Thread: Zen and the Art of the WILD

I wanted to share my technique for a successful WILD. Some of the techniques
I found on this forum helped me a great deal in figuring out the subtleties of the
WILD, but once I learned them I realized the techniques themselves are not
that important. They are only needed to teach you lessons on the proper mindset needed to succeed. Once you develop that mindset all the real work is done subconsciously. Wu wei. You do without doing.


Now here's my short story...

You find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff. You slowly lean your body over
the edge. You hold onto a rope tied to a tree to prevent you from
falling over. This rope allows you to move further over the edge of the cliff than
you would ordinarily be able to without falling. Your rope allows you to move
closer to and experience the moments directly before, and sensations accompanying,
falling without actually falling. Now you lean over the cliff far enough that you
would certainly fall without an anchor to hold on to. You close your eyes and
gradually loosen your grip on the rope until you are just barely holding on. At this
moment you let go of your anchor and let gravity start pulling you over the cliff,
but you only let go for the briefest of moments. This is the life-or-death moment,
the only one that determines success or failure. Just as you begin your fall
forward and over you quickly reach back and grab onto your anchor. You grasp at
your anchor almost instinctually. You aren't aware that you're doing it until
you've already begun reaching back. You feel your stomach lurch and your heart
begin racing as your body prepares for its descent, but you have prevented the fall
from occuring. You've begun to experience the sensation of falling, without
falling.


You're standing over a cliff

This is you laying in bed, and sufficiently relaxed so you feel you may fall asleep
at any moment.

The rope

This is whatever anchor (counting, breathing, etc.) you've chosen to help prevent a
lapse in consciousness.

You lean over the cliff

This is where feelings of numbness, color swirls in your vision, and other mild
hallucinations may occur. The further you lean over, the closer you are to falling
(asleep) and the stronger any hallucinations or other sensations will become.

You loosen your grip

This is where it starts getting tricky. You intentionally begin to lose focus on
your anchor. This needs to be done in a controlled manner, but be careful, for it will
be very easy to lose consciousness entirely. But, if you are trying to make a
conscious effort to lose focus you will actually increase your focus. Like you can't stop thinking about an elephant if you continuously tell yourself not to think about an elephant.

You let go completely...

Now come some real mental gymnastics. At this point your mind will be so far gone
that it will be hard to remember what you are trying to do. Your subconscious
thoughts will have taken over completely. If, at this point, you do know exactly
what you're doing then you haven't actually reached this critical point and are
still too awake and need to spend more time loosening your grip. Sleep will only
begin its pull when you turn over all control.

Your stomach lurches, your heartbeat quickens

This is sleep paralysis. You have moved so close to sleep that your body accepts
this fate and begins preparing you. Normally you are already unconscious and
beginning an ordinary dream by this point but thanks to your anchor, and your gradual loosening of it, you have managed to remain conscious, although you might not have much real awareness.

You instinctually grasp for your anchor

Have you ever experienced a hypnic jerk? This is the moment when it occurs. Your mind snaps into awareness because your brain has sent the first signals of sleep paralysis to your body while you are still conscious. The snap is to prevent you from actively experiencing the process. But to WILD you must learn how to control this snap to awareness, and it involves more mental gymnastics. The snap to awareness must be strong enough to remind you of your anchor or of what you're trying to do, but not strong enough to wake you up. This is hard because the process is designed to do just that. But with practice it will become an instinctual grasp that requires no real thought on your part, making the snap strong enough to give you awareness but not disrupting the process of sleep paralysis. You are now experiencing sleep without falling asleep.



After some practice this process will be etched into your mind. It's just like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. The little wheels (WILD tutorials) will hold you up until you learn what it feels like to balance on the bike. Once you learn how to balance you put no thought into how you balance. No thought, no conscious action, your body just knows what needs to be done to stay balanced. All the work is done subconsciously. Same with the WILD process. Most everything is done subconsciously, thus allowing you to completely let go of your mind at the necessary moments. Just be aware that this is a slow learning process. I've had over 50 WILDs in the one year that I've been doing this. I attempt WILDs at least once, usually twice, most nights. That means I still fail far more often than I succeed. But my results have been very consistent and at the moment I achieve on average one WILD per week and these results have been steadily improving since I started. Good luck to you!