This is a great technique, and perhaps the most reliable method I’ve ever used for succeeding in WILD.
The idea is simply that you maintain an image in your mind to take your focus away from the real world. The object or scene can be absolutely anything, as long as you can picture it in your mind. You can start with something simple if you like, and add detail over time. For example, last time I tried this method I imagined a hard-back book, floating in darkness and lacking any specific detail. As I concentrated on building the image, I started adding various features, all the while maintaining what was already there.
I added a gold border and stylistic title to the front cover, and I began to rotate the book in all directions. I then pictured the book opening to a random page somewhere in the middle, and I filled the visible pages with small, unreadable text. Eventually I added a nearby fireplace, and did my best to imagine the orange glow on the corners of the gold binding. This continued until I had an entire scene, clear and vivid, before my closed eyes.
Without even realizing it, I’d been concentrating on this image for a number of minutes, and my mind was starting to move to the next stage. I incorporated the sound of a burning fire, and I imaged what it might feel like to run my fingers down the engraved writing on the cover. To put it simply, I was trying to replace all of my senses with stimulus originating exclusively from my imagination.
Then, the hypnagogic imagery starts to occur. This is apparent from 2 primary indications. Firstly the image becomes significantly clearer, due to the heightened power of imagination that comes with dropping some links to the real world. And secondly, I was noticing my mind starting to wander. Spontaneous images would emerge and distract from my concentration. It’s a struggle to suppress these random thoughts as they occur, but it’s also welcoming to see the onset of sleep.
From here, it shouldn’t be long until your body falls asleep, and your imagination is able to properly take hold of your senses. Funnily enough, most of the time you won’t even notice the exact moment when this occurs. Eventually it becomes evident that you no longer have any link to the real world, and your initial image, which was previously displayed before your eyes, now occupies each of your senses. Congratulations, you’re conscious inside a dream.
Naturally, to increase the chances of this actually working, it’s advised that you get around 6 hours of sleep prior to your attempt. This allows you to much more reliably enter REM sleep directly, often without having to endure the first few dreamless sleep cycles over again. For most people, it’s also much easier and faster to get to sleep when you’ve just woken up, probably due to your mind and body still being almost totally relaxed.
I don’t recall who posted the initial idea, but I only began experimenting with this technique after reading a suggestion from another member, who’d used a comic book as the object of focus.
