Can't break the "Barrier" in a WILD.

First of all I’m new here, so greetings to everyone and i hope this will become a place i come to frequently.

So about 3 days ago i started trying out WILD, it’s been going rather well. I tried it about 5 times now, none of them were successful , but i didn’t really expect to get there on my first week. Now i think that each time i get pretty close since i stop being able to move (although i can if i really try hard). My body seems to be well asleep , but my mind is totally awake. I see colors with my eyes closed and parts of my body start twitching about 15-20 minutes in. But when i hit that point i just stay there, i just cant seem to get any further, i feel really relaxed and everything , but i just cant “drift away”. Any “pro tips” you can give me, i been trough a lot of guides but i seem to be stuck. Oh, and one more thing, I have been trying this during naps mostly , is is critical that i have to wake up during my sleep hours to go lucid?

Thanks in advance!

Welcome.I hope-actually, I know- you will like this place.It’s friendly and welcoming.

WILD generally works best in the morning for most people.
So, after several hours of sleeping (4-5).

Also, you have to be relaxed to succeed in WILD.Not too much, but enough.
'Cause if you are too relaxed, you’ll fall asleep.

And if you are not relaxed at all…well, you won’t fall asleep.
WILD is the most discussed method here.
I wish you luck :wink:

hi Om, welcome to these forums. :happy:

I’ll give you my honest, personal opinion, that comes from my EXPERIENCE.

I feel that it, WILD, is generally a way more fluid & dynamic thing then most resources make you believe.

I remember when I first learned about WILDing, I too thought that there are a few very concrete steps that you go through. Like the vibrations, sleep paralysis, hypnagogic state, and those kind of things. When I started meditating, and generally practicing consciously entering altered states of consciousness, I’ve quickly realized that the borders between everything are much thinner then you would think. Generally, every person experiences it differently. I started having a lot of crazy experiences, but usually I couldn’t quite categorize them into one of the common definitions, since it’s just not that simple.

I think the biggest problem with the usual approach that’s being taught is that there is too much focus on what you need to do with your body and how you need to disconnect from it etc…

But usually, when people think about not moving their body, they immediately begin to twitch. And even tiny twitches keep your body focused.

It’s all about focusing into somewhere. It’s about traveling. It’s about going somewhere without your body.

If you think hard, you can probably kinda remember , have an idea, of that short period of time, sometimes half a second or so before you drift off to sleep in which you see, and hear things. The point where your thoughts become real, where you can really listen to them and see them… You following me ?

Practice just lying down as if you are going to sleep, and get a general feel of what it’s like to stay awake with your mind while keeping your body completely still. Now again, the way to do this is not to force your body to be still. This, in effect, causes your body to be active and it becomes almost consciously impossible to make relax. Don’t take my word for it, try it.

Just focusing on being in a field, or whatever it is you want, without giving any attention to your physical body. (and of course keeping it still) will just cause you to naturally start drifting away towards non physical worlds.

Now, what happens here is personal and depends on many factors, many of which are physical, like your body temperature , blood, amounts of oxygen, and what not… Sleep paralysis, vibrations and all those and other effects are very common , but it doesn’t make any difference what you experience and it does NOT by any means, indicate how ‘on track’ you are.

If you’ve ever seen an organ that you can just like switch to make it play a different sound. It’s the same thing. It’s like switching modes in your mind. Yet doing it consciously. And it is a very natural process that we are all capable of doing . Lie down, relax, stay still, and start focusing AWAY. Once in a while, you’ll probably remember your body and feel it etc… Eventually, if you just do it gracefully and wholly, things will start to happen, you’ll start getting a feeling of being on your bed, yet bodyless. etc… Again, it’s really personal. And there are so many different ‘states’ to experience.

Generally, a few physical tips to keep in mind are:

  1. Keep your whole body still. Including your eyes!! Very important. If you’re twitching any part of your body, it makes it a lot harder to leave. Not impossible, you can WILD while actually talking or moving your body in other ways. But generally, if you keep your body perfectly still, it makes it almost inevitable to somehow liftoff into another dimension.

  2. Try it at different times of the day. A popular opinion is that morning, 30-60 minutes after waking is an ideal time. From my experience, it is quite a good time to do it usually. naps are also great. As time comes along and you become better at it, you’ll start developing a natural understand of when and how good of a time is any given time. It’s, again, quite a complex thing and it all changes dramatically depending on the foods you eat, drink, amount of exercise, etc…

  3. Experiment, have fun with it, and don’t be anxious for something specific. Actually, the more open minded (the less expectations you hold) the better. You might not like hearing this, but learning these things is NOT like learning to play basketball. It’s more like teaching your ear to listen to music and developing musical hearing. You work with your perceptions and with other delicate aspects of your mind. However, keep in mind, and remind yourself, repetitively if needed, that it is 100% possible and that you will learn it if you want to. You WILL. Now that I think of it, it really is a lot like ear training, because the more you try to force it and try to make things happen, the slower the process becomes. The best thing to do is just to listen to tones easily, in a relaxed way, and slowly open up your ear. Then, amazingly, like magic, you start to hear better, you start to become better. Your ear gets cultured. It’s the same thing. It’s delicate, personal, and complex. Yet again, as all things, it becomes very simple when you understand it , physically, emotionally, logically, etc…

  4. When you lie down, start by taking very deep breaths and exhaling slowly. Think happy thoughts. Relax. Calm your mind. Ease your body. A very very helpful thing to do is to STRESS all your muscles, however you feel like, and release the tension. This really helps your body become relaxed quickly and deeply.

  5. Meditate.

As a general rule, almost always, the #1 thing that’s keeping people from doing it is Physical Relaxation. Practicing things like tensing your muscles and releasing will make you not only relaxed, but your body will begin to learn how to just relax deeply very easily without tensing your muscles. I think you’ll probably find as time goes along, that there are many ‘levels’ of relaxation. Like when you’re in a room and there are no noises and it’s ‘quiet’ but if you’ll put on earplugs , you’ll suddenly hear a whole different level of silence. It’s the same thing. You can feel relaxed, and as if you are not moving, just like you can hear the silence in a room, but there is always something deeper. A stronger silence, a deeper relaxation.

When you’re physically relaxed, I mean REALLY relaxed. Like your body is when you wake up, although it is stirred out of this condition usually within a few seconds, it is almost inevitable to start cruising.

Hope this helps,

any feedback from your experience will help me and others understand your experiences better and help you.

Ariel

Ah, it’s so nice to have you back, Ariel. :colgate:

Also welcome Om (another nickname I wonder how it wasn’t taken in 4 years’ time :tongue:), hope you’ll find this community friendly and helpful. :smile:

I have a very similar problem… I have only come close a couple of times, and I have tried literally hundreds of times over many years. These tips are good, I will keep on trying.

thanks… I’m flattered :content:

One thing I forgot to mention.

Brainwave entrainment does WONDERS (well, duhh!)

Mind-sync offer very decent tracks, specifically for many goals. If by any chance, you decide to get some of their stuff, I recommend the instant meditation (8hz), astral projection (7hz +12 hz I think) , there’s one called Lucid Dreaming (7.6hz & 9hz), and the OOBE one is also great, it’s like the astral projection but it also includes 4hz. This specific one is statistically very useful. Almost every person I know that have tried it for a basic 2-3 times have experienced some immediate and obvious shift in consciousness.

I’m actually in the process of creating my own tracks. I already purchased the software, license and everything, I just need to get windows (and for some reason, I seem to be avoiding this) to run on my mac and I’ll be able to create my own (and have the legal right to share them). so, that’s just that!

Really, use brainwave entrainment. Regardless of WILDing, it is going to change your life.

Welcome Om :wave:

and great post relV. You actually said many things I’m starting to realize myself about WILD, as I’ve been practcing a lot lately and getting results.

The main thing I’ve learned in the past few nights is the real importance of meditation. I mean, I’d read it and tried it, but now that I’m meditating systematicly 15-20 minutes before bed and sometimes while trying to WILD, holy crap! I really understand it now. A silent focussed mind while trying to WILD makes all the difference. So, Om, if you don’t meditate I strongly recommend you give it a try :content: and good luck!

Wow, it took some time to carefully read the answers. Thanks for being helpful!
reIV , i read your (great) post and it inspired me to try even harder. Because the very fact that you, and all the other people took the time and effort to answer my post and help me means that the experience is definitely worth the effort. I’m not in this only for lucid dreams, the very concept of controlling your subconscious mind fascinates me.

Also, the moment when you go to sleep that you were speaking of, i think i know what you’re talking about, i kinda remember in the back of my head that i get lost in some fantasy or thought. So I guess that’s what I’m aiming for , right?

I want to start meditation, but i don’t really know where to start, is there any special technique that i have to use?

I’m gonna try again tonight, I started writing a DJ a few days ago (I bought an awesome looking notebook to write it in also) and I’m eager to make more entries in it. Also, I’m downloading a mind-sync demo as I’m writing this. I’ll post results tomorrow morning.

P.S. (Yeah i was also surprised this nickname wasn’t taken :razz:)

This is a problem I also have faced many times over and over. Just a little bit about myself real quick, I have been lurking here since early in the year, but haven’t found the “courage” to post much yet. (I noticed after I make a post, the thread becomes inactive…)

Anyways besides that, I have been working with many different techniques since early in January this year. Such as WILD, DEILD, WBTB, RC, MILD. I more or less try to do different things every night, but I am most interested in WILD.

This is the problem I have faced which was discussed in this thread, also many thanks to reIV for that very helpful post. I have read countless threads just like it on what to do, but it seems no matter what I try, I just cannot break the spell of inactivity per se. Where my body would be completely in paralysis after about half an hour or more of simply waiting. It takes extraordinary amounts of time for me to even fall asleep. But once I feel that I am completely under SP, nothing seems to happen. My eyes are closed and I see barely green arrays of color, but that is it. And it is quite uncomfortable. It lasts forever and eventually I just feel like it is really going no where and I have no choice but to stop. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, it happens like this all the time.

aw, that sucks :sad: but I garantee you it’s a coincindece! nothing to fear here, we all just want to help each other out :content: What I think you could try is focussing on the green things you see. I bet in SP they evolve quickly. Usually when I see HI (from simple colors to complex scenes) I notced that if i focus on it it evolves into a dream. If I don’t focus on them they tend to fade away. So perhaps instead of just lying there waiting you could try to just perceive anything your mind is creating and see where that gets you.

Another thing I’ve had success with while in SP is imagining my body is rotatingon a horizontal plane, so my head ends up by my feet. This way my physical body and dream body become easier to separate. In SP it’s usually best to forget your body in bed. One more idea is simply imagining you’re in another room in your house, rubbing textures, and breathing in the air. Your consciousness can pass unnoticed to this imaginary you quicker than you can imagine! :smile:

and Om, I’m also kinda new to meditation. I really started to see the results in my LD’s a few nights ago when I decided I’d meditate daily (or nightly, lol) You can simply try to sit still with your eyes closed and try to clear your mind, focus on your breathing. Try to shut off any thoughts. When they appear (because they will! it’s part of it, don’t worry) and you notice you’re not focussing on your breathing anymore simply shift your focus back. Just give it a try and see what you get :wink:

Hey, I almost made it this morning I’m sure!
I had some trouble sleeping and i woke up after every dream to record it (self-suggestion works like a charm) but i maybe slept about 3 hours before i woke up later than i had planned. I went for the WILD anyway, I was very sleepy and it was hard to stay in control, but at one moment i realized that it seemed like my head is on the other side of the bed, and i tried to make my hands into fists , my “spirit hands” clenched into fists and i knew i was almost there. I managed to stay relaxed and in what seemed like a few minutes i started shaking all around a bit, it seemed like i was spinning 100 miles/hour all round this single point in my body, it was awesome! Suddenly my family started waking up and this feeling started slipping away, bummer…

On the plus side, i did manage to remember 3 dreams tonight! I’m gonna try and meditate today before i go to sleep.

To fix this problem, I suggest you prepare some nice ear-plugs before going to bed. Once you wake in the morning; use the loo, plug-in and THEN you should be ready to WILD :content:

oh, and don’t deny The Yawning :eek: It stresses your jaw muscles so they relax easier :wink: then you won’t have to wait long for your face to “melt” :grin:

Exactly what I had in mind as well. And believe me, I have tried this, but a lot of times as I focus on the colors, I never seem to get in the “zone” or as in if I focus a bit much on them. Then usually I can no longer relax through transition and my eyes seem to hurt, they never seem to develop into anything besides black and randomness. Now, on the other hand, if I simply go with the flow and pretty much ignore them, I lose track of what is going on, similar to losing consciousness or falling asleep. I never get a feeling of euphoria or an obvious difference between reality and the dream state either.

I will say that I have had a number of small lucid dreams but they were nothing to compare to the vividness of waking life, in a way, they were definitely cool, but yet still very groggy and fuzzy. It could be the amount of rational mind and awareness that is currently there, but I still don’t feel like I am engaging in the dream like how I go about my days in waking life.

Sverak, it’s just a matter of practice to get more vivid and rational LD’s. most of mine are fuzzy too, but after two years of practicing I can see them slowly getting better (not saying it will take two years for you! everyone is different :wink: )

Watching HI is tricky for me too, it’s only easy when I happen to doze off a bit and wake up in vivid HI. But when it’s simple colors I find it a lot harder. The trick is to watch passively. Try to keep your eyes still, as if you were looking through the colors/images but still paying attention. If they start fading, let them fade and watch what’s left for any new HI starting to form. Forcing an image to stay or become clear usually is counter productive.

The more you practice the more you get used to HI and SP and every other weird feeling present in the transition between awake and dreaming. I’m only REALLY practicing WILD now, I’ve tried many times in the past. I’ve noticed that not getting any perceivable results doesn’t mean you’re not making progress. I believe with each WILD attempt, even failed ones, you learn a bit, consciously and subconsciously!

And Om, congrats on your progress! :smile: I also recommend earplugs, they can make a huge difference. Keep it up!

'Also, the moment when you go to sleep that you were speaking of, i think i know what you’re talking about, i kinda remember in the back of my head that i get lost in some fantasy or thought. So I guess that’s what I’m aiming for , right? ’

That’s the closest thing to a hypnagogic state that I could think of… It is essentially a hypnagogic state. Essentially, I define a hypnagogic state as a state where you’re not ‘in any body’ (dream, physical , whatever). Where you’re just kinda floating in mind space, and your thoughts are immediately converted into visuals, sounds, etc… often times also TOUCH. which is an aspect that rarely anyone talks about. Obviously, people are usually somewhere between waking and hypnagogia.

'What I think you could try is focussing on the green things you see. I bet in SP they evolve quickly. Usually when I see HI (from simple colors to complex scenes) I notced that if i focus on it it evolves into a dream. If I don’t focus on them they tend to fade away. So perhaps instead of just lying there waiting you could try to just perceive anything your mind is creating and see where that gets you. ’

I think this is good advice.

It’s important to focus on what you want to do.

You can go hang around your house, just play in a dream field, or do pretty much anything you can imagine, and a lot more, it’s all basically viewing information. You have to choose what to view, place the intent, and focus on it.

People are being led to believe that they need to close their eyes, count sheeps, and wait for all the symptoms to come, one after the other, until it evolves into a dream.
Sorry, it’s just not this linear simple thing…

Experiment with it and have fun!

2 things I recommend you do are meditation, like mattias said, just focusing on your breath will do. and practicing deep physical relaxation. Tense a muscle group, really strongly, hold the tension for like 4-5 seconds and let go. Then do it again, slowly, relax your whole body this way. If you do this every day, your body will get very accustomed to relaxing easily.

Really, 95% , the reason you’re not entering a dream, is because your physical body is not relaxed enough.

hope this helps

Well,tonight I doubt I’ll have a chance to WILD, but i managed to meditate for about 30 minutes just before i started writing this, it helped to eliminate some of the thoughts that have been worrying me throughout the day. Before i go to bed i will do the muscle tensing exorcise. It’s snowy outside , tomorrow i need to study, I’ll just focus and getting a good nights sleep (which wont be hard) and maybe remembering a few dreams.

your doing better than me, the closest ive got was seeing white come up over the blackness, and maybe some semi-vivid visuals and sounds.

I almost made it last night, in my dream i was on a train, and every time i took the train ticket and looked at it I suddenly felt myself in SP and started gaining conciusness but only for a split second and then i started fading into the dream again. Nonetheless its a step forward.

I’ll definitely remember that advice. Thanks guys, I was a little busy yesterday and not feeling too well by the night, so I didn’t get a chance to read up on what you guys had to say, but it is all very helpful.

I am going to try and view the colors in a semi passive/ focused way where I won’t fall asleep from inactivity, but not concentrate too intently. I have found myself in the latter most of the time. It could be impatience or anxiousness, or both. A lot of it has to do with the uncomfortable feeling of SP, the need to swallow, twitch my eyes. Some of that seems to ruin any chance of relaxing completely.