Questions are welcome, and no, it’s no Disturbance at all, LOL.
You do each cycles in exact same manner, regardless of the sensation. Be it with or without the sensations, you just keep cycling through them. As you do more cycles, you get deeper into the trance (mind drifting back and forth), and you will notice that the external sensations become faded. For example, the humming from that ever-present AC unit no longer bothers you much, if not having completely faded away. Meanwhile, you may begin to notice the noises “in your head”. And as you pay more attention to them they may become more pronounced. This has the effect of shifting your focus away from the physicals. The beauty of SSILD is that you do not have to do this deliberately. The trance works like a gentle wave that carries you away from the physicals. Thus, you need to ease up, and allow the trance to do the trick for you. Even if you absolutely do not feel anything you should continue to cycle, knowing confidently you are slowing detaching yourself from the grip of the physical world.
Typically 4 cycles are all you need. Some people fall asleep in the first couple of cycles and that is no good – you are not done with your “mental massage” yet! Some people find it harder to fall asleep if they do more cycles, but that actually means they are doing the exercise incorrectly – instead of riding with the wave, they are fighting against it! (People with traditional meditation/WILD backgrounds tend to do this.) Once you master the cycles, you can do as many rounds as you wish. You can massage your mind to such point that soon after your stop doing the cycles, you can shift your focus point in an instant and enter the dream world while being fully conscious. This, of course, is for more advanced users, so I won’t recommend it to everyone.
Depend on what your beliefs are, the Focus Point model may contradict with what you believe to be the “truth”. In order to not get into debate of whether or not this model TRULY describes the nature of our consciousness, I decided to call it a “tool”. As long as it makes things easier then why not use it, LOL. For all matters of intent we now know that SSILD works, and this model seems not only explains it but compliments it quite nicely.
So, I continued doing the SSILD technique, and had a few more lucid dreams and FA. However, I am now pretty convinced that when I do SSILD I either get SP or get SP in a FA. Its pretty confusing lol. So far, I have had successful lucid dreams with this technique when I have SP with a FA, but there are sometimes when I have SP with FA but can’t exit my body. The normal techniques I would use to exit SP into a lucid dream/OBE don’t work all the time when in a FA and I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to have a lucid dream with the FA and SP seeing as how its pretty complex. Thanks in advance!
Great post, cosmic.iron! The Focus Point model does make a lot of sense to me, so I’m going with it. I think this explanation might really help me SSILD
A false awakening is just like a lucid dream, so an SP within an FA is essentially an illusion which is no different than being unable to fly or walking through walls. The method I find most effective in this situation is to focus on another place or object. For example, you could focus on the doorway of your room. A few seconds later you will find yourself standing in front of it!
Okay… the eye problem. It indicates several things:
You are using your physical eyes. Do your eyes twitch like that when you are sleeping normally? I guess not, right? Then you should do exactly the same. Just relax, don’t focus your physical eyes. You are seeing things through your mind’s eye. If you feel you are still stretching your eye muscles then just quickly move on to the other sensations.
You are under the wrong impression that you should remain motionless, as with all other techniques. With SSILD you should do whatever that makes you feel comfortable. If that means roll over a couple of times, scratch that itch, swallow, or whatever, just do it!
You are trying too hard and expecting to see immediate results. If you don’t feel like you are seeing anything, that’s PERFECTLY normal! You are not supposed to see things until your focus shifts away from the physicals (see my length posts above). You should not have any expectations throughout the exercise.
Becoming lucid in later dreams can happen frequently, but they are not guaranteed. You should pay close attention to the awakenings after doing the exercise. It is very possible that they are FAs. Even if they are not, you should immediately do a few more cycles which might give you a WILD or DILD in the dreams that follow.
I have done this exercise 5-6 times in total and have had a lucid dream on the same night twice. It may well be a technique that works for me after all.
Although I often have found myself forgetting where I am in the exercise and drifting away a bit, I have not noticed any peculiar imagery, sounds or sensations yet. In addition, I haven’t fallen asleep instantly after doing the cycles yet; I may well try doing one or two more than usual (I tend to stop at 4) to see if that puts me in any more of a trance.
Thanks for the post on the ‘Focus Point’ model. I suppose when the science isn’t there, it’s necessary to make somewhat bold theories like this.
Some people somehow tend to experience strange sensations more frequently than others. I’m still investigating this but so far no conclusion yet I will be interested in the result of your experiment as well.
I’m very new to LD (about a month ago). All this time mostly I only use WBTB since it’s the easiest technique for me. I ever use WILD tree times and I dropped the tech since it make me awake more and then it kill my DR due to lost of time to sleep.
My DR is still at horrible state so MILD and other tech related are out of question.
Yesterday I stumble on your thread in DreamView about SSILD and try it on my WBTB session. I only through the cycle 2 times and then let my mind wander (since yesterday I didn’t make myself understand more on what being said in the tutorial and what I understand the most is not to force it, just lazily observe). Because I thought I need to focus to only one sense and not three of them but I did those three sense anyway.
The result is I recall 2 dreams. One was almost lucid because I thought I want to plant some blue weed that I saw in the dream so the weed would also grew in my dream. Thinking about dream in my dream is rare for me.
I would stick to this technique and see the further result.
Just to let you know, I did the technique this morning. I didn’t really get to sleep afterwards, but I went into SP not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in total. On the last two of these I was able to step into a lucid dream for a few seconds. On all occasions, however, I was woken up by external noise.
I have had these bouts of SP before in the morning, and am interested in finding out what it is that lets me be aware of it so easily. I just doze off without paying much attention to anything and then feel a bit of tingling which, once noticed, develops into full SP. SSILD could well help with getting into this ‘mode’! I’ll keep at it.
By repeatedly focusing on the various senses, SSILD seems to bring heightened awareness within dreams, as well as making you more sensitive to the sensations felt while falling asleep. On previous page there are couple of posts in which I was discussing the theory behind SSILD. Maybe you will find that interesting.
So, I’ve been looking this threat since it was created and never posted on it. By the way you did a great job sharing this on this forum.
But today is a different day! I had a LD this morning and think it was thanks to this technique and i’d like to be sure.
So here it is :
I woke up after 6 hours of sleep or so and wrote a dream then i did some cycles and went to sleep.
During the next dream, i dreamt that someone put my feet in ice wich made them feel numb and woke me up 2 time (was that SP?).
Then i got full of vibration and once it stopped, i could get up in the dream by rolling out of the bed.
So after few nights of trying this technique I have succes. I am very happy! As ussually I woke up after 5 or 6 hours of sleep did some cycles and go sleep. Then I fall asleep without even recognize it (I am newbie in LD so I don’t have much experience to recognise it) but fortunatelly there was strange things in my room so I decided to do RC and it confirmed me that I am dreaming. Last night there was also some FA but everytime when I start thinking that strage thing are around me I woke up in reality.
Thank you that you shared this technique it really helped me.
Yes, I read this. I have definitely noticed I am considerably more aware of the sensations while falling asleep. I tend to find it a little difficult falling asleep, and what SSILD does for me is make me very aware of the tingling (etc) and I subsequently feel slightly uncomfortable (and have a hard time sleeping). If I don’t get to sleep, however, it means I’m very likely to go into SP. It happened again this morning after doing the techniques. I don’t know if you have encountered this with other users of the technique, but if it’s true it could mean getting right to sleep afterwards is not absolutely crucial as there is another potential means of accessing an LD for those with sleeping difficulty.
I did get to sleep in the end (after losing the SP unfortunately), and had what I believe was my most vivid normal dream yet. Therefore, what I have found so far basically supports your theory. Early days though!
Thanks to this (I think) I had my first ever lucid dream! Seriously, amazing, took me like two months - i’ve had 2 FA’s before - but this was a real lucid dream where I could explore the dream world and do what ever I wanted, my dream control was poor seeing how it’s my first time so I woke up after about 10-15minutes but it was still awesome and i’m so happy that I finally got it .
The reason I said ‘(I think)’ is because i’m not entirely sure that it was because of this technique or weather it was just luck. I woke up after my first dream at around 3AM or something and I was sooooooooo tired. I managed to try this technique out, spent about 20seconds looking at the blackness then focused on what I could hear but because I was so tired I fell asleep (accidentally). So I only did this for about 30seconds but it lead to a lucid dream in the middle of the morning. You’re supposed to do the cycle 4-5 times but I didn’t even do it once which is why i’m not sure if my lucid dream was due to this technique or if I got lucky. You guys got any thoughts on this?
Either way i’m still extremely pleased at my first lucid dream.
This gave me two lucid dreams last night. For once, I fell asleep almost instantly after finishing the cycles and was later in an FA. Although I didn’t realize it was an FA, I experienced SP in the dream and that led me to WILD within the dream and reach lucidity. Although it wasn’t a real WILD, the outcome was the same. I then had a brief DEILD later.
Also, I had another super-realistic dream. That is to say, I woke up from it and thought “that was a dream?!”. A very successful night all in all, and I’m beginning to accept that it is thanks to this technique.
it was unstable and short, but still longer and more stable than my other LDs 