Questions about WILD/Lucid Dreaming

I have a few questions and misconceptions that I want cleared about Lucid dreaming and the WILD technique.

FOREGROUND:

I recently tried to have a Lucid dream while using the WILD technique. I felt like I was doing pretty well. I think I almost made it to the SP state as I pictured the room around me, turns out I was focusing too much and my eyes started to open. I thought I was recreating my room in the sleep paralysis state; I had actually opened my eyes to the real world. Is this how the transition is supposed to happen? Are your eyes supposed to open in the real world?

A few other questions:

Q1) Aren't dreams just memories? If so wouldn't you say that lucidity is linked with the vividness of these memories or do people really live through these dreams?

Q2) Is time a dimension in the dream world? Can you feel time passing by? Does real world time coincide with dream world time?


Q3) Can one lose the line between the dream and the waking world? Confusing one with the other?


Q4) Does the real world environment affect the WILD technique? E.g: The lighting in the room (too much sunlight), sleeping with someone else, noises from the real world.

^^ I think the first thing you might do is try to take SP out of your WILD equation, Sarimdesert.

Why? Because SP has pretty much nothing to do with WILD, and should certainly not be considered a goal in a WILD dive; this is especially true because actual SP occurs when you are waking up, and not falling asleep, so you would not encounter it during a WILD. This might run contrary to much of the popular, um, stuff, that you've been reading on these forums, but I hope you'll at least consider making SP less important to your WILD attempts -- doing so, I think, will only help.

In case you're curious, here are a couple of threads that might help you better understand (or more easily disregard) SP:

Sleep Paralysis Explained
Sleep Paralysis Demystified

And no, you're not supposed to open your eyes in the real world during a WILD. Your eyes, and the rest of your body, should be behaving as they normally do whenever you fall asleep. I suppose that, if you sleep with your eyes open (and some people do), then you might have an issue (but it would be solved by wearing a sleep mask, I think). There is a chance, though, that you were opening your dream eyes to see a dream scene of your room, which does happen often, and which means that you completed your WILD... a quick RC will resolve whether you're in the real world or not.

I highly recommend that you look at DV's WILD tutorial, if you haven't already. Also, I humbly suggest that you look at my DVA WILD class. I think they may be worth your time.

As long as I'm here:

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Originally Posted by sarimdesert

A few other questions:

Q1) Aren't dreams just memories? If so wouldn't you say that lucidity is linked with the vividness of these memories or do people really live through these dreams?

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No. Dreams really do happen, and are remembered after they occur in your mind. They are not manufactured by memory without ever happening. People do indeed live through their dreams, lucid or not.

Lucid dreams are actual waking-life consciousness events, so You (as your waking-life self) are there to witness the dreams as they occur, in real time, and this makes them much easier to remember than NLD's. This improvement in the quality of recall has led people to believe that lucid dreams are more vivid, but lucidity really has nothing to do with vividness.

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Q2) Is time a dimension in the dream world? Can you feel time passing by? Does real world time coincide with dream world time?

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Time is experienced in dreams just as it is in waking-life, and real world time does seem to coincide with dreaming time (though some have made good arguments against this). Dreams -- particularly non-lucid dreams -- can sometimes seem to cover far more time than how long you actually slept, but this is likely because your dream jumps from scene to scene (like a movie, which can span many days, months or years in its plot, yet it only lasts a couple hours on the screen), so a lot of time seems to have passed, because you tend to fill in the gaps caused by those jumps with an assumption of time passed (as you would in waking life).

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Q3) Can one lose the line between the dream and the waking world? Confusing one with the other?

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Sure. But I wouldn't worry about it. Your immersion into the dreamworld would have to be extremely intense and extensive before a blurring between waking and sleep starts to occur. And even if it does, it's pretty easy to pull yourself back over that line, usually with a simple RC or moment of remembering.

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Q4) Does the real world environment affect the WILD technique? E.g: The lighting in the room (too much sunlight), sleeping with someone else, noises from the real world.

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Of course it does. Remember that you are going to sleep when you do a WILD, so anything that might effect your sleep normally will still effect your sleep during a WILD.

Sageous did a great job explaining everything, but there's usually something I like to mention after anyone says to ignore Sleep Paralysis (or more accurately just remaining aware during REM Atonia since SP describes a specific medical condition). Don't take what I say to mean I'm disagreeing with that stance or the importance of it as an idea for people interested in WILD/DEILD, I'm just a little bit more open about the idea of utilizing REM Atonia to transition into lucid dreams.

Sageous rightfully said that it shouldn't really be your target and is in no way an experience you must have prior to entering a lucid dream; you can often find yourself transitioning to a dream directly from a waking state when attempting WILD. I also agree that it shouldn't necessarily be a goal and definitely shouldn't be considered a milestone of any kind regarding successful WILDing. I do, however, believe that's there exists great potential in it as a state that allows you the unique ability to almost guarantee transition into a lucid dream, provided that you already find yourself in it and you develop the technique that works best for you in that endeavor. The only thing I fear is that flat out telling people that REM Atonia doesn't matter and isn't related to WILD facilitates the attitude that it's to be totally ignored and isn't useful as a means of induction. That's why I say it's a good message that needs to be heard, but I feel like it's a little bit incomplete because the lack of anything to say about REM Atonia's ability to allow easy transition into a lucid dream seems to exclude that idea as a viable practice. I'll make a little section at the bottom detailing my experiences using REM Atonia to transition directly into dreams and the technique I've used to do that since it doesn't apply directly to OP's main post or Sageous's response.

I'm pretty sure experiencing REM Atonia before going to sleep isn't as uncommon as Sageous made it sound though. Maybe I'm just strange, but about 60 or 70% of the REM Atonia I experience happens before going to sleep. Despite that, I am definitely much more likely to experience it while waking up from a lucid dream. I've had it happen a few times from non-lucids, but a majority I've experienced from the short-lived DILDs I get, and I stay aware during the entire waking process. I don't really have any empirical evidence to corroborate my experiences though, so it might be that I don't represent the norm in terms of lucid dreamers.

I agree with everything said about dreams being real experiences and not just a memory, unless for some odd reason you happen to believe that even waking reality is also only a memory and that real experience doesn't ever take place. To be fair the truth is more complicated than that, but it's easiest to say that experiencing a dream is like experiencing waking reality in terms of cognition. As far as dreaming and waking reality becoming something you lose track of... if you're a healthy individual without any serious mental disorders or illnesses, I believe this isn't actually possible. If you legitimately find yourself having difficulty telling a dream from reality upon waking up, something is going very wrong (likely having nothing to do with lucid dreaming) and you need to seek medical attention.

------Using REM Atonia to transition into a Lucid Dream------
If you happen to find yourself in REM Atonia, you're much more open to autosuggestion and the power of expectation. The first time I had purposefully stayed aware during REM Atonia, for a second I had no idea what to actually do once I got there. I think a lot of people experience something similar, but it really does present a great opportunity. After thinking for a second, I decided to give the first idea that popped into my head a try. The idea was to really believe/"know" that a vortex was a little bit above and behind my head, and that it would suck me up really quickly and when it did, I would find myself in a dream. It worked just like I had expected to, and I found that changing it to the feet worked just as well. I can't think of a single time afterwards that I've used this technique and it hasn't been successful. It's allowed me to get random lucid dreams from finding myself experiencing REM Atonia after laying back in bed when I'd gone to the bathroom and is what typically guarantees me a much longer, and more stable DEILD when I get a random DILD that ends after 3-5 min and I wake up in REM Atonia.