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    Thread: Zen and the Art of the WILD

    1. #1
      Member dms111's Avatar
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      Zen and the Art of the WILD

      I wanted to share my technique for a successful WILD. Some of the techniques
      I found on this forum helped me a great deal in figuring out the subtleties of the
      WILD, but once I learned them I realized the techniques themselves are not
      that important. They are only needed to teach you lessons on the proper mindset needed to succeed. Once you develop that mindset all the real work is done subconsciously. Wu wei. You do without doing.


      Now here's my short story...

      You find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff. You slowly lean your body over
      the edge. You hold onto a rope tied to a tree to prevent you from
      falling over. This rope allows you to move further over the edge of the cliff than
      you would ordinarily be able to without falling. Your rope allows you to move
      closer to and experience the moments directly before, and sensations accompanying,
      falling without actually falling. Now you lean over the cliff far enough that you
      would certainly fall without an anchor to hold on to. You close your eyes and
      gradually loosen your grip on the rope until you are just barely holding on. At this
      moment you let go of your anchor and let gravity start pulling you over the cliff,
      but you only let go for the briefest of moments. This is the life-or-death moment,
      the only one that determines success or failure. Just as you begin your fall
      forward and over you quickly reach back and grab onto your anchor. You grasp at
      your anchor almost instinctually. You aren't aware that you're doing it until
      you've already begun reaching back. You feel your stomach lurch and your heart
      begin racing as your body prepares for its descent, but you have prevented the fall
      from occuring. You've begun to experience the sensation of falling, without
      falling.


      You're standing over a cliff

      This is you laying in bed, and sufficiently relaxed so you feel you may fall asleep
      at any moment.

      The rope

      This is whatever anchor (counting, breathing, etc.) you've chosen to help prevent a
      lapse in consciousness.

      You lean over the cliff

      This is where feelings of numbness, color swirls in your vision, and other mild
      hallucinations may occur. The further you lean over, the closer you are to falling
      (asleep) and the stronger any hallucinations or other sensations will become.

      You loosen your grip

      This is where it starts getting tricky. You intentionally begin to lose focus on
      your anchor. This needs to be done in a controlled manner, but be careful, for it will
      be very easy to lose consciousness entirely. But, if you are trying to make a
      conscious effort to lose focus you will actually increase your focus. Like you can't stop thinking about an elephant if you continuously tell yourself not to think about an elephant.

      You let go completely...

      Now come some real mental gymnastics. At this point your mind will be so far gone
      that it will be hard to remember what you are trying to do. Your subconscious
      thoughts will have taken over completely. If, at this point, you do know exactly
      what you're doing then you haven't actually reached this critical point and are
      still too awake and need to spend more time loosening your grip. Sleep will only
      begin its pull when you turn over all control.

      Your stomach lurches, your heartbeat quickens

      This is sleep paralysis. You have moved so close to sleep that your body accepts
      this fate and begins preparing you. Normally you are already unconscious and
      beginning an ordinary dream by this point but thanks to your anchor, and your gradual loosening of it, you have managed to remain conscious, although you might not have much real awareness.

      You instinctually grasp for your anchor

      Have you ever experienced a hypnic jerk? This is the moment when it occurs. Your mind snaps into awareness because your brain has sent the first signals of sleep paralysis to your body while you are still conscious. The snap is to prevent you from actively experiencing the process. But to WILD you must learn how to control this snap to awareness, and it involves more mental gymnastics. The snap to awareness must be strong enough to remind you of your anchor or of what you're trying to do, but not strong enough to wake you up. This is hard because the process is designed to do just that. But with practice it will become an instinctual grasp that requires no real thought on your part, making the snap strong enough to give you awareness but not disrupting the process of sleep paralysis. You are now experiencing sleep without falling asleep.



      After some practice this process will be etched into your mind. It's just like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. The little wheels (WILD tutorials) will hold you up until you learn what it feels like to balance on the bike. Once you learn how to balance you put no thought into how you balance. No thought, no conscious action, your body just knows what needs to be done to stay balanced. All the work is done subconsciously. Same with the WILD process. Most everything is done subconsciously, thus allowing you to completely let go of your mind at the necessary moments. Just be aware that this is a slow learning process. I've had over 50 WILDs in the one year that I've been doing this. I attempt WILDs at least once, usually twice, most nights. That means I still fail far more often than I succeed. But my results have been very consistent and at the moment I achieve on average one WILD per week and these results have been steadily improving since I started. Good luck to you!

    2. #2
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      Thanks for the motivation to get back to WILDing. I used to WILD often, but then life got in the way and I've only had 1 WILD and a few scattered DILDs in the past ~6months. I already was trying to convince myself to get back into the routine, but I've been too lazy to WBTB properly. This has given me the final push to restart my routine. I will have a lucid this week... I will....

      I completely agree with your method. The better I got at it I would normally just wait for sleep paralysis to hit and then regain awareness and enter the dream. You have to let go or you won't fall asleep.

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      MarineRecon's Avatar
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      Thats some good info right there.

      It brought another perspective into it.
      Marine Recon
      Swift, Silent, Deadly
      DILD-14 WILD -5 FA-6

    4. #4
      Member Sydney's Avatar
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      Wow, this is awesome. Really refreshed my memory and got my motivation back.
      Definitely trying this tonight!
      Follow your dreams.


      DILD - 50 | DEILD - 3 | WILD - 1 | MILD - 1


      Previous Goal: Air bend
      Main Goal: Find my Dream Guide


      Spoiler for Goals:

    5. #5
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      Yep.

      This is pretty much exactly how I do things. No reason to use a technique when the process takes care of itself. XP

    6. #6
      Member dms111's Avatar
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      Thanks for the positivity! I admit this post was partly for my own benefit. I was trying to break a three week dryspell and thought this could help organize my thoughts. And it did.
      Mzzkc likes this.

    7. #7
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      A poetic and philosophical approach to WILDing, this seems to communicate the very actual mechanics of a WILD in a concrete and accessible way. For me this confirms what I've suspected for a while, that mindset is everything with lucid dreaming, technique is only peripheral. I feel more confident about getting back into WILDing, great thead!

      I can really relate to experiences you've described and the imagery you've applied to it, every hopeful would-be WILDer should read this.

      I think that 'snap' is where I go wrong, the shock of it completely wakes me up, good to hear it's something I can become accustomed to and control.
      Last edited by Ctharlhie; 01-20-2012 at 12:19 PM.
      My Lucid Dreaming Articles/Tutorials:
      Mindfulness - An Alternative Approach to ADA
      Intent in Lucid Dreaming; Break that Dry-Spell, Escape the Technique Rut

      Always, no sometimes think it's me,
      But you know I know when it's a dream
      I think I know I mean a yes
      But it's all wrong
      That is I think I disagree

      -John Lennon


    8. #8
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      Yeah, I just have trouble remembering what I'm doing, and fall asleep...
      Follow your dreams.


      DILD - 50 | DEILD - 3 | WILD - 1 | MILD - 1


      Previous Goal: Air bend
      Main Goal: Find my Dream Guide


      Spoiler for Goals:

    9. #9
      Member astralboy's Avatar
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      Great Post! This is all you need to WILD.

      Nature, without nature's source, would not last a moment.
      Your life, like your dreams expresses one thing, and one thing only, your state of consciousness.

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