Lucid?

[BobFM]

Alright, so...Last night, I tried a WILD. I laid down in my bed and tried SP without any luck, and went sleep (8:45 PM - 9:00 PMish). My alarm was set to 1:30 AM, but it didn't wake me up. Here's the trippy part - I was already dreaming at that time, and my alarm goes on repeat. My dream in the dream world seemed a few hours long, and I was sitting around my kitchen table eating cereal with my younger brother and my older brother. (I should have been able to easily become lucid, since my older brother is in the airforce stationed elsewhere in the US, but it seemed normal at the time) I remember dipping my ipod in my cereal bowl for some reason, then I looked at it and remember saying, "I think I fried my iPod's ram," which makes no sense at all lols. Then as I heard my alarm outside my dream, I saw my phone vibrating on the table, so I answered it, then I woke up to find my phone vibrating on it's alarm. I was kind of excited because this is the first normal dream I've had in a while that I remember, but I'm not sure if it was lucid or not. Would something in the real world effecting your dream count as lucid?

[Graves]

Firstly, don't try to WILD at night. Although it is possible, it's very unlikely that you will succeed. Instead, use the fact you're going to fall asleep to your advantage and observe what happens to you as you go through the various stages of falling asleep, as this will aid future WILD attempts. Meditation would fit in very nicely here. Secondly, the definition of being lucid is ''to be aware that you are dreaming''. Lucidity has different levels ranging from being very slightly lucid to super-lucid, but all that it is, is awareness. If you were not aware that you were dreaming, you were not not lucid, I'm afraid.

[Puffin]

Graves has given some good advice; you really shouldn't attempt a WILD without prior sleep. Firstly, you're not in REM yet so there isn't really anything to form a dream with. Secondly, you'll be much more relaxed and a bit more "hazy" in the middle of the night, which is great for entering SP faster. There's rare cases in which you may enter SP at the beginning of the night, but in these cases you'll either lose the SP, or enter a very unstable and non-vivid dream. It will probably take more than a good hour to reach SP in itself, too, which doesn't make it very worth it. As for knowing whether you were lucid or not, it's hard to tell based on the description you gave. If you were mentally aware in the dream, or came to the conscious conclusion that you were dreaming, then it was an LD. It's really up to you to remember whether you became conscious or not. If you were, then it was a lucid. Lots of sensations from the outside world can enter your dream - a flashlight blaring in your face could translate into a police car with flashing lights in the dream world. But this doesn't necessarily mean you're lucid.

[BobFM]

Thanks for the reply guys. And I did attempt a WILD, I ended up waking at 6:15ish for no reason. When I woke up, my alarm hadn't repeated yet, but I tried anyway, and I couldn't even get back to sleep. Had TOO much sleep I guess. =\ Lookin forward to trying again tonight though.