Good morning, hope you had very lucid dreams this night
I have 2 questions about the SSILD-technique; First one: I tried it one time in a combination with WBTB. But as I layed down I was very tired and the consequence were random thoughts. Not the normal ones, my brain felt like a street in NY on Rush hour. The Problem was that I wasn´t able to concentrate on the cycles longer for a few seconds. So I felt in a Normal Sleep. Has anyone hints for that situation? Or is my theory right, that I should´ve waked up myself a bit more before.
Second: This morning I was waked very early and felt tired (8.00 AM on Saturday ) so I thought why not SSILD. I waked me up a bit, layd down and did 5 very quick cycles. In the slow cycles I thought “Hm on HILD you had this change from tired to wake in a moment and then you was in a dream, maybe it´s the same with SSILD” (The thought was a bit shorter in Real). In the 3rd slow cycle I felt, that my arms had something like a warm aura around and so I thought “Cool LD´s near ”. Then a bit later I had this sudden change from tired to awake. (it needed 2 seconds for that, on HILD it was under 1 sec.) I opened my eyes and stopped the cycles because I thought I was dreaming but every RC showed that its reality. Did my own expectations changed my feeling into awake? But it were just one thought. Or did I just stopped to early with the cycles?
I was experimenting with SSILD in the past and it’s a very interesting technique. In my believe your first assumption is correct. If you feel you are to sleepy then you most probably are and you should wake your self up just a little bit more.
Once you start to experience HH’s like aurora around your hands each and every thought might become reality. What I wanna say is that if you thought let’s say about dragons in HH state you might experience something similar or something that is connected to dragons - caves, fire, birds or even the dragon itself. So if thought of wakefulness crossed your mind in this state then it’s no wonder that you experienced it. As you can see mind is a very powerful over body. Try and use that in your advantage.
I always preferred observing thoughts in this state rather then interacting with them. It might seem difficult not to think about something directly but mindfulness meditation might teach you how to do it. The secret is to acknowledge the thought and let it go away just like observing it and not giving it to much attention because then thought will become reality which you will experience at the end… The advantage that I was talking about is exactly that. If you wanna focus on thought and expecting it to became reality incubate the thought of becoming lucid. You were lucid before and you know the feeling, in this transitional state think about that feeling.
Well all this might or might not work for you, one thing is for sure, you need to experiment with it, see if it works or not but give it a try…
I also experience the first problem,I just couldn’t stop thinking anything randomly,so I think when we are in this situation,we’d better give up first …
It was quite an annoying moment,really made me angry of that…
Yeah its some feeling like useless time where you also could´ve slept
Think I´ll try the thought observing like db_FTS said or later thinking about lucidity. Sounds like much experimentation, yeah . What about in the first time with thinking about what I see or hear like “Aha black nothing, really deep, etc.” Just to hold or focus the concentration if my thoughts want to wander away? Good idea or disturbing the relaxation?
The first one is not a problem at all, or at least, it’s a good problem to have. When random thoughts pop up uncontrollably it’s a good sign you are getting very close to sleep. At which point you should simply let go and fall asleep as quickly as possible. You shouldn’t try to control your thoughts as that will cause you to become tense and may not be able to fall into sleep. The beauty of SSILD, compared to other methods, is the “lazy” approach – no need to concentrate and no need to stay still. The only problem you may have with this is that you may not have warmed up sufficiently for SSILD to work if you fall asleep too quickly. To counter this problem I suggest you either stay awake a bit longer before returning to bed, or get more sleep prior to performing the exercise. Both options are better than trying to force it during the exercise.
As for the second problem… sometimes we walk a very fine line between sleep and awakened states. This is especially true with the subsequent awakenings resulted from SSILD. Many of these awakenings are FAs, but some may turn out to be an intermediate state which can be easily transformed to either sleep or waking state in an almost seamless fashion. Once you learn how to utilize this state you are guaranteed to achieve near 100% success rate with SSILD.
) so I thought why not SSILD. I waked me up a bit, layd down and did 5 very quick cycles. In the slow cycles I thought “Hm on HILD you had this change from tired to wake in a moment and then you was in a dream, maybe it´s the same with SSILD” (The thought was a bit shorter in Real). In the 3rd slow cycle I felt, that my arms had something like a warm aura around and so I thought “Cool LD´s near 
. What about in the first time with thinking about what I see or hear like “Aha black nothing, really deep, etc.” Just to hold or focus the concentration if my thoughts want to wander away? Good idea or disturbing the relaxation?