Thread: When WILDing in NREM, how can you tell when you've actually 'fallen asleep'?

It's quite of a paradox. To be aware of your body sleeping is the same as saying that you are not aware of feeling your body anymore.
But as soon as you try to feel your body again, well then you are by that definition not sleeping consciously.

Just like you in meditation have the idea of sitting and stop the thinking mind, but if you try to see if your thinking has stopped you have to think.

However even though this might sound like something problematic, it is really not. The purpose of WILD is not to know when you have fell asleep and the purpose of meditation is not to stop thinking. These are just things that happens during the process.

The real end goal is in meditation to get present and lucid dreaming to move your awareness to a non-physical reality (dream).

So focus on that! There is no need to perfect the steps torwards the goal, just aim and go and keep the other things in the back of your head.
Like when I WILD I just focus on imagining something until it feels real. I have an intuitive method of imagine something and briefly see it or feel something.
Which means that I visualize something until I really experience it for a split second or longer.

As I do this I am not aware of my physical (sleeping) body. Why? Because my awareness is elsewhere!

So do you see my point? Yes you should make your body fall asleep, but it is just something that happens, your primary aim should be to move your awareness.

This happens automatically when we fall asleep unconsciously and we DILD.

But when we WILD we are in full control of that process and you have to move your awareness yourself.

I like to think of it as moving my awareness from the physical world to a non-physical dreamworld (that exists independently without me).
But another way to see it is to just think of it as moving your awareness from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind or something like that.

I hope this makes sense and that it has value to you.

Peace!

You allways go through NREM when falling asleep. Byt the time you reach REM, you should be on the verge of falling asleep, just seconds away.

When I WILD, sometimes it gets tricky to know when you already fallen asleep. There are some signs, but they can be easily overlooked, because of our state of mind at that point.

1. I may see HH, that evolve into photographs and moving pictures - videos. That's my clue, that dream is ready for me and I can enter it and let go - fall asleep.

2. I may feel any sensation line vibrations, feeling of sinking into bed, falling backwards, flying head first at warp speed, rotating, waving, ... When this is happening, there is a good chance that you are alseep and you can try and either to a motionless RC, or just trust your instincts (and what you read here on DV) and roll out of your body or simply stand up).

3. I may start seein my room or any other place around me. As if I was still awake, on a sofa, with my eyes opened. Only I'm already asleep.. At this moment I just stand up and I'm in a dream.

As long as you know, that there may not be any clue that you are already asleep, or it will be so subtle, that it's easily missed, you will be ok. If you know this, you can start doing motionless RCs (trying to roll out without moving your muscles, trying to bring your hands in front of your face without moving muscles, trying to levitate up...), or just try and stand up or roll out.

Sometimes you will need a leap of faith. Even if you are 100% sure you are still awake, RC or stand up. Good luck

MasterMind

Great advice!

Originally Posted by MasterMind

Just like you in meditation have the idea of sitting and stop the thinking mind, but if you try to see if your thinking has stopped you have to think.

^^Yes I’ve often found this to be a major difficulty. Whenever I try not to think too much about the process, I begin thinking about not thinking too much! It can be hard to know what to focus on, but I can really see the benefit of keeping your awareness on the end goal, as you said, making it much easier to divert your attention away from the steps required in getting there.

Originally Posted by MasterMind

I hope this makes sense and that it has value to you.

Peace!

It certainly does, thanks!

Gab

Originally Posted by gab

I may feel any sensation line vibrations, feeling of sinking into bed, falling backwards, flying head first at warp speed, rotating, waving, ... When this is happening, there is a good chance that you are alseep and you can try and either to a motionless RC, or just trust your instincts (and what you read here on DV) and roll out of your body or simply stand up).

^^Yes, I’ve often experienced this phenomenon when trying to WILD, like the sliding or sinking feeling, as well as feeling like being in a dark ‘void’. I always thought of this as some kind of early stage of sleep paralysis (which I’m fairly sure it isn’t). I suppose it’s definitely a good sign, though, that you’ve probably fallen asleep.

Thanks!

Glad you liked it Eamo24!

I forgot to mention the real issue with WILDing and Meditation.

Which is our western mind that is molded by a philosophy that creates problems in these types of practises.

From a really young age we are taught to do the right thing and to follow instructions and our progress thinking is because of the media very short-termed.
We want a magic pill solution for everything, may that be to literally take a pill like for example a diet pill to lose weight, but also a metaphorical pill like a FAST, 2 WEEK, SUPER EFFECTIVE training routine to lose weight. This is what sells and what people want to hear and believe or choose to believe out of lazyness (which I guess we can't be blamed for since our DNA and brain is designed to save time and energy). But the people who gets successful are the people that work and consistently and regularly workout and eat healthy, but also NEVER GIVE UP or STOP DOING whatever they want to accomplish, a man for this example would be Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But do most people want to hear this? NO they want the "How to get six pack in 2 weeks" kind of thing...

I apologize for making this post so long, I just can't stop myself when I start writing... I write more about this in my Journal if someones interested.

But if we translate this to the topic of lucid dreaming, our errors in thinking becomes clearer.

Realize that lucid dreaming is just like working out, there are no magic technique that will make you lucid every night.
Our western mind tells us that we should find out the most effective actions, but we need to combine this with the eastern philosophies of just letting go and trusting the process, you need to balance this.

Anyway with meditaiton and WILDing the action of choice is to DO nothing, and the mindset is to trust the process.

So here is the main problem and paradox that makes meditation and WILDing confusing.

The best action is the action of doing less, and ideally you should really do NOTHING, because when your mind is in nothing, it has to get filled by something, right?

Just like in our universe, at first there was nothing, then there was a whole world.

It sounds kind of weird I know, but the reason I am writing this is to sort my own mind on this topic. It's just so confusing to accept the concept of just trusting the process. Because when I meditate I have the goal of becoming present and happy and in the moment, because when you are present of the moment you are no longer in the past or the future where the worries are, you are in the now which is by default a happy place. But as I try to think less thoughts, focus on my breathing, not move, try not to fall asleep etc. I am too occupied by my mind and that I don't get present of the moment. But then another time I might be like "Ok never mind I just sit here and let whatever happen, happen" -> BOM present in a blink.

I hope this wasn't too far off topic..

Good luck with your practise, but remember that you don't need luck, actually you need nothing.

I was going to put up a post in response to your OP, Eamo, but then I read MasterMind's and Gab's posts, and they pretty much summed it up! So time saved for me, I guess!

To repeat what MasterMind said, though: Just keep your mind on where you are going (the dream) and not where you are, and the pause between waking-life and dreaming-life will be no more than that -- a pause.

Thanks, MasterMind; that’s very interesting.

I agree that ‘techniques’ can often be detrimental to valuable practices, especially with things like meditation and WILD, where you need to be able to calm your mind, rather than think too much, which tends to really cloud the process.

For example, on a normal WILD attempt, I would focus on HH to the stage where it comes into ‘focus’ (like adjusting a camera). It begins to look very realistic, however, at this point I start thinking about what I should or shouldn’t be doing, and as a result my awareness shifts back to reality and the visual fades. So I suppose it’s wise to just do nothing!

Originally Posted by Sageous

To repeat what MasterMind said, though: Just keep your mind on where you are going (the dream) and not where you are, and the pause between waking-life and dreaming-life will be no more than that -- a pause.

I'll certainly try.

On the notion of "just trusting the process". There is so much goodness in this simple idea. I've mostly successfully applied this to getting back to sleep: not trying to sleep, but just existing in a relaxed happy space with no expectations other than it is so nice to be so relaxed, relaxing deeper and deeper, and ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz it is extremely effective.

I have yet though to apply it with any success to WILD. I think I've had some near WILDs but inevitably when the signposts start popping up that the transition is approaching (body sensations, imagery, etc.), something in me just wants to "watch/manage" the transition and that inevitably brings me back to fully awake. I know I'm supposed just to continue "not trying", just like in sleep....but that's easier said than done! "Not trying" for sleep is easier I think than "not trying" for WILD since for sleep it involves giving up all consciousness, while WILD requires holding on to some.

^^Agreed! This in my opinion is the most difficult aspect of WILD.

There’s always the inevitable need to steer and ‘manage’ what’s happening, as you said, Fryingman. As soon as I get anywhere near lucidity, I begin thinking about how not to mess it up. Even when trying not to do this, trying to ‘not try’ is in itself an obstacle. In fact, I've found that my best attempts were always impulsive or accidental. I would not really be concerned about whether it would work or not, and as a result, got closer to achieving it, than if I had planned it beforehand or thought too much about it.

Also, on the note of keeping your mind on the dream, I was in a lucid dream once which began to fade rapidly. By focusing, though, on an object in the dream, and completely trying to forget about reality or the fact I was waking up, I managed to bring the dream back to clarity.

So I thought, surely this is the same for a WILD attempt - putting all of your focus into the dream during the transition, or perhaps even trying to imagine that it’s already a dream, putting your focus into ‘bringing back the clarity’. The only real difference is the you must wait a longer time to completely fall asleep.