I've been making some progress. Following my first lucid dream of my adulthood 2 days ago I had several more this morning. I actually lost count as some were quite short and I also remember trying to become lucid in other dreams and not being able to. I went from dream to dream and my lucidity came and went. At some point I woke up at least I think I did, I've been having trouble with false awakenings since I haven't gotten in the habit of doing an RC straight away plus I don't want to move if I have a chance of getting back in the dream.
I'm hoping someone who has more experience with WILDs can tell me if there's a big difference between doing it in a false awakening and doing it for real.
Another thing I want to add is during one of these awakenings I had a double image where I could see my bedroom and the dream at the same time.
So I remember just lying in bed, not wanting to move or open my eyes again because it was starting to get bright out. I can usually tell if I'm awake because my eyes have this heavy feeling but I can never be 100% sure.
My focus drifts in and out and it feels like I'm falling back to sleep but I've had a string of lucid dreams already the same morning so I was getting used to feeling. At some point I could feel my consciousness separate from my body, hard to explain but I could feel myself lying in bed AND feel my legs and arms moving around at the same time. I was trying to focus on my 'dream' body to sit up. I tried to imagine a rope or handle above me to pull me up I reached but I couldn't grab anything. Then I just bent my knees and my feet went through the bed and hit the floor. I managed to stand up then and I leaned forward and started to freefall. I ended up in another lucid dream. It felt more vivid than the others at the time as if this dream was in 4k and the rest were 1080p. But I had heard that WILDs were supposed to be better so I could have just imagined it. I also woke up for real shortly after and I thought WILDs were longer and more stable. Was this really a WILD or did I just go lucid in another dream?
I've had similar experiences with this blurry boundary between WILDs and DILDs.
One was a week ago; I woke up for real, and I decided to try enter a WILD. I was diving deeper and deeper, and my mental images became clearer and clearer. And I kept on trying to turn it into a dream.
There was a moment where I saw some light pass under my door, and my mother getting closer to my room. I was afraid that it would snap me back into reality. And then my sight was "projected" through the door, to see my mother getting downstairs.
That was so weird that I knew it was a dream. So, I had successfully entered a dream, but at this point I was still trying to enter the dream, as I wasn't very aware.
Was it a WILD, or a false awakening, or a DILD ? I don't think that finding the exact category really matters, because such experiences seem impossible to classify.
By the way, you seem to consider that WILDs are necessarily vivid and stable. But the majority of the few WILDs that I've had were short and very hard to stabilize, so, at least for me, the two don't go hand in hand.
Ok I think I answered my own questions because this morning I had an undoubtedly wild experience. Shortly after going back to bed I had full blown hypnagogia in the form of neon graffiti like little stone age stick people and a thumping almost like music echoing in my ear I thought I was at a rave. Then my body started shaking violently as if I was taking off on a rocket. My eyes started to open and I could see some light but I tried to fight it. It was only after I woke up I realised I had my sleep mask on so I think I accidentally fought off the dream. I was disappointed and my heart was pounding so I couldn't fall back to sleep after that. Still it was nothing like what I experienced before which makes me think I went from a false awakening into a lucid dream the first time. Still cool but not a real WILD. I'm so close to one now I want to keep trying. I'm in the middle of tracking my sleep cycle so I can get the most out of my wbtb