Dreamstate

I admit I don't have a lot of experience with WILDs, but from what I've read they seem to require a different set of skills than for DILDs. Of course, you have the fundamentals such as reality checking and dream journalling, those seem to form the roots/trunk of the tree. But for WILD and DILDs, do the necessary skills branch off from there? For example, I know Daniel has mentioned meditation is incredibly important for WILD inductions, but it seems less important for DILDs. For DILDs, prospective memory seems to be very important, but doesn't seem as important for WILDs. General awareness and critical thinking seems like it'd be more important for DILDs rather than WILDs too. How else do you think the skillsets needed for a DILD vs a WILD differ? Is it possible that some of us should focus more on one type, kind of playing to our strengths (whilst obviously trying to develop our weaknesses too). Curious to hear your thoughts because, like I said, I have very limited experience with WILDs.

Question: is there any sense that doesn't "work" in your dreams or is different from real life? Taste, hearing, smell, touch? After a dream last night, featuring a Johnny Depp who had the most unfortunate body odor, I thought about how senses work in dreams. Going over my most recent dreams, I get the feeling that my sense of taste is pretty much non-existant in my dreams while my sense of smell is overexaggerated. Hearing and touch seem pretty realistic. I'm thinking of doing reality checks tailored to that. Smell is going to be easy – I can plant someting in every room of the house that I can easily grab at any time to smell and ask myself: does this smell as it's supposed to? Coffee beans, my bottle of rosemary oil etc. Taste is going to be more tricky, because I don't want to actually have to eat something every time I do a reality check! Maybe I'll just use a drop of vinegar or something else that has a strong taste. What do you think? Do you have a sense that might work as a litmus test for the question: Am I DREAMING?

I've read the chapter about hypnagogia in "Are you Dreaming?", but I'm still not quite sure how to interpret my experiences. 1) Sometimes I have "dream snippets" right at the first border between waking and sleep – which makes them hypnagogic hallucinations, I suppose? Thinking of Daniel's childhood experiences with "catching the butterfly", I often try to catch the exact moment those hypnagogic hallucinations turn into sleep. But usually, I eventually lose my grip and fall into oblivion. 2) I can often trigger several bouts of hypgnagogia by visualizing a scene or listening to music while I wait for sleep, which is why I feel drawn to the Anchor method. Sometimes, I'm vaguely aware that something is off or even not real, but it's not a clear "Hey, I am dreaming!" 3) WBTB seems to damage my dream recall, so I've switched to trying to achieve lucidity after waking up naturally. Last night, I first had one "dream" that I'm pretty sure was just hypnagogia and nothing more. At around 4am, I awoke from a regular dream, stayed awake for about 15 minutes and then decided to put on some soothing instrumental music to try the anchor technique. I don't think it took long before hypnagogia started, and I got the feeling that I was starting to slip from hypnagogia into real sleep. A scene formed: I found myself walking from the living room to the kitchen, where I looked through a brochure by the local supermarket.All very real and normal.Then the ads I looked at were projected as holograms, hovering over the page. One of them was for dog food, a hologram of a happy cartoon dog wagging his tail. He reminded me of a friend's dog, which at that moment I really wanted to be able to see again and pet (which is not possible due to Corona), so I willed the cartoon dog to turn into the real dog. It was odd, I knew that it was a dream but I also did NOT know it was a dream – I was aware just enough to know that I could change things, but not enough to do a RC and go fully lucid. So I sort of ran my fingers through the hologram and wherever I touched it, the vibrant colors melted away to show real fur underneath, which felt very soft to the touch. It felt more lucid than the usual hypnagogia, but it lacked the clear, absolute certainty of lucidity Daniel desribes in the chapter "Did I experience a lucid dream?" I did understand that I could change the cartoon dog into the real dog, but there was no feeling of "OMG I am dreaming!" revelation. Would you say this was still hypnagogia or already a dream with a very low-level form of lucidity?