主题:Sstrugling With Ssild. AdviceSo I've learned about SSILD about a week ago from here and decided to practice it every night since then. Things have not gone as smoothly as others have claimed. So far no dreams I've had were lucid, nor were any of my awakenings false. I have followed the instructions pretty accurately afaik and have scrawled down quick notes onto a scrap of paper for me to read when I head to bed as a quick review on what to do.
Am I missing something, do I need more practice or is it something else entirely?
SSILD, like anything, is not a magic bullet. People love to hype things way beyond the reality. It is just a technique to manage the process of approaching sleep while maintaining awareness, to (hopefully) quiet the mind and stop the inner chatter.
One really important thing is to stay relaxed and to continue to relax and make progress towards sleep. You must fall asleep!
I find this post much more useful an a philosophy and approach for sleeping in order to have lucid dreams:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/2n0vm2/as_a_person_who_has_had_hundreds_of_wilds_here_is/
You have to be prepared to lose a lot of sleep though while you're getting better at it. But I have a tendency towards insomnia so I'm hoping that learning to quickly quiet the inner voice will help me with that. Just today I was practicing this as a late morning nap and I fell asleep and had 3-4 dreams, several of which had semi-lucid almost-lucid moments. I almost never can fall asleep in the middle of the day and when I do, I almost never have dreams (despite having excellent night-time dream recall), so I'm really excited about this /u/InfiniteCrimson approach
So the whole process of the cycles is to keep my mind clear and calm?
I guess overall, it's just another form of WILD as I've heard :P
Really it's quite separate to WILD. It's just a way of raising your awareness before you sleep. You still go to sleep normally at the end of your cycles like you might at the start of the night (unlike WILD).
This is the claim. I'm not sure I believe it. It seems much more about raising awareness *while* you fall asleep, like MILD. That people find it useful and associate lucidity with it seems clear. If it works, do it. Frankly, nobody really totally understands lucid dreaming, it's pretty much a mystery :). We just try to find ways to increase the chances of it.
I've tried it for the past 3 nights and had no results but anecdotally it seems that a lot of people have had success with it and I'm sure these people know what they're talking about when they differentiate a WILD variant from a much more simple awareness-raising exercise. A technique where you raise awareness *whilst* falling asleep as you hint at is FILD which is also well established. I've had mixed results with this (entered SP but never managed to materialise an LD).
You're taking people's gushing messages as gospel truth of an established phenomenon. Define "a lot." I know personally of a few people who have good luck with SSILD, and a number (including me) who have pretty much gotten nothing from it. Same with FILD (what is so "well established" about it other than people keep repeating the hype?). "FILD WORKS EVERY TIME" you can find on the forums, yet where are the slew of repeated successes, and why so many actual "problem" reports with it just like with SSILD? The sidebar here says FILD is the "biggest improvement in a long time." So, where is all the improvement? It's nowhere to be found.
It's all hype. FILD is WILD, SSILD is, well, basically a form of meditation. Meditation is great, and can be very helpful for a number of things.
Once you learn the fundamentals, you will see that these fly-by-night approaches (remember the recent huge craze on the alarm system that "WORKS FOR EVERYBODY WITHIN THREE TRIES!") are basically just fads. Sure got quiet fast on that alarm one.
There's solid meat, and there's infomercial hype. It's much better to stick with the meat: awareness, meditation, memory, reflection, intention. There are no shortcuts to solid, long-term improvement. It takes effort and personal transformation.
When I say a lot I mean 20+? You complain that "it's all hype". Of course it is. Everything we know about the techniques of entering LDs is anecdotal. And that is the weakest form of evidence alongside opinion. Google "hierarchy of evidence". We will most likely never have actual concrete evidence behind the success of techniques (not for the foreseeable future anyway).
Regardless, my original point was that SSILD is merely a platform to raise one's awareness (aka a form of meditation) which you now seem to be agreeing with. My other point was that FILD is WILD. At this point I'm not really sure what we are even discussing.
Out of interest: what is the alarm system you mention? I haven't been on the sub for some time until recently so missed that craze.
I can't even remember it's name other than it's named something starting with "R". Look back a couple weeks.
There's quite a difference between technique hype/fads and fundamentals. Techniques are simply ways to give direction & focus the fundamentals, especially intention. When you work properly on the fundamentals, on *becoming a lucid person*, you don't need to look for the latest fad technique.
You raise a good point and I understand what you were saying previously now. Any suggestions on how to work on the fundamentals?
Find a way to consistently work on them in a way that you find fun/rewarding. Because if you don't enjoy a practice, you won't do it for the long-run, and LDing requires the longest of long runs to achieve high frequency and quality of LDs. I consider the fundamentals to be: self-awareness, reflection, memory, intention, expectation. Some of these terms involve elements of the others and some might use slightly different words. The qualities of dedication, perseverance, honest self-examination and review, patience, creativity also play an important role.
But basically, it comes down to being a lucid person for as much as you can. I think the Tibetan dream yoga sources describe it best. The sequence we're looking for is, in this order achieving awareness in: 1) the moment of experience, 2) the moment of response to experience (i.e., in behavior), 3) in dream.
Avoid auto-pilot, zombie mode. Pay attention to all life experience, reflect upon them ("is this dream-like?"), practice recalling them, day and night. Enjoy, repeat, dream.
Read a lot, especially sources like dream yoga books, practice a lot, think a lot, become really familiar with the process and the feel of dreaming, build super high dream recall and a closeness to your dreams. Try different things, and do what feels right to you based on your experiences. Ultimately we all need to find our own way through the jungle.
Without knowing your routine it is actually hard to diagnose your problem. When SSILD is performed correctly it almost always has some kind of effect on your dreams -- LDs, OBEs, FAs, or flying/telekinesis dreams. I've created a sub-reddit called SSILD so it's easier for me to provide some (limited) tech-support for people trying the method. Please feel free to visit it and post your routine there so I can help you diagnose. Cheers!
Excellent! I'll give it a look!