McDreamy

This was a strange night, and strange morning..

Pre-sleep

-Meditated for a few minutes to relax and forget about some things that were on my mind
-Wrote mantra in DJ: "I will gently wake from a dream, motionless with eyes closed."
-Repeated this as I was falling asleep

The night was strange from the beginning because as I was repeating mantra while trying to let myself sleep, I really felt as if the intention became solidified, and actually felt my legs become much heavier. Then my arms and body in general became heavy, as if in response to my desire to remain motionless upon waking. Then my cognition became very odd, which was a little disturbing. It's hard to describe, but my thoughts were just strange, foreign and garbled. This isn't the first time this has happened after setting this intention, and previously I would disregard my intent and tell myself the contrary, that I would just sleep the night through and not concern myself with lucid dreaming. This time I decided to ride it out and see what happened, although it took me a while to fall asleep, and it was very uncomfortable to be in my head. In the background noise of all this, my thoughts would sometimes turn to the paranormal, further complicating my efforts. Eventually sleep overtook me.

I woke up in the night and definitely moved, but stayed awake briefly to see if anything happened, before falling asleep again. I was reading KingYoshi's WILD guide before bed, and he mention with DEILD that remaining motionless and eyes closed is great, but that you should still make an attempt with it even if you did move while waking up. Yoshi's emphasis on falling asleep and letting things happen with minimal input is also pretty interesting for a beginner like me.

Dream

I am flying a helicopter with J or someone else at night over a city, and there is a mountain range in the distance. There are lights between some of the peaks, coming from somewhere far off that I am interested in going to. It looks like lights from a city or a stadium or something. I decide that I want to fly between the peaks, and radio this to the air traffic controller in the city I am hovering over. The man on the other end tells me not to, because I don't have the training to be flying at night, and that this would be too dangerous. I tell him I will return to base, but hesitate about saying "base" and search for the correct non-military word.

I am in a building and it is either a match of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (having a lot of dreams about this haha), or a non-video game military battle. There are some noises of someone's quiet footsteps, so I sneak around the door way into a different room. To my right are two doors, and another entrance to the room I am in, and to my left is a window (random details). I have my gun ready to open fire on whoever comes in through the entrance. I hear the breaking of some glass or the crumpling of some paper under someone's feet, and this lasts for a little while. This is a little strange, and I realize that I am dreaming! I look around the room, but my vision is becoming foggy, and I realize that my hold on the dream is weakening and I wake up.

Another fragment about some authority figure, and some task I had to do.

I think I was having an olfactory hallucination after waking up from the lucid dream, which has also happened before. It's just this strange smell that is sometimes there for a while after I become lucid and wake up. Feeling a bit strange today but that could be from lack of sleep from my weekend of waking up throughout the night to try and become lucid!


WILD Attempt (noon nap)
-Progressive muscle flexing/relaxing, and put a blanket over my eyes to keep the light out. I decided to put an emphasis on letting things happen, but still incorporated counting with exhale, as this seems to help with my mental chatter. Changed positions a couple of times after nothing was really happening, to get comfortable again like in Yoshi's guide. In the third position my body became very relaxed and I definitely got to the point where I was teetering on the edge of consciousness/unconsciousness, which was definitely a step in the right direction! But, excitement kicked in and the heart rate went up as I noticed some vague physical sensations, and things kind of fell flat. Was also a bit apprehensive. Oh well. It does help a little bit to not fight the excitement, and just let it happen and then return your attention to whatever else.

It's kind of funny that I seem to get more excited during the WILD process than I do when I actually become lucid through DILD.

I set a goal this week of waking up with my eyes closed and remaining still one time. I managed to do this twice. April 3rd I did this and waited for about 20 seconds without anything happening before deciding to go back to sleep (didn't want to lose much sleep that night). Last night, I did this and thought about my previous dream. There was maybe some slight hypnagogia, but nothing more happened for whatever reason..could be focusing too intently and watching the process happen as any slight changes occurred. I think the former attempt was too early in the morning, but the latter was probably at an appropriate time. I mentioned in a DEILD thread that I would experiment with multiple attempts per night, resetting the intention to wake up appropriately after any unsuccessful attempts. Eventually I should wake up in a more REM dominated phase of sleep in the morning (if this is even the issue). From what I've read the hardest part about DEILD is waking up without moving or opening your eyes, but even when I manage to do this, very little else happens. This is confusing but I will figure it out soon enough. In my first DEILD attempt, I woke up motionless and felt strong vibrations...where did these go!?

Dream

I am in a game of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in first person, but am actually physically in the game. There are a lot of noobs as part of some event that's going on. I see armor on the ground and pick it up. I am with someone, I think J, along with R2D2 and C3PO from star wars. We are in the woods at night, and are a little bit lost. There is a raised rubble pathway to my right. I am surprised that the droids are able to manage through this terrain. We get to a small grass gap between the edge of the forest and a farmers field with tall corn. Suddenly the clouds part and the moon shines down on us, leaving us exposed. I lead us to the crops to take cover so nobody sees us, especially a werewolf because its a full moon after all. We lay prone in the cornfield, but oh shit! We're lying next to a werewolf!! It starts snarling at me and moves toward me barking..or whatever is it that werewolves do.

WILD attempt at noon:
-focused on my breath to relax, and then started counting down with each exhale..There were some thoughts about whether my eyes would flutter open like they sometimes do when attempting a WILD, but I mindfully let them pass and returned to counting. I noticed some very active swirls and blobs moving for some period of time while counting down, but then I got excited and it stopped. Will try to be more mindful about this, and just return attention to anchor as anything is happening. Paying too much attention to the process of falling asleep is probably keeping me awake. Will just let things happen on their own. WILD is basically still just falling asleep, and I know how to do that already