Everything that I thought I knew about WILDs were wrong. How can I be so sure? I didn't lose consciousness when I fell asleep last night—something that I didn't think would happen for another several weeks, or years. WILDs or Wake Induced Lucid Dreams are when you go from being awake, to being in a dream while conscious and aware. As crazy as this sounds, this is a skill that can be learned however, this was nowhere close to what I thought it would be like.

Two weeks ago, I started a dream diary to boost my ability to recall my dreams in greater detail. A few days later I confessed;

"What got me started in meditation was my attempts at a successful WILD."

"Somnium Lucidus" @shello—CC0 Creative Commons

The Current Understanding

How to Lucid (n.d.), describes a WILD as

"The basics of this technique are to stay focused, keep concentrating on staying awake, while letting your body go into what is called ‘sleep paralysis’. This means that you can bypass the need for reality checks by simply not going to sleep in the first place, at least not in your mind. "

What's strange is that every guide I have ever read in a book or on the internet on how to perform a WILD states similar steps, but I realize now that there are many details and steps missing on how it actually works. Many of these guides are incomplete. I've expressed a major interest in this area of research since 2007, and is one of the only topics that I have written about that has no correlation with my academic studies. I'm passionate about dreaming, and this border-line obsession has lead me one step closer to a comprehensive understanding on the many variables that come into play in dreams.

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Included in This Article

• How crucial it is to record all of the dreams you recall
• The stages of a WILD including its deconstruction
• Dream mechanics and logical explanations of why certain things happen
• Understanding how physical reality affects the dream world
• Looking at dreams through a rational lens

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Dream Logging is a Non-Linear Process

Two weeks ago I started writing down all of my dreams—or what I could recall from them. According to The National Sleep Foundation, we have about five dreams a night, ranging between "anywhere from five minutes early in the night to as long as 34 minutes towards the end of your sleep session".

When one realizes how many dreams we are actually having daily, it can be demotivating to barely even remember one. Just because you only remember bits and fractions of it, doesn't make it any less important to write down. Below I have the physical entries of the five dreams since my first one, do you find anything odd about them?

Dreams No. 2 & 3 Took a paragraph each—drew some images to reference.



Dream No. 4 was all of two sentences. Drawings continued.



Dream No. 5. Didn't climb out of bed to grab book.
Typed on phone, two paragraphs.

Dream No. 6

Took three entire pages to write

With various drawings and descriptions

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Additional Rules to Accompany Writing a Dream Diary

• Recall is non-linear. You can easily go from two sentences to multiple pages. We often get caught up thinking that we need to progressively remember more and more slowly. Writing them in the first place holds precedence over this.

• The medium you use to record your dreams doesn't matter. Dream No. 5 was typed from my phone's notes because I didn't want to get out of bed. I decided to still log it. You can't recall after it's lost but you can rewrite.

• Drawing Pictures helps. Even if you remember your dream vividly today, can you relive it a year from now? There's many times that I've written things in old diaries that I can no longer visualize. Adding an image creates additional reference points to help you return to a dream long after it happened.

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The Dream Verbatim

4-23-18 WILD LUCID DREAM Concrete Library
Laying on side w/ knees up. Not sure what started first. Spinning and rotating sideways. Fetal position, screaming that progressively got louder with each scream in a male voice. AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS but no hypnogogic imagery at all. Rotating while screams @ onset of sleep paralysis.

THOUGHT 1—Keep eyes closed, not game for shadow people. THOUGHT 2—I'M GOING TO ENTER A DREAM BUT WHERE? I got caught between going to the beach or the field.

My dream started before I could decide where to land. I'm tumbling forward now—falling out of the sky. At some point I was able to stabilize to normal falling. Clear blue sky, falling outside an infinitely tall building, covered in glass & it was light blue glass. All sides.

The building must have been several thousand stories high. Triangular landings & regular floors alternating. Every so often I would fall past a concrete level with no windows. At first I thought it was a parking lot, but it turned out to be a bathroom in the middle of the floor. Shaped like a cylinder, IT WAS ALSO ROTATING SIDEWAYS.

So I am still in motion (falling) THOUGHT 3—FLY THROUGH THE WINDOWLESS FLOOR. I begin floating inside—realize this cylinder bathroom is in the middle of a library. I'm floating much slower now, can't stop. THOUGHT 4—Float into something to stop moving. Touch a wall. It's made of concrete, cold. I stopped moving. THOUGHT 5—TRY TO MOVE INTO DREAM BODY. Step "down" I'm standing on the ground in my dream.

Walk around and explore. See corpse "maybe months" of old man laying on an elongated ottoman. I don't know what he was wearing. Too focused on his left arm missing, only a stub.

THOUGHT 6—I'M GOING TO WILL THIS GUY BACK TO LIFE. 100% aware I am in a lucid dream. Started to think of him younger (and alive). He starts de-aging slowly and opens his eyes and sits up.

Dream Mechanic Deconstruction

Many texts suggest that hypnagogic imagery is the first major step into lucid dreaming through visualization, but what happens when there is no visual hallucinations at all? It was pitch black, and my only goal was to relax. I had done affirmations on one occassion and full meditation on others. I only wanted to be comfortable that night.

I started rotating while in position on my bed. Up until last night, I only experienced vestibular-motor hallucinations as shaking in the past. This was completely new to me, but I managed to immediately identify the sensory change as a type of sleep paralysis. I didn't stop rotating at any point, and only observed what my body was doing. I could try to move now, but I would either panic at the resistance, or wake my body.

I was also met with a soft yelling in a male voice, that didn't stop as though it was one continuous scream. It grew louder the longer it went on. This is only the second time I've had an auditory hallucination while in sleep paralysis. It's sounded convincingly external, but I obviously knew that everyone else would wake up if there was really someone screaming at 2 am. My ears were not in any pain. I observed the screaming and the motion without any urge to change a single aspect of this situation.

I have never had sleep paralysis without any visual hallucinations before, aware that the only controlled motor function that can operate during this state is the opening and closing of the eyes, I decided to keep my eyelids where they were. I am already experiencing 2 of the 3 types of hallucinations I was accustomed to in these episodes.

If I were to open my eyes, I would see believably real figures in the room. Whether shadow people, hands from the side of my bed, a mist from under the door, or a person standing at the foot of my bed. An emotional dread would fill the air to follow. Although I knew what to expect, I was at a stage where I didn't want to risk shocking myself back awake.

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Dream Limbo

I wasn't sure what to expect, I've had sleep paralysis wear off, or my awareness fade. It felt like this episode was lasting longer than normal. I still didn't understand why this time I couldn't even see a glimpse of an image on my mental screen. It dawned on me that if my dream is going to be starting soon that I should think of somewhere to go. I couldn't make up my mind weighing the pros and cons of each place, so my dream started without it.

My body changed orientation so that I was rotating downward at an accelerated pace. The direction I was moving was completely not possible if I were laying. I was surprised that a building was already rendered in front of me when I decided to open my eyes. The glass was azure, and was so clean that all of the windows reflected as I fell past them. I had already been falling for a while, I thought that damn this is a really really tall building.

The rate that I was tumbling and falling was too proportionate to one another. Normally falling dreams can shock one awake rather easily, but this only happens if you are not in complete awareness that you are dreaming. The entire time I didn't try to unfall, or resist what was happening.

The one time I can successfully WILD, and I didn't plan anything out for it. I only observed and didn't react to anything. Every choice, although they came slow, were conscious decisions. It was like this scene was on repeat until I took a further action. I spotted a noticeably different floor every so often, and instead of heading straight there, I was trying to figure out what was inside. Nothing was changing, I willed myself in that direction—first time flying, if only for a moment.

I've never had a dream where I was in a continuous motion before. I remembered that when changing scenes, a method to stabilize a dream's surroundings is to spin. I had thought this was a conscious skill to execute, but I had been in a state of spinning the entire time before falling, then flying, decelerating into floating.

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New Territory

Was I moving because my dream was not stabilized? When I was tumbling from the sky I was head down, the scenery would be changing too fast for a still image to come hold focus. Even falling, facing a building—it had to repeat multiple times. Now that I had progressively been slowing down I realized that the bathroom I thought was rotating in the center was really me floating around it, possibly absorbing the attributes of my tumbling.

I was at a loss. The dream I longed to have for so long, what is the point if I couldn't stop moving through it long enough to actually enjoy it? I need to stop somehow. I found my closest wall, and floated to it with a hand extended. I gently came to a stop when my hand touched the wall. I felt my hand touch the wall.

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Completed Materialization

I looked around for a moment, realizing I was in a library. A little bittersweet feeling since I wouldn't be able to read any books with continuously morphing text. Because I was able to feel a wall that didn't exist and my body stopped moving, what would happen if I tried to move now? I was still floating a foot off of the ground.

I stepped down and felt both of my feet standing on the floor, I was inside the dream. I took note that the floor felt cold because I was barefoot. I didn't sleep with my socks on that day either, so they wouldn't materialize with me, the AC was set at 60 at home.

The world that took an eternity to materialize was now real. I walked around a bit to explore and came across an obviously dead old guy with wrinkles laying on a low but upholstered bench. He was missing an arm, I didn't feel a presence, he was not decomposed looking like a zombie, just frail.

Cleary aware of how unskillfully I was rendering my dream so far, it wouldn't make sense to attempt creating a new scene, or materializing another person. In my mind it would be more effective to raise the person already here from the dead so I could have a conversation with him. First WILD and I decided to be a necromancer. Not bad.

As he began de-aging and coming back to life, I was weirded out by how easily I could manifest literally anything by sheer willpower that I could witness occurring. I thought that this was enough and decided to leave my dream and wake up after I succeeded in reviving him.

I got out of bed and began scribbling everything like a madman. My boyfriend said I was only asleep for 20 minutes total, although the first stage of REM is supposed to start at 90 minutes in.

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The Truth About Lucid Dreaming as a Skill

I have been trying to lucid dream off and on for the greater part of 11 years. One of my biggest goals was to achieve a WILD, but now that I have, there are an insurmountable number of misunderstandings on how to succeed at them. Similar to meditation you can't force or will something to be from the get go, this and resistance ignites frustration.

I can't count how many nights I laid perfectly still, anticipating a lucid dream only to be awake five hours later with a sore body. Being anxious for anything will tense the body and speed up the mind. You will not be able to fall asleep at all this way. I had believed for a long time that I could will myself into a different state by using willpower in a resistive manner—determination.

I believe that calmness is the most important part of a WILD. You are only watching as an observer until the process of going to sleep is complete. Any action performed before or during sleep paralysis will thwart the effort. Furthermore, any effort to react to the aforementioned processes is an indicator that you are in fact still awake. Your mind must remain calm as mental reactions also count towards this.

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The Key to Achieving WILD

I didn't even try to have a WILD nor a dream when it happened. I actually didn't do anything. It might sound counterintuitive to say but there is no concentration.

"If you truly know something, you don't have to prove anything."

I would lay still to try to prove to my mind that my body was asleep. I would react before becoming certain. I would continuously try to prove something that wasn't there by creating the image in my head. I can tell you right now, if you can understand sleep paralysis to be able to immediately identify every manifestation type, if you can get hallucinations but know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they aren't real, if you can fall from the side of a building in a dream and not flinch at all, you can WILD.

The point is to understand every aspect, so that when they occur there is no reaction, no fear, no questioning, no wondering. There is no unknown. If you know it, you won't worry or tense up at all. There isn't anything to think about. The reason reality checks are needed at all is to check if you are dreaming. If you already know for sure you are dreaming, they are no longer needed.

The diary is important, to document things that happen in your dreams, making it easier to spot each subsequent time. Many reality checks are universal, so it's good to know as many as you can. When recalling dreams, and rereading diaries we are memorizing not details, but facts that are true under these circumstnces.

Do you need a calculator to know what 2 + 2 is? The reason you immediately know the answer is because this fact is engrained. You want to know everything you can about dreaming immediately as if it was that question. If you have to think about any process the illusion breaks and you wake up. Memorize all of it, and be aware of what specific things need to be ignored.

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Sleep Paralysis is the Gate Keeper

The process of sleep paralysis is to run as many checks against you as possible to ensure that your body doesn't fall asleep if you are still awake. If you know what every check is, you can remain calm enough to bypass it. Most lucid dreaming involves remembering and waking up when you are already asleep, but for a WILD you never went to sleep.

The best analogy I can use to describe this calmness is that you are not hiding in a closet from a pursuer praying to not be spotted, instead you are standing in the middle of the room—but it's okay, you're invisible.

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As always, thank you for stopping into my blog today.
I learned quite a bit this time, did you?





If it scares you, understand it. You will become fearless.