My DEILD journey

Hey everyone :D ,

you can probably guess it from the title, but here I am going to write down my experiences with DEILD.
After deciding at the beginning of the year that WILD doesn't seem like the right technique for me, I switched to DEILD, having had a few lucid dreams with it already. It looked like a pretty promising way of LDing to me (it still does) and I got a few LDs rather quickly.
I decided to open up this thread for a few reasons: firstly, I hope to hear of some of your approaches. Many tips and tricks aren't written down in any tutorials and so I would love to learn something new. Secondly, it (hopefully) keeps me motivated to continue practicing :D . And it might help someone else, who is trying DEILD.

At the moment I am trying to DEILD every day. For waking up at night, I use autosuggestion, as alarm clocks never quite work for me. I try to transition into the dream by vividly imagining the dream I had before waking up or thinking of another scene. Instead of focusing on the visuals, I mostly use the feeling of touching something, because that seems to work a lot better. I also think that some of Michael Radugas separation techniques, like phantom wiggling (trying to move a part of the body without using your muscles) are quite interesting and I had some success with them.

Now, I encountered some problems, mainly getting aware while waking up. Oftentimes I wake up and only get "conscious" after some time. The few times, at which I get aware while leaving the dream are often pretty easy DEILDs. Thats why I try to get those more often, but at the moment I don't know what I can do to increase the rate of those awakenings. This, next to not waking up at all throughout the night, because I need to get up early, are my biggest problems right now.

I am hoping to update this thread weekly and I am looking forward to any tips or tricks you got :D

Kasy

Best of luck Kasy!
I have been wanting to learn DEILD for the longest time and this seems like a great opportunity so, if you don't mind, I'll join you on your journey!

I definitely feel you on not waking up at all during the night because of getting up early, I struggle with that myself.

I don't have any tips for you but one thing I noticed that when I wake up during the night, I realize that I have already been awake for while. I don't know of that makes sense, but I get the feeling "Oh yeah, I have been awake for a while but only now realized it". Maybe that is worth exploring...

Company is always nice, so thanks for joining me!

Quote:

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"Oh yeah, I have been awake for a while but only now realized it"

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That pretty much describes my experience perfectly and hopefully we can find a way to get aware earlier.
Good luck from me as well and I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Week 1:

This week I have had one successful DEILD, but to be honest the LD wasn't great at all. I am still struggeling with awareness in LDs, and so I often forget my goals and my stabilization techniques. This is exactly what happened here.
The rest of the week I had a few pretty good tries, where I woke up completely still and remembered to DEILD. I am now trying to practice the lying still part. I do this by imagining myself in a dream and "waking up" after some time. Then I will do the entire DEILD process. I think that this simulates a normal awakening quiete well and I will test it during the next week to see if it really is helpful.
I am also working on my recall right now, as remembering a dream I just had, could be an easy transition into a LD. Next week I will report, if any of this helped me.

Kasy

Hello Kasy. Good luck with DEILD. Why do you have troubles with WILD? Isn't DEIlD a kind of WILD, I mean when you use DEILD, isn't that just WILD after you woke up in the morning??
If I'm right, I just can't understand why you have troubles with WILD, why do you try DEILD. It is almost the same.
I don't know if that is true, I read it somewhere.

Well, DEILD and WILD are considered to be in the same class of techniques mostly because with both of them one enters a dream without loosing awareness. But the process of DEILD, at least for me is entirely different. While doing WILD I struggled a lot with keeping my awareness up when falling asleep. DEILD is different in that aspect because most successful tries only take a couple of seconds, which makes this technique way easier for me. WILD on the other hand can take up to an hour and so I never found a way that would make it work for me.
Still, I believe that succeeding in DEILD might help me getting a better grasp of the WILD process and maybe in the future I will give WILD another try.
I hope that answered your question.

Just for the record: WILD and DEILD (and DILD, for that matter) are not techniques at all, but descriptions of the transition you are making to lucidity. The techniques (i.e., MILD, WBTB, repeating a mantra, machines, supplements, etc) are the things we do to induce these transitions, and not the transitions themselves.

There are only two types of transitions to lucidity (aka, bringing your waking-life self-awareness into a dream): You can either initiate your lucidity during a dream (DILD), or maintain your lucidity throughout the falling asleep process (WILD). Since during a DEILD you are (generally) already lucid during the wake-up period, and you maintain that lucidity while falling back to sleep, DEILD is indeed a form of WILD... and yes, since you are already half asleep and still in a dream, and your body is usually interested in going right back to sleep, DEILDs are -- in my opinion -- a lot easier to manage than are "classic" WILDs.

I know this sounds like a bunch of semantics, but I really do think it is very helpful to successful lucidity to understand the nature of what you are doing. To assume that WILD/DEILD and DILD are techniques is to expect things out of them that are simply not there, and that can lead to a lot of disappointment.

Interruption over; good luck with journey, Kasy!

:sageous:

Sounds promising Kasy! Maybe this week will be more successful.

As for me, I have been trying without much success, mainly because of the fact that when I wake up I have to go to the bathroom and I can't concentrate on falling asleep. It might have to do with the fact that the WBTB routine that I normally use for WILD always starts with me going to the bathroom.
How should I deal with this problem?

Success! Well, partial success.
This week I had a DILD that came out of nowhere and, at the end of that DILD I managed to remember to DEILD, so I lay down on the floor and closed my eyes. Sure enough, I felt my bed and I knew I had woken up, so I thought "great! let's get back there". That getting back there part was unsuccessful, I just fell back asleep, but at least I didn't have the problem I talked about in my previous post and got some experience with the transition!

How goes your journey, Kasy?

Week 2:

This week not a lot happened. I didn't have a lot of time for practice, because I was travelling and so I have had no successful DEILDs.
But still I managed to further improve my DEILD routine in the evening. I did it the way I described it in my week 1 report and it has worked great for me. Many awakenings throughout the night and a lot of them aware. This approach looks promising and I will definitely try it for some time.

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It might have to do with the fact that the WBTB routine that I normally use for WILD always starts with me going to the bathroom.

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I guess you could try keeping this WBTB as it is and wake up once more after that. This next waking up could be used solely for DEILD. You could accomplish that by doing autosuggestion during your other WBTB. This would also have the added benefit, that your intention is refreshed.
The book "The Phase" even recommends it that way and you might want to take a look at it. Its freely available here: https://obe4u.com/files/the_phase.pdf and is a guide to DEILD or at least a variant of it. Although it is by no means perfect you might find some useful tips in it.

Quote:

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This week I had a DILD that came out of nowhere and, at the end of that DILD I managed to remember to DEILD, so I lay down on the floor and closed my eyes. Sure enough, I felt my bed and I knew I had woken up, so I thought "great! let's get back there"

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Sounds great! The same has happened to me before: you think of reentering or you even do it successfully but then you loose awareness. I guess it is just a matter of practice and with time it will lead to real DEILDs.

Starting next week I can't sleep in anymore, which means all my routine will be changed again. Until then I wish you Leao and anyone else reading along good luck with DEILDing.

Kasy

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I guess you could try keeping this WBTB as it is and wake up once more after that.

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That is actually a good idea, the only problem I have is managing the time. I usually try to WILD on that WBTB, so I'm not really focused on inducing more awakenings. Also, sometimes I wake up quite "late" (1h30 or 2h before I have to get up), which means that the second awakening would be very close my actual "wake up time".
Still, I will experiment a bit and report back.

Thanks for the book suggestion and best of luck getting settled on your new routine!!

Week 3:

As expected getting up early messed up my routine. I had one LD, with low lucidity. Right now I'm trying to get my schedule working with less sleep, but I'll probably need another week or so to adjust. I also noticed that it seemed harder to get motivated to do my LD practice this week. I'll try to fix this by making up some new goals and thinking about them before going to bed.
I also had some awakenings where I layed still, but I couldn't seem to get back into a dream. Once I was pretty close at least. I saw some pretty realistic images already. Maybe next week will be better.

Well Kasy, I would sure appreciate some updates on your DEILD progress as it has been quite a while since you've posted on this thread. I have been quite successful with WILD using galantamine and choline, but find the night to intense when using those supplements. I am now trying to avoid using supplements and concentrating on the DEILD technique, using the DV DEILD tutorial almost exactly as presented. So far my recall is getting pretty good as is my awakening after many dreams during the night using the mantra "I will be aware of waking after every dream". I plan to work on these two areas diligently over the next few weeks before making any real attempts at transitioning into an LD. That is because I want to take the time to write down those dreams I wake up from to strengthen my memory and visualization skills rather than jump to fast into trying to transition. I've rushed things in the past and tried to take shortcuts rather than do the necessary prerequisite work and have usually become disappointed and given up on trying to LD regularly. I'm sure my current approach will prove fruitful.

Thanks pdunc for your interest in this post!
Despite me not posting anything, I continued doing DEILD except for a few really stressful weeks. Right now I have one big question which if I could answer it, would really help me. Just last week I had one of those "perfect" awakenings. If these happen upon waking up I immediately know that my DEILD will be successful. I'm in the perfect state of mind, neither to tired or to awake, I never forget to do DEILD when waking up like this and it only takes me a few seconds to get into the dream.
Now, how can I get these awakenings? I got absolutely no idea. It doesn't seem to be connected to the amount of work I'm putting into Lding or even the technique I'm practicing at that moment. The only thing I noticed was that it mostly happened after about 8 hours of sleep.
I'm hoping to be able to answer this question at one point.
What I learned during the time I didn't write anything here was how import attitude is with lucid dreaming. Over the years of being not as successful with LDing as I would have liked, I developed a really negative attitude towards the subject. Lucid dreams seemed like these elusive things that I only get by chance. This led to frustration and changing techniques quickly. Just like you mentioned rushing things and lucid dreaming, well these two just don't fit each other.
So, this is where I am right now, trying to achieve lucidity from a different angle, by putting the work into me and my mental barricades rather than expecting that a new technique will magically solve all my problems.
I'd love to hear about your experiences pdunc, and in the meantime I will practice dream recall and waking up during the night as well, to strengthen the foundation for future DEILDs.

Great to hear from you so quickly. It seems that you know that feeling of the "Goldilocks" moment of not being to asleep and not to awake in order to easily transition to a LD. Now, you just need to fine tune it so that you wake up at just that moment most of the time. It could be that you need to concentrate keenly on your waking up process. I guess an awareness of your personal waking up process is what is needed. Think of it as an art, something that can and will be developed over time. It's something I hope to work on myself once I do wake up consistently after dreaming and after greatly increasing my recall. Both arts as well. No rush though. At age 66, I really value a good night's sleep and believe that DEILD will be the least intrusive means of having an LD and have them consistently. With a regular WILD (and the supplements), the WBTB and the regular process of relaxation, it would take me 45 minutes to a little over an hour to have an LD. And that was only about 75% of the time that it worked. It was disruptive to my night and occasionally a big waste of time. So now I am just doing my daytime work with mantras, working on memory, intent, and awareness. That and the recall and becoming aware that I have woken up. Last LD I had was last November. I stopped trying after that but am now interested again. I've only managed to have 15 or so LD's. Two were DILDs and the rest were WILDs while using supplements. Not a great amount of LDs, but at least I know they are real and can be had with the right work and the right frame of mind.