I did SPs before, this its likely not to induce nightmares when it does happens to me, not affraid ! It must be out of a coincidence, I think.
I tried it again, twice. The first time I thought I could get rid of the 5mn awake step but I almost felt asleep failing at doing even 1 cycle
The second time I respected all the steps you mentionned and had 1 FE in which I managed to do an RC and became lucid again (but I lost it )
Woke up in the middle of the night, feeling kind of bumd out cause I did not recal even a hint of a dream. Then decided to try this and went to sleep. Then I woke up again later. again nothing…
However, I tried it again and fell asleep after doing it for so long…
WHOW! I had entered the most vivid dream of my entire life. I was in my hous and after a while water started to pour out of the walls, they even stood on fire. I did a nose check and a hand check but both didn’t work. I just stood there saying:“this must be a dream, but how can it, it’s all too real.” Then I decided that if it was a dream I could fly just as the dream was collapsing, I remeber telling myself: “SSild is Awesome!” I actually didn’t wake up but had at least 3 more dreams before I woke up, but I had to sacefice those to write this one down as good as possible, it was over 3 pages long! So thanks a lot for this teqhinique, will try it again tonight
I’ve been trying this technique very casually for maybe a month now. I hadn’t been having any success, I’ve fallen asleep during cycles, after them, been too awake some nights and tried to shift into a WILD a couple of times after seeing things during the cycles.
I wake up during the night almost every night and so like I sometimes do I decided to give the technique a go. This time I see things during the cycles. I heard voices, vivid images appeared in my head. Normally I’d think “I can WILD here, lets do it.” but this time I decided to just to keep going with the cycles.
I think I made it to the third cycle when I fell asleep. I then found myself in bed and instantly knew I was dreaming, so I sat up and checked my fingers just to be sure and that was it. It wasn’t a WILD since I know I was asleep for some time.
Instead I think it worked for me because by not trying to WILD I didn’t become too excited and I was able to fall asleep. I had the longest LD I can remember thanks to this technique.
Later that same night I had a FA but didn’t realize… so I still have some work to do.
I’m curious to know if many other people actually see things during the cycles. Usually I don’t see anything before I fall asleep (which I understand is perfectly normal) but I don’t seem to have any success when that is that case.
Probably just need more practice
Congratulations! It is common to see things during the cycles. In fact, the cycles are designed to bring you deeper into the “state” very quickly. It works much better than focusing on one sense for extended period of time. You did the correct thing this time – this is the reason I said in the article that we should NOT treat it as a WILD technique! That being said, you can indeed use the technique for WILD once you become more proficient with it. Have fun!
I already sent cosmic.iron a PM on my results, but i thought that perhaps other people might want to know.
I am used to getting SP and this technique is making me more familiar with it, therefore I am less afraid when it happens. The first night I used SILD I got SP twice. The second night I used it I got what cosmic.iron believes was a FA with SP or a hybrid of awakenings. Whichever it was, it led me to have a very awesome lucid dream! I flew successfully for the first time
I was content with the lucid dream, so I didnt try the technique again until a couple of days later. Trying SILD again, I had a FA and also SP. However, this time I didnt convert it to a lucid dream successfully.
Anyways, I just want to say that this technique is awesome and it works great! With more practice, I think it will be even more successful. I just want to add that, since it important to sort off “fall asleep” while doing this technique, it would be good to know what your mind does when your start to fall asleep. Personally, I know I am doing well with the technique when I start losing focus, space out a bit, and go back to doing the technique. When I space out again, it is more vivid than just random thoughts, and I know I’m close to falling asleep and doing a successful SILD!
Thanks Cosmic Iron for sharing this amazing technique. I experienced my first OBE already after two weeks. Never thought it could be so easy.
When I started, the lucid dreams were very short but soon became longer.
Then lots of realistic FA’s and more vivid normal dreams and the frequency of my lucid dreams went up dramatic. Now I am excercises when I lay on my left side (my normal position when I go to sleep again) instead of my back. I find it more easy to fall asleep. Does that make any difference ?
I tried this method this morning and I ended up falling asleep almost immediately as I started! I’m kinda new to this stuff, so I’ll keep trying to be more focused. Any suggestions to make sure I don’t just fall asleep before I can do a few cycles?
Try another position to excercise. I am not used to get asleep laying on my back.
Probably you can do so more cycles. After 4 or 5 cycles turn to the position you normally fall asleep.
but why does it work ,i don’t seem to understand the point of it,anyways,this tech is going to have a place in my program,we shall see
if i may ask,what was your name in DV ?
I tried this last night but I fall asleep after few seconds without any result. I decided to try it again this night. Do you think that if I drink some swings of cofee before I return to bed it will be better?? Or I couldn’t be able to sleep??
Let me give you one theory which I like the most (I’m not saying it is THE theory. After all, we know so little about these things in general, so it is always better to stay curious and modest than pretending we know it all.)
First let me provide a brief overview about the Focus Point model of our consciousness. Our consciousness is a vast and seamless “entity” (for lack of better terms) which covers a wide spectrum of “areas.” These areas include our waking state, dream, everything in between and beyond (higher state of consciousness). Just like how camera lense works, “focusing” on an area makes that area appear clearer, and other areas become blurry. Once it’s completely in focus, it becomes the focal point of our “self-awareness”. In this model, falling asleep and entering dreams is essentially the result of our focus shifting into the dream area. What we typically see as a slow and gradual process (falling asleep) can in fact happen in an instant if you could manage to shift your focus quickly. Whether or not this has any scientific basis I truly do not know. However, through years of practice I can indeed do this shift “manually” and sometimes extremely quickly – shifting from complete waking state (with small degrees of controllable physical movements still present at the time of shift) to other states in mere seconds. One interesting state is the intermediate state between waking and dreaming. In this state, our self-awareness is no longer confined in our physical body, but it has not yet entered the “dreamland” and assumed a “dream body.” Instead, it exists in pure intangible, shapeless state. Under this condition you can proceed to form a dream deliberately, or re-focus to move to a higher state of consciousness. This state is also extremely “fragile” because with but the slightest focus change you will return to the physical. In fact, it is not uncommon to be able to feel and command both the physical and mental at the same time, and that can produce some truly amazing results! Okay let’s not get carried away, LOL. Anyway, because our physical input and output are not fully “shielded” from us at this fragile state, our “attention” can be rather easily distracted. For example, sudden sounds, abrupt change of ambient lights, physical touches, and so on. When they happen we inevitably “pay attention” to them and as a result we change our Focus Point back to the waking state.
As you can see from the above, the way to move our Focus Point around is by “paying attention”. If we pay a lot of attention to the physical then we remain physical. Likewise if we pay more attention to things beyond physical then we are moving the focus point of our self-awareness toward them much closer. That, is the theory behind SSILD.
During the SSILD cycles, the first one is almost entirely loaded with the physical. You stare at the blackness behind your closed eyelids, that is physical. If your room is not completely dark you may even see the outside light, and that’s even more physical. You listen, and your ears are filled with outside noises – fans humming, wind blowing, and all that weird stuff. You try to feel and all you could feel is your bodily sensations – blanket rubbing against your skin, some itches, and that horrible backache, etc and etc. However, as you do more cycles, you may start to notice that these external sensations begin to fade, and some “internal” ones begin to appear. The more you cycle, the more attention you are paying to the internal sensations, and less attention are being paied to the external/physical ones. And that, moves your focus point closer to other areas in your consciousness. Think of this as a gentle massage of the mind. You are loosening the grips of the physical and warming up your mind for the more fun stuff.
Then you fall asleep. There are now more chances for you to become lucid in dreams because you have brought more focus/self-awareness with you. Or you may wake up into a false awakening. I suspect this is due to the fact that we all wake up multiple times at the end of each sleep cycle, and immediately fall asleep again. Since our focus point has shifted away from the physical so much during the exercise, when we briefly wake up we don’t have the necessary physical input so our mind simply makes it up for such occasions and immediately goes to sleep again.
Sometimes we do just wake up for real. However, our link with the physical world is still very loose due to the exercise, and thus we have much better chance to manually shift our focus at this stage. This is very powerful stuff. Once you can utilize this, you will almost be able to achieve 100% success with the technique.
Additional note: I always encourage doing SSILD in totally relaxed, lazy manner, and allow your mind to drift into a trance. The trance allows you to relax very quickly and divert your attention from the externals. People often run into problems with SSILD because they try so hard to bring out the sensations, and all that does is to glue their attentions to the external ones. Traditional meditation/relaxation techniques do not mix in well either, because focusing on relaxing your body is effectively, well, focusing on the physicals.
I hope this explains it rather than causing more confusion, LOL. Again, I must stress that this Focus Point model is just one way to look at this “consciousness” thing, and by no means I’m pitching it as a “fact”. It will be a lot more useful if you simply treat it as a “tool”. And in that case, it works wonderfully.
Ps. My DV forum user ID is “cosmiciron”. I no longer participate there outside the scope of SSILD related discussions.
i read it,and now,it’s time for some questions
1-you said,The more you cycle, the more attention you are paying to the internal sensations, and less attention are being paied to the external/physical ones.
but,as we are cycling,aren’t we paying attention to our external/physical sensations every time we start a new cycle,you did said that we have to at the blackness behind your closed eyelids…etc,we keep doing this in each cycle,right?
or we are supposed to do something else after internal sensations begin to appear?
2-how many cycles i’am supposed to do before going to sleep,and if i don’t notice any internal sensations,should i just keep on going till i do?
3-you said that i should just use it as a “tool”,does that mean that i can have success with it even if i don’t know the Purpose of it.
thanx in advance ,and sorry if i caused any Disturbance.
Questions are welcome, and no, it’s no Disturbance at all, LOL.
You do each cycles in exact same manner, regardless of the sensation. Be it with or without the sensations, you just keep cycling through them. As you do more cycles, you get deeper into the trance (mind drifting back and forth), and you will notice that the external sensations become faded. For example, the humming from that ever-present AC unit no longer bothers you much, if not having completely faded away. Meanwhile, you may begin to notice the noises “in your head”. And as you pay more attention to them they may become more pronounced. This has the effect of shifting your focus away from the physicals. The beauty of SSILD is that you do not have to do this deliberately. The trance works like a gentle wave that carries you away from the physicals. Thus, you need to ease up, and allow the trance to do the trick for you. Even if you absolutely do not feel anything you should continue to cycle, knowing confidently you are slowing detaching yourself from the grip of the physical world.
Typically 4 cycles are all you need. Some people fall asleep in the first couple of cycles and that is no good – you are not done with your “mental massage” yet! Some people find it harder to fall asleep if they do more cycles, but that actually means they are doing the exercise incorrectly – instead of riding with the wave, they are fighting against it! (People with traditional meditation/WILD backgrounds tend to do this.) Once you master the cycles, you can do as many rounds as you wish. You can massage your mind to such point that soon after your stop doing the cycles, you can shift your focus point in an instant and enter the dream world while being fully conscious. This, of course, is for more advanced users, so I won’t recommend it to everyone.
Depend on what your beliefs are, the Focus Point model may contradict with what you believe to be the “truth”. In order to not get into debate of whether or not this model TRULY describes the nature of our consciousness, I decided to call it a “tool”. As long as it makes things easier then why not use it, LOL. For all matters of intent we now know that SSILD works, and this model seems not only explains it but compliments it quite nicely.
So, I continued doing the SSILD technique, and had a few more lucid dreams and FA. However, I am now pretty convinced that when I do SSILD I either get SP or get SP in a FA. Its pretty confusing lol. So far, I have had successful lucid dreams with this technique when I have SP with a FA, but there are sometimes when I have SP with FA but can’t exit my body. The normal techniques I would use to exit SP into a lucid dream/OBE don’t work all the time when in a FA and I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to have a lucid dream with the FA and SP seeing as how its pretty complex. Thanks in advance!
Great post, cosmic.iron! The Focus Point model does make a lot of sense to me, so I’m going with it. I think this explanation might really help me SSILD
A false awakening is just like a lucid dream, so an SP within an FA is essentially an illusion which is no different than being unable to fly or walking through walls. The method I find most effective in this situation is to focus on another place or object. For example, you could focus on the doorway of your room. A few seconds later you will find yourself standing in front of it!
)
Have fun!
,i don’t seem to understand the point of it,anyways,this tech is going to have a place in my program,we shall see 
,and sorry if i caused any Disturbance.