So, lately I've been making it an effort at least a couple times a week to attempt an afternoon LD.

Almost every time, I'll be lying still, not moving, and swirling colors and small flashes of light will happen. At this point, everything is good, and eventually REALLY strong HI starts happening, most of the time it almost becomes a visible dream scene. At this point, for some reason the HI just fails and I don't enter a LD.

This begs two questions.
One, if I'm experiencing HI this strong, does this mean I've hit SP? I've never encountered the traditional SP in my afternoon LD attempts.

Two, what am I doing wrong? It feels like there is this line I have to cross to fully enter the dream, and I just don't something right and I fail. Is it just because my REM cycle is failing? I usually wake up at 7:00 to 7:30ish, and my LD attempts are usually made around 1:30 to 2:15.

I'm pretty happy I can get to HI consistently, but if I could just go beyond it into a LD it would be great.

During Christmas Break, I hope to attempt an afternoon LD every day at different times to get a feel for what my options are. Unfortunately, I'm usually busy around 1:30 to 3:00 so finding another time that would work later in the day would be awesome.