I guess this is WILDing, but I never quite get there. Any thoughts?
When I tell myself that it's time to go to sleep, I lie down in bed and get comfortable. I breathe, I relax, I tell myself in my mind that it's time to go to sleep, and I close my eyes. Within a minute or two, the blackness behind my eyelids becomes alive; not vividly, but very faint static, like tiny distant stars in a dark night sky. As I relax more, I feel my body begin to fall asleep. Within fifteen minutes, I see washes of light grays, sometimes faint colors, oozing across my field of view. I tell myself not to focus on them, and instead just observe. If I'm too focused, my eyes will dart to follow the washes of color, even though I know that they're hypnagogic images created by my mind. If I'm not focused, I'll dip in and out of consciousness, eventually falling out completely. What I need to be doing is clearing my mind, observing without looking. This is when my body tests me to see if it's safe to fall asleep, and I either fail the test and roll over, restarting the process, or I concentrate too hard on telling myself to stay still, causing me to lose focus.
If I'm successful in letting my body fall asleep, the washes of color begin to form vague shapes. Usually, my analytical side tries to focus on the shapes and figure out what they are, which heightens my awareness, pulling me out of the trance and making them disappear. Deeper into the trance, my mind's eye will flash with brief scenery. I tend to get excited when I get this deep, and it pulls me out. I frustrate myself trying to pull the scenery back, rather than just letting it come to me. Eventually, the scenery comes at me very rapidly, quickly changing. This is when my subconscious mind is pulling concepts from my memory and storing them in short-term memory. This is a good gnostic trance.
From here, I know that I'm beginning to dream. Generally my subconscious tricks me into falling into line, my consciousness slips away while my mind is directed to play whatever script is pushed at it. If I'm still conscious, I end up losing focus by noticing my breathing, getting frustrated that I can't let go of my body, and slipping back into waking consciousness. There is a fine line between awareness and consciousness, and I've been making it too difficult to balance. As I lose awareness, I fight to bring it back, I try too hard to compel my mind into relaxing. I fight to pull myself into my dreams, or I try and conjure up dreams of my own and fail. I know this is because I'm not there yet, at this point I'm still in a trance, and not dreaming.
The next step is letting go of my physical body. I need to maintain awareness of what's happening, without trying to force it. If I allow this stream of concepts to continue further, I will shift awareness and consciousness. I will drop out of reality and into a dream. I can't force myself into a concept, which is what I've been trying to do. The concepts need to flow to open up the subconscious connection into my dreams, and it's when they stop flowing that I'm ready. I will either be fully immersed in a dream, or completely removed from reality into the "construct." It is there where I need to enter the dream. It is there where I can conjure up my own imagination.