Verre

Ritual: wtb around 12:30am. Had to get up at 8am so no time for serious WBTB, but I had been reading about FILD and how it relies on short WBTBs that allow one to go back to sleep quickly, so thought this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I was waking up naturally every couple of hours and each time did FILD as I went back to sleep, but no results. If I was having NLDs, I didn't take notes and don't remember them now.

My fourth waking occurred at 6:50am. I did FILD again. This time, as I was nearing sleep I saw a tiny white light, rayed like a star and unusually bright, appear in the darkness behind my eyelids and seem to come closer. This reminded me: wasn't I supposed to be paying attention to hypnogogic imagery? Actually I don't think that is a part of the FILD technique but in my half-asleep recollection I was convinced it was, so I focused on that white star, and for whatever reason I felt like it was actually effective in helping me transition.

I had not been doing the "nosepinch" RC during my FILD attempts, as the tutorial recommends, because it struck me as potentially counter-productive to make such a large motion—if the body is not already in SP then one would end up moving one's physical arm and disrupting the transition. Plus, I figured, if I still had the presence of mind to remember to RC in the first place, then I could probably figure it out in some other way.

As I was trying to come up with alternate RCs that didn't involve physical movement, at one point it occurred to me, "Hey, if I'm lying here with my eyes closed, how come I can see my bedside table?" What a giveaway! So then I realized I must have transitioned without even knowing it, and got out of bed.

WILD: The first thing I did was go look out the sliding door in the bedroom. In RL it leads to the back patio, but in the dream, it opened onto a wide grassy lawn that extended a great distance. The air felt very real and fresh as it came through the door. I remembered my tasks, but after botching them last time because I rushed out of the house before the dream had stabilized, I didn't want a repeat of that failure. I realized I'd better take some time first and let the dreamstate develop a bit more strength. It felt unusually "thin," even for an early-stage WILD.

As I walked down the hall, I noticed three coins lying on the floor just inside the door to the library. This pleased me immensely, because I recognized it at once as waking life residue, the consequence of a conversation yesterday, and I was glad the dream was showing a bit of initiative. I picked up the coins and then wondered where to put them when I discovered that was wearing a skirt that had no pockets. "Don't be silly," I reminded myself, observing that this shouldn't be an obstacle in the dreamstate. So without looking, I slipped my hand down until I could feel the edge of the pocket that manifested on the skirt just where I "expected" it to be, and slipped the coins inside.

Shortly after this the dream was disrupted by a half-waking, but I was able to re-transition. I got out of bed again and realized I'd better work more deliberately on stabilization, running through each of my senses in turn to better engage them. Touch always seems the most foundational, so I rubbed my hands together and over various differently-textured surfaces in the room: the fluffiness of a sheepskin, the scratchiness of the wool rug, the smoothness of the wall. My sense of touch tends to be robust even in the most poorly-integrated dreams, so the results were satisfactory. What next? I thought of sight and sound, but immediately hesitated. The dream felt so thin and fragile that I felt convinced engaging sight and sound would expose me to RL stimuli and risk waking me. I thought it might be better to do taste and smell first to try to get a little more traction. As I walked toward the kitchen I saw a potted basil plant (much like the one I had bought yesterday from Trader Joe's) sitting in the door of the hallway bathroom. "That'll do for taste," I thought, plucking a leaf and putting in my mouth. It tasted very much like real basil, spicy and herbaceous, but somehow not entirely pleasant on its own. The leaf was unusually large and now it was filling my mouth in an unpleasant limp wad, so rather than chew and swallow, I took out what was left of it and put it on the counter. Surely there must be something else to eat? Ice cream maybe? I looked in the freezer, but remembered that I had finished the chocolate ice cream last night. I considered manifesting some more, but didn't get around to it. This might have been around the time the second half-waking occurred, and I had to re-transition.

It's not unusual that I have to chain a few WILDs like this before the dreamstate stabilizes, but this time it only seemed to be getting weaker rather than more robust, despite my deliberate attempts to gain traction. I guess my REM state wasn't very strong or I was already too wakeful. At one point I had opened the screen door by my work area and was standing with one foot inside the room, one foot outside on the patio, looking down the side of the house and thinking how unusually lifelike it looked, rather than showing the typical degree of dream-like distortions. And not long after that I woke up for the third time, too fully awake to retransition. I checked my clock and it was 7:35am.

It was a rather unsatisfying WILD in that the dream started out thin and only got thinner as time went on... there was one rough patch in the third part where I felt like I was holding it together through imagination alone before my senses re-engaged. By the very end, after it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to accomplish anything worthwhile, I think I just gave up and was indulging in libidinous pleasure—through thought alone, as it seemed too much trouble at that point to try to create a scenario.

I'll have to keep trying with FILD to see if I can get better results. On the upside, it has the advantage that it can be practiced during very brief WBTBs, so it can be used at times when other techniques that require more mental focus would be unsuitable.