Hey, I’ve had many Lucid dreams throughout my life starting from when I was about 8, I was able to recognize that I was in a dream and fly (learn to fly) by treading water in the air and then later I was able to fly like superman. I have also teleported and walked though walls/ doors, created people and many other things too numerous to mention. I had a few years of not LDing and then in my mid teens read a Carlos Castaneda book (I think the Art of dreaming) that refueled my interest. The book mentioned seeing my hands in my dream and this lead to a whole new set of experiences. And again I had another break and a number of other experiences in my 20’s. I have now after seeing the film Inception become interested in LDing again and have decided to learn the whole process from scratch. Although I have had many experiences I never could really bring on the LDs at will, it was more a case of it just happening here and there.

So the last 3 nights I have been attempting LDs waking during the night and attempting to consciously drift back into sleep, with little success, until last night. I decided to try and LD from the moment I went to bed, rather than waiting 5-6 hours.
I was listening to a LD mp3 that has an LD induction on it and I didn’t move my body for ages. I could feel a warm sensation slowly engulf me and I became less and less aware of my body. Then my eyes started to flicker insanely, It took me aback at first, I could see bright flashes in corners of each eye. And my eyes were so jumpy that they kept flickering open which kind of freaked me out. I have not experienced this REM consciously before (or at least do not remember) and it seemed to go on for about 10 minutes. I tried to look up, as I had heard this was a good method for transition. but it didn’t work. I was adamant not to move my body as I didn’t want to wake myself up so was unsure whether I was in SP or not. I felt I was so close to transferring but I had no visual images at all to transfer into. Eventually the flickering subsided and I was awake again. I tried this exact same induction again with the same results. Frustrating but I feel I have made good progress. My questions are;

Does REM usually come before SP?
What is a good method to transfer into the LD from REM, I have heard counting is good?

P.S. - I also have an alarm set for around 5am that triggers a wav file for a WILD the usual way but will persist with this method as it seems I am having some progress. Also I will try a sleep mask tonight to see if that helps with the crazy REMs.

Thanks