I tried WILDing last night (I was going to try the night before but I had a headache so I basically lost my resolve to just lie there) and I was trying to do a WBTB. I went to bed around 12:30 am and set my alarm for 5:30. What was extremely annoying was that I actually woke myself up at 3:00 a.m. This is highly unusual for me, as I never wake up in the middle of the night.

I was also trying MILD in case I failed in WILD and I can only assume that all the excitement and thoughts about dreams somehow provoked me to wake up. But, when I woke up I had no memory of having dreamed anything at all. I decided that since it was 3 I might as well try to WILD, and if I mess it up, I can just try it again at 5 tomorrow. Well, I ended up lying in my bed for around 75 minutes, eventually feeling what I thought was a significant feeling of SP and at times a very small side to side rocking motion that happened, subsided, came back later, then left again. I never really felt like I saw any imagery or heard any auditory hallucinations. The only sensation of "strange lights" I had when I closed my eyes was what I normally have whenever I close my eyes at any time, so I attributed it to that. I tried visualizing dreamscapes but eventually I figured that waking up at 3:00 a.m. had screwed with the entire process and I basically gave up. I looked at my clock and it said 4:15 so I left my alarm set for 5:30 to see if waking up at that time might help, and I figured I'd give it another go.

This time, I woke myself up at 5:15 am (again, I never wake up in the middle of the night, and I attribute this to excitement about dreams), but at that time I had been dreaming. I hadn't realized I was dreaming in that dream, I just spontaneously woke up. I'm not sure if I had been dreaming at 3, but if I did I had no recollection of it.

At this point I was extremely uncomfortable in my bed and had no mental will power to actually try WILDing, so I figured I would turn off my alarm and just go to sleep.

After that, I ended up having a short DILD. I'm in no way experienced with this, so I had limited control. I found that my normal expectations of the world greatly affected my ability to act. But I'm not completely sure how logical I was being, though I felt fairly reasonable. I tried going through a brick wall, but was unsuccessful. At that point in the dream, I reasoned that I was inhibiting my dream actions by having expectations as though I was int he real world, and i figured I should just try to enjoy the lucid dream a little more before practicing to overcome my normal expectations. Another thing I noticed was that I was constantly wondering (wait, is this okay to do?). Sometimes I just wouldn't do something because I was worried about the consequences, despite the fact that I was aware that it was a dream. I think at this point I probably didn't have a full ability to reason. I heard in the dream my mother and nephew walking down the stairs and was worried that they might wake me up from my Lucid dream. I wasn't sure whether or not they were a dream noise or an outside noise incorporated into the dream, but I felt like it could go either way. So I decided to try to avoid the noise in the dream in the hopes that it wouldn't effect me as a result.

Eventually that faded and I went to my kitchen upon which I saw a donkey and instantly woke up. I think there was a significantly reduced ability to think and reason in this dream as well as strong inhibitions taken from my pre-existing knowledge of the waking world. Does anyone have any tips for overcoming that? I was in my house the entire time and never thought to try to go anywhere else, which was probably lack of experience and lack of full mental abilities. And I had caught myself losing a full mental picture of the world partway through the dream and started to spin around to help, and that seemed to solidify everything. But the second time with the donkey was a near instantaneous jolt out of the dream. I didn't really expect to have a DILD so I wasn't prepared to enter the dream without being mostly aware, so I probably didn't make very strong mental preparations to make sure that I was being logical and thinking things through, which I hope to practice.

After I woke up I kept going back to sleep and seeing if i could have another DILD, but I just kept having normal dreams, waking up, going back to sleep, normal dreams.

Anyway, does anybody have any tips on WILDing, falling to sleep, any of the other stuff I mentioned?

Lately I've been having some trouble getting to sleep normally and the only way I can consistently fall asleep is trying this meditative practice. After gaining sufficient focus on my breath, I switch my focus to the idea of a spinning, glowing, white disk located in my heart. It works very well to help me fall asleep, but I'm not sure if it would help me fall asleep if I tried to maintain active awareness of it, as whenever I maintain a strong active awareness I can't seem to fall asleep at all. When I think of the disk I know I have the intention of going unconscious so I'm not in any way trying to stay aware.

That's all I have for now, I'll share more when I experience it.