Thread: diffrece between being awake and aware?

The difference? You should know the difference. The differences that you will notice when feeling it out are different depending on the person, so we can't tell you what differences are going to be. If you are trying before you go to sleep, then you are probaboy just making.yourself not go to sleep. It is much harder to WILD without prior sleep. I give up on WILD in 5 minutes and just go for a DILD. It us better to sleep than to keep trying to WILD for longer. If you haven't done it in the first 5 minutes, the odds go down significantly.

With WILD, you should already be quite sleepy and it should feel like you're just going back to sleep while gently holding on to your consciousness. You should feel that strong "pull" to sleep. If you are too awake and feel like you're trying to fall asleep, then you're better off getting up and doing a WBTB until you feel more sleepy.

Originally Posted by sisyphus

With WILD, you should already be quite sleepy and it should feel like you're just going back to sleep while gently holding on to your consciousness. You should feel that strong "pull" to sleep. If you are too awake and feel like you're trying to fall asleep, then you're better off getting up and doing a WBTB until you feel more sleepy.

true, if you aren't feeling sleepy, you will induce insomnia more than an LD.

Interesting enough, the longer my WBTB, the more awake I am. If it is too short then I will be too tired to set intention. Too long, I can't fall back to sleep. Just right, WILD. it takes a while to know your own sleepiness, and you realize that it isn't a specific amount of time, it is the feeling.

Aware is nothing more than noticing what you're doing and paying
attention to little details, the smell, the sounds, feel the atmosphere.

Originally Posted by Iriba

Aware is nothing more than noticing what you're doing and paying
attention to little details, the smell, the sounds, feel the atmosphere.

It's exactly the other way around: one can be aware without paying attention, like when you capture someone saying your name in a room with 30 people.
To WILD, attention is (often) counter-productive: focusing can often lead to impatience, which can lead to insomnia. In fact, many lucid dreamers (especially beginners to WILD) actually fail WILD due this "fear" of not falling asleep. This is called Psychophysiological Insomnia (Zoth thinks awareness of this particular event should be raised).

Like Sensei said, the (usual) best course of action is to give up if after some minutes you don't feel any progress (read, gravitating yourself into sleepiness), because sacrificing sleep towards an WILD attempt is counter-productive. What you can do is respond to this by naturally setting up some more sleep time aside. For example I like to sleep 9 hours when I can because that allows me to compensate for moments like WBTB or WILD attempts. Rarely possible any more, but affordable for more people than we think. Also, train yourself to identify your current alertness when you wake up for WILD: waking up in the end of a sleep cycle may put you too alert to try to WILD right away. Finding your "harmony moments" is a big part of it

I think you are supposed to fall asleep like normal, but still maintain some degree of awareness of your senses.
For example, if you start experiencing HI, then just passively observe it and be aware of it without trying to change it or control it too much.