Hello all. I have passively been on this forum for a month or so now, but being at school have had not time to write anything. But it is now half term so I will make my first contribution.
Now the question, Which method to choose, has been asked countless times before. But please hear me out, because it is a little more complex than that. I have been consistently combining the MILD and WILD methods for a while now, MILD-ing at bed time and WILD-ing when I wake up in the night.
I have had one or two full lucid dreams recently, but they felt sort of spontaneous. What I am really interested is the brief spate of ‘failed’ or very short lucids over the last few days. The first of these was when I was trying to WILD. Everything was pitch black, and I started hearing whispers. They were stereotypically sinister whispers. I could hear them perfectly and I recall one of them quoting some Latin (can’t remember precisely) then saying:
‘Taken from the letter of Theodoric the Goth to Emperor Anastasius.’ This made it seem a little less scary, seeing as they weren’t doing devilish incantations or anything, but nevertheless I decided to get up. Now once I got up the voices continued, and I was in a much larger room than my bedroom. It was also pitch black but I knew what was around me, so I was clearly dreaming. What I would like to know is whether this dream about WILDing was actually the tail end of a real WILD, with hypnagogic whispers turning into dream ones, or whether this was actually a ‘spontaneous’ dream that came later into the sleep period.
The second instance that I can remember was when I became briefly lucid while going up a flight of stairs. I had been reading about how to prolong and increase the clarity of LDs, so I concentrated on noticing all my senses. Everything then became incredibly real, but at the same time the stairs morphed into a bed. I was in a bed, and I could see a large pillow looming softly just inches from my eyes. So I thought I had woken up, and tried to WILD back into the dream I had just come from. On reflection, though, it must have been a dream because a) the pillow was the wrong colour and b) everything was more lucid and clear, and my senses more acute, than if I had actually woken up all fuzzy at goodness knows what time of the morning.
Thirdly, I dreamt about King Lear teaching me dream control (bet Shakespeare never saw that coming.) Apparently, saying ‘Blow winds, and crack your cheeks’ can summon up enormous storms, even inside buildings. Fact.
Lastly, I dreamt once (ND) that I was part of a sort of ‘special forces’ group, non-military, that deployed itself to various sub-dreams through WILD-ing in special bunk beds. This dream linked to various other dreams (all non-lucid) , but surprisingly, I thought, in between them I kept returning to this common platform.
So the essence of my question is really, are these dreams the result of my subconscious picking up my MILD suggestions at the beginning of the night, or are they the result of my mind thinking about the WILD attempt in the middle? And subsequently, on which technique should I focus?
Sorry for this quite long and rambling introduction, which is as much a ‘hello’ as a question, but once again, greetings to everyone else on these forums.
No posts yet. 
Anyway, if you just starting out I generally make this recommendation. If your a light sleeper who falls asleep rapidly WILD is often better because you can more quickly fall into a dream. MILD tends to be better for those that don’t fall asleep as quickly because it actually gives you a greater amount of time to focus on and ingrain your mantra and intent.
Other info is relevant though. For instance if your a very visual and patient person WILD can be the better choice because your typically a little more predisposed to get good hypnagogic imagery going and better able to let the dream envelop you when it is time to enter it.