Trouble Finding The Right Balance of Consciousness For WILD

Hey guys, I've been practicing WILD for the past couple of weeks with varying degrees of success, but my number one problem is right when I wake up with my alarm. Essentially, I'm having difficulty determining how much to wake up. Sometimes I won't wake up enough and thus won't care about WILDing and just go back to sleep. Usually the night after this happens, I'll make sure to wake up enough to get my intentions straight, but then I'll be too awake and will have difficulty WILDing. Do any of you have problems with this, and if so what would you recommend to help?

This is a common problem for myself, it is hard to strike that balance between wakefulness and relaxation which is ideal for WILD induction. The problem with trying to WILD too soon after waking up is that one tends to be foggy and unfocused, which inclines the person to slip into the inertia of normal sleep. Of course the other side of the spectrum, over excitation, is bad because it becomes very difficult to get back to sleep, or the person becomes inclined to more immediate sensory gratifications like video games or television.

What I can say is that this is a problem created by the brains natural tendency to equalise itself in one pattern (attractor) or another, it is nearly impossible to stay in-between states for any amount of time, and thus to my great irritation in the morning the mind will unavoidably incline toward either full waking or unconscious sleeping, which are the enemies of the lucid dream state, unless there is conscious intervention. The waking state, the dreaming state, the deep sleep state can all be visualised as competing points of attraction or gravity, the brain is always being inclined toward one or another, and the closer it is to whichever point, the more likely it is that it will fall into its 'basin' or point of greatest stability. The waking, dreaming, and deep sleep basin points are unfortunately for lucid dreamers quite fare apart and thus antithetical, the presence of one metabolic state tends to exclude the other.

I think the best jumping off point is the meditative state, which can be reached by the waking mind, but which is more cooperative and less antithetical in its chemical make-up or constitution in reference to lucid dreaming. I would place its centre somewhere above and in the middle of the waking and dreaming basin points, their relation to each other looking like a Scalene triangle, the meditative state being closer to each state than they are to each other. For brevity I will simply say that their distance from each other in this graph is dictated by similarities or overlappings in their phsyiological, chemical, and/or electric configuration. The more similar (in constitution) and/or the greater the potential for nondisruptive synthesis, the closer are they represented to each other in my graph.

Basically, what I am saying is that it is much easier to go from waking state, (any where along the waking spectrum) to the meditative state, to the lucid dream state, than from any point on the waking spectrum to the lucid dream state. This framework is justified by my personal experience. The ease of movement from the meditative, to the lucid dream state is a result of their association with identical, reconcilable, or at least non-contradictory neural patterns. So the 'space' between the meditative and lucid dream basins are relatively close, and thus easily traversed. By generating a meditative state right after waking, as opposed to letting oneself be carried by 'neural gravity' into one of the extremes of self-reinforcing wakefulness or the mire of normal sleep, one can avoid falling into the two extremes (excitation and inactivity) which leads to the absence of the lucid dream state.

It takes a lot of practice of balancing on the edge of waking and sleep. The more you do it and experiment with degrees of letting go vs. holding on, the better you get at recognizing the subtle signs that sleep is approaching. I find that I need to work almost solely on relaxation and letting go to have a hope of falling asleep when trying to WILD. I'm still working on figuring it out, but I feel like every time I get at least a small fraction closer to more complete understanding and learning that "feeling" of approaching sleep and being able to reproduce it upon demand.

I do find the same problem as you, but I was thinking that maybe we are thinking of it in the wing way. I too seem to have to try really hard to get to sleep, but it's almost a digital, all-or-nothing thing. Perhaps it would work better to try cycling in and out, but going a little deeper each time, and then changing the emphasis as the cycles progress. That way, rather than succumbing to sleep very quickly, you can shift the cycle so that there's just slightly more emphasis on the wake part of the cycle as you get close to going to sleep to make sure you can stay in the zone.

I think I will experiment with that next time I try.
What do you reckon?

This is precisely the approach I've suggested in the past, but perhaps at a more macro (per attempt) than micro (multiple times during a single attempt, as you suggest): what we're doing is experimenting with damping an oscillation: too little awareness one time, too much another time, slightly less awareness next time, slightly too much another time, eventually zeroing in on the right amount.

The approach of cycling going deeper with "coming up for air" (awareness) I think is perhaps a promising one. I'm not sure, exactly, though. I myself find I can't fall asleep sometimes unless I "digital, all or nothing" let go and aim only for sleep. But it will take more experimentation.

Ultimately, it requires becoming very familiar with the stages and feeling (body and mind) of falling asleep. It takes constant monitoring and making adjustments. "Holding on too tight?" Relax more. Losing your train of thought too quickly? Add in some awareness.

I'm becoming more and more familiar with my dives, and I have a very positive feeling that this year is the year I finally really "get it" and get down to regular, successful WILDs. Paying attention to how I fall asleep every time my head hits the pillow I think has helped a lot.

Managed to break my loooong dry spell last night with a WILD, but I had a hard time getting there!

I woke naturally at about 03:30 and then tried to WILD on my back. I have always really struggled to get to sleep like this, but decided I would stick at it.
I find that if I try to WILD on my side I go to sleep too quickly, and on my back I can't get to sleep at all!
After two hours I was still not asleep, and although I had not been wide awake, I seemed a long way from transitioning.
But in the next half hour I started to finally feel more drowsy, and then suddenly I was in a vivid dream scene. After a few seconds, always knowing for sure that I was dreaming, I remembered to do a RC, but I couldn't breathe through my pinched nose, even so, it didn't feel right (I have had this type of fail before). I tried again and still it didn't work completely, but I was definitely blocking my nose and able to breathe slightly, so I just carried on in the dream (next time I must do another test as well!)
I had about a minute looking around this toy shop / warehouse before the dream faded and transitioned to another scene. A short while later I decided to try flying into the air, and did for a few seconds, but then the scene went all pixelated and the dream faded.
I was able to DEILD back in, but it turned into a non-lucid.

I'm not sure that this WILD technique is a good idea because of the time spent awake - I suppose I was resting, so maybe it's not too bad.
I don't actually feel very tired today, so maybe it hasn't impacted me too much.
Anyway, just an illustration of that balancing act with WILD!

So happy to have finally broken my dry spell though! :bliss: