Hi all

This is my first post but I wanted to share something with everyone that I thought might help provide a concrete example for those wondering what a successful WILD is like.

The other night I woke up about 40 minutes before my alarm would normally go off. Accidentally: I hadn’t planned to try a WILD but my wife woke up and startled me awake, so awake I was. Unusually for me, I had a very hard time falling back to sleep. I ended up lying awake going over the day’s events for about 15 minutes. During this time I became calmer and my breathing slower, and I decided to try dream. Eyes closed, in the ‘darkness’ of my vision, as in, behind my eyelids, I tried to make my mind blank. In seconds a ‘dreamlet’ image popped into mind of a white domino. The domino was very fuzzy and started to fade away, but as it ‘hovered’ in the blank space of my thoughts, I gradually grew sharper, as I focused on it.

For an instant I heard a loud thud and my attention shifted, and almost immediately the domino began to disappear as sensation returned to my limbs and I ‘forgot’ about the dream image. I was aware I was still lying in my bed, but I didn’t want to lose the dreamy, ready-to-fall-asleep feeling. I threw all of my attention towards the domino image and it quickly grew clearer and sharper again. I focused on it, examining its color, shape, and letting it rotate around so I could examine it from all sides. As I did so I realized I could no longer feel my body…my attention had left and attached itself to the domino. At first I thought I was already in a dream, and frustrated, I relaxed my eyes, as if to open them (can’t think of how else to describe it). Only instead of waking up, relaxing brought the domino into greater focus, as if I was ‘waking up’ in the dream.

Once I realized I was beginning a lucid dream, I laughed a bit to myself (mentally) and thought “I am GOING to make a dream world!”, and as I thought that…well, it’s hard to explain, but basically I wrested by will and attention away from the domino, and everything became lighter and gray as my vision kind of ‘swam’, and shadows began to form in the shape of my family members. Irritated because I didn’t want some lame ‘family’ dream, I again shifted my attention…it was a bit like sliding a screen door open or closed. The darkness returned, and I said to myself “a car and a streetlight!” And now I was laying on the pavement of a darkened street with a single light overhead and a car parked nearby. And so my dream started.

So, there you are. Now you know what feeling to look for. It’s that feeling of unwillingly having some image come to mind, and then consciously focusing on that image until you are able to ‘open’ your eyes without waking up. Or rather, open your eyes IN the image, rather than in your body.

Haha. That may have confused things more but I found it quite revelatory myself.


*Mods if this post is in the wrong spot, go ahead and move it, sorry about that!