My Almost True W.I.L.D. Attempt - PAIN! [Story + Question]

[Kenny95]

As I am posting this, I have just woken up from my first (almost) true W.I.L.D. attempt. I have decent dream recall and always found the details of my dreams to be very interesting, but it seemed as though I would never get to have a lucid dream. The problems were my sleeping habbits. With the start of summer vacation, I've been getting the proper amount of sleep for two weeks, and my first W.I.L.D. attempt did not go too badly. After sleeping on and off for about 12 hours, and waking for another 12 I attempted a W.I.L.D. dream. I started going through standard sleep paralysis, trying to follow the instructions as well as I can remember (I've been attempting this every night even though I'm never prepared.) and I felt paralysis, my muscles spasm, and a loss of balance. The only thing that kept me grounded was the sound of the fan and the mattress spring jutting into my face. I stopped noticing some minor details in reality, like when the dream catcher seldom chimed, and the headlights passing by my window. The lights that burned into my retina throughout the day started to take shape with my imagination, swirling around and occasionally turning into faces. For some reason a table that I remember fondly (back story is too long) appeared to be standing in front of me: an image I didn't intend to create. When I thought about why it was there it disappeared. I was still stuck to reality by the sound of the oscillating fan and the mattress on my face. I stopped feeling the fan and my hairs then seemed to be moving on their own, I imagined a spider crawling up my arm but told myself it wasn't real. Time must have been moving very slowly, because it seemed like a while before the fan turned to my face. I felt the hairs on my face move, and I figured that I had to knock something like a bug off, again. It's not real, I told myself, but I thought, What if I'm about to get bitten by a mosquito? After that I felt a bug bite my face, harder and harder until I woke up and pulled at my face, but the bite was just imaginary. What was this? If I imagined a man sawing my arm off, would I feel the most intense pain I can imagine, and wake up ready to fight for my life? How can I prevent this, and tell real pain and discomfort from the dream kind?

[KingYoshi]

That pain was just a hallucination. Its nothing to be afraid of worry about. The best thing to do is to completely ignore any type of unpleasant hallucination. Try to think about that table again or anything to get your mind off the hallucination. Repeat to yourself, "This isn't real, it is only a hallucination." As for the sawing off your arm, that is very unlikely. The mosquito pain was able to manifest because it is something that has fairly high odds of happening. You thought, "maybe there really is a mosquito on my face." This caused the hallucination to become extremely real. I am pretty sure you are not going to think, "Maybe there really is a man sawing off my arm for no reason while I am sleeping." You did an excellent job to be a beginner. Just try to think pleasant thoughts as you continue to drift toward sleep. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask!

[Avalanche]

Same thing happened to me last night. I was lying in bed, trying to just drift off and I don't know, catch my dream as it took shape, I don't know, I was bored. Anyway, I kept having things pop into my head, and voices speaking random phrases that I didn't think of. Then I, and I am sure everyone else on here, felt some kind of bug on me, but I ignored the itch and let it subside. When that happened, my body shut down a little bit more. That itch is a test your brains makes to see if the body is still awake or not. If you don't scratch, then the brain might think your body is asleep, and will go asleep itself. But then I though I heard a moth in my room, but I disregarded it as just my mind. But then it landed on my face and I flipped out. Spent the next hour trying to catch it to throw it out the window, didn't have any dreams last night because of it. Moral of the story- ignore the itches and worries. It is just your brain. If you can successfully get past all of them without moving or opening your eyes, your body will enter S.P. and if you are lucky enough, you can enter a dream that way.