With all this talk of alarms, this I think needs to be repeated:
 Originally Posted by Burke
I'd also recommend trying to perform DEILD waking up normally. If you naturally wake up before an alarm or don't need an alarm for the day, natural DEILDs often tend to be easier and more reliable, in my experience. I'll occasionally chain them together on a weekend or day off and it's a great feeling to wake up from an unfinished lucid (maybe you didn't accomplish what you wanted to) and then dive right back into it. I've managed up to 6 in a row or so but I've heard of people getting more. Granted, if you have trouble falling asleep after waking up for the morning then it's likely best to stick with the WBTB method. I'd definitely recommend trying out various times and techniques to do so, since DEILD is probably my favorite method  .
In spite of Ezzo's admirable success with alarms, DEILD's really do work better without them. I believe this is true for a couple of reasons:
First, DEILD's are literally transitions that take place as you realize that you are waking up, naturally, from a dream, as per the "Dream Exit" part of the acronym. It is preferable that the dream you are exiting is a LD, but you can also notice yourself waking up from a NLD as well, since your waking-life consciousness can tend to wander in before you are fully awake. The reason that exiting a dream is important is because it gives you something to hold onto as you wake up, and something to target as you quickly return to sleep. That something is more than just the dream, but the state of mind you are in at the time you are dreaming (that state being best, again, when you are exiting a LD, but still quite "dreamy" when exiting a NLD). That state might not be present when you are woken up by an alarm, both as a matter of timing (you simply are not dreaming when it goes off) and consciousness (the alarm wakes you up too much) -- which brings me to point 2:
Second, though more as an extension of my first point, alarms by design tend to pull you from sleep, delivering you directly from sleep to wake without that all important moment spent realizing that you are waking up, yet still dreaming. This is not helpful to DEILD at all. Yes you can find alarms that gently wake you, or ones that might even stir your awareness a bit before you are fully awake, but generally they just wake you up in a fairly abrupt manner. That abruptness is exactly what you do not want in DEILD, because it causes you to enter the waking world too much, leaving behind the dream you just exited, if there was one. If that happens, then your DEILD is very unlikely to happen. For what it's worth, I also do not recommend using alarms for classic WILD's for the same reason: alarms are simply too good at breaking you away from your dreams to use as a method to help bring about dreams... they don't call them "alarms" for nothing!
I think that some misunderstanding about DEILD's has begun to become a sort of common knowledge these days. DEILD's are a remarkably simple WILD transition that are a matter of doing nothing more than realize that you are waking from your dream and -- before you are fully awake, and generally without even opening your eyes -- going immediately back to sleep and returning (generally) to that same dream, with lucidity in hand. So many techniques and processes (i.e., using an alarm, repeating a mantra) have been added to this simple process, making the transition much more complex, and, I assume, difficult... either that, or folks have simply developed techniques for alarm-based WILD's, and are using the term DEILD in a new way (in my mind an incorrect way).
Okay, I'm rambling/preaching again, so let me finish with a couple of notes meant directly for Clidu, if he's still with us:
First, meditation and recall are actually not necessary for successful DEILD's... they might even get in the way (you are not recalling the dream you just exited, BTW, but are keeping it close, in your present state of mind; make it a memory and you will leave it and your DEILD behind). Try to keep your DEILD as simple as possible (i.e., just hold onto your last dream, and your self-awareness, and let yourself go back to sleep), and it will likely work much better.
Also, DEILD's tend to work best very late in the sleep cycle, when your waking-life consciousness is hovering more closely to your sleeping self (and, perhaps not coincidentally, REM periods are much more closely spaced). Setting your alarm. if you must, for 3-4 hours into your cycle might not be allowing yourself enough initial sleep time.
Finally, if you can learn to do DEILD's without an alarm, your girlfriend will appreciate the gesture!
|
|
Bookmarks