Need a feedback on my WILD attempts

Hi, first time posting on this forum! :)

I've been trying to WILD for more or less than a month or so. However, when I get to a certain step I'm not actually sure on what to do.

Basically, I usually lie down focusing on my breathing until I start to see phosforescent patterns behind my eyelids; I shift my focus from my breath to these colours at this point. After not so much I begin to experience strange phenomena: I kinda feel light electricity going all over my body and I may see random imagery/hear random sounds, which sometimes even come with information. It has also happened that I start to perceive my body as though it were distorted, like I feel my head getting bigger or longer and my visual field seems to expand according to the sensation.

Now, at this stage my thoughts begin to be quite heavy. With this I mean that even the slightest thought that pops up in my mind at this point has the power of entirely dragging my awareness away, thus making me enter kind of a deep meditative state in which I'm still conscious but I've completely lost my awareness. Yet, I noticed that if I just "hop on" one of these thoughts by willingly trying to visualize myself in a specific situation, this action too has the power of completely dragging me away and almost making me feel as if I physically were inside the situation I was trying to picture myself in. Nevertheless, it doesn't last for long, like only for a few seconds: as soon as I realize I may be doing the whole thing properly I get sent one step backwards if not even wake up entirely.

My question is: am I really doing it right or have I gotten it all wrong?

I've also got doubts about this "vibrational stage" I keep reading so much about. From what I understand, one should be supposed to hear engine-like sounds buzzing in one's head whilst I only feel light electricity across my body.
Plus, I almost never go into full sleep paralysis. And when I do, I always snap out of it within a few seconds. Basically I haven't even got the time to realize I'm in SP and how should I act that the whole thing has already ended lol.

Hey Pavischan, I am practicing the exact same type of WILD as you. You are not doing anything wrong. You might want to forget focusing on the hypnagogia as you seem to be doing however. The reason is that it is hard to enter WILD that way, as there is no particular anchor. Of course, in that situation, the smallest thought can sweep your awareness away. It is akin to being in a hurricane in the open.

What I do is focus on my breath, all the way, until I enter the dream. Forget the lights or any of that. The one thing you might want to do is focus on the images that appear as you near the dream state. These are incredibly vivid and if you focus on these you can enter the dream state directly.

As for your last part, don't worry about any 'vibrational stage' or such. Everyone is different. Sometimes I feel strange effects, others I do not.

It will take time to gain enough awareness to be able to enter your dream consistently just by following your breath, but with time it will come. Practice during the day.

Thanks for the reply, DreamSwimmer.
Well, this early morning I tried only focusing on my breath as you suggested and I must admit it went a lot better than it used to. Although I’ve yet got to succeed completely I noticed that the process really did take me less effort. So thank you :)
Still, I don’t understand how you fully enter the dream state. Is it supposed to happen randomly without you trying to visualize anything in particular?

I believed it was kinda necessary to go into sleep paralysis if you wanted to complete the process but if you say it isn’t I’ll trust you on it.

It happens by itself. There are 3 stages to the process.

1) awake
2) dead zone
3) lucid/dream

All you have to do is get past the dead zone. It's the time when if you are not careful your awareness slips into sleep. This zone is characterised as the hypnogogic state. It's the time where you may hear auditory hallucinations or closed eye images.

If your awareness is strong enough you can get through the dead zone and will automatically enter a dream. Don't worry about doing anything other than holding on. Imagine you are on a river holding onto a floating raft. The river automatically flows to the dream state. All you have to do is stay on the raft. If you fall off you will lose awareness. If you stay on to the end you will be lucid.

That's it. It's simple, but hard. You will need to develop your awareness to do this. There is no complicated methodology. Sleep paralysis is just something that may happen whilst in the dead zone. Like a wave on the aforementioned river.

Just hold on. That's all WILD is.

As someone who's never quite got the hang of WILD, I have to thank you DreamSwimmer. You have just presented WILD in the easiest to understand way. I always felt like I wasn't doing "enough" to have a lucid dream. I'd reach a hypnogogic state, try a bunch of visualization exercises I'd read about and then get anxious that I was "doing it wrong" and wake back up, but your analogy actually makes a ton of sense. I'll have to try that a few times over the next week or so and see if I have any luck.

As well, I hope you get the hang of it Pavischan!

So, yesterday night I finally did it!
It was awesome, seriously. Already had some DILDs but really WILDs are simply another thing to experience.
In my DILDs conquering my lucidity back was usually a struggle: even when I would realize I was dreaming my dream-self's ability to make any sort of decision whatsoever was pretty low; my capacity of rational thought almost non-existent. But wow, yesterday night it was all so vivid and detailed that I did not even realize I was inside of a dream at first, it seemed too much like waking reality! Moreover, it appeared to me that the dream had been going on for ages when compared to the other LDs I've had, in which I barely could keep my awareness together for a couple of minutes. I had at least 3 false awakenings, too.

I've just got one question at this point.
Basically yesterday I got up at 4:15 AM, stayed up a bit and then lay down onto the livingroom's sofa around for 5:00 AM (I noticed that if I go back to my actual bed I'll usually fall asleep within minutes without accomplishing anything, therefore I tried the sofa this time round). I started to count whilst visualizing the written numbers and syncing the counting with my breaths. Arrived up to 200 or so and tried to visualize a dream scene since I noticed from my previous attempts that up to this point I'd usually lose my awareness and fall back to sleep for a while. Now, I can't remember exactly how the whole thing went from this point but the feeling I got immediately thereafter was that I found myself straight in the dream scene from a moment to another without me being able to acknowledge it. Even the room I woke up in in my dream was pretty much the same as its real counterpart, took me a few moments to realize what'd happened lol.
Thing is, when my father woke up for 8:30 AM and entered the room, I was still dreaming. I mean, notwithstanding the length of this dream in particular, it should be impossible to dream for all that time, right? Did I lose consciousness again but managed to pull the WILD off nevertheless?

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Originally Posted by Pavischan

Thing is, when my father woke up for 8:30 AM and entered the room, I was still dreaming. I mean, notwithstanding the length of this dream in particular, it should be impossible to dream for all that time, right? Did I lose consciousness again but managed to pull the WILD off nevertheless?

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i don't understand
What do you mean with this sentence??? :)

Oh now I get it. Yeah, it's likely that you fell asleep for a while and that explains the gap in time. I guess you did a DILD/MILD anyway.

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Originally Posted by Pavischan

...Now, I can't remember exactly how the whole thing went from this point but the feeling I got immediately thereafter was that I found myself straight in the dream scene from a moment to another without me being able to acknowledge it. Even the room I woke up in in my dream was pretty much the same as its real counterpart, took me a few moments to realize what'd happened lol.
...

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Sometimes it's not easy to realize you are already in a dream, dreaming, since your mind is still awake and you have same thoughts you had just moments ago while you were awake. It's easy to lose awareness here, thinking it didn't work and that you are still awake, give up and "go to sleep". But you seem to have realized that you are dreaming. It sounds like a WILD to me. Even if you dozed off for a few seconds just before you realized you are dreaming, it's still a WILD. That's because losing awareness for a few seconds, just to regain it again, and dipping down into a dream again, only to come up and realize you are dreaming, it's common way for a WILD to go. And being in your dream room is another tip off for this to be a WILD. They often start in your bedroom.

I agree that it's good practice not to focus too much on any one kind of hypnagogic hallucinations. They could be simple visuals, more evolved images and videos, sounds, sensation of your body moving, sinking, floating, flying, or vibrations. I do love to experience them, but it's best to just observe them passively and not get excited when they happen. The reason why it's best to not expect them is, that they may not happen. Or they will happen, but very differently than last time. And if we wait for something to happen and it doesn't, it may give us false impression that we have failed. Not focusing on it is good, but HH provide great mile post to let us know where in the transition process we are.

Transition to a lucid dream via WILD can be full of sensations. And that's why I would definitely not call it "dead zone". I have experienced sensations here far more intense than any other waking life sensation ever.

Or it can be so subtle, that it's hard to realize it. I had missed a lots of opportunities to enter a lucid dream, even though I was already there. Only I didn't realize it. To help me with this, I'm using a mantra "I am dreaming". If I hear myself say this later on when I'm already dreaming, but I perhaps forgot what I'm doing, haha, this reminds me and I "realize" I am lucid. At that point I can just stand up into a dream scene which I can already see in front of me.

There are other ways to enter a lucid dream, as you can see in this post http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...into-wild.html

Good luck and have some awesome transitions and lucids!

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Originally Posted by Threeofeight

i don't understand:
What do you mean with this sentence??? :)

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Hm, I didn't phrase that one too well, did I. I meant that since I went back to sleep at 5:00 and my father woke me up at 8:30, I find it impossible that I'd been dreaming for all that time, right? Even if I spent a good hour counting and visualizing numbers it'd still be more than a 2 hours long dream, which is still pretty unlikely even though the dream itself did feel unbelievably long and it seemed as though I did a lot of stuff in it.

So I was basically asking, supposing that I fell asleep for an hour or so, even if I did not realize it, how come my WILD seemingly resulted in a success? Are WILDs always supposed to happen after an hour or two?

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Originally Posted by gab

[...]Sometimes it's not easy to realize you are already in a dream, dreaming, since your mind is still awake and you have same thoughts you had just moments ago while you were awake. It's easy to lose awareness here, thinking it didn't work and that you are still awake, give up and "go to sleep". But you seem to have realized that you are dreaming[...]They often start in your bedroom.

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It basically went like this: out of the blue, I heard something/someone scratching on the sofa where I was sleeping. I mused on what it could have been for a moment until the scratching sound started once again. I thought that it must be the cat but immediately remembered that I'd left it in my room when I went downstairs to attempt my WILD. Now I'm like "Don't tell me it's the mice again! I thought someone had already seen to that problem" and then I'm like "Why do we even have a cat if it's so spoilt it doesn't even bother to catch mice?". Then I remembered myself that it's probably my fault if our cat's turned out this way since I'm the one who usually spoils it the most. The scratching kept on. Now extremely frustrated and already feeling like I failed my attempt because I had to move, I try to turn the lamp on (the room was still pretty dark as it was in reality). But it doesn't, even though I clicked on it three times. I thought it was extremely weird because I was sure I'd plugged the thing in before lying down onto the sofa. I reached for my IPAD and grabbed it but I immediately noticed that what appeared on its screen made absolutely no sense.
Now I'm like, "WAIT A MOMENT DON'T TELL ME...", I try to hold my nose and confirmed that I was still able to breathe nevertheless, "Omg I'm dreaming already!"

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Originally Posted by gab

There are other ways to enter a lucid dream, as you can see in this post http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...into-wild.html

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Thanks! :)
Yet, I still don't get the whole vibration thingy. Are you supposed to get these vibrations after the HS or it's just something that happens altogether? The only thing I'd gotten thus far is just visual and auditorial hallucinations. And tactile too to be honest, which are the weirdest ones I must admit. Sometimes I almost feel as though I've got more than two arms or that one of my limbs moved or jerked when in actuality it didn't.

What you said in that topic about how to interact with hypnagogic images is pretty cool, though. I'll try it tonight for sure.

Yesterday night I managed to do the thing again. But it was different, the dream didn't begin in my room and it only consisted of two meaningful scenes, one of which was spooky af. Alfter this, I even pulled off a late morning MILD.

I woke up at 3:30 and got to my sofa at around 4:00. When I woke up again from the first LD it was already 6:30. Has anyone got any idea of how I'm triggering these dream events hours later I try to WILD?