Keep falling asleep

I have been trying to WILD and FILD, and I have the same problem with both of these in that I can't catch myself entering REM and stay conciousness. Am I doing it right?

With WILD I just lie as if trying to fall asleep. I repeat a mantra to try to keep my concentration, I just say 'alert' to myself over and over. Images and hallucinations form easily and quite rapidly become realistic but at that point I'm sucked into sleep with no control, I always remember that the whole scene suddenly became 'real' but by that point it's beyond my control, and the jump form just a few pictures to sleep is sudden with nothing inbetween - it happens really fast. Often I then awake with a start and have to start again, or just continue to sleep normally.

With FILD it's very much the same. I start to feel very sleepy think to start about wiggling fingers, either I leave it too late and fall asleep, or the thought that I need to start doing it and actually starting to wiggle the fingers brings me back to full conciousness.

I notice there is a recent thread about concentrating and WILD. I meditate and can hold my concentration for long periods most of the time. Should WILD be regarded as a meditation?

Does this get better with practice and do I just keep trying or is there anything I'm not doing right?

Thanks.

I've been having the same problem since the first time I tried FILD
I've been told in reddit I just need to practice to sleep much faster, taking 20 minute naps.
I haven't tried it because it's just too much time-consuming, but here's the article and the answer I recieved


http://puu.sh/jLuuc/788b6e4aff.png
How to Fall Asleep in Less Than 30 Seconds

ZeDe thanks for that link. Interesting, although I fall asleep too fast most of the time! Also there is so much information on Reddit about this I'm going to have to have a good read there too, thanks for making me aware of it.

I'm actually getting better at feeling myself slip into sleep. I had half an hour to lie down just now, and must have fallen asleep and woken up around 5 times just hovering around the point of falling asleep. I think that is what needs the practice so that you get used to getting more and more aware of the process and more and more able to keep concious during it, and then one day (hopefully) I will suddenly realise I have stayed conscious and my body has fallen asleep.

I'm also scared of sleep paralysis having had some very scary episodes of it in the past, one quite recently where I felt my arms flying all over the place but in fact when I came out of it I knew that they hadn't moved at all, fell back to sleep and it happened again, so I'm trying to push through that and stay calm.

Can't help you with that as I suck at LD and haven't started yet

You definitely have a great chance of becoming Lucid when you're in and out of sleep like that so keep trying for that state!
When you're on the verge of sleeping and waking like that, even if you don't hold on to your consciousness all the way through, it's so much easier to click on you're Dreaming when you get one.

If you're falling asleep to fast after WBTB try to wake yourself up more before attempting WILD, at first I found it was much better to struggle a little to fall back to sleep rather than drifting off to quickly.

Do you know about WBTB? This is a key factor. You do these methods after your body has had many hours of sleep. For me 7 hours sleep is about prime, but at least 4.5-5 hours is needed. So, WILD is something done in the early morning not when you first sleep.

Second thing I would recommend is try changing that mantra to something with the word Dream or Dreaming in it, like "I am Dreaming" or "this is a dream."

Thanks sivason and MrOBlonde. Yesterday I was specifically trying to have an OBE or astrally project by WILDing in the daytime, and was using it as an exercise really.

When I try to do it in the mornings I fall asleep each time very fast. You are correct that I need to do WBTB properly and wake myself up more first, so I'm doing that now and going back to bed again shortly. I've also got a totally messed up sleep pattern trying this so many times during the night over the last few days, and now I'm exhausted, so I'm going to take a few nights off and just continue trying DILD only and catch up on sleep, then go back to trying WILD.

Thanks for the advice about the mantra. I did try that one last night having read someone mentioning it, so I will keep using it, and try it again now.

I really appreciate all this advice. :)

I have been doing this for 4 days now trying to WILD with my afternoon sleep. Today the same thing drifting in and out of sleep, I even had a dream conversation with my youngest daughter (no lucidity) and came back to conciousness again, thought I must be there, but I was awake and got a bit frustrated so gave up. I'm doing the mantra but it stops as I lose conciousness each time. I'm trying to stay as a passive observer in much the same way as when meditating to separate my thoughts from my conciousness but that's not working.

I rolled over and went to sleep normally and recorded a long dream in my diary after, no lucidity again.

Has anyone got any hints or tips for changing this drifting in and out of conciousness into a succesful WILD?

Just keep trying. It is an art and takes work. Sounds like you are doing great.

Getting somewhere....

Last night I had the sensation of falling during a WILD. Messed up because (a) I panicked a bit (b) I tried to separate to get an OBE immediately so concentrated on that instead and brought myself back to conciousness.

Will keep trying and practicing. Thanks for the support.