Some questions about WILD / Hypnagogia

Hello there.

About a month ago I started reading about Lucid dreaming and everything related, I began doing reality checks and trying to do different methods but I lost interest pretty quickly since all that happened was I fell asleep.

Now the last three days when I have tried to fall asleep I have focused on laying completly still and letting my mind wander, this feels extremely good and if I'm correct it's hypnagogia that I am experiencing. While in this state it's like my thoughts become dreams, everything I think about is visualized before me (Only the completly weird thoughts are visualized, if I for example think about and event that has occured for real / will occur, then I see nothing).
Now as you might know it takes a while before you realize that your mind has wandered off in a strange chain of thoughts and when I do realize that I'm actually thinking and not dreaming I get very excited that I am seeing my thoughts and wake up and can't fall back asleep.

Now this feels like its very close to WILDing? I need help moving forward with this, I just took a nap and was very close to experiencing this but I had one of those hypnic jerks so I "woke" up.

Any tips, thoughts or experiences are welcome!

WILD is particularly difficult. You need to stay somewhat emotionally detached (but not too much) or you will either lose consciousness and just fall asleep or you'll wake up due to the emotions. Try staying calm and just observe the imagery without 'participating'. Once you get to the stage where you can start dreaming (for me, this is when everything becomes completely silent and dark, as if my body is no longer aware of the outside world) you may want to try using visualization techniques to get a dream going quicker. I know it's difficult; my heart would beat at a million miles per hour when I was first attempting WILD because I got too excited, making it nearly impossible. That will go away with practice, though. I also practiced meditation, but I don't know if that helped or if greater success was all due to practice.

Good luck.