Thread: Hypnagogic Imagery Question

So, one of the basic parts of WILD'ing involves seeing hypnagogic imagery, which is usually a sign that you're getting closer to sleep paralysis, and the lucid dream. I'd always been somewhat confused about what exactly hypnagogic imagery was...I've remembered reading on Wikipedia that it's just "snippets of dreams", but generally, I've just understood that it's just images you "see" as you further relax when WILD'ing. I've never had what I've officially considered a WILD, although I feel I've come close at times. But usually, what I've considered to be hypnagogic imagery that I've seen has generally just been a very dim flashing image on the "back of my eyelids", which I barely even notice, and often only process a moment after I see it. To describe its clarity, I basically would say it's something in between the clarity of a dream and the clarity of an image that you attempt to imagine, but this random image would only flash there for a split second.

Then, last night, as I decided I'd try WILD'ing on my side instead of on my back like I usually do, I was laying there, relaxing, when I saw this bright light in my vision. Wow, this startled me, because I'd never seen that before. It was just a bright light concentrated in one specific part of my vision, which I definitely "saw", and it made me realize that this was hypnagogic imagery...and it didn't just last a split second like the faint images which I'd previously thought had been "hypnagogic". And this startlingly bright light in my vision was more consistent with the Wikipedia description in that I could very easily have defined this as a snippet of a dream, in that I "saw" it there, as though it was real, on the back of my eyelids, as is the case during a dream or lucid dream. Now, it makes more sense to me to read things about attempting to "spin" objects you see amidst the hypnagogic imagery to increase their clarity and drift right into that dream scene, or about how certain hypnagogic images for some people "last" x number of seconds, since I've now, for once, seen "hypnagogic imagery" that lasted for long enough for me to process while it was still there.

So, I was wondering if my description of this bright light qualifies better with the general definition, and people's understanding, of what hypnagogic imagery actually is, rather than the faint, split-second images I'd thought I'd been seeing in the past. And, if this was hypnagogic imagery as I suspect, why have I never experienced hypnagogic imagery before?! As far as I'm aware, everybody sees hypnagogic imagery when WILD'ing, which is unlike sleep parlaysis, which can be more individual, or go unnoticed at times. I've reached the state of vibrations (but never full sleep paralysis) often, so presumably I'd have passed the stage of hypnagogic imagery by that point...yet the most I'd seen until this was those faint, flashing images, or other times, just my imagination of a dream scene, probably no more realistic than a normal, involved daydream. Does everybody here experience true hypnagogic imagery when WILD'ing that you can actually "see" on the back of your eyelids as though it was real, that lasts up to seconds at a time? And might my position (on my side) have affected this hypnagogic imagery? I've never tried to WILD on my side like I did this time, yet this was the time I was startled by a small, bright light that suddenly entered my vision out of nowhere, much clearer and more realistic than the faint flashes of random images I'd previously seen...Thanks!