McDreamy

I woke up repeatedly throughout the night but not with eyes shut. Didn't have too much time to set my intention perhaps. After my initial successes, a part of me is also afraid of failure because this is a promising technique that I would like to work for me, and now I'm somehow expecting it as a result. But I will focus on the progress, the successes, and remember that it is about training over time. I will get this. I will try meditating for relaxation immediately prior to my next attempts, and see if this helps. A part of me suspects that confidence in success is a huge part of whether or not it actually works.

After a wake back to bed of 45 mins I try to WILD. I took an attitude of: anything that occurs is an experience happening to me, I don't control it, so I will just let it happen and observe whatever it is, even if that experience is me becoming too excited and things coming to a halt. I tried FILD on my back and became quite relaxed, body numb, and I noticed the swirls and blobs of light becoming more and more frequent. They became more intense than usual probably due to my mindset, and I felt my eyes starting to open automatically, and I struggled to keep them shut, but unfortunately they fluttered open a little bit. Switching to my front, I was on the brink of sleep and was sometimes forgetting what I was trying to do, and would then revert back to the FILD practice. I let myself forget about lucid dreaming, and just let myself sleep, but also remembering the finger practice without consciously thinking about the WILD attempt. Re-interpreting it as something I do to help me sleep normally, so that I wasn't so focused on lucid dreaming, which tends to keep me excited and too alert. I noticed rapidly flashing lights and the sensation that something had just happened to my body, like a heaviness or something. My alarm went off shortly.

Later noon attempt: body became very relaxed and numb, and there were swirls of light, but I was drifting off less often than earlier. The excitement/heart rate was high and I was having trouble mindfully/gently allowing thoughts and metacognition to come and go, returning attention the task. Mindful breathing did help somewhat but improvements and dedicated mindfulness practice may pay dividends.

Edit: Afternoon attempt (3pm): When had some HI and it felt like my view of it was zooming in, my eyes just automatically started to open. How frustrating!!

Dream (from night before waking)

I am in England with my girlfriend (I think), and am driving over what looks like a Scottish countryside road, replete with rolling hills overlooking beautiful small lakes. There are old stone buildings on the hill tops and elsewhere along the road, and the day is a cloud one, but still the scene is picturesque. I am sitting in an airport terminal with some people, KZ included. We discuss driving to Cape Cod (USA) before leaving England, because this is one of my favorite places and I would like to go. I think that KZ leaves today to go back to work, but he says that he is leaving in the morning and can go out on the town tonight.

I am at work now, and there is a toy remote control helicopter similar to the one my girlfriend's brother owns. I play with it and fly it around the office. I almost crash it a number of times but manage to salvage the mini flight. The lights are off in the other end of the office, because I decided to save power and only turn on the ones that I would need. I am completely alone here, nobody else is at work. I am disembodied and flying a helicopter in the third person now, and am hovering above three warehouses below me. There is someone in one of them, communicating with me via radio or walkie talkie when I am hovering about them directly. This is some sort of drug bust, and they are perhaps undercover.