Originally Posted by PlatoPuss
... I'd love to start my WBTB's naturally, but I don't seem to be recognizing those moments when I wake up during the night. I've tried looking up autosuggestion techniques to help with this, started writing down on paper 100 times "I will lay still and be aware after waking up from my dreams." None of these have seemed to help since I've started using them daily for the past two weeks. I've seen the question of how to train one's self to recognize these awakenings raised many times in the Q&A and throughout the forums but I've never seen a definitive answer, do you know of any?
For what it's worth, autosuggestion and prospective memory techniques have never worked for me, and God knows I've tried, so you're not alone. Sadly, there is no definitive answer, at least from me, but I do have a suggestion:
Try scheduling your WILD attempt for a day off, a day in which you can sleep as late as you want to sleep, and then some. If you are able to do this, chances are you will more easily notice a micro-awakening or two, and can do your WBTB. This is because your waking consciousness is very close to being fully activated very late in the sleep cycle (after, say, 6 or 7 hours), so remembering to do your WBTB should be a bit easier. Here's the catch, though, and it's a catch you might like: Since wakefulness is so close, you might have some difficulty getting back to sleep so, yes, try to keep your WBTB short (10 minutes is still a little too short, even here, though -- maybe 20 minutes?), be sure to avoid any bright morning light or other things that might wake you, and kick your significant other out of bed so you can stay focused and find sleep!
Now to the stuff you're not going to want to hear:
I have no qualms with what you're saying about the purpose of WBTB and the need to regain one's lucid mindset, which is biologically programmed to be lost during sleep. My ultimate goal is to have LD's as frequently as possible, so using an Alarm or attempting WILD's immediately after waking (What's known wrongly as FILD) I'm understanding to be suboptimally aligned with this goal. Having said that I did transition one time after an Alarm/"FILD" attempt and I know people close to me I *rather unfortunately and ignorantly* introduced to the methods spread around as FILD & CANWILD, and who've had success with these techniques.
Having an ultimate goal of frequent LD's is an excellent one, but first you must have successful LD transitions occasionally, or even just one! Try not to expect a PhD when you're still in high school. As I may have said earlier, consistent LD'ing is not easy for most of us, and long-term success can take a while... give yourself that while; and by "while" I mean weeks or months of steady work, not just a couple more days.
Yes, thanks to things like the placebo effect and high expectation, an excited dreamer can certainly have success with any technique, no matter how bizarre, the first time; even the first few times. But then the placebo effect wears out, excitement dims, and those happy accidents do indeed peter out. This is normal, and a real problem with learning stuff off the internet, where everyone else seems to be an expert regardless of the speciousness of their claims and promises... which brings me to the cynical bit that I probably shouldn't include here:
At the risk of sounding like an old coot, if I had a dollar for every time I heard a dreamer say something like, "I know people close to me...who have had success with these techniques," I wold be a rich man today! People say a lot of things, even good friends you know in person, and not just the folks who find some sort of power in announcing their prowess in special skills like this (though they do abound). I'm not sure what comes over people -- do they want to impress? do they need to 'belong?" Do they really believe they are having all that success? -- but when I used to call people on their "revolutionary" new techniques, they almost always proved to be just making stuff up, or just copying someone else's work; often someone who was also making stuff up, which is where popular things like FILD come from, I think. And sure, there are a few people out there to whom all this comes easily, but think about that for a second: if they became lucid so easily, regularly, or naturally, why on earth would they even think of needing a new technique, much less invent one? After all, the basic techniques for WILD and DILD are pretty straightforward, and downright easy if you're already inclined toward lucidity.
Try to find folks who know what they are talking about, and try out their stuff. There are very few actual experts (meaning people with experience and talent enough to teach the stuff we know, much less introduce new techniques) in the art of LD'ing, but they can be found. For instance, the actual expert Daniel Love recently posted an excellent video on the problems with FILD; you might want to check it out if you haven't already; also, the tutorials and DVA courses on this site are pretty good, and all of the "official" ones should prove helpful, if you're willing to do the work.
Here are some things to look for in identifying actual experts: they rarely volunteer their own successes, much less brag about their expertise without solicitation (if someone tells you they get lucid all the time with great ease, they probably don't, in both cases); they usually focus on known techniques, like MILD or WBTB, and then introduce their own (often helpful) suggestions or twists that might help you in your practice; they never promise that their technique will make you a lucid master immediately; they generally agree that lucidity isn't about techniques at all, but about mindset; and, by far most importantly, they almost always tell you that, even with their instruction, successful lucidity will require a lot of work and time.
In the spirit of this thread, what the heck is happening to these people who successfully WILD by directing their focus on their finger movements or their breathing, or anything else immediately after being awoken from an alarm? Are these those "happy little accidents" you mentioned above? Their lucid awareness somehow isn't sufficiently turned off? Does their anticipation/excitement override biological programming? For me, I'd sometimes wake up naturally and other times rely on an alarm, would focus on my finger movements, experience vibrations et al, get too excited or try looking at the HI and wake up.
If the people are sincere, and having actual success, they are probably not getting lucid because they chose to wiggle a particular finger; they are becoming lucid because their mindset is in the right place and they are focused on being lucid. In other words, they could wiggle their toe, wiggle their their nose, wiggle any body part, or maybe just stick a finger in their navel or up their nose, and become just as lucid just as easily. It isn't about the finger, it's about the focus they're exercising when they wiggle it. As I think Daniel said in his video, FILD could stand for Focus Induced Lucid Dream and be perfectly valid. That the FILD teachers don't know this is a bit puzzling, BTW, and all the more reason to perhaps look elsewhere for advice.
In these moments I would've sworn and still believe that I did have the 'lucid mindset', but due to my obsessiveness on the HI/Vibrations et al, I failed in my attempts. What you've said suggests to me I should write off the "immediate WILD/CANWILD/FILD" entirely and I haven't had enough/arguably any success that would lead me to oppose doing so. However, my one reservation is that I know some people swear by these "techniques", and I was getting the 'closest' to a LD that I ever have been when I was experiencing Vibrations and HI consistently. However, again I acknowledge the name of the game isn't how often can you experience Vibrations et al or HI, and perhaps these 'immediate WILD attempts' are conducive for consistently experiencing vibrations et al, but maybe not so much for actual WILD's.
Again, some people swear by a lot of things, for whatever reasons they may choose; take those claims and promises with a grain of salt (but keep in mind that they might not be knowingly lying to you, sometimes people just want to believe). And again, "getting" to Vibrations and HI when falling asleep does not necessarily mean you are close to lucidity, it just means that you are close to falling asleep and happen to hear some noise. Pretty much everyone, even people who have never heard of LD'ing, experience a bit of noise or vibrations, sometimes quite often; it just means they took an extra few seconds to drop into sleep. In other words, HI happens to all of us, LD'ing does not.
Beyond that, and maybe a strong suggestion to be wary of random YouTubes and Reddit forums, I guess the bottom line here is that WILD takes time, effort, and practice to master, regardless of the promises or claims you might hear; take that time, do the work, and you might find yourself with a PhD in WILD eventually!
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