Often, I can fall asleep so fast, that what I am thinking turns directly into a full dream. The only issue is I haven't often recognized that transition, and assume that I'm still just awake, thinking about things. I realized this when I fell asleep in a meditation class, and my friend elbowed me awake. I was definitely in a dream, but completely believed I was still awake and contemplating the teaching. Since it was not lucid, it must be a Waking Induced Dream (WID) for lack of a better term.

Due to lack of sleep, and wearing myself out at work, I often fall asleep whenever I sit down, but only briefly. If I try to sit still but stay awake, I will fall asleep literally every 30 seconds, like clockwork. A few times I kept track of how many times I fell asleep in one sitting, and it was over 40.

Each time I fall asleep briefly like this, I immediately enter a dream. Also, each time, I am completely unable to distinguish the dream from just thinking. It is only once my head falls, and I wake up, that I realize I was dreaming, and can then trace the dream back to the exact sequence of thoughts that lead to the dream.

I propose that it is just like this when we go to bed normally, with a couple differences. Firstly, it generally takes some time to fall asleep, instead of being surprised by sleep in the middle of a conscious activity. This means the sequence of thoughts, one leading to the next, is probably extremely random and difficult to trace, so you can't track down the dream as easily. Also, there's more time to get distracted from our initial thought related to our WILD practice. Secondly, after a few REM cycles, it is much more likely that we have completely forgotten those first moments of dreaming. Even if they were lucid. I have forgotten a lucid dream, and only remembered it when I really dug into my memory. I always assumed I would definitely remember lucid dreams. I was wrong on that.

I suppose all that is some of the implied difficulty with WILDs. What I get out of this is to really aim for recognizing the dream as soon as it appears. I've managed to miss that immediate recognition 100s of times a day as my mind literally assembles a dream before me, as I witness every moment of it. Maybe that means having some awareness of where I am, and being really alert to when that changes to some place else. Especially when sitting / laying still.