Weird issue with WILD (surprise surprise)

Hey guys! So I'm making real progress with lucid dreaming, my last few WILD attempts have been nearly successful my latest resulting in lucidity (but only a very low-level of lucidity it seems, if anyone can shed light on how to 'increase' the level of lucid you become in dreams [if that makes any sense lol] that would be really appreciated as well).

Anyway, something I have noticed in my WILDs the past 5 times is that I have really strange false awakening sequences. I will be mid-wild on the brink of entering the dreamworld and eventually I'll feel the vibrations but at some point I enter a dream/dreamlet false awakening type thing. They usually are me in a bed somewhere (not necessarily the one I fell asleep in), for instance today during my nap I was in some strange bedroom in an apartment I think? However from this bed I had a view of my living room window, and I could see police lights flashing on the houses across the streets which is one of my dreamsigns for pete's sake. For some reason I just didn't even make the connection that this was a dream (even though I was feeling pretty confident about how the WILD was going while I was still awake) and assumed it was my reality and I even checked my phone because I was like well WILD attempt failed let's check my messages. My phone screen was all effed up too and still I didn't become remotely lucid.

Eventually I gained consciousness in my bed again and tried to just go back to sleep to try again but I only ended up laying through a few cycles of feeling like I was flying through a tunnel really fast or something before I was too awake to continue.

It's extremely weird because it almost feels like the dream I had was a real
memory of something that just happened but of course I know it was a dream, and my entire time and reality schemas just seem whacked out.

If anyone has any insights on how I can proceed I'd love to hear! Thanks for reading :)

Hi there,

The most important thing is to ALWAYS do a reality check every time you wake up. Not just the times you are trying WILD, or when you think about "maybe" being a dream. I mean always. When you wake up in the middle of the night to have some water, when you wake up, check the clock and go back to sleep, and even after the alarm clock.

I had this as a routine and catched many false awakenings. Lately I stoped doing it for some reason, and missed some. I even had a short lucid a couple weeks ago, woke up while feeling sad it ended, and while I was doing some things, I woke up for real.

I also experienced those frustrating FA when trying WILD some times. You think you failed, even if you wake up in your grandmothers house, which also isn't her real house, and still feel you're awake...

Maybe you already do RCs, but just wanted to give the advice. It takes some time to get used to it. Several days of "arrggg... I forgot the RC again...". But eventually you get to it.

Hey Jesslet, Irreo has a good point: make sure to do some kind of RC upon awakening. Just glancing at a clock will not always work, simply because we usually expect the clocks to function--at least on some level--and if they don't, we make up an excuse (it's broken, or whatever). Much more difficult to explain to yourself why you can breathe if you have your nose pinched :)

As for increasing lucidity, do you mean your overall awareness that what you are experiencing is a dream? Or the level of dream vividness?

If you mean the former (lucidity), then it is often enough to just pause, remind yourself that everything you are experiencing is a construct of mind, and then proceed mindfully. That's fairly lucid.

If the dream is simply not vivid, WILDs can be like that at the very beginning (but not always); I think it has to do with the dream generators still getting "spun up" (I think Sageous mentions this somewhere, and it is a point with which I definitely agree). Just proceed with things as normal, and often the scene will become more realistic as you interact with it. It is probably a good ideas not to worry about vivifying the scene, as this could turn into an obstacle (fading or receding dream scene, FAs, etc.).