Thread: I think WILDs might just be really good DILDs

It is, for all intents and purposes, probably impossible to know if one loses consciousness or not over a period of time. I posit that the slip into and out of unconsciousness can be so subtle that it can present the illusion of never having lost consciousness at all.

If we accept that thesis, then yes, it is not an unreasonable conclusion that all "true" WILDs could be actually just start-of-dream DILDs with an undetectable period of unconsciousness that *feels* like continuous consciousness. But if we accept that assumption, then we really can't know the truth at all, it would be unknowable, even with EEGs, perhaps the lapse could be so short that it's not measurable.

But then even if all that were true, does it really matter? WILD could then be defined as entering a dream "with no discernible loss of consciousness" as opposed to "with no loss of consciousness" that accounts for the possibility that it may be impossible to know for sure. However, that is slicing the semantics pretty thinly and other than being an interesting theoretical question, holds no relevance to those who just "want the dream."

I have experienced a few what I thought of as WILDs that now I think may in fact have been just start-of-dream DILDs where I watched the dream image form, after a (possibly very short) period of unconsciousness / discontinuity.

I have also experienced entering what seems to be a dream state fully consciously, without a feeling of discontinuity, but I've never experienced a dream with visuals forming once in that state, so I really can't say for sure.

If every time I try to "WILD" I actually get a "start of dream DILD" instead, I'd be one happy camper.

Also note that, from the data points I'm aware of, it seems that "expert lucid dreamers," by and large, succeed at DILD far more frequently than they succeed at "full WILD" (not counting DEILD as full WILD). So calling on people to jump fully into WILD only may do nothing other than keep a lot of people from DILDing .

Originally Posted by FryingMan

Also note that, from the data points I'm aware of, it seems that "expert lucid dreamers," by and large, succeed at DILD far more frequently than they succeed at "full WILD" (not counting DEILD as full WILD). So calling on people to jump fully into WILD only may do nothing other than keep a lot of people from DILDing .

This post is essentially about theory, semantics, and the way we view lucid dreaming as a whole, and less of a "this is what you should do" post. But as a whole, I've always felt unsatisfied with the way I and the lucid dreaming community views lucid dreams, mainly because I felt that if we viewed lucid dreams in a more accurate way, everyone would be a whole lot more successful. I've also always felt unsatisfied with all the lucid dreaming techniques out there, mainly because they all seem like they only work for a few people, and essentially seem like tricks. This post also stems from a lot of the reading I've been doing about WILDs involving more "current" theories about achieving them, namely that the most important part of WILDing is to fall asleep, and secondary to that is retaining your awareness. A lot of those treatments of WILDing also discount SP, hypnagognia, etc, as interesting but irrelevant side effects of WILD, and that the most important part is just falling asleep.

I suppose it's also very important to mention that I like to view lucid dreaming from a perspective of mindfulness, and that increased mindfulness and awareness are what leads to more lucid dreams, and that all techniques are just derived from that. It seems that nearly every expert lucid dreamer I've read about uses techniques that are either just overall mindfulness (pretty much identical to all day awareness or lucid living) or concentration exercises/meditations which would by their nature increase awareness and mindfulness. These viewpoints also come from personal experience, because I noticed in myself that after I started a meditation practice the number of lucid dreams I had skyrocketed, and I don't do any techniques.

The reason this comes back to WILDs is because until I had the realization which was in the original post, I had no way to fit how WILDs came about into my grand unified theory of lucid dreaming, and that bothered me. But now, it seems to me, WILDs are also generated by awareness.

I imagine that was all somewhat incoherent, because I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment, but I'll try to sum up my viewpoints. Most importantly, I think that for the most part the way we view lucid dreams, and the way we view achieving lucid dreams, is distorted. I think a technique is only useful in so far as it increases awareness. And I think that with WILDs, the way to have one is to fall asleep while holding on to your awareness, which makes it pretty much the same as a DILD, where you simply lose your awareness for a while and then get it back again after a certain point.

So actually in summary, I guess what I'm saying is not that people should try to WILD instead of DILD, people should just try to increase their awareness overall, because that is what will lead to WILDs and DILDs.

Originally Posted by solpic

So actually in summary, I guess what I'm saying is not that people should try to WILD instead of DILD, people should just try to increase their awareness overall, because that is what will lead to WILDs and DILDs.

Bingo! I'm in pretty much total agreement with everything you write. In other words, everyone should listen to Sageous Love that new smiley .

Only don't discount timing. And memory. And recall.