5 months ago I had my first lucid dream by accident, and after it was over I was exhilarated yet had no idea what had just happened. So I went online and researched. I found dozens of articles about lucid dreaming, and came to a conclusion on what went down that night, using some terminology I had picked up along the way.
I got up in the middle of the night for some reason and rolled over to look at my clock, which read 3:30 AM. Exhausted, I rolled back and went right back to sleep, but something weird happened. I started hearing Space Invaders arcade noises going off in my head, and I felt like I was falling. A few minutes of this and opened my eyes again, not realizing that I was really in a WILD False Awakening by accident! I rolled over and looked at my clock, and the electronic display was completely jumbled with nonsense. Not knowing what I was doing at the time, I somehow managed to realize I was dreaming, with the clock being a reality check. I controlled everything from then on. I was awakened again, and this time when I rolled over the digital display was normal again, reading 4:17 AM. For 5 months, I thought nothing else of the experience.
For the past few days, however, I’ve been trying to successfully pull off another lucid dream, with no luck. I did 2-3 WILD attempts without prior sleep, both wasting 90 minutes of my time, and just leading me to go to sleep with regular dreams (both curiously very obscure). Last night I went to bed and got up 5 hours later, went to the restroom, and went back to bed to try one last time. I would lie on my back for 25-30 minutes, and be completely numb with a light, floating, tingly feeling. I would hear voices in my head, and see vivid imagery, but EVERY TIME I was close to paralysis, it all just stopped. Then I rolled over and tried again for 25-30 minutes. Same thing happened. Then I just said “Forget it” and went to sleep normally. When I got up this morning I tried again and again, with the same results, quitting at 10:45 AM. All I ended up doing was wasting my time. I’m a sophomore in high school, and I had today off, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try to achieve lucidity, but it couldn’t. What am I doing wrong?
Well, I’m not much of a WILD expert. But, you might be trying to ‘step’ into the dream too quickly/early. Also, don’t get frustrated. The more frustrated you get, the harder it will be. Try to relax as much as you can. Push misleading thoughts out of your head and don’t think too hard.
Well to be successful with WILD you need to find the fine line between being consciously awake and your body need to be asleep enough so you can actually fall asleep.
You obviously had this with your first attempt which was by accident(which doesn’t matter). You woke up, cheeked the clock and went back to sleep. Then you start to experience HH which helped to stay consciously awake and this helped you to not normally fall asleep but actually watching the dream to form…
The “gap” you had which you described as:
is how we actually experience transition from waking state into the dream state. You may feel falling, rolling over, floating and such experiences and then you have blackness and then the dream. The blackness period is which you actually fall asleep and enter the REM cycle therefore dream.
BUT what actually helped you to be successful? I believe that you were successful because you did wake up for some reason. You were somewhat alert(if you weren’t you wouldn’t wake up in the first place), or maybe your REM cycle was over. Even though I think it’s more the first situation because your transition from waking to falling asleep again was very short which means you did wake up in the REM cycle. If you wake up after REM cycle them you would need some time to fall asleep.
About your last attempts: you need to find this fine line again. The main reason why WILD can be hard is because we don’t know when our next REM cycle will be exactly and we need it to dream… So if we would know that our next REM cycle will be lets say 3 am the you would wake up 2:45 am and be awake for 15 minutes to awake your mind and not your body(so you can fall asleep) then things would be very easy.
So you need to experiment and see when you are waking up. Tell yourself that you will wake up after every dream. And then try WILD.
