I haven't been on this site in a while, but I got a notification about a reply to this thread. I just wanted to say I love this site, and this thread about WILDing really helped me to learn to be able to induce lucid dreaming, which is amazing! It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it has happened a few times in the past 6 months. I wake up, and then when I lay back down to go to sleep, I just lay very still with my eyes closed, hoping to achieve that state where I fall asleep - except for my mind. It's so weird because I can actually feel this shift, where I know I've gone into the "sleeping" state, but my mind isn't...it's the most bizarre, but amazingly cool, feeling! When this happens, I end up getting out of bed (I'm ALWAYS afraid I'm going to wake myself up when I do this), but usually I don't. So I get out of bed, do a dream check, and find that I am, indeed, dreaming!

The only thing about this is, in the lucid dream, sometimes I can't see - it's because I'm afraid to open my eyes in the dream, because again, I'm afraid I'll open my eyes in real life and wake myself up. However, I did something the last time this happened that worked. If any of you have ever seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in one scene, Jim Carrey is asleep, getting the memory-erasing procedure done, and he wants to stop it, but he can't wake himself up because he's drugged. He knows he's asleep, in his mind/dream, and he lays down on the ground and physically opens his eyelids to try and wake himself up. Well, even though it seems counter-intuitive, I decided to try this in my last lucid dream to see if I could open my eyes in the lucid dream to actually be able to SEE, because nothing I did would open my eyes in the dream - they were half-closed, and it was pointless to do anything considering I couldn't see! Imagine my delight when this trick worked for me! In the lucid dream, I put my fingers to my eyelids and literally pried my eyes open, and all of a sudden I could see in the dream, and I DIDN'T wake myself up in real life. It was so awesome!