OK, lastnight was, indeed, the best attempt so far out of my 7 months of practice. I did everything as usual, but I made one change. I tried to just sleep regular for about 5 minutes. This isn’t a WBTB technique because I never fell asleep… Anyways, back to the topic. I’m laying there staring into the darkness behind my eyes hen all of a sudden I got the vibes. I’ve gotten them before so I knew what to expect, only they came on a lot quicker than normal, about 1/2 the time infact. My “vision” suddenly changed and it felt like I nolonger had my eyes closed, but I still knew that they were. Some kind of face appeared, almost like a bat I believe, but it was very blurry. I tried to focus as hard as I could on the face, but eventually I snapped out of it and was back to normal. In total, this lasted only seconds.
It happened again lastnight… Only this time the darkness changed into a light blue/purple and there was a watch instead of a bat face. I’m rather confused, both instances have been very similar.
These images are pretty normal effects you encounter when doing WILD: they’re hypnagogic images which occur on the onset of sleep. You almost succeeded, because you remained already conscious until the images appeared. During a succesful WILD you float with the images without interacting with them. Just watch them unfold before your eyes. Don’t be scared because they can be pretty unstable and intense at the same time. Mostly though, you’ll soon start notice these images melting together, and extending until they’re all around you. This marks the true entry of the dream, which is far more stable than the hypnagogics. Only from that moment on you can safely interact with the dream.
Yes you were very close. My suggestion would be next time try not to focus on the HI. Be aware of them but don’t get to involved with them. I say this for 2 reasons:
HI is designed to put you unconsciously to sleep. So if you get to caught up in them you could well find yourself going nighty night leaving your conscious self behind.
As you experienced, focusing and thinking about the HI can cause you to snap out of your trance. I used to get that a lot. I would watch the HI but, as soon as I got to involved with them I would get a flash of imagery that would jolt me awake. I learned to keep myself detached from the imagery yet stay aware of them.
Another thing you can try is to visualize a simple object or a symbol. You will see imagery form around the object but ignore them and keep your attention on your visualization. If you do not have good visualization skills then just create a white dot in the center of your forehead. Even if you do not “see” the dot just keep your attention in that area.
