I feel like I'm not working fast enough, so I swiped a couple of paragraphs from my DVA WILD class about the "noise." I don't think its enough, but I'll try to add more or get rid of unnecessary crap shortly.

Let me know if I'm at least playing in the right court, though, or if I should be mentioning something else. Fair warning -- there's an excellent chance I'll wake up tomorrow with an actual idea and change everything (not the concepts, of course; just the words)!

Here we go:

First, I have had many thousands of WILD's, and never once cared about SP, much less looked for it. No one should.

SP is not a mystical or unusual event by any measure because REM Atonia happens naturally every time you are in REM -- it must occur, or else we’d all be flailing about in our beds, or sleepwalking, or shouting, or … well, you get it. That you are consciously aware of it because it remained switched on a bit too long or switched on early does not make it special, unless you consider your ability to defy nature and notice it something special -- which is a pretty cool thing, I suppose.

SP is also not a goal in WILD. Let me repeat that: SP is not a goal in WILD. One more time for the back rows: SP is not a goal in WILD! You should never, ever, be trying to “achieve SP” if your ultimate goal is lucid dreaming. To do so is to elevate a normal condition of sleep to a point where it is all you pay attention to, and then, invariably, your chances of LD’ing will fade behind the empty excitement of SP.

It is critical for WILD that you understand that SP is not dangerous: it is not an invasion by monsters, or your body failing you, or a break from reality, or any of the other things noted on the forums by breathless dreamers who encounter SP unprepared. It is just a natural bodily function that you happen to notice because you possess waking awareness at a time when nature never intended you to be awake. So if you ever encounter SP (I rarely do) just relax, acknowledge it, and move on!

Most of the time SP isn’t really even SP: People who are talking about their experiences in SP are really talking about their experiences in NREM sleep, which can include the vibrations, sensory deprivation, and other assorted bells and whistles associated with SP these days. This is sort of a shame, because consciously navigating NREM sleep is an adventure unto itself (and, BTW, the place the Tibetan sleep yogis like to visit), and to belittle it by calling it SP is to miss out on an otherwise good thing.