Thread: What am I doing wrong in my WILD?

Ehm I am not entirely sure where I stand yet. My friends that were skeptical before have experienced things that have proven to them that our dreams is more than just memories and stuff created by our brain. And I have also experienced weird things. But I have not got enough proof to convince me that the astral/ out of body state and so on is more than just memories. Except for one time:
I met a DC/ entity that told his name was Iapetos and I had no idea who it was. I googled the name upon awakening and was very shocked that the name actually existed and of who it was!

Anyway back to your question. Don't try to aim for sleep paralysis if you look around this forum section you will see hundreds of people saying "I'm in SP but can't go to the dream!"
I personally don't believe that sleep paralysis is something more than just a FA nightmare.
We get paralyzed in sleep yes. But in order to lucid dream you don't need to be in SP!
Remember that.

Because of my and my friends strange experiences I have started to believe that dream are more than dreams. So I started reading Robert Monroes Book where he describes his journey from skeptical to spiritual. I strongly suggest you read "Journeys out of the body". When I finished that book I was interested in learning how to do it as easily as he did.
So I started listening to his guided meditation or Gateways Waves as he calls it and I can achieve what you describe now in just 36 minutes by just relaxing. Not to brag I just want to clarify that heavy sensations can be mistaken as sleep paralysis. So don't aim for sleep paralysis just aim for relaxation of the mind and body and just observe what your body does.
I am actually at the tape where he teach how to float out and then land back in the body again, so when I get to the later tapes he will teach me how to separate, so I can't help you with that yet.

Although there are many experienced WILDers on the forum which you can read the posts from, where they describe how they separate.
But I just have to say if you are experiencing false awakenings you should be glad because then you are close to your goal, because you have already separated then. Just don't forget to reality check after every "failed" attempt

I realize now that I didn't answered your question properly, but that's because there is no right answer you have to find out by your self with your own sensations. But 2 years ago I used to DEILD all the time then my answer would be: If you feel any strong strange sensations get out of bed with all your might because you are in a dream bed. So many attempts have failed just because I didn't reality checked...

If your interested in the Gateway Experience I have a link to it in some of my old posts.

Good luck!

Ps. If I ... I mean WHEN I learn to separate and have listened to the other tapes you will be the first to know =)

Iapetos, I really appreciate the time it took to write out that reply. Thankyou!

I'm not sure weather an OBE / other spiritual endeavors are something I would aim for. I just want to lucid dream some more! However, the seperating from my body did seem to me to be more then dreaming, it was so... I don't know the word. Meaningful? I'll check out the book you mentioned. Please do keep me updated on your progress, I would love to know more!

Also, I already believe that there is more to dreams, and this sort of thing interests me.

Again, I enjoyed reading your reply, big thanks!

Believe me to not become spiritual while experiencing the NON-physical is almost impossible. You will experience a world more vivid than your own reality so in a sense it feels more real than reality, so how can something that feels more real not be real? And what is real anyway? Haha just look at the matrix world for example their world isn't real but it is their reality o. O Whuuuut.

I am glad you liked it

Ok I did an attempt now in the day actually. I listened through the first tape in WAVE II - Threshold but I realized that I misunderstood what Monroe meant with Focuses.
Focus 10 is Mind Awake Body Asleep state which I can attain easily by now although Focus 12 was not an out of body experience, it's just expanded awareness.
Although even though it's day I started dreaming unaware for a bit while I was in this state of relaxation. I remember that I was thinking that I was a dude on a party drinking a beer and some guy took it and I got angry, then I realize "What am I thinking about lol I am in my bed not on a party" and I was back in my bed aware of my practice again. So that was pretty cool.
I am not sure what Focus the actual lucid dream or separation from the body occurs in. Perhaps it Focus 15 - State of No Time. The awareness is expanded beyond time and place.
We'll see later on =)

Originally Posted by Iapetos

I remember that I was thinking that I was a dude on a party drinking a beer and some guy took it and I got angry, then I realize "What am I thinking about lol I am in my bed not on a party" and I was back in my bed aware of my practice again. So that was pretty cool.

Hey! I do this all the time! Mostly as I'm relaxing before WILDing, I start watching my thoughts, and I see myself talking about / doing things that don't make sense, and I suddenly say, hey, you're starting to lose focus! Some of the things are illogical and I take this as a sign that the logic part of my brain is turning off ready for sleep.

You're not doing anything wrong. That time you separated and landed on the floor was a lucid dream. If you feel a dream body that is separate from your real one you are in a lucid dream. The dream just isn't behaving the way you're wanting it to.

Originally Posted by isthisit

Last night I sat up fully, but just couldn't get into a dream. It was like an OBE rather then a dream it was so real.

Lucid dreams do feel that real. That's why we do this. My guess is your knowledge of OBE's is skewing your perception. Your subconscious has tied these strange experiences to what you know about OBE's instead of tying them to what you know about lucid dreaming. You said yourself that these feel like OBE's and not lucids. If you feel you're getting OBE's then that's exactly what your subconscious will give you.

Just know that an OBE can become a lucid dream in an instant. A lucid can become an OBE. But you don't exactly get to choose which experience you get at the start. The choice is made at a subconscious level. But if you're getting OBE's you can still consciously manipulate them into lucid dreams by focusing on what you know about dreams.

Originally Posted by dms111

You're not doing anything wrong. That time you separated and landed on the floor was a lucid dream. If you feel a dream body that is separate from your real one you are in a lucid dream. The dream just isn't behaving the way you're wanting it to.



Lucid dreams do feel that real. That's why we do this. My guess is your knowledge of OBE's is skewing your perception. Your subconscious has tied these strange experiences to what you know about OBE's instead of tying them to what you know about lucid dreaming. You said yourself that these feel like OBE's and not lucids. If you feel you're getting OBE's then that's exactly what your subconscious will give you.

Just know that an OBE can become a lucid dream in an instant. A lucid can become an OBE. But you don't exactly get to choose which experience you get at the start. The choice is made at a subconscious level. But if you're getting OBE's you can still consciously manipulate them into lucid dreams by focusing on what you know about dreams.

Thanks, I think I kind of wanted someone to confirm this to me, as I did suspect that it was a very real lucid dream. I just couldn't believe it could be so real!

Once you have more of these happen to you, you may be able to tell them apart easier, althought that's not a guarantee.

I personally do believe that OBEs and LD are somewhat different. Until I had my first unintentional OBE, I though those are happening only to people that had some near death experience. But that still could be "just" LD of a different caliber.

On a few occasions I had what I believe to be OBE, is when I was WILDing and got some strong vibrations. I just floated out of my body without me even having and idea, that it can happen to me.

Next time when WILDing, vibrations were not as strong, so I was able to wait for images behind my closed eyelids to form into a dream and enter a dream that way.

So I kinda see that point during WILDing process, when you can either exit your body and be in LD/OBE that whay, or wait for images and enter into LD that way.

These are just my personal observations. But in my case, I don't completely agree with "what you expect is what you get". Because I totally didn't expect to exit my body and it took my 2 1/2 days to actually realize, what it was. Even after I floated out, I tried to enter LD by mentally pushing my head down, because that's how I entered a few LDs before - by flying head first through space at incredible speed.

I think that this is something, everybody has to study individually, gather as much information as you can and form your own opinion. There is so many incredible cool mysteries that await to be discovered, and it's easiest to do if someone has open mind. There is always time to reject something later.

Originally Posted by gab

On a few occasions I had what I believe to be OBE, is when I was WILDing and got some strong vibrations. I just floated out of my body without me even having and idea, that it can happen to me.

Next time when WILDing, vibrations were not as strong, so I was able to wait for images behind my closed eyelids to form into a dream and enter a dream that way.

So I kinda see that point during WILDing process, when you can either exit your body and be in LD/OBE that whay, or wait for images and enter into LD that way.

Interesting, thanks. Your floating thing sounds exactly what I have experienced twice now. Next time I will try to wait for images, or mentally press my head down as you said. It's not that I didn't enjoy the floating / pulling out my body thing, I just wanted to lucid dream, and this felt just... different somehow. But if it is possible to enter a lucid dream this way, boy does that feel real! I couldn't tell it apart from waking life.

Originally Posted by isthisit

Next time I will try to wait for images, or mentally press my head down as you said. It's not that I didn't enjoy the floating / pulling out my body thing, I just wanted to lucid dream, and this felt just... different somehow.

I don't want to tell you what to do, but if I were you, I would read up on OBE and next time you float up, expore that realm. I didn't get another shot at OBE since that time I described, and I really wish I could explore it some more.

Some of the favorite things for people to do when OBE
- look at your sleeping body in the bed
- look at your "astral" hands. How to they look?
- look at yourself in a mirror
- try to see the silver cord that's connecting you to your sleeping body
- explore your room, house, or outside and see how is it different/similar to waking world
- if you have pets, try to find their astral bodies (once I saw my cat's astral body curled up on my bed next to my head, when I knew, in WL she is at that same moment sleeping at my feet. My friend suggested, that she chose to sleep closer to me, which I thought was very cute)

Originally Posted by gab

These are just my personal observations. But in my case, I don't completely agree with "what you expect is what you get". Because I totally didn't expect to exit my body and it took my 2 1/2 days to actually realize, what it was. Even after I floated out, I tried to enter LD by mentally pushing my head down, because that's how I entered a few LDs before - by flying head first through space at incredible speed.

Neither do I, actually. I believe OBE's to be mainly lucid dreams, yet nearly all of my WILD's begin as an experience that an OBE believer would refer to as an OBE. I know full well that I'm entering a lucid dream, but it begins as an OBE anyway. The realism of my first successful WILD surprised me so much that I believed I was having a real honest to god OBE. I thought I was out of my body and wandering around my house. Later I was able to pick out enough incorrect details to prove to myself that it was not reality that I was experiencing. But the experience had such an impact on me that all of my WILD's begin in that same way, even though I don't still believe in OBE's. So it's not really about what you expect, but what you've been influenced by.

Not to drag this into another OBE fake/real discussion but I just want to clarify my stance on OBE. I know there are different types of OBE's. I once bonked my head on some concrete and had a full blown OBE, the type where I felt totally disconnected from any sort of body, my mind seemed to be running normally yet time and space around me seemed to be moving in slow motion. This was obviously not a lucid dream. I think the OBE's people experience at sleepy time are mainly lucid dreams, but there is still wiggle room to say they are not totally lucid dreams. I think OBE's are like sleep paralysis, only reversed. In SP we start out experiencing mostly reality but with dream phenomena intruding on it and we interpret these phenomena as hallucinations. When the hallucinations take over completely we refer to it as a dream. A sleepy time OBE is when we are experiencing mostly dream phenomena, but with bits of reality intruding, enough intruding reality to convince us that we are still mostly awake, though we are not. Being convinced that we are mostly awake prevents the dream from launching into typical dream craziness and so it sticks mostly to the reality that we are expecting.

Thanks to everyone who has commented, it's really helping me sort out what I have been experiencing. I don't know if I believe in OBEs or not, but what I have been doing is just so real (sorry I keep saying that, it really has affected me!) that weather it is or lucid dreaming, I'm glad it's happening. I want to get out of bed fully, and explore the house, but so far I wake up before I get to the door. I'll work on this.

DMS111 - I understand what you are saying. I can see why people call this an OBE, because that is truely what it feels like. I've had a few lucid dream but none have been like this. It could be a super realistic LD, I've never believed in anything that doesn't have scientific proof and facts to back it up. But now, this has thrown me!!! Haha. I've stopped telling my friends because they think Im mad.

My super skeptical friend didn't believe in shared dreaming or the astral, but then that lucky bastard got it proven to him. It sounds totally surreal when you hear how it happened. They were not even in the same room, the guy who helped us with astral projection (as he called it) did this through Skype! He is a friend of a friend and not a medium or anything so we didn't had to pay. So this guy really believed in what he was doing. I am very skeptical myself but when I suddenly see a bright light shining in front of my eye lids, he suddenly yell to me "What do you see can you feel or see my energy?"
and I am very skeptical and discouraged that as neural discharges from the eyes or something because I had literally just been sitting there for 2 minutes so it was too early for something to happened right? So I just say "No sorry =(" he then told me to visualize walking in my room in another shape than human form. I think I imagined myself as Pikachu lol just for fun. But nothing happened. Although with my friend described it as he felt energy somehow and then was taken to a castle and without telling the guy who was guiding us what he saw, the guide could tell everything he saw. Sorry to hijack the thread a bit but you were interested in these things right?

Although this event doesn't mean anything to me or to you since the only way to truly be convinced it to experience it by yourself. even though I trust my friend's word, I can't do it 100 %. yet...

Originally Posted by dms111

The realism of my first successful WILD surprised me so much that I believed I was having a real honest to god OBE. I thought I was out of my body and wandering around my house. Later I was able to pick out enough incorrect details to prove to myself that it was not reality that I was experiencing.

My current belief is from explanation I have read someplace. It's about why is the world we exit into during OBE not identical to waking life. So according to this, the occasion when we exit directly into WL is rather rare. If I remember correctly, those who exit into WL are seen as ghosts, orbs and other things.

In majority of times we exit into one different plane. Closest to our physical is the plane, that looks nearly identical to waking life, but still there are differences, because it's not actual physical, but astral, or energy representation of physical.

I do accept this explanations, seems pretty plausible to me, at least untill I find out from my own experience otherwise, or I see a really compelling argument. I really appreciate all experiences I'm given, from all the crazy transitional sensations to all forms of dreams and out of bodies. I guess OBEs appeal to me, because they give me hope, that there is something after death, other than end of existence.

Originally Posted by Iapetos

I met a DC/ entity that told his name was Iapetos and I had no idea who it was. I googled the name upon awakening and was very shocked that the name actually existed and of who it was!

Forgive me, this is off topic, but I'm dying to know what have you found out about this Iapetos guy. If you don't mind sharing, that is