Hi Sageous, nice to meet you. I've read many of your notes on lucid dreaming, and they're fascinating and informative.
Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
I'm a little late to this conversation, but here are a couple of thoughts:
First: be happy that you are doing WILD's without noticing the noise; Let me assure you that that is a blessing, and not an obstacle, by any measure!
Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
So I guess the tl;dr: here is that you might consider yourself blessed with a certain innate ability to enjoy WILD transitions without noise; value that ability, and don't be concerned about not experiencing the crap they insist you must experience these days.
I think you've misread my first post: I did one WILD years ago accidentally, which was without any transition sensation at all, but I've been unable to repeat the process or understand how it was achieved. I don't like the sleep paralysis because it's something I've suffered from a lot over the years and it gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the heavy vibrations are just incredibly distracting. Ideally I'd like to go in via visual markers alone. Most of my WILD attempts have failed because my pulse and breathing get away from me when I get the SP/vibration - calming my breathing and heart-rate is something I need more practice at. So yes, I'm looking to avoid the noise, but I'm not finding it easy.

This morning I did manage a WILD with no SP or vibrations, but I'm unsure why this one was different. It may be because I lay on my stomach rather than side or back.

On the subject of sleep paralysis: I've been experiencing this for nearly thirty years, long before any of my LD attempts, from the odd isolated incident in my twenties to nearly once a week in my mid-to-late forties. It doesn't last for long, but the panic is difficult to contain; usually one hand can move a little (occasionally a foot, too), but very weakly, but after five or ten seconds I'm back to normal. However, sometimes it has acted as a gateway to a false awakening where I attempt to get up and move around my bedroom but find I'm half-paralysed and unable to cry out for help; it always turns out to be a dream of course, but it's frightening enough that I panic when I feel SP hit. For anybody who also suffers from this unwantedly, I decided that part of the reason for the increase in SP events for me in the last few years was that I kept having a little snooze in my arm-chair before going to bed (sometimes waking a 1AM or so), and I think this meant that when I did go to bed my body was still tired enough to try to go back to sleep straight away, but my mind was too awakened to drop back to unconsciousness. Keeping to a more sensible sleep pattern has cut down on these incidents.

Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
I've come to believe that these poorly lit LD's (I've had a zillion of 'em, myself) might be occurring because -- as can happen with WILD's -- even though the dream has started you are still very close to being physically awake. This means that your normal perception is still active, causing a sort of dark filter through which your dream imagery must pass (dark because that is what your physical eyes are actually seeing, of course). I've found the best way to work with this lies in patience: Stay calm (so you stay asleep) and let your fall into sleep progress until your dreaming mind has the full attention of your perception. Don't try to do anything about it, like ask for light, because you will likely just wake up... and yes, a poorly lit LD is indeed better than no LD at all!
My first LD some years ago (DILD) was by far my best in terms of both visual intensity and my own awareness and confidence; in that dream the first thing I did upon becoming lucid was to turn night into day - it took a couple of tries, but it looked very impressive. Not tried it since, though. This morning's LD was, as I said, a bit short, and as I entered the dream riding a flying bicycle (no idea why), most of my attention in the dream went on steering, though having read some of your notes I did take a moment to check my memory awareness, making sure I remembered who I was and what I had done recently.