Somewhere between thinking, imagining, and dreaming..

Hello everyone :smile: I really hope I’m in the right subforum lol but let’s get right into it.

I’ve been taking lucid dreaming seriously for about a week now and I’ve been diving deeply into different inducing methods, stabilization tricks, WILD methods etc.
Upon completing Field Guide To Lucid Dreaming, I decided that a DJ, RC’s, and WBTB+WILD would be my poison.

At first what I did was set an alarm for 5 hours from which I laid down. When I woke up I attempt recall, then chill and just read forums about WILDs and other LD jazz. I would stay up for 20-25 minutes as the book suggested, then lie back down.
It was then that I would repeat my affirmations, and remain perfectly still.

Once in darkness, I begin to calm myself and focus on the black. I feel my body tingle and then slowly relax. I begin to see hynagogic images so now I know the ride is beginning.
In the first 3-4 days I tried to “see past” the images and colors and “let the dream reveal itself” I would start to see very very small “peepholes” into some wonderous place, but couldn’t breakthrough and would remain stuck in the swirling and darkness of the images.

More recently, I’ve been doing the same things but with a little twist.
For starters I looked into Kelly Howell lucid dreaming ocean sounds+theta waves+subliminal messages. 1 audio tracks is for waking life, the other is to help you get to the SP + Hynagogic stage faster.
So I combined this with WBTB.
At first I tried WBTB and THEN listening to the audio as I went back to sleep. No go. Once the ocean sounds went off, I felt myself still in my room.
So then I changed it to listening to the audio during my WBTB session. This helped a ton keeping me relaxed for the duration. I attempted to dream incubate this time around.

It’s here that I would like to note that I haven’t experienced true “sleep paralysis”. I feel my body becoming increasingly heavy, but I have not even for a second felt like I “couldn’t” move, instead I just had the willpower not to.

From my understanding, for an effective dream incubation you must go to a place that you can basically walk through with your eyes closed. I also understand that emotions play an extremely important part as well.
Soooo… I went with my ex girlfriend’s house. I figure this would be the perfect place, with some serious emotions behind it.

I gave myself a virtual tour but it always felt “hazy and distant” as I walked through the house. Once I got to her room door I paused, and went in. I felt myself (my real body) become immensely excited. I felt my body tense and my heart beat going crazy.
It’s then I decide that I’m TOO awake, and drop everything. I go back to hynagogic mode. I figure “I’m not sleep enough, my mind is thinking of it instead of dreaming of it” so I wait until my arms feel like they’re in a cast and try again.
This time a little different… I added her.
Everything played out the same but when I opened her room door, she was there and rushed towards me. As I hugged her I felt my real body’s arms tense. When we kissed my lips moved and I even smiled. I felt my surroundings becoming more real so I spun around. This made my sleeping body twitch but it made the scenario more vivid. I thought for sure I was going to break through, but nope.
So I tried putting my finger through my hand, failed, it was solid. I tried breathing while plugging my nose, failed, I almost ‘woke’ myself from gasping for air.

So I got creative “what if I ‘laid on her bed’ like how I’m laying on my bed? What if that provides a gateway?”
So I did. I closed my eyes and I laid there and laid there but I never felt or saw anything.
I eventually called it a night and opened my real eyes. Turns out that 2 hours has passed since my WBTB.

I decided not to keep it in my dream journal cause I felt like I never really “dreamed”. This has been the case with my last 2 WBTB/WILD.
Lucid dreams have been described to be extremely vivid and beautiful but these were grey and felt like it stayed in the background to the blackness and hallucinations.
I later went back and put it in my DJ because I figure that documenting my failed attempts/incubation scenes would be useful information in some way.

So what do you guys think? Am I headed somewhere? Am I getting close? Is feeling my sleeping body tense and smile normal with WILD? How do I focus on the incubation when my body sensations are keeping me grounded? Though it wasn’t extremely vivid, did I still lucid dream or was I just in deep imagination? Should I even be attempting WBTB/WILD methods this early on?

A little more info:
I attempted WILD just now during a nap and I noticed that the smallest sounds in my house throws me off (I think)
I feel discouraged when I hear my roommates door close because that means I’m still “here”. Is this normal? Is it impossible to tune out the “real world” when attempting WILD? Are earplugs the next step?

I tried telling myself “no, he’s still sleep, that’s my mind playing tricks to see if I’m sleep” but once his phone rang there was no faking that lol

Also, I want to have a consistent sleep schedule so I think 1030-1130 would be a good sleep time, making 230-330 my WBTB time, and anywhere from 5-7 my wake up time. I don’t work so the wake up time is flexible but I’ve noticed that usually if I wake up after 630 or so I’m up for the day.

Seems to me you’re on the right track. I’m certainly no expert, but I could offer a couple of suggestions if you don’t mind. First of all, you should drop the idea of sleep paralysis altogether. 98-99% of the time you won’t be aware of it, as it is a rare ocurrence. In addition, it isn’t necessary for the induction of lucidity.

Now that that’s out of the way:

To me, you’re close to getting it, and yet, the way I see it, you’re right in between the waking state and the actual dream. Remember it’s not about tuning out of the world as you put it when attempting any of these methods. You must be actually dreaming for it to be called a lucid dream. And for you to be dreaming you have to actually fall asleep. So, you see, the ability to relax when practicing WILD is of utmost importance. Focusing on your sleeping body sensations and the “waking world” might be working against you and keeping you from falling asleep. Maybe you could try focusing a little bit more on that visual imagery you had going on?

About that last question, I can’t say for sure. I believe it depends on each person, as any method works differently for everyone. That being said, WILD is a pretty tough technique if you think about it, one rating higher in difiiculty when compared to other techniques that lie with the DILD method. Then again, I can see the popularity newcomers have with WILD, as it basically gives you a surefire way to attain lucidity without depending on the dream itself. Nonetheless, I’ve seen dreamers who have become exceptionally talented, with lots of lucid dreams on their back, and rarely using the WILD method. People who become so proffcient with using DILD, most of them by cultivating self-awareness.

Many others devise their personal methods of induction, so in the end, it’s all a matter of creativity and finding out what works for you. If you see yourself making progress with WILD, then by all means continue with it.

WBTB is a whole other thing. It’s very much recommended to anyone, whether it be newcomers or experienced lucid dreamers, so there’s really nothing wrong with that. As I see it, it isn’t even a technique itself. You’re basically taking advantage of your sleep cycle in order to increase your chances of remembering dreams and becoming lucid in them. All this is done by waking up and giving yourself a nice boost in awareness so that it becomes easier when you return to sleep instead of, you know, going to sleep for the first time, when your REM cycles are far in the sleeping process.

Anyway, these are just my two cents. Hope I could be of aid.