a lucid dream and I'm part of it. Here you stabilize and go on to do your thing.

Please ask, if you need help with anything else. Happy dreams

Thats good to know, so basically i just need to focus more on the images, when im doing that the problem im having currently is actually getting there or rather the transition, once i see the image i have no idea how to jump in and i dont know how it feels im sure once i do it once WILDs will be easier
About how your way of entering, do you sort of focus on the dreamscape try to hold it then imagine yourself flying over it or is more like you are already doing that because for me im stuck just picturing things that whole dream scene for me was about maybe 10-15 seconds is that enough time to enter into the LD?
Also it might not have been the ideal conditions for a WILD during my first attempt like 2 planes flew over my house interrupting me!

Originally Posted by Mattorix

About how your way of entering, do you sort of focus on the dreamscape try to hold it then imagine yourself flying over it or is more like you are already doing that because for me im stuck just picturing things that whole dream scene for me was about maybe 10-15 seconds is that enough time to enter into the LD?

OK, so first I see the black and grey swirls behind my closed eylids. Later on I may start seeing these swirls getting shapes of images, like skulls and faces (don't ask me why). But they are still made of the "foggy swirl material". But you should not focus on the images. Just be a passive observer, at least for now.

Later, I may see some individual images, this time they will have color and are much better defined (like a shiny golden image of an old fashioned alarm clock). Then you can see some small movies, dreamlets. Like at one time a stick figure came out into my field of view as if onto a stage, did something and walked off. Or more complex movies, like literally a 35mm film, with each individual frame being a picture of different theme. But so far, these were not covering my whole "screen".

When one of these dreamlets fills out my whole view, I'm always flying maybe 50 meters above the dreamscape and the dream unfolds underneath me. This would be a good time to enter a dream. I don't focus on it hard at all. I'm not trying to alter what I see, although some more experienced people I believe do that. So i just find a spot on the ground and say "I am there".

If you want to have a dream about some place, you can incubate it by visualizing. It's best to do this with a place you are very familiar with, like maybe your childhood house. But I would wait until you have few lucids under your belt, to get an idea how it goes.

So anyway, I went into detail, because for me, this part of entering the dream once you see it was the hardest part to figure out. Maybe something from this will help you. But nothing beats your own experience. Happy dreams

Hey Gab, thanks for your description there. Can you tell me how you get that balance between staying aware but not waking? When I try to do a WILD I either can't enter, but sort of bounce in and out of the SP/visuals, same as Mattorix, or spend so long I just go to sleep!
I guess it's just practice, but can you describe how you get that balance right?